If they drive away everybody not sympathizing with a communist ideology, wouldn't that make it harder to surveil them? What's the intelligence value of watching a bunch of "loyal communist subjects", when all the commie hating capitalist scum go elsewhere? If anything, who would benefit from observing such a group if not the west? By that logic, is it reasonable to assume Lemmy is sponsored by a US intelligence agency we know have been intimately involved in mainstaying most of our current western social media platforms?

What would be the benefit of getting involved with an open platform where nothing is behind locked doors? Wouldn't it be much less of a risk to simply scrape lemmy instances? It's not like anybody is sending secret messages - Everything is open.

But it's an open system in the way that you're allowed to not use it as well. I didn't use Lemmy for a while out of ethical concerns rather than being afraid of the CCP.

Are the Lemmy devs specifically pro-CCP?

You'll have to check out their instances, I haven't been in contact with them for nearly long enough.