I messaged the mods of two subreddits saying “hey, I’ve left this shithole and moved to lemmy. I’ve opened this community there and if you’d like to mod it I’m happy to add you. Just let me know.” No response. I don’t think you can be much fairer than that.

There’s two communities I opened that had existing but inactive communities on lemmy. Again I messaged them saying “do you plan on adding content to get this sub going? If not I’m happy take over for you. Meanwhile I’ve started an alternative. I’d prefer to combine the two communities than have competing ones, let me know what you’d prefer.” Again no response, so I created my own.

I don’t particularly want to be a mod, but the stubborn part of me doesn’t want to put all the legwork into building up a community that has an inactive/uninterested mod.