Depending on the instance where the new piracy community is hosted, it could be a thousand times better than the original subreddit.
On Reddit you could openly discuss piracy, but had to be extremely careful with links and directly mentioning any specific tool or service. And yeah, using a base64 encode on a URL was often not good enough.
But host a Lemmy instance in a country that doesn't care about digital piracy and you're golden. In fact, if you're not for profit in anyway (including ads) even Brazil would work, but I'm sure there are even better choices out there.
It definitely can flourish here given the right circumstances. I haven't pirated anything in a long while, but I love seeing the community doing it's thing. I'll definitely be following along
Good mobile apps are key, I agree. My main use of reddit was on mobile. Currently using Jerboa, which seems okay except it keeps logging me out for some reason.
Jerboa as well, on android. I actually just figured it out, I have to long press on the comment and the option to reply will drop down. I feel like my father using this app, but I sort of love it. I'm figuring it out!