It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking.
Are there any lemmy instances or other defederated networks that focus on Q&A, niche communities, and people conversing, instead?
Tildes is pretty good. Metafilter.com is still going strong and I believe is open registration as well, both are heavily curated but have good conversations to peruse.