…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.
You can insult and annoy more people with your comments when there’s more users, so…
(People on lemmy are way too nice. I love that, but I miss old fashioned trolling here. It’s just part of the internet for me.)
Yeah will I think you’re a fucking idiot for that shitty take 👍
(Am I doing it right? ❤️)
Yes, you could still do better, but it’s there. Love you, you shitbag
(Philosophical background for this:)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IISMr5OMceg&pp=ygUMWml6ZWsgcmFjaXNt
Agreed, he’s a sad clump of grinded meat in a loose ill fitting sack. The sweaty kind, their armpits likely have patches in their moist hairy growth.
Okay… that wasn’t very nice of me, I’m going to go find some cute pictures of river otters to re center myself.
/I hope he is having a nice day (no real hurtfulness meant)
Awww, you guys are making me feel so sentimental 💕 thank you, you fucks
Anytime!💕 If you need some cute to wash off the pain the otters really are a nice relief: https://lemmy.world/c/otters
I sincerely sent an otter pic from there to my gf half an hour ago. Maybe you and I are more similar than we think.
(Why would you wash off the pain, though? You smear it unto others, that’s the most fun part of pain. You can still send them otter pics.)
(People on lemmy are way too nice. I love that, but I miss old fashioned trolling here. It’s just part of the internet for me.)
Hey, Fucko. While I also miss that a bit, I find the positivity that I encounter more in the Fediverse to be much better for my mental and emotional health. Plus, it’s inconveniencing you in particular 💕.
I want the world to use open source tools.
The smaller population overall isn’t a bad thing, but it can really be felt in smaller or niche communities. Reddit’s huge size is a plus in this regard, because chances you can find at least a semi-active community for just about any hobby or niche interest.
Yeah, I’d actually forgotten about it since I’ve been here for so long but the joke “there’s a sub for everything” is actually completely true and one of the things I miss, even if it’s an inactive community you can 80% of the time find a subreddit with a few dozen posts to check out. I used to just hit “random” until I found an interesting one. I feel like I’d cycle through all the communities on my instance in a couple of days.
That being said I love the small feeling here compared to Reddit and if I had to choose between “small community with conversation” and “unlimited dopamine trickle tap” I’d rather it stay as it is
The smaller subreddits are still good on reddit, as long as they have a good focus. They are effectively their own little communities
Yeah, my reddit account is exclusively for the communities around a couple mangas I read. As soon as the SpyxFamily and Akane-banashi communities here reach comparable levels, I will gladly jump ship.
Yes. I never had too much trouble on reddit, but I only stuck to specific subreddits and stayed away fron news or politics.
They are used to the short-term goals of stonks.
The more people there are, the more popular it is with the working class. Instead of being a niche community, you can meet non-tech people that know about Lemmy.
Lemmy is good as is; slow growth is better, IMO.
It highly depends on what you’re here for. Some communities have gathered enough active members to expect a continuous influx of posts and comments.
The strength that Reddit has built over the years is that many niche communities also thrived and turned into a rich repository of knowledge that was searchable. Lemmy isn’t there yet, if you’re into fishing, knitting, Japanese chess or sourdough baking.
But it also doesn’t need to be a perfect drop in replacement for Reddit, it’s probably fine if it remains something different, slightly fringe and a friendly place that doesn’t require massive amount of servers and moderation staff.
I chose this example because I’m an avid Shōgi player :-)
There is a community on my instance, but nobody ever posted anything. Maybe I could post a couple of Tsume from some books I have, or some castling strats.
https://discuss.tchncs.de/c/shogi
EDIT:
First post in the community: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/20104621
Reddit took over a decade to get to that size, it’s not a fair comparison.
Reddit also didn’t have Reddit to compete with, which certainly makes things harder.
Well, there was Digg, then Digg imploded.
Yeap, but Digg was still pretty early in it’s life and was very much catering for tech nerds.
Reddit is basically the home of all communities these days, its swallowed what used to be individual forums from around the web and put them into a single place.
Building those new communities across multiple lemmy instances also adds to the complexity.
Because the communities I care about are getting less than one post per month.
Come join us at [email protected]
And at [email protected]
I’ve been having a nice time with Lemmy having ditched Reddit last year, and considering the changes that happened or have been conceptually floated over that time I’m happy with my choice.
One thing I would like is for the Lemmy framework to make it easier for the network to be “wider” than “taller” as it grows. By this I mean a wider array of separate domains with operators each with thriving niche communities, rather than a few tall generalist servers and a handful of outliers, and a fragmented myriad of inactive communities that are hard to find.
That is exactly the problem with Lemmy. Far too many niche communities with next to no members. That does not work. There are not enough people to have 5 separate communities about X.
Thanks. A topic we regularly discuss on [email protected]
There’s also a number of them indirectly trying to use the numbers to trash talk Lemmy. Personally, I would prefer the quality over quantity you can see here on Lemmy.
People just want what they gave up and what they know, it is that simple.
You are not wrong, it is within human nature to seek validation for their actions. Some people came here expecting a mass migration from Reddit that did not exactly happen because inertia is a powerful force in human behavior. So some people are sour about it, it’s understandable.
Reddit has the same dynamics. Smaller niche communities there were awesome, the massive ones were full of toxicity. Here, the large communities are the size of small Reddit boards, which is good, but many niche communities here are unfortunately too sparse to thrive.
I don’t think Lemmy must grow. In fact I like the relative obscurity that tends to make it a better quality of user. But at this size, it’s less of a one-stop shop than Reddit. I miss the Reddit cigar community. They aren’t really in favor, particularly with the left, and there isn’t the critical mass to sustain that here. So I just don’t talk about them which unfortunately leaves me less informed about what’s going on in that world.
That so being said, I agree with the thrust of your post which is that Lemmy is just fine at this size. It is.
Subs which are huge in other places don’t exist here. So growth is needed.
Like others already pointed out, it’s not about the size per se. It’s about the small odd communities of specific interest that we miss. These usually only thrive with numbers.
Then again, I used Lemmy for over a year and didn’t get a single death threat. I went back to check my Reddit account and had two in my inbox, I didn’t use the site since the exodus. Soooooooo, yeah. You win some you loose some.
The flagship communities are quite alive, but the niche communities have not really taken off. I am talking from both the absence of such communities, and my experience trying to migrate !fluidmechanics. The subreddit has around 10k humans (or bots).
On [email protected] there’s a weekly thread called “How are you doing with your communities?” It’s for/by all the people who single-handedly keep niche communities alive by posting regularly. It can be a tough job, and easy to burn out. That’s because of the relatively small population here on Lemmy.
However, I agree that I like the culture here better. On Reddit, even when I blocked ads I still felt like I was being marketed to and manipulated.
Thank you for mentioning it!
