As a few people have shared (thanks @Psyborg, @zina and others) the proposal for protection zones was to try and get the game itself to help players protect their surround environment. Please see the proposal here.
Now the proposal isn’t perfect. As others point out in the discussion thread it does just move the point of potential abuse from touching your claimed plots to touching your protected plots. But I feel like it helps and moves the problem away from you.
What it would do in a community / settlement is limit players from swooping in and claiming plots that expire within the settlement. Assumption some of the expiring plots would be touching up to your road network or other beacons, and they wouldn’t naturally be able to claim into this space without the consent of the owners.
The polls is currently split 80 : 20 which is a pretty decent indicator that it would be something we could proceed with. There is of course a question about the size of the buffer. A tight answer would be maybe a 3 plot buffer. So it’s not protecting huge amounts of land, but it would if something became available near you, then you would have some direct say over who could then claim it.
The protection buffer automatically protects plots that become available within and around your beacon and settlement. I personally think this would help with a decent number of reports we receive.