More users to accommodate more active niche communities
Yeah, there’s a few subs that I miss — particularly the ones for my city and my state — but r/twobestfriendsplay is top of the list. It was by far the sub that I most enjoyed interacting with since I joined years ago. Lots of power users who I’d immediately recognize by pfp.
The actual group that it’s named after broke up a decade ago — they’ve been disbanded longer than they were a thing — but it was still loosely connected to a couple of the guys’ ongoing careers, particularly two of them who host a podcast and stream separately. More importantly, it was a hub for discussion on games, movies, shows, comics, whatever, niche or popular, even if the relevance to the group was tenuous; the mods tried to block some topics but lost the battle on vtubers after the guys had Mori Calliope on the podcast, lol. I imagine it’s even more lifted now that one of them streams with several vtubers.
tl;dr yeah I really miss some niche communities I’d been subbed to for years.
Truthfully, Lemmy doesn’t even have enough users for some mainstream interests, like sports. Lemmy leans very tech and selects for a certain type of user. But I’m sure plenty of people here are happy to have a place without daily NFL and NBA news.
If it means anything, I know at least I don’t participate in a lot of stuff because of AI
More users is not necessarily more better.
… but I do agree there are very few active communities.
The focus should be on making the fediverse the best it can be, rather than focusing on attracting users.
The issue is without some mass, small communities will likely not prosper. I can’t imagine if someone wants to create a community on spoon collecting that it would do well. We may just have to accept that for the next 5yrs the fediverse may just be larger communities with lots of smaller interests lumped in together.
Yes but more users doesn’t necessarily make a spoon collecting community more viable.
Am easier pathway is to encourage existing users to visit this type of community.
Additionally, consider carefully whether the fediverse can support a spoon collecting community, or perhaps you should just post about spoon collecting in the general “cutlery collecting” community.
More users provides more diversity - More diversity provides the potential for more niche interests to arise - More active niche communities provides more reasons for existing users to stay - More active users staying on the platform inevitably attracts more new users.
More users also increases the appeal for bots, purveyors of misinformation, trolls, and assholes generally.
And the Fediverse doesn’t have all of those already?
These are inescapable in the modern age internet unfortunately, however the decentralisation of the Fediverse should help in alleviating those symptoms of an open platform.
Of course we have them, but the ratio will increase as user numbers rise.
Federation does not protect us from these issues in any way. In fact it’s very susceptible to misinformation through federation.
only if lemmy was the only 1 aggrgated site it would be more pervasive. but reddit is still too big right now.
A large enough userbase to support more niche topics. On Lemmy, like a lot of small communities, people tend to put the cart before the horse. They make places to share content for very niche topics but there aren’t enough to warrant it. Plus sometimes you have mods in certain relatively niche groups that will remove content from their community because it is off topic, but their volume of posts is nowhere near enough for the occasional, technically off topic post to really matter. I see it in Discord servers too. Some places have more channels than users on the server. People get obsessed with categorization.
Content and the number of users. Good lord there are so many dead boards on lemmy.
content
Active communities. Some of the comms for my interests technically exist, in that they get one post every third month that gets 2 upvotes. Despite everything, these communities are still thriving on Reddit. Yet for whatever reason, any attempt to replicate them here fails. Smh
They were small on reddit once too. Just a matter of time. Also helps if you post to them.
I’m not sure that it is a matter of time. Maybe I’m just being pessimistic, but I think the fediverse wave has crested already. There’s a reverse migration from Mastodon back to places like X/Twitter under way, and lemmy really never even saw the scale of adoption or attention that Mastodon saw.
I’m not worried that lemmy will go away any time soon, but I’m not sure it’s ever going to be mainstream enough to attract enough users to really support vibrant and diverse communities.
Yes, unfortunately the multiple instance nature of Lemmy is an obstacle for most people. I’ve been here for more than a year and I still struggle to describe what Lemmy is.
I’m not sure that’s the problem. Maybe it is, but from what I see, most people never even get far enough into considering lemmy for its decentralized nature to become the blocker. I don’t think it really even registers as an option for most of them.
The big commercial sites would do things like research studies and marketing campaigns to try to attract new users. Fediverse mostly relies on organic growth, driven by things like word-of-mouth. That’s fine, in that it gives us a core group of users who really want to be here and know why, but I think there’s an upper bound to our ability to attract new users that way.
I’m sure some will prefer that it works this way, but for me, I consider users of Reddit and X/Twitter to be something along the lines of hostages needing to be rescued. We can’t save them all, but I’d love to get more people off of those sites.
active niche and place based communities. the ones i’ve seen for my area are super quiet
Any amount of positivity and fun. Lemmy users just feel so miserable and argumentative.
I mean sign of the times but damn.
That’s interesting. I feel like my experience has been the opposite. I’ll occasionally post things here, completely expecting some negative response (not looking for it, but I know how people are). For example, I posted a rant about an issue I was having after switching to Linux. Instead of negativity, I typically get responses more like “that’s a valid criticism. Have you considered $x, though?”, and the conversation continues quite pleasantly.
I feel like reddit was far quicker to jump to “no. You’re wrong, and here’s why…”.
Edit: correcting hypothetical redditor’s spelling.
You were having an issue, not posting your opinion. What is there to be mad about? Also Linuxers will froth at any opportunity to do that.
oh yeah, either infinite Trumpa-lumpa or linux! so much linux! horrible!!
/s
The only time I’ve been dunked on is by tankies when said that RT is pure propaganda.
Otherwise I like vibes here…sometimes the super hard line against Libs and Obama throw me off but an anarchy-socialist so it doesn’t bother me personally. Just a bit confusing when looking at the alternatives at the time.
I miss being able to make sarcastic comments without someone telling me I’m the sole reason the world went to shit.
Honestly yeah. I stuck with Lemmy for 3 years before caving and going back to Reddit because I was sick and tired of every single conversation no matter how unrelated circling back to Trumpa-lumpa.
Not to say Reddit isn’t its own flavor of horrible. It’s banking hard on social media addiction with all those post analytics and reminders to repost and boost engagement. Not to mention the fake AI users. Yuck.
I still sometimes steer people here because I still believe in a decentralized non corporate online space, it just needs to get past the self-selecting echo chamber phase. Once /c/mildlyinteresting isn’t 90% doomer news articles I’ll consider things a success.
What Reddit does have is niches. There’s a sub for dogs, then there’s a sub for labradors, and then there’s a sub each for yellow, black, and chocolate labs. All of them are lively and active and most importantly on-topic.
Reddit is basically facebook at this point.
Edit: this isn’t even really true. I just wanted to say something bad about reddit because they banned me for life for saying that Alex Karp should be yeeted into space and that Donald Trump rapes kids.
could be worse, you could live in a place where people are like that in person.
the niche communities over there, replicated here, but without the number of users some are ghost towns on lemmy. with them forcing popup logins piecemeal, we may get a boost.
also people scattered way too much to other similar platforms, when one instance shutsdown which is problematic.
also some politically heavy instances ban like they would on reddit.
more diversity. currently lemmy predominantly has politics, tech, and memes. Anything else is a little rough around the edges or nonexistent
Particularly, I was a huge fan of the Tales from X-style subreddits. It was entertaining to be able to go into them, read some stories about it and see others responses, even if some of them you could totally tell weren’t actually real. there have been communities made for some of the topics, but they’re dead, and unfortunately, those types of communities aren’t really communities that you can do too much with yourself unless you’re actively in that same field.
politics, tech, and memes
And surprisingly Lemmy has very little programming content. The programming and learn_programming communities are almost dead.
As a member of the programming.dev instance, this just isn’t true. Maybe those sublemmies on other instances are, but there’s always posts, questions, and content on programming.dev.
In addition to this, most people just ask ai nowadays.
More users in smaller niche communities. Lemmy has less users in general, so smaller niche communities are practically non-existent here.
I don’t can enough to post enough in there canning, but I’m hoping it’s just well, we’re all waiting for fall and the harvests!
Support from Nebula creators.
Nebula doesn’t have its own comment system, so it’s up to the individual creator where, if at all, they engage their viewers. Most if not all I’ve seen mentions reddit. Some may be on Bluesky too, but as far as I’m concerned Bluesky is just another proprietary platform that can turn into a monetization driven project.
I really want to participate in the jetlag discussions, but I don’t want to log into my reddit accounts ever again. So I’m left with the nebula community here, which is better than nothing, but we’re like 5 accounts that participate monthly.
This might be something to write to your favourite creators about. They want know if it isn’t brought to their attention, and I would certainly enjoy it too. Change takes time, but also effort by the early adopters.
Yeah, problem is I have no other way of contacting them than reddit, and I’m pretty sure my message will get auto-deleted and my account permabanned for trying. I don’t care about the account, but a 10year old account with +80k karma does have some credibility, if I have to use that someday.
More apolitical communities
Agreeing with you here.
Visit popular on reddit and posts will be like:
- cat pic
- pic of food and girl complaining
- video of fight
- meme about work
- mandami
- ice bullshit
- dog pic
- kids are fucking stupid
- cat pic
- PG video of something funny
- pic of food of girl complaining
- cat pic
- Trump
- picture of celebs boobs
- cat pic
Popular is based on you. So that’s a personal list and problem… r/All still works for me that’s where it’s not based on you.
I don’t have a reddit account anymore. This is me as a non logged in user.
Otherwise, it’ll just be 30 posts about shitposts, and then one post about pie.
More users.
And for lemmurs to stop being so binary and assuming every discussion is a war zone. Defend a Jewish person and you’re a fascist. Defend a Palestinian and you’re anti-semetic. Make a ‘whore’ joke and you’re a misogynist. Criticise capitalism and you’re a tankie. Accidentally and innocently misgender someone and you’re transphobic. Defend trans folk and you’re woke. Its all so bloody exhausting.
Oh I see, so you hate Free Software! Fucking typical, unsubscribed, and I will not be returning. 😛
Real talk though, the militant Linux stuff is what really pushed me away in the end. I am legally blind. I literally cannot use desktop Linux due to lack of accessibility, but somehow that’s my fault.
The never ending politics stuff is exhausting, sure, but at some level I can understand why people are passionate about it. The “FOSS or die” mentality just short-circuits my brain. Software is a tool, like a hammer or a screwdriver. If it works for you, more power to you, but it as often as not doesn’t work for me.
I am legally blind. I literally cannot use desktop Linux due to lack of accessibility, but somehow that’s my fault.
I understand if it would be a burden, but @shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip could probably give some advice. I think they are legally blind too.
GNOME with the orca screen reader should be at least useable
That sucks, and I’m sorry you had that experience. To provide a viewpoint for your short-circuit, the FOSS software is a tool, yes, but the FOSS movement is politics and philosophy. To them (us, but I like to hope I’m less of a dink) software made unethically is similar to advocating for socialism or unions as a means of empowering the people against forces that would oppress them. For some people, using proprietary software might be like using products made by slave labour.
Some people who are more puritanical than myself might refuse to use anything that they can’t use freely, the equivalent of you obstaining from using a laptop at all if Linux doesn’t work for you. I think most people, myself included, would consider that extreme, but I bet you’ve heard from those extremists.
None of this is meant to excuse the people who’ve been crap to you, you should do whatever you need to. I’m just trying to explain why people get so worked up about it compared to a screwdriver. Or a hammer, say. A hammer and a sickle, even…
😉
I was on the cusp of leaving Reddit just before the API fiasco, and Redditors treating every interaction as combat by rhetoric, a contest rather than a discussion, was one of the main reasons.
Yes, that happens here, but it’s, like, the same two or three people every time. For several of your examples, particular usernames come to mind. The background vibe is much more chill, I feel.
agree on the first part, second part is just the modern internet sadly
Its always been this way.
This person just said they would like to be fascist anti-semetic misogynist tankie and transphobic without catching shit for it. In the old days of the internet, we definitely would have told them to shove their head up their ass
A bit, yeah
The sad part is that the centralized platforms that are popping up and adopting anti politic stances are feeling much friendlier. People here complain about centralized platforms, but all the fighting is ironically just pushing people over to those platforms.
I don’t think any of that is Lemmy Official Opinion. it just shows there are all kinds of people here, some of them maybe a bit too sensitive in their topic.
Same with posts. I posted something to TIL and it was instantly tagged as self promoting my channel. That was my last post. Message received.
Easy way to look at the context of a reply.
90% of the answers in here boil down to more users.
active users specifically
Searching my username + lemmy in the search bar equals every instance except my own for +90% of searches :p
