iirc, it's a consumer co-op. So think of it as a vote of all users willing to pay for the membership to the service, who (correspondingly) are more likely to be power users/"activist" in the "activist investor" sense.
This can be contrasted with a private company, which will often have a "activist investor", the actual owner!
Given that the actual number of paying users is probably low, it sounds like it would be relatively cheap to disrupt policy for someone with deep pockets.
consumer co ops are broken because you can pay to get in. any bad actor whos rich enough can get thousands of people to join and vote in a corrupt way. and if you make it invite only you defeat the whole point.
imo the best way to fix is with a hybrid model where consumers pay member fees to get discounts but decision making is down to workers, basically how it was before shareholder supremacy.
How is this a failure mode? Sounds like a good idea to me to let the members decide who they want in the club. Just wish this could also be done for national borders.
Codeberg is a community steered project. If participating isn't something you're interested in, it's probably not the right fit for you. There are other Forgejo hosts (you could even be one yourself) where you can be the king of your own castle.
This can be contrasted with a private company, which will often have a "activist investor", the actual owner!