I would say that Reddit’s problems are enhanced by complicit admins. I feel that Lemmy instances can get just as bad as any subreddit power tripping mods can be. The good news though is that users have much more power to start a fresh instance and get it popular as the main name of the instance before the @ can stay the same. This is a big deal compared to Reddit imo, as the ability to hold the name of the community gives a lot more leverage over legitimacy. Take r/manga for instance, I believe most of the mods over there are now inactive. Another head mod has not come in to fill the void, and the subreddit has not posted things like applications for new mods. The userbase feels stuck to that subreddit due to how impactful the name is in attracting users to the community. Sure can offshoot can slowly grow in popularity, but it may be missed by the people that stop their search after typing in ‘manga’ to the search bar.

TL;DR Lemmy has it’s issues, but it is much harder for any one instance’s mods to be overly harsh on their rules as the risk of users jumping to a new instance with the same name is relatively low.

Reddit has about soft power for a while now. Ever since they scapegoated Ellen Pao, imo. They’ve been changing things relatively slowly compared to Twitter in terms of enshitification, and being more careful about who they piss off at any given time. They’ve become more emboldened ever since they allowed bot farms and bad actors that commented on their behalf, mostly around the time they killed 3rd party apps.

Reddit could be seeing tons of users leaving the site daily, but they’re for sure replacing them with bots to paint a better picture and drive engagement. The same thing applies to Twitter as well. It’s why on BlueSky for instance, I don’t see ragebait dominating my feed due to the more robust moderation tools compared to Twitter and Reddit.

Lemmy has avoided most bots due to the manual approval processes from what I can see. I think Lemmy should strongly consider implementing BlueSky’s moderation tools though.

In a sense, we are integrated with the previous hominids. They didn’t go extinct so much they bred with early humans and their DNA is preserved in our own.

Speaking ill of someone not present to defend themselves is commonly in bad tastes, imo. Commonality of occurrence certainly doesn’t make it any less wrongful. I don’t think it’s a gender specific issue based on the story being about guys doing this.

It definitely does, I tried my best for months, but it didn’t make enough of a difference unfortunately. It does makes sense that so many are struggling. If it was just online problems then that would be one thing, but people are trying to have their basic needs met which further causes problems.

I think blocking is important, if you’ve responded to their misinformation and they move the goalposts, I would call them out on it and then block them right then. That’s a great question, I haven’t been here long enough to personally, there might not be a cap though since I couldn’t find a reference to one upon my searches.

It’s not all one country doing it either, although they are one of the largest players. Intelligence networks and private citizens from multiple countries and backgrounds have bot farms and have bad actors sowing division online. I’ve noticed that IRL is nowhere near as polarizing as online is framed, even with the most staunch people on the extremes that I know.

What sucks is that all of what some of these bots and bad actors do all day every day is post their same tired points, in different threads and communities. It’s like playing whack-a-mole trying to respond to all of the misinformation. They want to exhaust the people trying to refute them and control the narrative by parroting the same debunked misinformation over and over again. They won’t even defend their points, but move onto some other thing for you to have to debunk.

I think the answer is to be a poster that sets the message from the start, not get caught in the weeds of their bad faith discussions, and pressing them for a change on failures of their argument rather than just defending your own points. They appear to have a stronger frame of view since they are always on the attack in arguments, flipping the script makes their arguments crumble since they can’t defend them.

Reddit removes all the time, but they shadow remove so you never get a notification or anything.

There’s always the potential for them to grow as a community here. I’ve found a few smaller communities I liked that were slow at first but have been gradually gaining traction.

I started the switch over after how grossed out I was with Reddit advertising betting on the elections, and the overwhelming number of bots and bad actors trying to influence people constantly in most of the subreddits. Since then, I’ve been promoting Lemmy, BlueSky, and the Fediverse as a whole on Reddit.

I believe we are on the cusp of another great migration. The more enshitified things continue to get on Reddit, the more real people will leave for spaces like here. At some point it could just be mostly bots talking to other bots on Reddit.