When mindlessly browsing Reddit, I found that I usually just jump directly to the comments, read a couple, and continue. Lemmy seems a bit more curated (read: smaller), and therefore it’s easier to actually engage in discussions, which leads me to read the article, think critically about it, and respond (if I have something to say) in the comments–bigger is not always better!
captcha and motivation paragraph while signing up should filter bots. and duplicate communities are just natural: if an instance seems to be struggling in hosting communities, it should be natural to create a community of the same content in another freed up instance, just to distrbute the bulk of the load. they could reconsolidate later if an instance is capable enough. i saw earlier someone complaining about duplicate communities (with no duplicate content): some people are just plain whiners.