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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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The bigger a social platform gets, the more synergy it spawns. That's what adds utility to a social platform.
I don't think anyone here wants it to be 'the next big thing', but I do think a lot of people (myself included) want to see it become 'one of the next big things'. As in...we want it to become big enough to be a viable alternative to the proprietary walled-garden corporate establishments that have become the current standard.
More choice = better, and for as long as this platform remains small and elitist (referring back to your 3rd sentence), it will never truly be a viable choice. There's still a lot of engagement I'm required to use Reddit for - and I hate that - and the only reason for it is we just don't have the community size needed (yes, it's getting closer every day) to be that viable alternative.
You are young it sounds like. If Lemmy becomes that size, all good things about it goes away, and we get ads and corporations moving in to profit from it. That turns the entire thing into the same shit as everything else.
It happens over and over and over again in tech. It's a pattern that all older people knows about because we have lived it.
So I hope Lemmy stays small. Bigger than now, sure, but not big enough to attract corporations.
As toxic as Reddit is, it is a huge wealth of information if you can search and parse it. It also encourages small niche topics that wouldn't get any attention without a huge audience to draw from. If Reddit is no longer going to feed that role, I hope SOMEPLACE becomes that kind of place in the future. If it's the Fediverse nothing stops instances from creating smaller communities within it. Could be best of both worlds. Or it could ruin it. I guess I don't know.
I think the Fediverse model has a really strong advantage compared to past platforms. Corporations are always going to have a profit motive, and that will necessarily eventually make the user experience worse. With how easy it is to move things around in the Fediverse, there's a meaningfully lower risk of that since the lock-in factor is reduced. I'm sure we will see monetized corporate instances (see, Threads), but if that experience eventually gets intolerable, it'd be relatively easy for users to jump ship without drastically changing the experience.
It's not perfect, but we're in a better position I think.
@BraveSirZaphod
@ekZepp @CaptainAniki @krayj @mrmanager
(Messaging from mastodon server) I think so too. Your posts may not follow, but the freedom to move from one server to another, and the freedom to follow posts and info from other servers means if threads wants me to join they'd need make the experience better than anywhere else, or I can leave and still follow anybody I was following before.
Okay see, this itself shows exactly what I'm saying. I'm on Kbin, you're on Mastodon, and we're talking on a Lemmy instance. This is genuinely stupid cool.
No. But it's humorous to me that you immediately go there for anyone who disagrees with your take. I'm >5 decades.
Sounds like massive speculation. Especially for an open platform system that anyone can self-host. If you don't like ads or paying for service, light up your own instance and self host. That is, by definition, why lemmy works the way lemmy works. I hate to accuse you of making shit up, but you are making shit up.
I've probably lived through more of this than you have. I've made my career in the tech industry and have been at it since 1991. Again, you keep trying to imply that you somehow have more experience or more time in industry just because I disagree with you. That's awfully pretentious.
That's elitist. And it's self-defeating. Sounds like you'd be happy just joining a few email list servers...because you aren't going to get any more value than that out of the self-inflicted handicap of keeping community sizes tiny.
We disagree with eachother for sure. I'm also about your age, and I havent seen any platform become big without also becoming user hostile. Google, Youtube, Reddit, Meta, you name it.
It seems that you believe that just because Lemmy is federated, it will be able to not be affected by Threads and it's users. We will see. I doubt it.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that because federation is a two-way street and can ben enabled or disabled between any two instances, it will always be possible to have instances that are unaffected by threads. Certainly, some instances will choose not to federate with threads - and so there will always be the possibility to join a community (or create one) that shuts itself off from that influence. Take beehaw.org for example - they didn't like the influence lemmy.world had on their community so they defederated. They are no longer influenced by lemmy.world. The point I am trying to make is that because of that fact (that possibility), there is no reason at all to desire to limit the total scope (userbase) of all of lemmy. If you want a private/closed community, then make one or join one - you don't need to suppress everyone just to achieve your own personal goals for a community.
There was an article not long ago about how blocking threads won't make the problem go away. Not sure how to find it again here, I tried searching for it but there are so many articles about Threads so it's hard to find. Either way it made a very good case why blocking won't make a difference.
“The bigger a social platform gets the more synergy it spawns”
Ehhhh, small groups have plenty of synergy, no?
Is some growth good? Of course. Is becoming as big as everyone else is a good idea? You tell me: which megalithic tech company has a userbase that isn’t being poisoned or exploited? Namely: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etc.
Keeping a reasonable size, just like anything else in this life, is the correct option. Obsessive growth leads to greed and misery.
EDIT: Sorry for being so brain dead in my initial response
Don't be hostile.
"Why isn't anyone interested in my hobby!? I keep telling them they're wrong and they keep leaving!"
Reddit tier aggression lol. Chill out and then we'll listen to what you have to say.
Thanks for calling me out fam
What exactly is wrong with his comment? He's right.
It came off as aggressive but they fixed it
What's wrong with a little aggression if you're making a solid point and straightening a few people out?