this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Lemmy Support

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Anyone else noticing engagement and post quality issues? (self.lemmy_support)
submitted 1 year ago by j4k3 to c/[email protected]
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This is just my basic perspective as a daily user since June 9th.

I was able to use just my subscribed communities feed up until a couple of weeks ago. I subscribed to a lot in the first 2 weeks of this thing exploding. Those initial communities are very engaging, but several have slowed down or are dead. I expected that. I've been using the "All" feed to try to engage with people and find new stuff. I've used it a lot, but there is a lack of engagement. I use the "new" sort priority to try to find active participants, but it seems lacking as viewed from .world. I have other instance made accounts, but I have not seen any differences. Anyone have suggestions about finding better engagement with positive people?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have also noticed a drop in engagement these past couple of weeks. I think there are many reasons why this is happening, just a few of which include:

  1. Way too many memes and meme-centric communities; I've had to block so many communities the past few weeks just to declutter the All feed and to find posts that warranted actual discussion; it starts to feel like 4chan after a while
  2. Too many communities and not enough users; there was an attempt to mirror reddit during the exodus, and there just isn't enough of a userbase to justify so many communities; many of these shell communities are aggregating dozens of off-lemmy links everyday without a user base to engage with, so it just spams the All feed and makes it look like a ghost town
  3. Many users have likely gone back to reddit or found alternative platforms

My own engagement has slowed, as I just don't even know if users from other instances are seeing my comments or posts. Lemmy's federation system broke shortly after the explosive growth and as far as I can tell it hasn't been fixed. Subscriber counts vary greatly, depending on which instance you view a community from. Some folks see your post, and some don't. That's a nonstarter for a lot of users who might otherwise engage.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, things have definitely dropped off. I'm still getting engagement on my cat posts but most of my feed has been news with no comments and tons of memes. I'm hoping things will pick back up as we head into fall and winter. Just wanted to let you know I saw your comment from my instance :)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Hah, thanks I appreciate it! Re-reading my post, it sounds pretty glum, but that wasn't really my intention. I fully appreciate that Lemmy is still in alpha development, and I didn't have great expectations that it could compete with reddit in its current form.

And I don't mind the smaller communities, nor my own diminished usage. Since breaking away from Reddit, I find myself spending more time exploring the small web, rediscovering niche blogs, working on websites within my own circle, and generally just enjoying the break from doomscrolling and getting overwhelmed with the lack of humanity displayed in that worldview.