Dear Lemmings, how can we funnel reddit users to lemmy?
Please, help us to better understand how we can effectively funnel reddit users into Lemmy across all demographics, leveraging the average Lemmings advantages like expertise in automation, ai and bots?
What tactics/strategies do you propose? Can we automate the process? Can we somehow add ai to make it more fashionable?
Users don't care if Lemmy or the Fediverse is more "free" or which technical features are superior to what Reddit offers.
Most users want a place to find content and basically doomscroll. You want users that will submit new content, not just lurkers. So in order to attract people here, the best way to do so is to submit new content.
I see some people here saying they don't want Lemmy to grow. They're right as far as growth for the sake of growth. That said, there's value in a bigger user base because it allows for niche communities that otherwise wouldn't have enough activity to be worthwhile.
So in that spirit, I think actively posting and commenting about the subjects you're interested in is the best way to help develop active communities. If in conversation IRL we find ourselves saying, "I heard about X on lemmy" or "This tutorial on lemmy helped me figure out an issue with Y" then that's the best advertisement for new users.
Likewise I think reddit posts are favored when people do web searches because it's humans having a real discussion, not seo trying to sell something. As there's more content on lemmy I'd hope web searches will start bringing people here. (And as platforms like reddit make their product worse to make more profit fewer people will go there)
The problem with Lemmy is that the demographic is so skewed. Its mostly hyper-tech nerds mixed with political activists. I like tech and politics but its a bit of a toxic brew and I haven't found myself having that much fun over here. On reddit, there's comedy and people not being angry because someone isn't using linux. Lemmy often feels like a glorified arstechnica link aggregator. Its just kind of a sad place compared to reddit. The other day u/shittymorph made some posts that made me laugh super hard. I haven't laughed at anything over here, because well most of you aren't funny, haha me neither so don't feel attacked. But lemmy not attracting comedians, and having the top post in here be "Dont" really makes it seem like the people here prefer being sad and lonely. sorry its not a direct reply to your query, as some actionable advise your seeking, just me attempting to articulate what i enjoy about reddit that I feel like i don't see here yet. I don't how to get someone like shittymorph over here. I don't know if there's anything that lemmy offers that appeals to a person like that, that's enough to make them start creating content over here. Maybe we just need people to stand up the sort of communities commedians would be attracted to, even if its a bit out of our wheelhouse, but idk. Authenticity is important and faking it is easily seen through.
I don't really understand why you would want to. In order for the fediverse to be strong it has to grow organically and scale up, not face an eternal september of clueless people who aren't particularly interested in it.
The corporate/political shills, scammers, sealions and such are attracted to reddit by its size. Not having all that crap here is a good thing. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.
Cross post from Lemmy to Reddit.
But we must raise the question if we really want that. Reddit became toxic over the past few years, and I think people on Lemmy right night are in general different. Do we want to turn Lemmy into Reddit?
At this point, anyone who was part of the 3rd party app protests who stayed and didn't make the switch clearly didn't want to jump here, so they'll probably be on r€dd!t for a long time.
If you just funnel reddit users onto Lemmy, you're just going to get a shittier version of Reddit. You'll be selecting for people who are tired of, can't use, or rejected from reddit, but didn't make the move on their own. That will result in growth, but at the cost of quality. Specifically reaching out to reddit users sends the message that you just want to be reddit for people who can't or won't use reddit anymore.
Expansion should come naturally. As Lemmy grows and improves, new users will naturally gravitate over, but because it wasn't some sudden influx of reddit users they'll be less inclined to just bring Reddit's culture with them.
You don't. There just isnt enough content. I stopped using reddit for months but now use it again when I am using my PC. Reddit for PC with RES and lemmy for phone is a good balance I found out. At least until they kill RES
Don't focus only on reddit users. That unnecessarily narrows the scope of the issue.
Lemmy has significant barriers to joining that other sites or services do not have. And then once people manage to join there are basic usability issues with simple things like finding communities.
Until these core issues are solved it feels pointless to try to target users from a specific site.
Dear Lemmings, how can we funnel reddit users to lemmy? Please, help us to better understand how we can effectively funnel reddit users into Lemmy across all demographics, leveraging the average Lemmings advantages like expertise in automation, ai and bots?
This almost reads like an AI generated prompt from a company. Personally I don't think it makes sense to coordinate something artificial because people will see right through that.
Lemmy and the Fediverse at large IS better than the other platforms. With time it will grow for that reason alone.
What tactics/strategies do you propose?
Post content about things you know about and follow. It could be stuff you see on other social media, local news, anything really.
If you want to get more involved, pick a specific community or subreddit type and see what it needs. How can Lemmy serve that topic as well or better than Reddit could. If it makes sense, see if you can work with the moderators for the subreddit to get an official parallel community going (link to eachother, update rules, add the subreddit mods as mods here).
Can we automate the process?
Only in some cases where it makes sense. Lemmit exists for those that want a feed from a subreddit. Otherwise Time sensitive content, such as deals/sales?
Can we somehow add ai to make it more fashionable?
I think the opposite is needed, don't do any of the random "fashionable" things companies are doing, which actually end up making the experience worse. Areas where it might be nice to have AI might be:
improving the summarizer bot (it's broken sometimes, not sure why)
local translations when content is in another language
Don't want to. This is good as it is. There's already a fair crack of wowsers here, and that's already too many. The discussion here was pretty amazing a while back, but it's already dumbing down as this place grows.
Honestly, lemmy and the fediverse as a whole will have natural growth and thats fine - mastodon has been around for like 8 years and is only recently getting a small amount of attention and mainstream usage. Like take the long view - like the really long view like 15 years from now. It'll probably be huge, but until then we will just share memes and have a good time discussing stuff.
Honestly at this point the people that stay on Reddit just liked getting fucking in the ass by big tech companies or are just too stupid to not be fucked in the ass
I find theres enough content here to satisfy my needs without it becoming an unhealthy addiction. Also it feels like my comment is actually noticed and sometimes replied to by a real person like me. Reddit relt unhealthy in those ways.
I see marketing via AI tools and bots unethical. Many things can be done via conventional marketing.
Contact content creators (especially oriented towards Linux and Free software, like TheLinuxExperiment or DistroTube, or some gaming channels, as well) to create communities of their channels on Lemmy.
Somehow reduce content about world news and politics. Many people go to the Internet to step aside from the real world events.
Also, majority of Reddit users are teenagers. The older generation of Reddit has fled away. We must think twice what target audience we want to bring in. I don't want Lemmy to become a place where alt-wing anti-establishment political leaders bait naïve teenagers and take them into the rabbit hole (aka scenario described in The Social Dilemma).
We could improve Lemmy's features because this is an important factor in the next of content creation. For example: better sync, account migration, more intuitive UX, etc.
If you remember a ton of people left because for these reasons: Confusing sign-up (having to choose an instance), worse UX, having to use third-party sites to explore communities which aren't local, suffering from defederation (my main gripe with Lemmy)
I think it would help if when people googled Lemmy the top results would be a familiar interface with posts. Not a bunch of information about what it is and how to join.
They will leave when they reach their breaking point and not before. Part of this has to do with changes implemented by Reddit the company. Part of this has to do with quality of user generated content. Unless you are going to tank quality by making bad posts on Reddit or running a bunch of bots to do the same, I doubt you'll have much of an effect.
I suppose the only thing Lenny Lemmy can do is advertise and Reddit isn't good at allowing that so I've heard.
I think the only thing reddit has over Lemmy is the number of active communities, and not how big these communities are. If there's 10k people in a community, it's fine. It doesn't help if there's 100k.
But I need the diversity. I need r/soccer and r/chatgpt that are way more active.
I feel the very specific community topic split is already affecting Lemmy negatively. So I think having larger, broader community topics (e.g. 'commuting' instead of a community for every single option to commute by itself), with more diverse content, interaction and of course more visible activity, would also attract new users.
Right now some communities are so specific, that by its creation, it's a filter bubble by design. And then of course you don't get a lot of content or interaction, as only yea-sayer get accepted.
Interaction requires different approaches, opinions, options and of course people who upvote them even when disagreeing. The reply box is the correct option when disagreeing, not the downvote. That's how Lemmy will sprout.
tl;dr Broader community topics for larger, more diverse and more active communities
Chill the fuck out with the bans, for starters. A lot of people come to these sites to discuss news, and then leave for good when they catch bans for stupid shit like saying "US revolutionaries probably didn't go around murdering entire families." Meanwhile, hexbears are posting pics of pig shit, which is apparently fine.
I mean, I definitely won't suggest this place to anyone at this point because of how toxic .ml has become in particular.
Maybe inviting people to be less extremist and radicalized. If you want Lemmy to be less of a niche and more of a mainstream platform you have to accept normies.
I literally ended up blocking the world news sub because all the posts and comments were circle jerking around the left wing agenda
Lemmy is actually worse than Reddit. It's use base appear to be a bigger load of fedora wearing, fart huffing, hive minded l, predictable shut-ins than even Reddit.
You could try attracting users from somewhere a bit more diverse in terms of thought than Reddit.
lets keep talking about getting redditors here on lemmy which will surely bring the people that arent on lemmy
the fact u said add ai, bros desperate for content just go use reddit some vegetarians still eat bacon sometimes
lemmy sucks my man until we have some actual content itll continue to suck. content has to exist for more content to be created its a self fulfilling prophecy that would likely never happen due to lemmy being weird and not super intuitive in the beginning
i say all this as a reddit refugee and lemmy user though i use lemmy less because it sucks but ive stopped using reddit entirely (except for those long nights if you know what i mean)
I'm assuming there's a shredder in the middle of the funnel, kind of like when that ice machine shreds up a random crony in James Bond prior to the avalanche in that scene in whatever James Bond film it was I forget.
I dunno, let reddit keep fucking around and they'll come over. More engagement is always good but nothing gets better when there are more people on it.