yeah but if you join, and your friends join, and they're friends, you know what nevermind
[Edit] holy shit people I get it, people like it small, take it easy it's just a meme, don't need to keep commenting and DMing
Most people just wanna doom-scroll, they have no interest in having conversations.
man if I start my day without a healthy level of existential dread and depression what's even the point?
You know what? I think I’m okay with the fediverse simply never getting as big and popular as Reddit is/was. Over the years, as it got more popular, I definitely noticed that the average quality of interactions I had on Reddit slowly but steadily declined. Lemmy feels like old-school Reddit, which I am honestly pretty happy about.
That's what I keep saying. I keep getting told I'm wrong though, that Lemmy needs to be easier to join, and hit critical mass and become the reddit killer because that's the only way we can exist.
Like, no thank you. I'm happy with Lemmy NOW, I don't need it to keep growing!
the only thing I miss from reddit are the niche communities
but that will come with time
I think some more growth would definitely be good for the community. There's still a lot of room for growth before we even come close to being as big as early 10's reddit.
There is a pretty wide sweet spot between 100k users and 100 million. I think most of us agree that Lemmy shouldn't be trying to be a reddit killer, but that doesn't contradict the fact that we still need to grow the userbase by orders of magnitude.
I'm loving this phase, don't get me wrong, but I have a feeling that by the time we hit 1 million or 5 million it'll be even more enoyable here. We have a longggg way to go before we have to worry about becoming too big.
I went to Reddit for the first time this month to speak up in a relevant thread about it and got a bunch of tone deaf replies about they‘d rather join Threads cause "its popular and you sound like crypto bros with the decentralised stuff" and also some "Lemmy was made by tankies" and so on.
You know what, I don‘t care, don‘t want these short sighted people here, let them get screwed a few more time by the corpos.
Yeah, I read stuff like that a while back before threads, but there was a turning point. Used to be Reddit was the place you'd downvote any post about meta, insta, or any other huge social media to hell. Now tiktok videos are upvoted to the frontpage.
And Lemmy's founders may not have views I like, but then again neither does Meta's founders. At least with Lemmy if their views ever make it into code we can fork off of it
Funny thing is my comment was about kbin, I just mentioned Lemmy and Mastodon as an interaction, but that is their main talking point anyway, the other ones was "too complicated" and "looks shit" and some more. They clearly don‘t have any understanding of open source or forking, so I didn‘t even bother to explain.
Also I don‘t even wanna know what ideology spez or Zuckerberg subscribe to, probably something fascist too and TikTok is also owned by tankies basically, anyway no sense in fighting that and I regret I tried, just glad I got this space with all of you to enjoy.
Steve Huffman (spez) is a well-known, big time doomsday pepper.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Some of his quotes in this article are incredibly cringe. For example:
Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Ew
The rich are the least useful people in an emergency. Lacking basic skills and not relating to normal people enough to lead a group.
Right? “Bro, you’re not treated like a leader because you have leadership skills. You’re treated like a leader because you have money and power, which would be largely useless if this political/social/economic system collapsed. Plus, you just made clear that you’re looking forward to a future with slaves. Maybe try therapy?”
Makes sense, he does seem like he’d have an inflated sense of self-importance and he can see all the eat the rich type of stuff on Reddit.
Yeah, not sure I really want all of those low-effort shit posters here. Let them pollute another community.
Honestly? I think a big issue with getting more people over here is kinda the attitude. This place is really elitist and condescending when the real reason go to threads or stick to twitter is cause
I like it here, its been my prefered site, but between the stale memes and elitism the Fediverse has been like the Linux of social media. Probably better, but not really worth it for the average user.
Like, I know that wont win me any friends, but it's the truth. People are usually going to go the path of least resistance, and Lemmy instances being confusing to navigate for an average user, or looking at Mastodon.world and seeing they banned shitposts and not understanding that they can use a different one or spin up their own is going to turn people away.
If you want a more niche userbase that's fine, I certainly do, but it's wild to insult them for being stupid for not joining while actively keeping them away lol
Edit 2: Removed the first edit
This place is really elitist
Folks over here shit on them a lot
I feel called out. And I can't even try and defend myself, if I'm being honest, best I could do is try to defend my elitist point of view, that people who don't want to bother putting the slightest bit of effort really don't have much to do here. There's also the problem that instances can only grow so much before their home servers get strained with traffic and hosting costs soar.
In a way, we are and will remain the linux of social platforms. Small, vocal, divided by the pettiest reasons and annoying to no end to "the normies"
You make good points. People could afford to be more accepting and patient.
But it's also inevitable that the people on a more niche platform will judge the people on a mainstream platform. That's just human nature, and it doesn't turn people away as much as you imply. For everyone who's turned off by the condescension, there's another person who's curious whether it's justified.
while actively keeping them away lol
I mean, the numbers clearly indicate that 99.99% of reddit users have never made an account on Lemmy. I don't think people are being pushed away, I think they are simply lazy and short sighted, and also waiting for the dust to settle.
Reddit was the most elitist site on the planet for much of its existence, and it never posed a problem for growth.
Watching this whole thing go down has made me realize that regardless of what people say, it's not about the number of people, the quality of the experience, or anything like that.
A lot of people actually want to be surrounded by "brands" and "influencers". Some people even get a kick out of "hate following" people who they don't like, which blows my mind.
That's why Threads feels so right to them. Threads has been designed for one thing, and one thing only: connecting companies to customers, often via influencers and eventually through traditional advertising.
Yup, there's a reason all of the corporate brands immediately jumped over there, and most celebrities.
The only reason I'd want to federate with threads would be for celebrities I follow, but even then I'm not sure if I'll federate my instance with it. Definitely not creating a threads account by any means.
This. I don't want to be on someone else's "team" because I like to form my own opinions. I don't want other people telling me how to manage my own head.
Quality > quantity.
I'm not interested in seeing cringeworthy posts or paid posts to ruin healthy conversation here.
The truck is not to tell them all the complicated shit. Just tell them it's another social media site that you browse. Don't need to tell them about the fediverse. Don't need to tell them it's independent. All that stuff is like a Naruto headband is to girls.
They'll discover all that stuff afterwards.
Everyone is still using corporate shit because everyone is still using corporate shit
Be the change
Its the same as how the vast majority of the US citizens hate both main political parties, but the majority also says "I wont vote for a third party because they could never win."
Yeah but it's true. It's better to ensure Republicans don't win than try to get your third party in. The problem is not the mindset of the people, it's the first past the post voting system. If they used ranked choice voting instead, it wouldn't be a problem.
Cool, the community is big enough. I’d welcome more, but I like social media better when the techies are the majority.
Just like the Internet in 2005! Which means...
Oh no
Reminds me of this discussion of how a scene/subculture grows and evetnaully dies: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
Feels like federated social networks are creating a new fresh scene, and there's now an influx of new users (including myself)
Normies are coming
The same problem is in politics in Germany. They vote only for the big politicians who have already a big group of supporters and so a high chance to win. Like „ I don’t vote for xyz because they have only 0.5% of voters in Germany and can’t change anything by that“ . With this attitude they also grow very slowly.
It's not only in Germany...
And it’s by design
Lots of my friends are going absolutely nuts trying to get into Bluesky asap because a bunch of big queer/left voices went there and they want to get in "before too many people join and it starts to enshittify". It's hard to compete with people that a lot of others want to follow dictating the direction with their influence. I must admit, so far my Mastodon feed is not all that interesting. Lemmy does entertain me, though.
Lemmy is more like the old school Usenet than modern social media, and I would like it to stay that way. I don't want the average doomscroller to come over here, I like the cozy atmosphere.
Honestly, I'm fine with the normies staying on Reddit and Twitter, while all of us 'new cool' folks explore our rebel alliance.
Threads starting up just proved to me that everyone would willingly join the empire if it gave them the smallest amount of convenience. Hell they'll pay for the empire to have less privacy and freedom if they can.
Tell them it's a secret club that you've formed with friends. Set it up for them on their computer or phone. It might make it seem fun.
Tbh I kind of don't want everyone here with us lol
The onboarding experience still sucks.
Ok but I don't post on twitter. I only view posts on Twitter, and they're pretty much all from relatively big people. So before I can move away, the people with big follower counts needs to move first. The only people on Mastodon that I follow are tech people. All the other people are on Twitter, Threads, or have just straight up left twitter altogether.
This is the ”insurmountable” challenge of almost every tech platform from Google to Reddit to Twitter and so on, the competitive advantage is the user base. So without a notable performance advantage (like Google usurping Yahoo) or tangible user experience benefit (Facebook replacing MySpace), these platforms will remain the dominant player in their niche.
Good news is the shitification of tech has really presented some opportunities in some of the niches. Obviously we’re all aware of reddit’s recent actions, Twitter is trying its best to fail, Facebook went the cable TV route and made itself uncool, and Insta keeps flirting with real bad ideas.
Fediverse might not be the answer, but there hasnt been a better time for viable alternatives in a very long while.
collective action problem is not a joke Jim, billions suffer every year