Submitted 1 year ago by asmodeus@programming.dev to fediverse@lemmy.world
For the last time, there is no need. We are large enough. 400,000 people is a large town or small city. Remember:
There are no investors to please
No stock holders to appease
No CEO to bootlick
No ads to chase
No e-peen to contest
We are free at last. Free your mind from the tail chase of corporate controlled social media.
These are good things, for sure, but for me they are separate from why I’m here. The niche discussions that I crave are just not here. We’re simply not large enough to have anything but the most popular subjects get any traction. So we have memes, politics, and programming/linux discussions. Worse off, you have to dodge the hexbear and lemmigrad dipshits. So the overall experience is still suffering due to the size.
I want more normies 😭
Don’t mind the memes, but there’s too much tech and politics IMO
True, but a slow, steady growth is going to result in a better platform than having a flood of old redditors that take over. And that’s coming from a Reddit refugee, which I’d guess is a pretty significant portion of the user base these days. I saw a thread about Beehive considering leaving the fediverse altogether because they can’t keep up with all the fedderated content coming in that doesn’t meet their standards. I also think there needs to be further development of the software, things like users being able to block while instances(I’m fine with porn instances existing, but I don’t want them showing in my main feed and I don’t necessarily want to block everything labeled NSFW), as well as something comparable to the multi-Reddit system that lets me make groups of communities to browse together rather than just subscribed/home/all. The second would go a long way to getting that niche content communities up and running. The few niche communities that I have found seem to get buried under the more popular ones(which was an issue on Reddit for a long time too), so some method to bring that niche content to the surface on par with the bigger communities would go a long way too.
This is my problem. I want to use Lemmy over Reddit, but there’s just not a diverse enough population to find the content I want about niche topics. Bundle that with the same 3-4 “tech company bad”, “CEO bad”, or “USA bad” topics on the top of my feed every day and it’s pushing me away from Lemmy tbh. I signed back into my Reddit account for the first time in months yesterday.
There are like 50,000 active users. That is the metric that matters above all else.
People that make an account and never post (which is where that 400,000 number you are referring to comes from) means next to nothing. If the number of active users continues to decrease, then this site will be dead, regardless of what the user count it.
There are 50,000 active accounts.
Individuals who are active on multiple accounts (having accounts on multiple sites) count multiple times.
Exactly. This. We’re not trying to get popular.
Lemmy has a good group. It will ebb and flow. People are finding their groups online. If it’s not here. That’s fine. If you enjoy lemmy. Stay! But we don’t need to grow lol
I don’t want us to get exactly popular, but I’d like to be big enough where the nice communities can be big and active enough. I still have to go to reddit for those and it is annoying.
It’s not big enough. Virtually every Lemmy sub alternative to Reddit is empty with no content, so I spend the majority of my time on Reddit.
…Except for the mods and admins of whatever instance you use, and you can’t even make your own because of the CSAM problem.
It’s turning into digital feudalism, where we peasants try to shop around for a lord to protect us from the other lords.
400,000 people is a large town or small city
That’s basically the population of my whole state… always interesting what people think of as “large towns” or “small cities” lol
Meh, if it drops it drops. I’ll never have the relationship to social media I used to, because I don’t want it anymore. If Lemmy can give me a few posts a day of things I might not normally see, that’s enough for me. It doesn’t need to be the next Reddit or whatever. After quitting Reddit I’m getting back into things I haven’t done in years. I don’t need that again.
Damn, this is exactly how I feel. Well said. I honestly feel free after spending over a decade on that god damn website.
Same
Lemmys slow feed is helping me detox from my decade of reddit doomscrolling
Same. I’ve gotten back into hobbies that I had abandoned. It’s really nice
Plus the graphs actually show that posts are up despite active users (people who make at least one post) being down. That means the people sticking are generally more willing to post and comment.
The total number of posts is up. And while the rate remains positive (for it to go negative would mean more posts are deleted than created - according to the charts it has happened before though that was when the total new monthly posts was about 10,000 and removing one community would be sufficient to change that number), the question of “is the second derivative negative? Is the rate of increase slowing down?”
And so, I don’t agree with the “That means the people sticking are generally more willing to post and comment.”
The next question is “what are they posting?” Based on lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&am… the answer is “memes and politics”.
Amen brother. I was so addicted to Reddit i saw the things in the real world like Reddit posts. I’m glad I’m out and I’m not coming back, at least not to endlessly browse or get in any kind of content posting. It’s still great for niche hobbies and solwing lots of issues with hardware, health, unbiased product reviews.
No wonder since most topics on all are:
It’s a huge circlejerk here and there isn’t that much engagement in other smaller communities. And I highly doubt that it will change for the better since I already see that a lot of the remaining people love this little circlejerk and don’t even want more people that could diversify the content. More power to them, I have already given up on Lemmy as a Reddit replacement.
And fuck cars!
Honestly, fuck cars though
Lemmy and 90% of the people here honestly suck and are circlejerky bastards with shit content but it’s also the only good option right now.
As someone who mostly likes those things, that does seem to be a big problem here.
i’d rather see a circlejerk over capitalism being bad than people accepting the shittiness
Don’t forget…
I just made a new community yesterday about objects that looks sort of like private parts, if that helps? !mildlyprivates
I’ve also got cute bugs and sea critters here: !awwnverts
And cute bees here: !beebutts
But for the life of me I can’t get any engagement on my r/legalcatadvice dupe at !cattorneys_at_paw Maybe I should have used the original name. I really miss that one.
Reddit cat subs are tightly knit with people suggesting other related subs for some content. Being able to say “aww, cute angry black cat - this would fit on /r/stealthbombers” that sort of interconnection is difficult on Lemmy making the tangent discovery, reposting and niche cat subs more difficult.
Without the fairly consistent cross posting (and thus part of the discovery), such niche subs are going to be harder to grow a community for.
It might be a bit more feasible if there was a “cats and only cats” lemmy instance where all things cats are posted (compare programming.dev and startrek.website which are two single topic instances and browsing communities on each makes targeted discovery more feasible).
The other part is that those niche cat subs are filled with “normal” people. There usage stats show most people used new.reddit.com or the official mobile app - even before the api changes. Most of those people didn’t leave Reddit (with the exception of a few mods where /r/cathostage is restricted but /r/cathostages which was created in response has even more activity).
This also gets to a “there aren’t enough fun things on Lemmy”. The flairs of /r/cathostages are fun.
If you look at /r/leagalcatadvice you will see that most of its activity is from crossposted (not by original poster either) into the sub and then people are having fun there.
The software supporting fun (flairs, easy cross posting) and culture are currently working against Lemmy for niche cat subs. Consider that !cat@lemmy.world has 84 users per day and fewer posts per day than /r/oneorangebraincell - it might not be able to support the range of niche cat subs that Reddit is able to.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !mildlyprivates@lemmy.world, !awwnverts@lemmy.world, !beebutts@lemmy.world, !cattorneys_at_paw@lemmy.world
There are also some of us that are/were trying and experimenting with different types of the fediverse, such as Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, Firefish, Pixelfed, etc. I have found myself gravitating toward Firefish, and Mastodon for the feed style, where as Lemmy, and Kbin are better as a forum or Pixelfed for image feeds.
Be the change you want to see; add new/different content.
Thus the reason for !lemmymoment@lemmy.world
To be fair, part of the reason to use a decentralized platform is because these topics are de facto censored on most of the internet.
FWIW early Bitcoin was the same; they were much more anarchist than they are today. Long after merging with the mainstream, the most anarchist thing most users do today is running the software itself. It’ll be the same way with Lemmy - eventually most users won’t care about anything leftist, they’ll just happen to be using p2p free software because it works better for reasons they refuse to acknowledge.
Here’s a classic must-read essay that explores other facets of this evolution: meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
because these topics are de facto censored on most of the internet
Complaining about capitalism, landlords and US Politics are censored on most of the internet? Have you been to Reddit or Twitter? And aren’t a bunch of other websites specifically dedicated for discussing specific topics? I.e. modding video games, agriculture/horticulture, etc? Are there like a bunch of bloggers complaining about living in the West that are being censored, or are they just not popular because they’re terrible writers and have 0 reach?
Also no one talks about Linux besides weird and niche communities. It’s not censored either. I say this as a Linux user.
Stop advertising the site as a place to go when you get banned from reddit for being too insufferable even for them.
This. I feel the drop in users are the people who came here thinking it was a place for “free speech” and are upset for being downvotedfor shit comments.
In reality it’s probably people who checked out the site, saw its mostly software/tech and political communities, a handfull of communities for trans people and reposted memes, and a dash of “the West will fall and China will prevail” communist communities, and decided to leave.
Also the porn is hidden too well, and even when you figure out how to find it, the porn that exists is 90% furry and hentai. Reddit has a huge amateur porn community that I’m certain keeps much of their users coming back.
Oh crap. Has that been happening? That would be bad.
It certainly feels like it is, because the user base seems to be made up of exclusively the type of person from reddit that made me want to commit war crimes.
This is pretty normal, you get a surge of users and then it tapers off a bit as people don’t like it.
Could be a lot worse, take a look at the user graph for threads.
Yeah ours is very good if we are honest.
Trying to make a place popular for the sake of popularity is putting the cart before the horse, and will always be a losing battle.
Make your Lemmy instance a place worth spending time. Don’t worry about user counts or popularity.
I think you are missing a big piece of the bigger picture.
Much of the ‘utility’ of the lemmy alternatives is the significantly larger user base, which is what’s necessary for more niche communities to get off the ground and actually be viable. Without that userbase, lemmy is just another alternate place to discuss the basest comm9n topics, that can be discussed anywhere. I mean, technology and news are nice to have, but it’s the variety of the niche community that are what keep people still hooked on reddit.
So in the end, making a place popular for the sake of popularity actually does serve an important purpose.
You’re not wrong. You just need to look around you and realize this is still pretty shitty and people with normal taste won’t really like it.
It needs more work. More polish. And where the fuck is the rest of my Fediverse content? Then it can try to keep users. Until then, it gets us. You know, us completely average, very normal, extremely typical sorts, that are totally just like everyone else, we promise.
IMO, Lemmy doesn’t need to be super popular. Large numbers don’t automatically mean great quality, while great quality can result in greater numbers.
Modern capitalism has made us overly concerned with anything other than constant and rapid growth. This does not concern me.
Thanks for articulating my feelings about this in a way that made them easier to understand. Perfect analogy.
How can we make it more popular?
By not doing the things that corporations do to make things popular. Do we even need Lemmy to be popular? I think we concentrate on trying to keep the Fediverse and Lemmy user focused and privacy friendly and people will naturally come over as they get burnt on the ever increasingly enshitified corporate data-theft sites. We need to be something different than the big sites. A breath of fresh air. I think people will be OK with putting up with a few quirks to escape those toxic environments. I think Lemmy is progressing just fine and I’m enjoying it.
How about instead of worrying about making it more popular we concentrate on making it better?
Eliminate all the shitty worthless content and spammy replies that people brought over with them from the shit hole that shall not be named and focus our efforts on creating quality content that users (particularly the ones that are already here) actually enjoy and engage with.
That’s my two cents on it anyway.
One that that has made me unsubscribe from several communities here is when they are just bot-lead reposts of the equivalent subreddit. This makes these communities on lemmy objectively worse than the reddit equivalent because there is not the population to interact with the sheer volume of posts, and it just becomes spam without engagement.
More upvoting of posts.
I know that sounds a bit dumb/lame, but when I first got here and every post had like 5 upvotes, maybe 20 and then maybe once a week you’d see one with more than 100, it was jarring. Made the place feel empty and without interaction. Which it’s really not, but that was my and I think perhaps a lot of peoples’ first impression.
Honestly, the main problem for popularity’s sake is the un-diverse userbase.
It’s a bunch of techy redditors, the same way that many other services that splinter off from reddit are. Almost all the communities are literal clones of reddit ones. So for someone who wants a similar style of place and doesn’t have a hatred of reddit corporate built-in, why would they not go to reddit, which has the same kind of userbase but with 100x the users?
Honestly, other than “Open Source Master Race!!!111!!!111”, there isn’t any reason, especially not one that the average person will care about.
Another one, and I fucking HATE saying this, not enough zoomers dragging their friends along. This place feels like a place for the 30-something instead of the 20-something. Which isn’t bad, of course, but in terms of network effect power it is, because peer pressure is huge for social media.
But, separate from all that, do we actually want it to be that kind of popular? Maybe we should stay under the radar for the most part. Keep it from becoming stale and condescending like lots of Redditors can be. Keep the advertisers from sinking claws in. Maybe that’ll be better for the site as a while than needing ads to support a service 100x the size.
All this endless nagging of politics, ideology, capitalism, billionaries, tankies, right-wing, left-wing, Desantis and Trump are slowly making me lose interest in Lemmy. You are ruining Lemmy honestly
Stop with the doomerism.
“Lemmy is losing users” -> Lemmy has a stabilizing base of communities developing their own culture after a great exodus from several centralized platforms. Original, high quality content is finding its home here as users engage with one another on thousands of federated, interoperable, transparent websites.
Lemmy got a HUGE influx of users from the Reddit fiasco. Of course, there was going to be a pull back.
What is going to determine if Lemmy becomes popular is of has reached critical mass to start growing organically on its own.
Has a recent refuge myself. Some random thoughts.
Things that will help, hobby groups moving here. And other interest groups. Not expecting everyone to code, be a privacy advocate, or a political extremist.
Solving some of the fundamental issues around “federation” and ease of use for the average user that just wants to post about cars, hobby, etc
Actually WANTING more users. There is a non small portion that activity is toxic to new users who came from Reddit just to escape.
Keep calm and continue posting and commenting. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
In other words, lemmy population isn’t just an ever-increasing growth slope, let’s panic.
This is normal, it’ll stabilize. Lemmy development is certainly needed, but what we can do is just keep the content rolling despite the issues.
Going in with the aim of making Lemmy “more popular” is not the best approach. There are going to be surges of people signing up for new accounts, trying it out a bit, then leaving, especially when Reddit does something major in its poisoning of well. But the goal shouldn’t be to try to keep everyone who ever creates a Lemmy account.
The best thing to do is build the communities here that you are interested in. Do what you can to make them lively and active. This, combined with client improvements from Lemmy developers, will lead to steady growth and more community participation.
The only way to make it more popular is by having more content. Unfortunately we haven’t reached the critical mass number of people that keeps people interested.
Less communist propaganda. Based on what I’ve seen, I don’t think these pro-communist kids truly understand what they’re supporting.
I don’t think the quality of content here has been as high as I would have liked. Over on lemmy.world/c/games, the moderation and post/comment quality well below below what I would have expected from /r/Games in its glory days. For example, all the highest voted comments on the Starfield impressions thread are karma-whoring single sentence meme responses about pre-orders, “patient gamers”, or piracy, all completely off-topic for an impressions thread.
Maybe we just need to tighten them? Perhaps a lock washer will help.
Threads did the same thing. Explosive growth followed by silence. Social media grows over time. It’s not a constant gigantic upward slope.
Make high quality content like answering questions and eventually people will start flocking
By stopping asking how to make it more popular and starting making it a place that could become popular.
The charts show that Lemmy has gained a massive amount of users quickly and is experiencing a normalization period.
My first post so apologies if I break any rules. I’ve been a computer user for 50 years. I use a pc for many hours everyday. I’m averse to Facebook, Google, and TwitterX. I first heard about Lemmy today. Perhaps why it isn’t growing as fast as some think it should.
Also, if you want to grow Lemmy, the best thing you can do is comment and respond to everything (With thoughtfulness of course), because the value of reddit (and Lemmy) is always in the comments, so that’s the best way to contribute.
sirfancy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s essentially a brand new platform. A tiny dip a month after the initial boom is far from “losing users” and is not indicative of trends. I don’t understand why everyone is so obsessed with growing Lemmy as fast as possible.
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because a lot of the time you lose users because there aren’t enough users.
Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You also lose users when you’re basically asking your userbase to be alpha testers as you build from scratch. It’s fine, it’s an open source project.
People that are thinking this is some finished, capable competitor already are a little out of touch though. Which is unsurprising, given we’re all in a weird, dark corner of the internet atm.
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And even if it stays small, the quality and community here is thriving. Sure, we have our trolls and junk but they don’t have nearly the influence or visibility as…ahem…other familiar platforms.
gelberhut@lemdro.id 1 year ago
I have mixed experience with community quality here. For many topics you should better ask your question on Reddit - you will get better answers there (and faster).
darreninthenet@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Depends on the communities… quite often they consist of one or two users (or bits) reposting old or current Reddit posts.
And certainly for more niche topics the communities tend to be dead.
Quite often there is little commenting or conversation.
The communities with the most conversation seem to be about Lemmy and the Fediverse…
But yes there are a couple of decent communities in my Home feed, but the whole needs to grow to get it to a tipping point where it provides an active and diverse (in topics and conversation) community.
asmodeus@programming.dev 1 year ago
Fair.
DLSchichtl@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Also, a lot of younger users started back to school. But I’m with ya. Let Lemmy grow organically. There are no advertisers or shareholders to appease here. There’s no need for explosive growth.
KIM_JONG@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah we don’t need more assholes here. They can stay on the other site.