When mindlessly browsing Reddit, I found that I usually just jump directly to the comments, read a couple, and continue. Lemmy seems a bit more curated (read: smaller), and therefore it’s easier to actually engage in discussions, which leads me to read the article, think critically about it, and respond (if I have something to say) in the comments–bigger is not always better!
Thats not even accounting for all the bots, alts and inactive accounts; it wouldnt surprise me in the least if the majority of those were bots or throwaways. Another benefit of lemmy’s setup is that individual servers will be fairly small so theres tons of space for smaller communities with higher quality discussion, even if it does end up causing duplicate communities across instances.
captcha and motivation paragraph while signing up should filter bots. and duplicate communities are just natural: if an instance seems to be struggling in hosting communities, it should be natural to create a community of the same content in another freed up instance, just to distrbute the bulk of the load. they could reconsolidate later if an instance is capable enough. i saw earlier someone complaining about duplicate communities (with no duplicate content): some people are just plain whiners.
I was more referring to reddit bots than on lemmy; I should have specified