Lemmy just isn't that good, you need other stuff too. I highly recommend finding independent niche website forums (the old school ones) for your interests and joining them. These are WAY less likely to have bots (unless political based) than Lemmy, Reddit, etc etc. They have real people, sometimes parroting bot stuff they saw elsewhere, but they are at least real and you can talk to them. And you get to know them because normally there's only like 50 active users on those websites at a time anyway. But damn do those 50 people know a lot about vaccuums, or trains, or magnet fishing or whatever the dedicated topic is for that site. It's the most unfederated you can be