Is it realistic to hope that lemmy grows to the size of the bigger social media platforms?

I liked the variety and sheer volume of content on the other one, but I have had a lot less of those horrible interactions on Lemmy. I kind of like it being small town.

Precisely this. The more people come here, the more of the judgemental shitheads are going to come too. I've encountered a few on here already but nothing like back there.
- I've also yet to come across censorship favoring fascists here.
There are downsides to small-town life, though. Some of my views don't match the ones that are prevalent here, so I either end up getting hammered with downvotes or self-censoring when certain topics of discussion come up. And unlike Reddit it's not a big and diverse enough place that I can just go find a sub-community that is more tolerant.
- Lemmy IS the sub-community! I suspect that you and I would have at least a few disagreements then! Hah!
The bizarre hostility of Reddit users is baffling. It's like they've never interacted with a human being in real life and have no idea how to process an opinion that isn't a 1:1 match of their own.
You could say something like "I love waffles! :D" and get a response that is like "Oh, so you hate pancakes then? Wow, you didn't need to shit on every person that loves pancakes."
- Most of them are trolls. Some are cantankerous normal people, but most are probably getting paid or are bots. Anger gets engagement and division helps Russia, China, etc. It's a win-win for reddit.
I've definitely seen more trolls and significantly more racist/transphobic people even in just the last few months which is worrying. Maybe it's like Baader Meinhof effect cause I started tagging them, but it's certainly frustrating because this site used to feel a lot more friendly.
- The idea that some people may have me tagged makes me a little nervous, and feel like maybe I should behave a bit more.
  Still cant help shitposting...
I would like to stop being banned arbitrarily for "ban evasion" when I was never banned in the first place. That hasn't happened here yet lol..

It's possible, but I don't hope for it. There are tradeoffs for everything. The more the population expands, the more content, yes, but the number of negative encounters goes up too.

I'm good with where it's at now, but do recognize that I'm not necessarily average because I don't stay on my phone for extended periods.

Do we want it to grow to the size of traditional social media?

I want people here, not US politicians, the Pringles social media account and three bots.

Realistic? Yes. Especially since Reddit is going far down the fascist rabbit hole gargling those Trump balls while allowing power tripping mods to dictate everything.

Desired? No. As the bigger Lemmy gets, the more likely enshittification will happen.

Considering piefed launched a bunch of people went there... No I don't think so.

Could the fediverse? Yes I hope!

No. I'm much more technology-literate than the average person, and while I appreciate the advantages of federation it annoys even me a lot of times.

Also, Lemmy is much further left than the average population and even reddit. So either it won't grow to mainstream size because of that, or it will and the demographic will shift more to the center which will be off-putting to the original users.

But surely if all those people join the Fediverse and see my insightful comments they'll change their views to align with mine, won't they?
- This, but in a hopeful voice instead of sarcastic 🙂
  (Being surrounded by people who think more progressively will tend to shift people’s views)
Barring the communist instances, Reddit used to be equally left. Look at them now.
Honestly, as a centrist I’ve thought about leaving Lemmy multiple times and this is by far the biggest reason. I know I can’t have an intelligent discussion with someone if I don’t agree with them and god forbid I bring up anything positive about religion, they will crucify me every time. It’s the equivalent of them putting their fingers in their ears and just yelling. No thanks.
So either it won't grow to mainstream size because of that, or it will and the demographic will shift more to the center which will be off-putting to the original users.
No the admins would ban those communities or defederate other instances that allow those communities.

Yes and no. It's more I want the big socials to have competition and shrink

Don't put that evil on me Ricky Bobby

If it becomes like the others, I'll just move on again.

I like how left Lemmy is and, as a result there's a lot less dickheads.

...apart from me of course

Be careful what you wish for.

I don't know that I'd call it a hope personally: Any place that gets really big starts to get shitty too (see Digg, Reddit, etc.) . Federated stuff might be more resistant to the effects, but it is not completely immune.

That said, I think the Fediverse in general stands a chance to really take off with the general public, it may or may not be Lemmy that is the platform that does it.

I don’t think so. The barrier to entry is pretty low but the average internet user still can’t get over it, so I don’t think it will ever become mainstream.

The barrier is less than most email nowadays

No, because it takes slightly more effort to understand and interact with than centralized social media without the firehouse of content.

No more unrealistic than the massive valuations on the stock market of social media corporations that can supposedly back it up somehow (with AI! or something... VR maybe?) despite the fact that fundamentally these social media places are becoming crowded rooms full of bots pretending to be humans all trying to manipulate humans who are long gone.

My point is, we will figure out how to sustainably scale before corporations do because the metabolism of massive tech companies precludes them from giving a shit about that.

At this point, inefficiency is a virtue for these corporations as it degrades the environment around them making future alternatives unlikely to be able to gain a hold in such a broken context.

I think that depends on your time horizon.
In the next 5 years? No, not realistic.
In the next 50? Nearly certain I expect.
15-20 years? Maybe?

It's not an equal comparison because there isn't a single Lemmy. And I say that from a non-Lemmy account (Mbin), furthering the point. Most people from the Reddit migration probably came here because of the decentralization factor. Think of Lemmy and the rest as subreddits but without the domination of the main site. The best any community (subreddit) can do is defederate other groups (prevent their content from being seen in their own instance) that they see as problematic, but that's all that's needed.

Imagine the Fediverse structure, but there was a single controller that any instance had to go through to filter external content, and had to obey when told to filter external content. It's a new Reddit. The freedom for anyone to set up instances with whatever content or filtering they want makes it totally different. But to the point asked, that's why you can't talk about Lemmy in a singular manner, it's not one thing. And that's good.

I wish decentralized platforms could be the future, but realistically, corporations hold the power and the momentum, and they will do everything they can to keep it that way. Even when one platform does enshittify too hard and die, users will go to the next corporate platform with the biggest advertising budget.

Still, I'll do what I can to help build this corner up for those who want to try.