this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
1366 points (97.6% liked)

Lemmy.World Announcements

29803 readers
13 users here now

This Community is intended for posts about the Lemmy.world server by the admins.

Follow us for server news ๐Ÿ˜

Outages ๐Ÿ”ฅ

https://status.lemmy.world

For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.

Support e-mail

Any support requests are best sent to [email protected] e-mail.

Report contact

Donations ๐Ÿ’—

If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the following donation URLs.

If you can, please use / switch to Ko-Fi, it has the lowest fees for us

Ko-Fi (Donate)

Bunq (Donate)

Open Collective backers and sponsors

Patreon

Join the team

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
1366
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by andobando to c/lemmyworld
 

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.

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] MyOpinion 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The great news is we will get both with an instance for everyone.

[โ€“] andobando 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Absolutely. And as much as I am saying this, I would love to see a proven alternative to massive corporate tech. I worked at one of these companies before, and I despise the them with a passion

[โ€“] hydra 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Absolutely. And as much as I am saying this, I would love to see a proven alternative to massive corporate tech.

Cannot stress enough how organic this place feels in comparison to Reddit, no "your post was removed due to karma" bullshit, no dumb comment chains, no "sponsored" or "related" fake posts embedded in the sub listing. Only raw user participation and community building. Feels wonderful.

I worked at one of these companies before, and I despise the them with a passion

Which one? And how was your experience?

[โ€“] andobando 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

Which one? And how was your experience?

Tinder. It was and probably still is, a great place to work. One day at the height of BLM, someone posted an article how another one of Match's companies was removing ethnicity filters in their app to keep out racists. I said wait, who are we to making these kind of societal decisions? Why are we removing users personal decisions because we don't like it? It turned out into a huge argument but it got me really thinking. Were not philosophers, sociologists, etc. Its a couple people from a very certain background making decisions that affect millions of people globally. Who are we to decide?

Then I thought about the fact that these kind of decisions were not even made for ethical reasons (which I don't even trust them to get correct), but were fueled entirely by money. Every single decision was entirely based on how much money it earns Tinder, with zero regard as to how it affects its users, in a very personal and important aspect of their lives. All the KPIs were money, internal projects called "Project Whale", zero discussions on relationships, experiments to get users addicted to the app as possible, etc.

If there ever was a decision that would help people but would compromise profits, profits will win, and if there ever is a concern that a decision is hurting users, it wont ever enter into the discussion.

Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future.

load more comments (6 replies)
[โ€“] camr_on 13 points 2 years ago

I agree completely. I like the feel of what's here so far. Changing to be appealing to the masses is exactly how Reddit got to where it is today

[โ€“] primevandal 13 points 2 years ago

first comment, but im enjoying my time on the fediverse. ill keep on interacting here, hoping to eventually find my communities here.

[โ€“] 9point6 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I can see what you're saying and I do agree on some level. However one of the things I liked most about Reddit was how pseudo-anonymous it was.

There was too many people to know who everyone was, so I feel like it mitigated that unwelcoming cliquey-ness that you tend to get in the kind of smaller communities you tend to see on discord. It felt as if everyone equal, whether they had just joined a community or been furniture for a decade.

Entirely willing to suggest this might just be my own perspective and not a very common one

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

I couldn't agree more, feel much more at ease here than on Reddit.

I was not contributing anymore there, too many things going on , the sheer number of people , the rage , the bots..

Maybe my posts and comments won't be as articulated or good as others but hey I am engaging again and I don't mind at all the small size if it mean more quality interaction.

[โ€“] Voran 10 points 2 years ago

Samesies. Overly large groups tend to get a bit impersonal. Not always, but it's a tendency I notice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I kept getting pm's on reddit. None were worth responding to.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

In all my years of Reddit I've only ever gotten one PM I thought had the potential to not be spam. I feel it is used maliciously far more often than not.

[โ€“] immediate_winter 9 points 2 years ago

i tried to become active in mastadon and i realized pretty quickly that the majority of the conversation was about mastadon growth and adoption. i just didn't care enough about that to stick around. i hope there is more here.

[โ€“] Bonolio 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lemmy and other federated solutions will get a big boost in users, but it will only very be a tiny fraction of the reddit userbase.
And 98% of those users will probably just head back to reddit in a week or two.
Subreddits that have closed and moved with be replaced with new subs on reddit.

I think in the end it will be a healthy boost for Lemmy, but so far I suspect don't think we are at "Mass Paradigm shift" yet.

This is not going to be Digg > Reddit

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Absolutely on point. The intimacy of irc servers is nowhere to be found on these massive boards nowadays.

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] Albatr0ss 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I totally agree with you. Genuine participation > growth for the sake of growth.

(Long-time reddit user, and former IRC (and ICQ!) user here too)

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] brandonsh 8 points 2 years ago

I think you're pretty much right. Communities need to be big enough, not necessarily the biggest.

[โ€“] Tyler 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I loved IRC! I'm sure it's not super popular these days, especially with the rise of Discord, but it was super fun. I always used PurpleSurge as the server which is now gone. Maybe it will come back into fashion?

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] TeeTwoLee 8 points 2 years ago

I agree, communities take time to grow

[โ€“] TicklishRocket 8 points 2 years ago

Kind of agree! It definitely gets to the point where it gets overwhelming, I remember early days reddit used to be a chill place to hang out, even after the great migration from Digg it was still not overwhelming as it is now.

[โ€“] zaemz 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You and andobando make good points. It's fun because I noticed myself paying a lot more to usernames since I've started using Lemmy. Maybe it's because of how people are engaging with it, I'm not sure, but it totally does feel like I'm actually engaging with multiple individuals here as opposed to some vague entity.

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

One of the most useful things about reddit was that due to the sheer size of it you could quickly get answers on a myriad of different things from health problems to what kitchen appliance is better, often with very good arguments and trustworthy reviews. This is immensely useful and I hope we can replicate it here over time. It's nice to have a small community, but if it's good it will grow. There's not much that can be done about that. You can always start a new group based on some subsection of what the big groups cover to stay nimble.

[โ€“] Naja_Kaouthia 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ye flipping gods irc chats were great. Personally, I like it here. Iโ€™ll do my news checking, throw some comments around. The nice thing is I get responses here.

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

You've got a very good point here that I don't think a lot of people have considered. I'm glad someone had mentioned it -- it could very well be just what we need.

I have nothing else to add that wouldn't be portrayed as negative so I believe putting efforts frontwards to bettering what currently is, is a great course of action.

[โ€“] minimar 7 points 2 years ago

I agree, I think we shouldn't be focused so much on "growing" the network and more just making it better. I think it's unlikely we'll reach particularly high user counts, and that's okay. We can have a nice little comfy community.

load more comments
view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ