Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda.

Hey,

It seemed familiar but I had to check. We redirected from !france@lemmy.world to !france@jlai.lu as Lemmy.world was having a lot of technical trouble at the time, and also because it was nicer to have an instance in French.

The memes still exist on !rance@jlai.lu or !actu_memes@jlai.lu. Discussions moved to !forumlibre@jlai.lu

There is !jeuxvideo@jlai.lu , !musique@jlai.lu even !artsdufil@jlai.lu or !interessant@jlai.lu

There are other France communities around, the most active one recently being !france@sh.itjust.works. There is also !neofrance@lemmy.world and !actualite@lemmy.world but you said you found news boring.

What prevents you from creating !france@lemm.ee and use it to grow your own version of the community?

Edit: I was also the second mod of !france@lemmy.world. There was no infiltration.