It's nothing dystopian like you think. Basically just a variation on camera sensors:
[...] bio-inspired cameras that capture the world more like the human eye does. These are called dynamic vision sensors, and they work like motion detectors for each pixel. They only “wake up” and send information when something changes in the scene, rather than constantly streaming data like a regular camera.
These bio-inspired cameras are also highly energy efficient, using less than 1% of the power of normal cameras.
I don't really mind them all that much. The communities are easily blocked if you don't like the particular type of content.
Despite the general cesspool that Reddit has become, it still has some good content within many of the smaller subs that are less affected by bots and politics. If I can get some of that content without giving Reddit an ounce of traffic, it's fine by me.
That said, I'm also the type of Lemmy user who frequently scrolls through every post and runs out of new posts. My app marks every post as "read" when I scroll past it and often I clear the whole "top today" list. I don't read every post though. Anyways, I appreciate any way to get more context on Lemmy.