> I'd guess more and more valuable discussion will just shift to gated invite only groups. Private discord servers, signal, telegram etc etc I don't see another feasible way of protecting against the spam.

This is sadly the direction I think we are heading towards. I will lament the loss of the open internet.

> Reddit for example made it harder to check astroturf bots by blocking viewing comment and post history and giving every user default AdjectiveNounNumber style names

They did this just weeks before their IPO in what I assume was an effort to decieve shareholders from discovering just how did the platform really is. The amount of "people" with that setting on is shocking to me. On a site where people didn't even set a profile picture 9/10 times, I cannot believe that like 7/10 users are choosing to hide their history. Reddit is playing an illusion game fueled by bots to convince users and shareholders the platform is alive when it has began dying years ago.

It's also quite shocking to me that they do this and then choose to make their tagline "Where Real People Talk": https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/reddit-where-real-people-talk/...