If its possible to create your own instance and federate with any instance of your choice - are there any apps which include the ability to register your own instance with you as the sole user? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the underlying logic

I agree with this. There’s some problems that need to be addressed. Hopefully sooner rather than later

There does seem to be a lot of pushback around bots recently. It might be worth reaching out to discuss with a wider audience eg. !bots@lemmy.world or similar

Have you considered doing a top community of the week/month/year thing? You could reach out to community mods and alert them they’ve won “Top Community of X period based on <Growth>”. Keep a pinned post detailing current “winners”. It would help advertise this community, and it would encourage other communities to be more competitive/pro-active in appealing to new users.

That’s how doubt works.

1. There’s something you know and you experience something which challenges that knowledge.
2. Now you only believe this thing, less sure in your knowledge so you reach out to others who are more knowledgeable on the topic.
3. Post answer your belief has either returned to fact or you’ve learned something new, abandoned a false belief and grown as a person.

Nothing wrong with reaching out.

I had a brief read through the article you linked. I’m frankly shocked at how relevant it is. I never considered how widespread the problem is in reality. It goes so much further than just reddit. An extremely interesting article for anybody curious, I’ll be dedicating more time to reading it in its entirety this weekend.

Thanks very much for linking it!

That’s interesting - can I ask where you’re seeing those stats?

It’s something I thought about. But as you said the exposure to search engines is key.

!trendingcommunities@feddit.nl is my goto for discovery, for anybody else who might be struggling to find communities