Thank you for the insights and your opinion / decisions on this topic. Very much appreciated, especially by being so detailed.

I particularly looked for an instance which is open and doesn't start restricting users (e.g. disabling image uploads) if anything happens, instead trust all moderators which invest a huge lot of time to keep communities safe and a nice place, even if not on this instance and only act when actually needed.

I agree with most you wrote about, sadly though such reports usually end up with no outcome since those (truly awful) trolls use TOR, VPN or any other available tool to hide their identity / IP from the public. Being an admin and moderator of several communities myself, I know this struggle. Luckily, on Lemmy there's way more freedom / possibilities than on other managed platforms like Reddit or Discord.

Do you believe it might make sense to consider disabling local image caching (e.g. thumbnails coming from other instances) on your server or use any of the available tools to scan images for possible CSAM content and delete such cached content if this gets worse?

Out of interest, slightly related to this topic, how will you handle other instances possibly blocking Reddthat if ever any spambot attacks happen? Is there a strategy behind this, or will you simply act case by case if such ever happens?

My family comes first.

Absolutely, family and friends come first, especially for projects like this which isn't your job / main income (if any ever from this project).