Firstly, I understand why, most blank profiles are bots, but it’s so frustrating trying to dm people, and interact in communities when you are mostly a lurker. Now I’m not a lurker here, but on other places it’s very annoying when you just want to talk to a specific person. Reddit is especially dreadful for new accounts or lurkers. Karma requirement’s are such bullshit.
You’re starting with a faulty assumption that everyone wants to participate in DMs.
Why on earth would I want to exchange DMs with random strangers? On reddit, I never got a single DM that wasn’t a bot/scam or a creep asking for nudes or offering to be my foot-worshipping sub or telling me I should shut my woman mouth. Being a man on the internet must be so wild, seeing DMs on a pseudonymous platform as anything but a hidden channel to be sexually harassed.
I do check their profile when I receive a DM from someone I don’t know. If only, to get an idea who is trying to reach me, what I can expect, and how I should reply. My profile tells people where I’m from and how old I’m, stuff like that. So, anyone checking it will at least understand why my English can be lacking, and why I may not be that interested in stuff or questions younger people consider important. I also share my blog url in that profile but so far I don’t think anyone ever contacted me there coming from Lemmy ;)
I don’t mind a blank profile, but it won’t help me feel… connected to the person. So, my reply may not be as complete or personal as it could have been.
I’m pretty active here. And I’ll never do anything with my profile. I think it’s dumb.
Why would you need anything in someomes profile to join a discussion?
Why are you DMing people instead of joining the discussion?Hard agree.
Reddit has been shadow banning every single account I touch; it’s incredible. I burned through 3 accounts in the past month and got fed up, just haven’t bothered since. I seem to be incapable of not getting shadow banned lol, when at least 30% of the activity on that site is bots arguing amongst themselves and reposts of content that did well. I even tried setting a “snoo” (yuck) and a bio on my last account, but it made no difference.
You can ask someone to check your profile in /r/shadowban to find out for sure (if you weren’t aware). I checked and old account because I thought I was shadow banned, turned out I wasn’t it’s just my comments were buried under AI slop
So sad what happened to reddit, it really had a chance to be great
