I definitely noticed a lot of these kinds of accounts leading up to the election and have noticed that they all seem to have evaporated once the job was done.

I put up a graph in those other comments, showing a big spike in certain stories before the election, and then dropping right back off again after the election, which corresponds with my anecdotal impression that they were just getting spammed like a waterfall all during the time right up to the election.

It’s a shame more instances weren’t able to do something to be more effective about containing and shutting them down before it was too late.

I 100% agree.

One thing I’ve noticed about Lemmy, which I find incredibly naive, is that many of the people who use it seem to think it’s completely irrelevant. Like, I’ve seen people repeatedly saying that Lemmy or a particular Lemmy instance is just some tiny corner of the internet and let’s not pretend it has any significant impact. That, to me, reminds me of the way people used to talk about the internet, and later the way people used to talk about reddit.

Yeah. It’s clearly got a small userbase. But everything you say on the internet has a small audience, whether the site is small or large. You’re going to have anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand people reading your comment. That’s how it works. Which means, whatever place, is a place worth taking seriously and keeping as a decent place. If nothing else I would like just on a personal level to be able to talk with people about politics without these robots entering the room and saying “You hate Biden we all hate Biden he betrayed us he’s bad don’t vote for him” and then arguing vigorously in bad faith if anyone tries to disagree with them. Honestly, the aspect of it pissing me off on a personal level is probably a more significant part of why I put energy into it, than anything “objective” about how much impact it has.

I just think of Lemmy as my little space, and it annoys me to have people abusing it and cluttering it up with crap.