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.
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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.
the real treasure is the lovely human beings all around us
You can even say…the real treasure is the friends we made along the way?
/c/AngryUpvote
Ooh I have a sense this will all be very good here.
Indeed, my friend.
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.
Just my two cents!
I feel that. This platform doesn’t feel like it will necessarily be one to make it big. Or be mainstream. Or get all of reddit to move over.
I think what the platform does feel like is something I’ll remember fondly. When I think of my time on reddit, I mostly just think of arguments, power hungry mods, and spam. This feels like a community and I wouldn’t be happy to lose it to growth.
It can be the forum to rule them all
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.
It’s really relaxing tbh.
Relaxing is a great way to put it. It feels like meeting up with some friends at the park and hanging out. Just shooting the shit until the street lights come on
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.
In the end, we will always need a way to sort content. that could be from engagement, comments, or some kind of Karma system.
Its just unfortunate that that was then tied back into your account.
Using upvotes to sort content is one thing. That doesn’t mean the score has to be visible to everyone.
Agree completely. I was thinking about keeping the upvote/downvote but just using them for content ranking, but hide the actual scores in the UI. Then its up the instances to decide if they want to show it or not.
I read this the other day and thought it could be a cool idea: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-social-media-distrust-buttons-misinformation.html
Sounds very cool. I haven’t read the study, but I think a key part of this is how the post is promoted. If more “trusted” posts are promoted, could the button effectively become the new like button? Can bots abuse this system? “Distrusting” a post demotes it? All those things have to be taken into consideration specially when accounting for bots and brigading. Nonetheless, looks promising
In principle I agree with karma turned posts into people gaming the system.
However, I’ve heard one of the struggles for Lemmy Communities is to keep people from lurking.
Karma might be a stupid feature but it is/was a cheap way of driving participation - it could help Lemmy (especially at this early stage). Even if karma encouraged people to just up voted, it still raised visibility on the more interesting topics.
Build a good community, the growth will come
As always.
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.
Thats true, my guess is instances end up being more specialized. Instead of every instance trying to be reddit, an instance becomes a gaming community, another a movies and tv shows, etc
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.
That’s a good point. Smaller niche communities with more personal connections will inevitably sprout when the ‘main thing’ hits a high user count.
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
Agreed. I feel bad as someone who advocated for the adoption of this technology for many years only to see the shit show that it has become. It’s terrible as it is and I think some of this return to smaller communities will humanize things a bit more and that definitely seems to be happening with what I’ve seen so far.
This is a new era. Welcome to the Great Rehumanization of the internet.
Oooh I like that, it’s got a nice ring to it.
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.
Yes, very much this. I was able to reach out to a very small community before this blew up and the advice I got there was extremely impactful to a sensitive issue I’m navigating with my family.
It’s really the thing I’m most upset about losing.
It’s difficult to find spots to congregate and commiserate online when you or someone you love has an experience only shared with 0.1% of the population.
1 out of 1,000 and then only if they also want to talk about it.
If reddit still exists, and if I go back to it at all, that would be the only reason.
I know it’s not the same, but if you don’t see a community you like, why not create one and be the first? There may be someone else in the same boat as you.
This isn’t niche by any means, but I recreated maliciouscompliance (one of my favorite communities) because it wasn’t available and I wanted to see more posts haha.
(and if you’re interested -
/c/maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance
Or type the following in the search bar at the top: !maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world )
One of my favorites too, subscribed! I probably should start a few, there’s definitely some I’ll miss having regular access to.
be the change you want to see!
True, but a niche starts with one, two, six, a dozen, a hundred, folks who just persist and have a good time. And not worry about growth, that’s a side effect, not a cause. Growth is a corporate disease. We don’t need to emulate it.
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.
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…
Honestly, both sides of the coin have merits. A quiet place where people recognise each other is perfect for making friends, but bigger communities collect more information and participation. It’ll be significantly less personal, but it has its upsides.
Lemmy does deel a lot better than Reddit though, I have to agree :D
To me, the real benefit of growth is the ability to have active communities focused on niche topics, like discussion of a single book series rather than a genre or books in general.
I don’t know if it’s possible get there without creating an Eternal September situation in the broader communities, but it would be nice if we could.
Don’t get me wrong, reddit was amazing until it’s CEO wanted to cash in on the hard work done by its community. I don’t have an issue with being profitable, the means used simply isn’t acceptable.
I was just going to say this! I follow a few subreddits that involve a lot of theories and sharing of video game information. Those would be absolutely gutted/non-existent with a small community because discoveries would be too slow to maintain interest for most.
The gaming instance on beehaw is picking up steam! But yeah it will take some time before it’s able to compete with r/gaming but I am here for it!
I probably posted and commented a combined total of five times a year on Reddit. Maybe I’m just a lurker by trait, but I definitely feel like the vibe here is much more inviting and I feel like I may participate in more discussions.
I feel the same, I don’t know if it’s just me but Reddit feels somewhat hostile at times when people misinterpret a small detail in my comment and proceed to rip me to shreds and it ain’t fun!
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.
Cheers to a new start friend!
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.
Better, not bigger.
