Not even the biggest tech companies have an answer sadly…

They do have an answer: add friction. Add paywalls, require proof of identity, start using client-signed certificates which needs to be validated by a trusted party, etc.

Their problem is that these answers affect their bottom line.

I think (hope?) we actually get to the point where bots become so ubiquitous that the whole internet will become some type of Dark Forest and people will be forced to learn how to deal with technology properly.

environment more hostile to discussion and honest exchange.

"Voting" and "discussion" are separate things. The old forums did not have voting but still had polarization, personal attacks, hellthreads, etc.

The problem is that Reddit/Facebook turned "voting" from a tool meant to measure "quality" (e.g, this post is relevant to the community, this comment does not add to the discussion) into a tool to measure "popularity" (I agree with this, so I vote up. I don't like this, so I downvote).

Either get rid of voting altogether, or let's bring back a culture where "votes" are meant to signal quality.

Please don't take what I'm about to say as individual call-out, but your comment really will go to "reasons software developers should not listen to the users (unless they are paying for the privilege)" file.

You have a developer who started the project by themselves, got reasonably popular, does more than what Lemmy is doing and when they need help to be able to keep going, the reaction from the people is "don't bother, just move on to this other fork".

I know this is not your intention, but I can't stop picturing a bunch of locusts flying to the next crop.

This has nothing to do with branding or simple preferences. It's about ethics. Some people are here not because they think it is the best alternative, but because it has the potential to be good.

No one really depends on these corporate services. People are just too lazy and conformist to give up on the convenience that they bring.

I am talking about the ethos of open source and decentralized systems, not the general ethics or the values of particular people or instances that are here.

mass numbers of people means success

It's not so much about "attracting mass numbers of people", but becoming more than just a point for fringe groups. IOW, can we make it minimally interesting for normies? Can we go beyond the "techie/anime-manga/pretentious college student/socially awkward/neurodivergent" demographic? Could we perhaps make the Fediverse a place that can be attractive for, e.g, photographers? Car Enthusiasts? Fashionistas? Wood workers? Amateur triathletes?

IMO, reddit's value was never in the large communities. Aside from /r/soccer, none of the subreddits I joined had more than 500k subscribers. But the thing is: the reason that Reddit managed to have so many interesting communities in the long tail was because they managed to attract such a large number of people that even those in far tail end could still find like-minded people.

Not exactly what you are asking for, but we can have a Lemmy community for that. Feel free to contribute to !gamereviews@level-up.zone and I can help with moderation.

No. A better analogy would be like phone number portability. You can "own" your number, and if you want to change your company you can take the number with you.

Thank you for the effort to understand my perspective. It's much appreciated.

You are definitely right in a lot of your assessment. I am disappointed at the sheer amount of people who claimed to want to leave Reddit but never took any action about it. I am disappointed at mods who were all protesting about the changes but when push comes to shove, the large majority of them simply were afraid of giving up and losing their "power". I absolutely agree that any approach that ends up patronizing users and telling them how awful their choices are will cause them to be more resistant to change and aligned with the status quo.

The one part that I strongly disagree is the notion that "if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform": Social media (as we know it, with centralized control by a handful of corporations) is made to be as addictive as the most powerful drugs, and peer pressure is one of the strong behavior-regulating forces.

We can not wait until "things start to suck", because by then people will more likely than not just move on to the next crappy corporate-controlled media. What I believe is that we need a coordinated effort and that we need to act as an intolerant minority to fight against it. And I know that I am not getting everything right off the bat, but I hope that at least I can gather enough support to make this a credible threat to the status quo.

They are definitely not appearing as bots in Connect.

If the accounts from alien.top you are seeing are not marked as bots, then it means that you interacted with an actual person who has taken over their account. ;)

i dont agree this is the solution.

Then how about help and come up with something better?

will not waste time interacting with bots.

Then don't interact with the bots. You can, e.g, write the comment on Lemmy and send a DM to the original redditor, inviting them to join the instance/community. I did that to dozens of people already.

People build on top of each other's work all the time. That's normal and good.

If the people selling are passing someone else's work as their own, that's stealing. Otherwise, it's just Free Software working as intended.

If someone is writing software but wants to prevent redistribution, then go ahead and make a license that forbids it. But then don't get to call it "Open Source" or anything like that.

For those that are saying "no" because it's Musk: would you be willing to pay to your account on Lemmy, Mastodon, or any other social network that you happen to use?

Let me be specific: I am not asking if you donate or contribute to any server. I am asking if you'd sign up to a social network that required payment from every user as a measure to avoid spammers and to keep the service running.