There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you've been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren't talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive "community" ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don't need to focus on it.
Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I'll just lock it for now.
While a part of me doesn't think this will last forever, it's nice to be a part of a growing community in which you were a part from the relatively beginning (of an exodus, if we'll be more specific about it). It makes people feel more involved and closer to each other, and see each other beyond just being a random name or a number or a statistic. Honestly, the fact that there isn't a million eyes looking right now and scrutinizing every word I say gives me more confidence to simply... comment. Put myself out there. Like what I'm doing now. I've probably commented more in the past two days than I have from years on Reddit.
And I feel like even if it does get bigger (maybe not exponentially; I honestly doubt Reddit will lose a lot of people as some people just don't care for change. Look at Twitter :/ ), I feel like the fact I've been here from when it was in its infancy to whatever point it may become in the future would give me the courage to keep expressing myself.
I've noticed that with Lemmy and a couple other alternatives it feels like the first days of 4chan and Reddit. People are actually being civil and conversations are happening instead of people staying quiet because they know their comment will be lost in the thousands.
One of the major flaws of R*ddit was
the upvote/karma feature, which turned posting into a performance and a popularity contes, as you've mentioned. I hope as Lenny and the fediverse develops, we can shed those features in favor of a more simple and equitable system.
The longer ive stayed off reddit, the more I have grown the love the benifits of Lemmy. Discussions are civil, the vibe is a lot more chill and if anything, it invites users to participate. I wasn't sure if I would manage to avoid reddit given how addicted I was to it. Suddenly, I feel like I've found a better place...
I think the beauty of a community-of-communites platform like Reddit/Lemmy is that we can have both in a way. Sub-communities should be encouraged; where high-level communities can grow for the increased engagement and content while sub-communities can remain small and connected.
I agree somewhat when it comes to the giant subreddits, but the best thing about Reddit is that there were vibrant communities around an absolutely high variety of interests. Some of those communities were reasonably sized, but provided excellent discussion. On a smaller service like Lemmy, those small communities become ghost towns, with 1-2 people in there, and that's not fun at all.
I'm personally looking forward to growth here because I want niche communities to form like they did on reddit. And you can only do that when there's enough critical mass of users.
Bigger is not always better. Smaller communities are exactly why the old internet used to be better. Less centralization of userbases meant more productive discussion and friendlier communities.
I think you're 100% right, but frankly this issue is more important than just a nice home for us
Social networks are being pressured to start extracting value with interest rates no longer being nil, and their efforts aren't just inconvenient, they're bad for mental health.
And how long until they start selling control over debate to the highest bidder? Musk has pretty explicitly gone over plans to do exactly that - he wants to charge per-user to send out tweets to your subscribers. He says there would be a large limit before you have to start paying, but this is a great way to control voices that rise out of the crowd
Social media has been a disaster, but there's no putting it back in the box - it's the primary way we communicate. It's terrible for mental health and can be leveraged as a tool of control, so a decentralized system is very important right now
That being said, I think it'd be great if the fediverse encorages fragmented groups instead of a main subject monolith and refugees in fringe groups - smaller communities are just healthier and more fulfilling
You are absolutely right, you are hitting the nail on the head with the issues I had with Reddit too. I was pretty much just a lurker because it seemed like every time I tried to reach out or make a connection with a community, it was largely unseen or ignored.
I guess it depends on what you're here for. I'm not really looking for friends as much as insightful comments from people of similar interests. Quality posts need a certain amount of people to show up. Like the guy spending months and years making the perfect photo of the moon. Would that happen in a forum with ten people? I don't think so. Not to say that quality content wont happen here. It's all up to each and every one of us in the end, and people seem to leave longer comments of better quality and substance. Lets do our best and see where it goes!
As a "reddit refuge" I agree with this. I showed up on Lemmy a few days before the blackout, and even that small amount of time has been enough to notice a difference. I know people are hoping to recreate the things about reddit they love/miss here, but I really hope it doesn't become a carbon copy of that place.
Like many have said, I didn't feel the urge to engage on reddit since it just felt a bit pointless, no one was gonna read it. Here I've felt like I can actually have good conversations with people, and have been doing so. Ultimately things will be what they will be, but I hope we can maintain that friendly community feel for a while longer.
I agree. I'm still hoping some subreddits will move over to Lemmy, but I'm really enjoying Lemmy anyhow. The Lemmy communities seem generally really positive so far and there is enough content for me to enjoy. It even helps with reducing my time lost on the internet while still providing me with the community and information-influx that I enjoy. Quality over quantity.
I also really love the idea of the technical parts: federated, open source and self-hostable.
In general, I prefer quality over quantity. I never joined Reddit, and only visited under duress (i.e. troubleshooting Linux install & Reddit was the only place w/the info I needed).
For some reason, using Lemmy feels like I'm using old-school forums like EZBoard (I know...dating myself). I don't think that it needs to "become the next Reddit" to be an effective community platform.
Kind of a weird analogy, but it's like Mallrats...practically NOBODY saw it in theaters, but over time, it found its audience.
Just focus on quality community interactions, and the user base numbers will find the right level.
A concern that I haven't seen mentioned is Eternal September. Right now, Redditors are the school kids who are barging into someone else's space and trying to make it their own, without first knowing what the community is like.
The same thing happened on Reddit. I've always seen the Obama AMA as triggering Reddit's Eternal September, though it can be argued that it was happening before that. The influx of users killed the Alot Monster, and forget about anyone helping with grammar; they'd be ridiculed and downvoted into the negative. Then, Reddit got rid of the up/down counter altogether, so nobody coming from Facebook would end up with hurt feelings.
Anyhow, there's a risk that Redditors are going to ruin the fediverse. I'm new here and can already see it happening. Fingers crossed though, I'm staying optimistic!
I am not interested in irc chats. Reddit was home to many interesting niche communities that are not replicated here.
On one hand, yes, it will be nice to not have posts or comments go unseen because they are lost amongst the masses. But without those masses, there is not enough to cover specific topics that have only a small community associated. This is even a larger problem due to to nature of the fediverse, were similar communities are being founded on different instances rather than a single community on the topic.
This is one of the biggest things I have been saying. While a bigger community is great, I’d be happy with a community of just 1% the size of Reddit. The small community vibe really gives me memories of the older days. Glad to see other people feel the same way.
I'm here for good. I quit reddit for a year and started peeking back again a couple weeks ago and saw all this drama unfold. This place is exactly what I have been looking for since reddit went south (years ago imo). Cheers everyone :)
Sort of sounds like my little Arizona town. "No, we don't want this economic opportunity, we like the town small and manageable!" The average age ten years ago was 55, and now it is 65. What is going to happen to the town in 20 years?
Completely agree..... I see so many posts with "I would like this feature from Reddit etc." But honestly, it's quite refreshing to have something different.
The API changes were just the straw that broke the camel for me as after 13 years plus on the platform, it didn't even resemble what I initially signed up for.
I legit hope Lemmy doesn't turn in to a Reddit 2.0 where every reply to question is someone trying to be a smart ass and where not conforming to the ideology of the masses gets you nuked.
I too remember the days of IRC and I remember sitting in certain channels where we would all take turns in staying silent and allowing someone on the chat to hit the record voice and play a Jazz song they loved. I would sit there all night listening to and sharing music with people from all over the world drinking beers and chatting among ourselves.
Man, the early days of work arounds and early internet I miss. Every night of surfing was seriously exciting as you never knew what you would stumble on or find. Now it's the same dozen websites over and over rinse and repeat.
Anyhow, nostalgia and gripe over..... I agree 100%.
I'm really enjoying Lemmy as is and don't want to be wishing it away any time soon !
I don't need size, but I would like diversity of communities. That implies a size to fill out niches, but it doesn't require it. It just needs niches to move. I can do without the default subs here happily.
think the difference is community vs attention (or lack there of). while i personally am not currently looking for the latter, don't think i appreciated how much i enjoy the former until this whole spez driven melt down happened.
am sure things will evolve as they're meant to, in the meantime just happy to be here.
I kinda love the anonymity of Reddit, I could talk about my personal life with strangers who won't remember me within 5 minutes so I felt safe being open about things I can't talk about IRL even if I didn't get any feedback. I'm hoping that regardless of size, the communities here allow me to do that and still feel safe. Obviously I'll be more cautious here with a smaller user base, but I was still cautious on Reddit too because bad actors who would do you harm exist everywhere and can't be totally avoided if you engage online at all. Sometimes a larger user base simply helps alleviate the stress because you are just another random user rather than a recognisable user for people like me, but it definitely cuts both ways and sometimes people forget you are a human too. The quality of the community is absolutely the most important thing tho, and good communities will grow naturally.
Totally agree. We should worry less about coaxing redditors or about how many users joined etc etc. Interact with people. Post and comment. Create good content and share it. That's what drives engagement, and all of the other concerns depend on engagement.
You're right. I think there is a lower limit of required users, but if all the world moved to Lemmy by some miracle, most of the problems would be brought with them. I have the feeling Lemmy is a colelction of people missing the internet from before the big sites like facebook or reddit. It's been missing a long time and this is our chance to get it back :)
I can see what you're saying and I do agree on some level. However one of the things I liked most about Reddit was how pseudo-anonymous it was.
There was too many people to know who everyone was, so I feel like it mitigated that unwelcoming cliquey-ness that you tend to get in the kind of smaller communities you tend to see on discord. It felt as if everyone equal, whether they had just joined a community or been furniture for a decade.
Entirely willing to suggest this might just be my own perspective and not a very common one
I couldn't agree more, feel much more at ease here than on Reddit.
I was not contributing anymore there, too many things going on , the sheer number of people , the rage , the bots..
Maybe my posts and comments won't be as articulated or good as others but hey I am engaging again and I don't mind at all the small size if it mean more quality interaction.
Lemmy and other federated solutions will get a big boost in users, but it will only very be a tiny fraction of the reddit userbase.
And 98% of those users will probably just head back to reddit in a week or two.
Subreddits that have closed and moved with be replaced with new subs on reddit.
I think in the end it will be a healthy boost for Lemmy, but so far I suspect don't think we are at "Mass Paradigm shift" yet.
Kind of agree! It definitely gets to the point where it gets overwhelming, I remember early days reddit used to be a chill place to hang out, even after the great migration from Digg it was still not overwhelming as it is now.
Ye flipping gods irc chats were great. Personally, I like it here. I’ll do my news checking, throw some comments around. The nice thing is I get responses here.
I agree, I think we shouldn't be focused so much on "growing" the network and more just making it better. I think it's unlikely we'll reach particularly high user counts, and that's okay. We can have a nice little comfy community.
You've got a very good point here that I don't think a lot of people have considered. I'm glad someone had mentioned it -- it could very well be just what we need.
I have nothing else to add that wouldn't be portrayed as negative so I believe putting efforts frontwards to bettering what currently is, is a great course of action.
I loved IRC! I'm sure it's not super popular these days, especially with the rise of Discord, but it was super fun. I always used PurpleSurge as the server which is now gone. Maybe it will come back into fashion?
You and andobando make good points. It's fun because I noticed myself paying a lot more to usernames since I've started using Lemmy. Maybe it's because of how people are engaging with it, I'm not sure, but it totally does feel like I'm actually engaging with multiple individuals here as opposed to some vague entity.
i tried to become active in mastadon and i realized pretty quickly that the majority of the conversation was about mastadon growth and adoption.
i just didn't care enough about that to stick around. i hope there is more here.
yeah, looking back at it now that you mention it, the only names I really recognized in reddit were the famous/infamous ones, or the ones that were obnoxious enough on the subs I subscribed to. in reddit, over the 15 years I used it, I created a new profile every year or two - had to, I kept getting banned from top-level subs. a profile name generally meant nothing inasmuch as it was required to use the platform...
One of the most useful things about reddit was that due to the sheer size of it you could quickly get answers on a myriad of different things from health problems to what kitchen appliance is better, often with very good arguments and trustworthy reviews. This is immensely useful and I hope we can replicate it here over time. It's nice to have a small community, but if it's good it will grow. There's not much that can be done about that. You can always start a new group based on some subsection of what the big groups cover to stay nimble.
Someone posted a link a while ago to an article called killing community. I believe it speaks what I've been thinking for a while. I've quit so many social media over such a long time but I'm also part of a small community of friends. We Have our own little corner of the internet with file sharing and things like password manager and chat server and so on. We've been going strong for 15 years and going. Growth at all costs destroys communities.
I miss the days of messageboards and IRC rooms. Back in the day, Nintendo had a messageboard (the Hyrule Town Square and then the NSider Forums) and I was somewhat active on both of those. I even ran my own messageboard and made some good friends I still talk to to this day on another forum. There was an IRC room I'd hang out in a decade ago before they mostly all moved over to Discord.
Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
yup, I agree. I forgot how much better smaller communities are now that I haven't used reddit in about a week. much less garbage on my feed that will eventually start to grow