My first thought was AstroTurf too but honestly Lemmy is still small enough that I wonder if Meta even cares enough for it to pay for astroturfing here. They got more signups in a couple of hours than Lemmy got users in three years, and by several magnitudes even. Plus it’s an inherently hostile demographic for them. They’re better off investing in positive posting on Reddit, which I’m sure is what they’re already doing.

It’s run through the Open Collective, and is also run by Ruud who runs one of the larger Mastodon instances as well as some other stuff on the Fediverse I believe. They’re a fairly trusted actor in the space and I think pretty transparent with everything they do which is probably another reason many people flocked there.

Do you know if you’ve finally employed a Data Analysis service of some kind or are you still lagging behind in that department?

I remember back when United signed Wan-Bissaka Woodward was bragging about how he was chosen from a shortlist of 804 options and StatsBomb Podcast I believe it was were amazed that he didn’t realize that it wasn’t actually a thing to brag about but actually indicated an incredibly wasteful and inefficient scouting setup.

I’m not a United fan so correct me if I’m wrong but hasn’t that been a theme for ages for you? When was the last time you made your signings early in the window? Mourinho’s first summer with Zlatan et al maybe?