One thing I’m worried about here with the duplicated communities though is the same thing that was happening on Reddit in the last couple years, new astroturfed communities popping up with a decided slant. Like how /r/economy came out of nowhere despite /r/economics being an existing huge subreddit, and /r/economy having a noticeable conservative bent. Lemmy doesn’t seem a ton more susceptible to it than Reddit was, but discovering new popular communities does seem to be very much a desired feature here.

I don’t think Beehaw has it figured out, but the idea of making signups more onerous definitely makes sense to limit bots, advertisers, and state actors.