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.

If it has the BlueSky moderation tools I think that could go a long ways to keeping it a pleasant place. Quality moderators can help steer the culture of the boards as well.

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.