Given that they're expanding to reddit, I was wondering how dbzer0 is setup to handle similar requests. The legal help page for dbzer0 is just an e-mail address.
All instances should have the donation links at the top of the sidebar tbh, and an infographic or something to show how far along they are to paying for monthly server costs.
Do you think a warrant canary would help? Basically post something ASAP that says "I haven't been served any IP subpoenas as of today." Then, update the statement every so often unless you get served.
Could always go to excessive measures, your own cloud hosted VPN node to hop to an external provider or similar. Unless you're a major target nobody wants to deal with multiple providers and jurisdictions.
But their business model is solely based on not disclosing your info. If they do, most of all for just some silly comments on an Internet forum, be sure they are going to fail.
The simple fact that lemmy federates posts will mitigate the problems posed by this. For example if they want your IP, they need to go to lemmy.today, but for mine they will need to go to tchncs.de. If we were using reddit, they would be able to get everyone's address with just one request. The more small instances there are, the harder it becomes.
AFAIK they would get the info "which user said what". The source would be what ever instance you are from tho, not your own ip. So the owner of a instance knows as much as everyone else.