Echoing this. Even as someone who does read sci-fi, I think leaving it open ended is better. Hobbies is a good angle; it could also be “What show, book, or film did you enjoy recently?” then follow it up with “Why?” and work from there.

What this shows:

• They live a balanced-enough life that they have time to do relaxing stuff, aren’t money-focused tryhards like OP is trying to weed out.
• Allows them to demonstrate explaining a topic unfamiliar to the interviewer.
• Shows how they respond to unexpected questions outside the normal, practiced interview set.
• Follow up questions can still weed out people who are viewing it “just because”, they heard it was popular, or whatever.

Wait, so like, do we just play the game forever? Or are we actually going into the game world?

Can we break the boundaries of the game mechanics since we’re now “inside” it? Or are we still limited to what the game lets us do?

Disclaimer: I always viewed limited subreddits that fed my interests, and my Home feed. I never looked at All, because it never seemed to have things I’m interested in. That probably influences how I perceived Reddit.

Reddit:

• Way more niche topics. It was quite possible to find people who shared the same narrow interests as you. On Lemmy, having conversations about these things is hard.
• Towards the end, there was a much greater tendency for top comments to be a joke/quip/insider joke as opposed to actual thoughtful discussion.
• It felt like there was a much greater tolerance of nuance and complexity, though this was also showing cracks towards the end.

Lemmy:

• Politics definitely swing a bit more towards the left. In some cases this means “people just talk about corporations doing bad stuff more”, and in some cases it can mean some pretty out-there positions, like people fanboying for China or terrorists.
• It’s much, much harder for me to find activity on topics I’m interested in. If you’re outside of Lemmy’s handful of interests, not just finding but even building topical discussion feels like a struggle.
• Not everyone, but I do feel like I come across more people here who feel… allergic to nuance. Frankly, I think this might be less of a Reddit-vs-Lemmy thing and more of how just social media in general is shifting these days.

Obligatory IANAL, etc.

If the template is being used for non-commercial services and does not closely replicate any of the material the characters is based on, then it probably falls under Fair Use - similar to how many rulings have affirmed that fan fiction is broadly legally permitted. Conversely, if the chat service owner is charging for the use, then it would probably be forbidden under the grounds that the service host is financially benefiting from another’s copyright.

Between that, is a murky zone.

• Content creators and owners have at times made legal demands that pornographic, shocking, or other fan content which could reflect poorly on the original owners be removed, on the basis it damages their value. If I remember correctly, rulings on this have gone both ways and the issue remains largely unsolved.
• If the bot hoster makes small changes to obfuscate the identity represented to the bot, it could likewise become iffy. It’d likely depend on the court ruling whether the identity was “substantially changed” enough.
• A new course would be to argue that - given some of the issues regarding how bots have become abusive or encouraging of harmful behavior - any chatbot usage represents an intolerable danger to their brand value. I actually expect to see this litigated fairly soon.