this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Are we increasing though? I thought we plateaued or even dipped. e.g. https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats even says we dropped sharply, like 51k monthly active users in April compared to 47k now (this ignores the halfyear stats that iirc were affected by some technical changes), and the total users tanked from 1.9 mil to just 1.4 (though we surely don't have that many lurkers, so a lot of those were surely bots/alts), and even servers went down.
Everyone that I've mentioned Lemmy to irl gives me a horrible look like why would you tell me about this TruthSocial-like place (except leftist instead of right-wing as that one is) that actively calls for public beheadings of e.g. landlords?
So we've got some... issues that are blocking our future growth, from reaching more mainstream audiences.
I'll be honest, I hope Lemmy doesn't reach a mainstream audience. It's nice having a smaller site away from all the bullshit that will inevitably come with mainstream attention. We can say "just defederate! Join another instance" but when we get to a point where giant corpos are running instances that host 95% of users and 99% of content, we'll be in the same boat as now if we defed, except that Lemmy will then have a mainstream (and thus mostly right of center) image. If this, or a little more, is all we're ever really going to get on an open source platform that feels open source, I'm okay with that. I like seeing the same usernames around, and feeling like I found the internet equivalent of Stars Hollow, CT
It's a double edged sword, that.
On the one hand, we're kinda awesome the way we are.:-) Perhaps a bit more content would be good though?
On the other, there's like 50 people that generate virtually all the content, and they won't necessarily be able to keep up that pace forever. If we aren't sustainable, this project will die off. And I don't mean like cease working, but rather lose our uniqueness, like what happened to Reddit, which technically remember still exists:-).
I hear you about "fully mainstream", but I think we could stand to grow a bit more. What's going on with mander.xyz and scientists/academics is awesome:-).
I'm not familiar with what's going on with that. Care to enlighten me?
And I totally get what you mean. More content would be great. I specifically miss my philosophical and spiritual communities from Reddit. I love learning about mythos and different religions, especially the more esoteric stuff, as well as political philosophy. That content just isn't here in the same way (or sometimes, at all). It would be amazing to have that here. But I'd also rather go without certain things if it means not feeling like I'm being sold a story. Reddit felt like it wasn't social media in the same way as Twitter and Facebook, but the moment I left it for Lemmy it was this scales-from-my-eyes kind of moment. It was crazy how toxic reddit was for me, and going back a few times, and looking at my old profile, I do not like the person I was there. Always on the defense, always on edge, always prepared to argue a point because I knew some asshole was going to attack me for no reason, and make me defend myself. It's like it activates the caveman part of the brain and put me in fight or flight. I'd love for Lemmy to get big enough to have awesome content, but not so big as to devolve into that. But I'm not smart enough to know what that balance is, or if it's even an issue of size, or just culture.
Just that they are actively recruiting people from STEM.
Most of what made Reddit great was not Huffman's software but the people that were worth chatting with. Most of those people did not come here, hence the huge lack of niche subjects here by comparison.
Though indeed, even before the whole fuck spez fiasco Reddit was becoming enshittified, as it encouraged people to talk rather than listen - e.g. to make a new post rather than be able to find an existing one. And yes, it also encouraged us to become pedantic assholes, making every one of us defensive - me too.
A fantastic article somewhat related btw: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb, highlighting that social media becomes what the vision of the developers makes it to be. From the size and position and coloration of the buttons - and which ones, like are downvotes even turned on? - and every little thing, Reddit was doomed to become what it was purely bc of its choice to encourage its own profits at the expense of all else.
A favorite example of mine is that since ads go in-between posts but not comments, Reddit encouraged "more posts", far more so than "more comments", and not at all searching for existing posts, e.g. they only allowed 2 pinned posts, not 5 or 10 or 20 or something, just 2. So in places like r/Android they would have weekly mega threads where people could ask things e.g. "what phone should I buy?", but rather than help connect people to those mega threads specifically offered for that, the developers forced mods to do the work to try to stem the absolute tsunami of posts all saying "which phone should I buy?" - almost invariably with no other details, each just a child (of whatever mental age) wanting ~~personalized recommendations~~ attention, but thereby halting the ability of people to discuss things related to Android phones, bc how could you get a word mixed in among all that noise?
Even nonprofit social media is still damaging to us, but to a radically lesser degree it would seem, compared to a for-profit one attempting to predate upon e.g. our anxieties.
Not only that, we have a couple of social science people around too :-)
Oh, I naively thought it was included, but I see that it's a bit controversial. Interesting 🤔.
As some seriously considering changing my major (back) to anthropology, this intrigues me
That's really cool. I love the idea of Lemmy instances being their own specific cultures, and the idea of an industry/field specific instance is honestly one of the coolest aspects of Lemmy. I'd love to see, like, artist based instances really take off, for example, or even like an instance specifically for fast food workers. Might help get some kind of union action going eventually if it really took off
That's the idea. Right now most mainstream audiences seem to prefer X to moving away from that, but it sure would be nice to have alternative options. Such as Mbin that will check both Mastodon and Lemmy instances.
If you speak german, that is what the community !philosophie@feddit.org is all about.
Sadly I do not :(
Damn, you've mentioned lemmy irl? And other people have known about it?
Never once have they known about it already:-).
The horrified looks come on our subsequent visit, and then they refuse to talk about it again. I suppose it's our dirty secret... that we use Lemmy btw.:-P
I've only met maybe five people in real life that even know what Reddit is. Like yeah that's that super nerdy site right?
I've never even tried to mention Lemmy.
But... we could always use new memes!?
Maybe something like this:
with the caption "I use Arch btw"😁
I've mentioned lemmy irl, too. Various times actually. Obviously no one knows it. But they usually don't even know of mastodon or the fediverse either. And even reddit is just a name they've heard before. Everyone I know irl is on Instagram though.
But if you look at messages it has raised, so less accounts but more active. And I don't know the rest but I'm not in a hurry to see Lemmy become as big as Reddit. I can wait a couple of years to grow at a faster rate.