Reddit sucked in 2008 and it sucks now. It only has value because people were too lazy to implement a proper openid system in any of the forum software packages over the years. There’s no reason any community needs to be hosted on reddit. Forums SEO just like reddit when searching for answers except everyone has divested from the internet and given control to a handful of ruthless corporations who just want to hoover up all the data so they can train their live chat AI bots.
If you want lemmy to be better you have to contribute even if it means not being showered in validation and praise. The echo chamber era is over.
It’s not just about openid/identity/authentication. It’s also about syndication and subscription. For forums to fill the niche reddit fills, we would have needed much better tooling around things like RSS/Atom, to allow people to see and interact with content from many forums in a consolidated interface.
It’s funny you mention echo chambers because most of what I’ve seen here is just that.
You can’t go into a community and disagree with something without getting downvoted into oblivion. The hivemind here is the same as it is on Reddit, the difference being is that more people are left-leaning on the political spectrum, but hivemind nonetheless.