I have read most of this thread, and it is very interesting question indeed.

My response:

Taken as a hobby in con-langs it has an impressive community (I don’t speak it though). This is to be compared to other con-langs, not other natural languages. Just the number of learners or historical connotation do not make it necessary preferrable to other con-langs in this day and era.

I believe its practical purpose as international lingua franca is defeated by its Eurocentrism and the actual spread and expansion of its users. It is not a matter of merely the number of users but where and how you actually often they meet them.

For this reason I think it is better to follow the advice I read elsewhere (I think on Lemmy), like French and Spanish can open up many more communication opportunity in ex-colonies, and we should really pay more attention to languages or families that have been local lingua franca in localities of Asia and Africa, to have a more global perspective.

but not for everybody

I second that. English is all but useless in some places in Europe and Asia.

Well there is a standardized system of foreign language skills, which is called A1, A2, A3,…, all the way up to C2. I think that it is only a matter of gathering statistical data to know what percentage of speakers are conversational. It is not an “unknowable unknown”.

isolates like Basque that might have been invented

I don’t think this is a valid linguistic take. There were tons of languages in Europe and Central Asia that are unknown to us. Then the Indo-Europeans expanded and mostly replaced the native linguistic groups. But I think linguists think the critical factor is geographic isolation, for instance Basques and Romanians are geographically isolated, or perhaps I should say geophysically.

distorted beyond recognition by the people who misuse them

This is not the only driving force of language evolution, although is true for imperialist languages like French, Spanish, and English. Languages evolve by generational shifts among native speakers too, eg this has happened with High German, I think.

For me, Lemmy was a place where I mostly found like-minded people. Even if we don’t always agree (and we shouldn’t) I have had some genuine feedback to the thoughts that haunt me or tickle me. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the interinstance drama which I mostly ignore. And I think that the base probability of transphobia is higher than the sidebar rules would implicate. I am always surprised when I see naive and uninformed takes.

Although I do have found a place to share such thoughts with less harassment and backlash than Reddit, there is some unearned harassment and hating here as well, eg there are some consistent downvoters, to the effect I have a single downvote to anything I post.

Although I think that here in Lemmy I enjoy a higher probability of getting thoughtful responses and well-intended humor to what I post, I feel that a number of people I have interacted with me were highly prejudiced I was a troll or a bad faith actor.

This lack of trust to other users is one of the greatest achievements of fascists and spooks, and they have successfully used it with freedom movements everywhere.

I was also surprised at how conservative the privacy community is. Compared to the amount of radical content posted on every other topic, I find myself among those who think that c/Privacy actively discourages newcomers from developing advanced privacy and anonymity skills.

The privacy thing and some aspects of the Democrats situation pre- and post- election make me think that there is some “manufacturing of consensus” bad faith actors among us. This can lead to disbanding of any project, so we need a solid mindset, in which we assume good faith, but have exact methods for handling disagreement and genuine questions, but also look out for bad faith actors and take steps to build healthy online communities for anarchist and communist free and private software enthusiasts.

Afterthoughts

• The sitewide rules ask us to assume good faith, be civil, and discuss thoughtfully. As it happens, we fail to adhere, and I am to blame as well. I am quite uncivil to people I disagree, but it is often forgiven because a lot of other people are cheering. This makes us a stupid crowd by the way.
• As a Disclaimer, I switched sides wrt to Democrats. Although I had chosen not to post anything pre-election, I was like “Quit this nonsense and vote Democrats already”. I was radicalized after the election, and now think that Democrats are lobbying grifters and can stuff it.