It’s inevitable, in part because of how easy AI will make bot farms and censorship. Really all the problems reddit has, we will see here and probably faster than the 10-15 years it took reddit. It wasn’t just policy that ruined reddit, it was capital interests and special interests. Groups dedicated to swaying opinion, taking over subs, banning and shadow banning users.

In it’s way, Lemmy will be easier to break because we’re all already slightly fragmented. Imagine your favorite instances getting taken over like r/undelete and then defederating all the other opposition servers. Or…becoming hostile like reddit.

Then we have the greater slide to fascism. SOME of what Reddit is doing is in line with simply trying to survive that. We have no idea what kind of controlling laws might come out that will shut down or police instances hosted in places like the US. Misinformation laws. All and all it’s a scary time.

I like lemmy because it feels like I’ve gone back 12 years or so to a better reddit. Back to old reddit. But really it’s just a matter of time.

I really think we’ve seen a pretty complete cycle of social media over the last 25 years. If you look at how we used it and how it is used in China, Russia, or NK. It’s been weaponized as much as monetized. Maybe more.