this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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...relative to Reddit's size?

I see so many posts and comments voicing disappointment with Lemmy's lack of massive expansion.

I too want to see Lemmy gain more users, but I do not want it to grow to Reddit's size. If Reddit is the yardstick, I'd say that a population that large attracts a lot of negative behaviours; degeneration of discourse, amplification of echo chambers and hive mind behaviour, etc...

I started on Reddit in 2010 and found that by 2016 things were really bad in comparison. A fun and engaging site was experiencing an obvious devolution that persists to this day, accelerated by Spez's enshittification of the platform. Obviously the fediverse insulates us from that occurring here but I think you get what I mean.

Do you you think Lemmy is too small? I don't. I've been here since the great migration last year and have had a really good time. I see a lot of familiar names in the comments on a daily basis. It actually feels like a community here. I guess I just don't understand the fixation on the size of Lemmy's user base. Curious to hear your thoughts.

[EDIT] Thanks for all the responses, everyone! Lots of perspectives I hadn't yet considered.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Because I want to see Reddit fail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Many people have something of a fixation on the growth. It may feel big to you now, but believe me it's not done growing yet.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’d really like to see more posts come through, without the dip into the “copy Reddit posts” kind of thing. When I open Reddit, I can read 100 posts of varying topics, refresh an hour later and have a lot of new posts to ingest. Lemmy doesn’t have that much activity, so I end up looking at a very similar “popular” feed this morning, this afternoon, this evening. And 1/4 of those posts will also be in my feed again the next day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Use an rss feed reader, it prevents duplicates, but it might be annoying to use if you interact with post a lot

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I want more small communities with people who really like specific things. For example if you want to buy a robot vacuum going to a community about it is very nice to read up on what people find important and maybe issues with a particular model. Even the memes sometimes have great info (think something like a popular vacuum that doesn't pick up anything with "At least you tried" or spongebob meme pointing at stuff of increasing sizes referencing areas the vacuum missed)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Example meme I just created for robo vacs which I'd like to see in the some robovac community.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

I don't think it's the size but more the number of communities and how active they are. So if there are more people here it hopefully means there will be more active users as well. And perhaps more niche communities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

One day, this too will turn to shit. But when that day comes, people will just drift to different instances. Not including federation and niche communities, this is functionally equivalent to reddit for me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

In my case..

I just left a instance (which rhymes with seesaw) because one of the admins accused me of "starting a fight" and "not being nice" because I didn't agree with an article that was posted.

It was however perfectly acceptable for someone to instantly accuse me of wanting to kill an entire group of people and of being a bad person (I won't be specific, but it was a very clear exaggeration and the comment was overlooked by the admin). But, I wasn't being "nice" because I calmly explained my perspective on the lawsuit the article was about (and apparently having a difference of opinion is considered "fighting" lol). And honestly, my opinion wasn't extreme in any capacity either (in fact, it half agreed with them)..

And it was such a pity because the other admins there seem so cool, and I loved the idea of the instance (I actually donated originally)

So, yep, I can definitely agree, it's so easy to move around.

So far, I've actually found the people on other instances to be really cool actually (which I wasn't expecting, because my original instance portrayed the rest of Lemmy as a bit of a cesspool at times honestly)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why are you so fixated on people who are fixated on Lemmy's growth? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Why are you fixated on them being fixated on people who are fixated on Lemmy's growth 🤔🤔

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I saw a bunch of new people join recently because of Reddit saying something about potentially pay walling subs. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Because there are only a handful of communities that have enough traffic to sustain a meaningful conversation.

Even popular activities have low traffic, god forbid you want to participate in a community based around a niche activity.

I love Lemmy and I'm not going back to reddit... But sometimes it feels like a desolate wasteland here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I need people like you to join https://fediverser.network to become a community ambassador. Please join it, find the subreddits that you would like to migrate and let's bring the people who are interesting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

You don't want people like me. I have time to complain, but not time to work on a solution lol

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I agree. The smaller communities is nice, but when it's so small that each post has less that 5 comments, I feel the conversations are limited.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Especially when it's always the same few people commenting and posting

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Network effect matters

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Does anyone remember the inside jokes in the early days of reddit?

When does the narwhal bacon? Orangered Chuck Testa!! Ridiculously photogenic guy And of course the long list of meme-level posts like broken arms, cumbox, celebrity AMAs

This type of community humor made a lot of people feel like they'd found their tribe on reddit in those early days.

I haven't seen much like this develop on Lemmy yet, possibly because there's so many disparate communities merging. I'm not really sure. Or maybe all those 20-something redditors are now pushing 40.

I think it will take a while for a lemmy culture to develop and the community won't attract outsiders much until it does.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

cough cough I... I was there cough during the beans

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Lemmy is just a continuation of the Reddit crap of recent years, except for less corpo bullshit, but with more lefty infighting.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I need to not poop for three days.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago

Yeah those memes were cringy as fuck thank god no one's doing anything that dumb

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Im looking at it from a whole fediverse perspective but its large enough as is to be enjoyable. If it gets larger fine, if not fine. I just want it to develop to have as much freedom as possible and give as much control as possible to the individual for their experience.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is of course only my opinion but I want it much bigger but maybe not the size of reddit. I like being able to have a problem and going into the specialized community to ask the pros. Online searching is currently slowing down results. AI searches will tell someone to use an outlet to fix a pipe and if someone searching for something they don't know may try figuring out why their pipe doesn't even have a plug. I also like to research into things HEAVILY and having a community where I can sift through thousands of posts to form an idea of what I'm looking to learn is nice.

With that said I can't knock lemmy any because the community that has 150 people will have 125 of them respond to anything you post.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

With that said I can’t knock lemmy any because the community that has 150 people will have 125 of them respond to anything you post.

Yeah. Compared to Reddit which can have a sub with millions of members but the top posts only get like 12k upvotes and 300 comments

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