It's so funny seeing a large group (almost all) of the people in my feed being so excited about this new social media thing that they managed to get in through invitation on Instagram.
I would say they are more likely to be paid shills and astroturfing (just like this post seems to be). And anyone naive enough to continue business with Meta after everything we've learned about them deserves what they get.
My first thought was AstroTurf too but honestly Lemmy is still small enough that I wonder if Meta even cares enough for it to pay for astroturfing here. They got more signups in a couple of hours than Lemmy got users in three years, and by several magnitudes even. Plus it's an inherently hostile demographic for them. They're better off investing in positive posting on Reddit, which I'm sure is what they're already doing.
It takes minimal amounts of effort to set up a few bots to sow discord in a new social media network. With the things that we know Meta has done it the past do you honestly believe that dropping a few bots onto Lemmy is beyond them? Why would they let something like Lemmy even get off the ground to become a threat to them, snuffing it out in the cradle would be easier.
People want the new and shiny and to the regular person, the fediverse doesn't exist and Threads is the only option to Twitter. Its all over my twitter feed and ain't none of them are paid shills.