Needed a pickling mix recipe I remembered only vaguely, but before I navigated to the community that held it, I noticed how horrifically botted the front page was. I did a cursory account check of the posts on the top sort and found that nearly half of the front page was comprised of bot posts or bot boosted accounts. Which is, under no uncertain terms, horrific.
Lemmy has its issues, but how someone could see this toxic landfill and choose to plant their flag there, I don’t understand. Glad to be amongst the people who cannot tolerate this.
the front page of Reddit has been brainrot garbage since before LLMs were invented, IMO. the good part of Reddit has always been the niche communities
Honestly, I still regularly participate in some of them, mostly mechanical keyboard, sports, and local stuff.
If I want to shitpost or grumble or discuss new-to-me stuff with real people then I do it here, but for niche interests that are poorly represented here but hit a critical mass there, while staying small enough to avoid front-page attention or (god-forbid) becoming a default sub, Reddit still has some value. Old with RES and “Dystopia for Reddit” are still hanging on by the skin of their teeth, so that makes the experience itself less awful.