Rule 1: remember the robot

The only problem is we don't know what remnants we will have left when we finally find a good alternative, and that good alternative may turn out to be terrible in the long run.

In reality, I think that the main problem is that we've allowed capitalism to get to its later stages, and that we should've switched to an alternative long ago while it was still in its middle stages. Any way of life has problems, and the only thing that happens as it evolves is that those problems fester under the surface, eventually killing off most of the progress made because of it.

Indeed. And you can already see fascism becoming more and more popular in places around the world. The defining traits of fascism are so plainly visible that anyone with access to a history book can easily identify it. But fascism says that it is not fascism, but instead is the force for a better country, for a cleaner culture, for a more prosperous people, and so the followers do nothing except fight the people trying to attack it.

The only question is, can we get away from it?

What alternatives we do have are either worse (e.g. feudalism) or are so demonized in capitalist society any good-faith attempt at switching would be destroyed by a bunch of outsiders who know nothing about it (e.g. socialism (specifically, libertarian socialism)). And even if we do succeed in getting an alternative on the internet (or anywhere, really), the most powerful beings in whatever space we do it in will attempt to destroy us. The main reason for the "containment of communism", or the attempt to do so at least, was not "saving people" from communism but actually fear of its spread, and what a communist world would do to the powerful, capitalist countries of the west. (For the record, that actually was the cause, I'm not trying and don't want to spread tankie propaganda like Lemmy's devs are. We need libertarianism.) Capitalism, like most other systems, is fragile if people consider alternatives, so people have been made to not consider those alternatives, and as a result everyone is locked into this sinking ship, with many not even realizing it's sinking before it's far too late to do anything to stop it.

Reddit is killing itself before it can even go to market. They're gonna have to push back the date of the IPO so it doesn't fail.