I think most mods start out as the latter, but a few will turn into the former. Nearly all mods are fine, just a few power-hungry ones ruin it for everyone. At least with lemmy it's easy to spin up your own instance and start new communities.
While I do completely agree, changing ports is more about getting rid of low-hanging fruit so some script kiddie doesn't get into 22. But again I do agree with everything you said.
Good point. How else do you know if you're doing it right unless you've done it wrong before