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Dilemma with contributing to niche Communities on Instances federating with Threads (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After moving here from lemmy.world after learning of their view on federation with Threads, I now face a dilemma which I do not have a clear answer to.

Should I continue contributing to my niche communities on Instances federating with Threads, or build similar communities on other Instances blocking Threads?

I have a feeing this issue is not a one off, but a common one going forward, so it’s better to settle it once and for all. Below is my thought so far. What would you do in my case?

I love to post or comment on my favourite niche communities to share my experience with others and grow them. Those communities are small in size and they usually exist in certain instances only.

One one hand, having everyone in the same place would be much more beneficial since the community is not split and spread across the fediverse. We would also have better discussions with people from different background and diverse point of views.

On the other hand, I do not feel my contribution is in the right place anymore, if let’s say I post on lemmy.world. I don’t want Threads to benefit from my posts/comments and I want people to join Lemmy. Why would Threads users join Lemmy if they could subsribe to our communities?

I wish my communities were instance-independent so this barrier can be removed. I can create a similar community here but it is the last thing I would want to do.

Having written all these down, I realised this was exactly the same situation how I came to Lemmy from reddit, i.e. communities split across Internet due to issues we have with the platform/instance we are on. I guess discussion on platform/instance-independent communities can be a topic of its own

Edit: formatting and clarified my points and updated my question to reflect that

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why would Threads users join Lemmy if they can just subscribe to instances federating with them. That is why I don’t want to post on instances federating with Threads anymore

I also don’t want Threads to benefit from my posts/comments

I see.

Would you still post to lemmy.world or you would create another community on lemmy.ml where Threads is blocked, if you were in my case?

I understand your problem. It's an interesting thought-experiment. Though I am not a fan of Meta/Threads either, it probably is not that dear to my heart as it is to you. You'll have to decide this based upon how important the situation with Threads really is to you. If it's a matter of principle, you probably would not continue posting to lemmy.world. That said, as it's niche communities you are talking about, creating new ones on other instances will create a split, which is most likely not helpful for user engagement. Who knows, if Threads will bring many users, it might actually help bring life to niche communities.

Of course, you do have every right to create another community somewhere else, my gut tells me it will not be successful though. I just don't think many will be like "Oh there is a new community for this hosted on an instance not federating with Threads, let's move!". Users, overall, will probably gravitate towards the community with the most activity and it's not likely that it will be your new one. However, you may have a chance if it there is hardly any activity now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the answer I was looking for. You mentioned a couple of very interesting points and they are well articulated.

Do you post anywhere that I can follow?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks. Yes and no. I do from time to time, but I don't want this account to be associated with those. I do hope though that on Lemmy more communities for non-tech related content will take off eventually, for example Philosophy and Meditation etc. Civil discussions, no flame wars, no spite, no hive-minded downvote(or upvote) brigades for all your interests would be a dream, how realistic this vision is with growing users is the question. Nevertheless, we are not at the point to worry about this yet.