Hexbear has become a cesspool. Not exactly a great example to aspire to. I actually wish we would become very much like Reddit used to be back in the day. I very much enjoyed that experience and want it back. I'm sure plenty of others do to. Im just disappointed that it seems much more likely that Lemmy fizzles than soars. I can't emphasize enough how big and bad a deal the stripping of third party API access to reddit data is. I wish more people felt more strongly about this beyond posting pictures of John Oliver. Not sure if you are old enough to remember when high quality RSS feeds were a thing, but this direct access to data that users could custom curate was amazing. When you take control of how users consent data, you start to take control of the users. Lemmy has immense potential and at face value people are largely fed up with being manipulated and taken advantage of by internet giants, but most are clearly not fed up enough to leave their comfort zone. Spez and the others are well aware of this and happy to take advantage. It takes a ton of effort to keep something like Lemmy afloat. Just like a new restaurant, if after a few months it's not taking off, it's pretty unlikely to do so with more time. I hope I'm wrong, but the Spez nonsense was a huge gift to growing Lemmy, and in the grand scheme of things the effect was quite small.