I recently made the jump from Reddit for the same immediate reasons as everyone else. But, to be honest, if it was just the Reddit API cost changes I wouldn’t be looking to jump ship. I would just weather the protest and stay off Reddit for a few days. Heck I’d probably be fine paying a few bucks a month if it helped my favorite Reddit app (Joey) stay up and running.
No, the real reason I am taking this opportunity to completely switch platforms is because for a couple years now Reddit has been unbearably swamped by bots. Bot comments are common and bot up/downvotes are so rampant that it’s becoming impossible to judge the genuine community interest in any post or comment. It’s just Reddit (and maybe some other nefarious interests) manufacturing trends and pushing the content of their choice.
So, what does Lemmy do differently? Is there anything in Lemmy code or rules that is designed to prevent this from happening here?
The identity proof aspect is similar, but what I’m proposing goes beyond that to add a protocol for reputation information.
The idea is a substitute for the account age and karma requirements many subreddits use to make creating accounts for abuse difficult. There are opportunities to be more sophisticated about it though, such as a community only accepting reputation from certain closely-related communities.