we seem to be popular with reddit users that were banned from reddit, which on average seems to translate to less than wholesome behavior - so maybe lemmy’s whole reddit-alternative branding works against us that way.

maybe developing a distinct UI so it’s not just a reddit clone, and directing features in a way that is appealing more to particular communities or people we wish to attract would be a good idea, rather than trying to directly replace reddit as a whole?

for example, attracting academics by supporting built-in LaTeX syntax rather than requiring a browser extension