Let’s be honest, the real reason Lemmy build most of its traffic is because of Reddit users. But the thing is, outside of the mass exodus in the west that too from the PC era.. people discover and join Reddit not because it’s another social media like Facebook or Twitter that people need to reserve their usernames on like a brand or celebrity but because Google Search is kinda… actually absolute trash by SEO and machine learning crawlers.
Most of the world (I am from India btw, hello~) join or even discover reddit because they’re trying to search for actual solutions, recommendations, advice or even reviews by actual experienced people without having to go through another YouTuber which can stem from troubleshooting a router, finding an actual FOSS option or seeking immediate solutions to the recent CrowdStrike fiasco for example. After having to visit reddit every time whenever using a search engine including for education to career advice, I ended up directly signing up with reddit a decade ago.
Recently, Reddit even restricted its search results to Google only in a business partnership meaning those using Bing, DuckDuckGo to Ecosia or even SearchGPT wouldn’t be able to access Reddit answers anymore. Say, if someone searches for how to block ads on chrome as example - Solutions like uBlock Origin come into existence and continue to exist because of the combined community in Reddit that Lemmy is trying to preserve.
Unlike others, am not saying Lemmy would be dead but it would be pretty much like Discord-Telegram or Tumblr instead of wiping Reddit or correcting Facebook. Reddit is not something you discover from word-of-mouth or join from peer pressure unlike other social media which is even truer for Lemmy but because it actually helps and is useful to people.
Lemmy can’t be taking the path of 𝕏 (Alone Mask’s Twitter) but any of the good platforms were before the Enshittification with Facebook’s way~
Why does Lemmy need to do anything but be Lemmy? I don’t want to see it turn into Reddit. I like it just fine the way it is now.
Lemmy could absolutely benefit from a bit more traffic. Lemmy is a good Reddit replacement for the largest subs. Like if you're into self hosting, Linux and general tech there's a lot to offer. But if I need to engage with a smaller community or ask a niche question I know there just isn't enough people here to fulfill that. Either that or a lot of smaller Lemmy communities are just bots reposting from their equivalent subreddit.
I'm pulling a number out of my ass but it seems like for every 50 people to subscribe to a community, you'll get 1 really active poster and 49 lurkers. My hometown on Reddit has 23k subscribers it's safe to say it's got about 400 active users. On Lemmy it's 86 and as the assumption math goes, there's only 1 person posting there.
Even if our traffic doubled we'd still be tiny in comparison but at least the small communities would start to come alive
Reddit didn't become popular overnight. It took decades before small communities were a thing. The internet is even less discoverable than when reddit got popular. People don't search for new websites or move without a reason.
I mean, it kind of did. When Digg imploded Reddit received a massive influx of users over night. At the time and with Digg out of the picture there just wasn't a good alternative to Reddit (slashdot and fark to lesser degrees) so they had the whole market to themselves. Similarly a lot of us came to Lemmy overnight when Reddit turned off their apps. The difference is, Reddit for many many users is still good enough and fundamentally the same as it's always been.
The fact is though, without search traffic the only way to end up on Lemmy is knowing it already exists and that's going to hinder growth.
You worded the core understanding in a better way but finally someone gets it!