You also have to keep in mind that openly federating forces instance admins to, on some level, moderate the content from other instances too. Lemmy.world was forced to block some instances because it was proving too hard to moderate the content from them. You should also consider this when choosing an instance.
From what I understand about Lemmy, the only way to disable signups completely is by defederating. Meaning, you would not be able to view other communities from other Lemmy instances like .world or beehaw.
To get around this, you can switch to application signup like beehaw and just ignore/reject every application but this would also mean that anyone can view your instance as a guest. Like you can go to lemmy.world and view posts and comments without logging in
Atleast, that’s what I understand. Maybe someone can correct me if I’m wrong.
I tried ReVanced but kept getting ads anyway, especially banner ads and ads in shorts so I went and bought Premium Family for me and my friends. Then I realised I needed SponsorBlock so now I have YouTube Premium + ReVanced (with the block ads patch disabled)
I am sure that the ReVanced group have probably fixed the issue and ads are properly blocked now but its so cheap in my country (especially Premium Family) that I don’t even think about it