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.

Ahh you mean like a trending function? I know BlueSky has a trending function to see those new hashtags and big topics. I like using both Lemmy and BlueSky but for slightly different purposes.

Usually I’d just scroll through my already subscribed servers first here on Lemmy, and then I’d look at All sorted by Active for what big right now for all topics, after that I sort by Hot to get a glance of content that’s rising. I don’t usually search that much unless it’s a new topic I want to read more about like recipes, most recently.

There might be a trending function here, but I haven’t been around long enough to know for sure. Hopefully this helps a bit! I’m sure someone more knowledgeable can help give a more in-depth answer.

I’m still relatively new here so I’m not sure either. But maybe there’s a catalogue or list servers by topic out there? The search function on the Voyager app has made it pretty quick for me to find some of my favorites.

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.

I agree, I actually have been wanting a 4chan type replacement for a while and I believe there are enough tools out there with a federated space for it to be possible. 4chan’s method of communication in the best of times is fun and spurs some interesting conversations, when it’s done right. I think we all know what 4chan does wrong, mostly its lack of any noticeable moderation or automods.

If it had the same type of moderation tools that say BlueSky had though, where things like misinformation, slurs, etc. are removed/hidden as the default setting for users. Then this would go a long ways to building a kinder community/discussion space.