It's a bunch of techy redditors, the same way that many other services that splinter off from reddit are. Almost all the communities are literal clones of reddit ones. So for someone who wants a similar style of place and doesn't have a hatred of reddit corporate built-in, why would they not go to reddit, which has the same kind of userbase but with 100x the users?

Honestly, other than "Open Source Master Race!!!!111!!!111", there isn't any reason, especially not one that the average person will care about.

Another one, and I fucking HATE saying this, not enough zoomers dragging their friends along. This place feels like a place for the 30-something instead of the 20-something. Which isn't bad, of course, but in terms of network effect power it is, because peer pressure is huge for social media.

But, separate from all that, do we actually want it to be that kind of popular? Maybe we should stay under the radar for the most part. Keep it from becoming stale and condescending like lots of Redditors can be. Keep the advertisers from sinking claws in. Maybe that'll be better for the site as a whole than needing ads to support a service 100x the size.

[–] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think there's other factors.

I worked for 12 hours today. When I came home and browsed ALL, it was exactly same posts as there was this morning. That's a problem for getting return visits. I have resolved to take some of the energy I spend on comments and dedicate it back to posts.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

When I came home and browsed ALL, it was exactly same posts as there was this morning. That’s a problem for getting return visits.

Yes, that's a problem. What you can do to help yourself:

uncheck "Show Read Posts" in your settings
switch between feed algorithms ('New Comments', 'Active', 'Hot', 'Top Hour')
subscribe to more communities
unsubscribe from big communities if they dominate your feed

Most of these actions have drawbacks.

The biggest issue here from my point of view is, that none of this works out of the box. It requires will and capability to tweak your Lemmy. More often than not, the solution might simply be to not return visit.

An actual solution might be something like: Assign a relevancy score to each post. Posts with higher relevancy are more likely to appear in your stream. When a post has been shown to you, it's relevancy drops (at least for relative streams like 'Active' and 'New Comments'. Absolute streams like 'Top Hour' might need a different treatment). When you visited a post, it's relevancy drops a lot. This could help populate your stream with fresh content (of which there is no shortage!). When a user scrolls past a post one or even more times, they probably aren't interested in seeing it, so the post should not be shown in the future.

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

I find lemmy waaaaay more condescending and less spontaneous than reddit.

I still think it's a better platform in many ways, but the mere fact that "moral superiority" is a prime reason for joining guarantees that it will be condescending.

[–] tigull@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You hit the nail on the head. Revanced for Sync means I can browse reddit exactly as I did, and I lost interest in Lemmy pretty quickly after installing it. Lemmy is nice but feels too much like the reddit of old which was all tech/nerdy stuff and atheism apologists. It's nice but it just lacks the diversity that, over time, made reddit unique.

[–] sgtlighttree@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It's nice but it just lacks the diversity that, over time, made reddit unique.

Yeah, it lacks the userbase that allows for one to ask a hyperspecific question about a very niche topic, and near-instantly get a good answer from an expert on said niche topic.

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Amen. Exactly my position on that.