Lemmy world was growing at a decent pace leading up to July 1st, then had a big influx following the API deadline. However the last week in particular has seen a decline.
Engagement still appears to be the same, although a little lower than the start of the month. A few of the other instances i have been checking follow a similar pattern.
Do you think we will continue growing at a steady pace, or do we need another big trigger to get users to migrate? For Mastodon, it seems there’s a big trigger every other week to drive users away from Twitter, but with Reddit, the revolt seems to have quietened down considerably.
It does feel a little dead here. Right now it’s mostly memes, meta discussions, or Reddit hate. And the crowd is a very specific type of hyper aware internet dweller (myself included).
Reddit isn’t worth using without third party apps, and it’s the only social media I used before Lemmy, so I’m spending a lot more time off my phone nowadays. I only check the daily top on Lemmy once a day instead of compulsively every time I touch my phone. Guess that’s a good thing.
This is also partly to blame on the sorting algorithm. There is an active PR to improve this https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378 (Relevant issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3622)
For context, Reddit used to (5 years ago?) show multiple posts from the same community on /r/all, then they implemented a unique function that made it so only one post per sub was shown in the top X. This greatly improved /r/all. It was controversial and well documented.
It was weird at first but it really helped engagement and medium sized communities. I think if that PR makes it it would greatly improve Lemmy too.
I blocked the major meme subs (coms?) and my experience here has been much, much better. Free yourself of last year’s memes and explore all the interesting links getting posted
Yes, those meme communities are very active and drown other posts from other communities. Unsubscribing them drastically improve my experience. I can sort by New now and see Posts from communities I subscribed to. And unlike Reddit, new posts got pretty good engagements here, perhaps because other people browse by New too.
“very active” meaning nonstop reposts of last year’s top reddit memes by bots or humans acting like bots
I don’t want Lemmy to be reddit 2.0
It’s fine, memes also have their audience. I also blocked all of the communities, but to each their own
It’s what filters are for. Don’t complain - configure.
…did you skip my first comment?
I don’t care what your argument is.
Ok so yeah you did skip it. I said I filtered those communities but thanks for the “advice”
Now please kindly take that high horse elsewhere, it’s stinking up the thread
It would be nice if you could block a community directly from the front page without having to navigate to it first. Whole instances would also be useful.
The sorting algorithm fixes can’t come soon enough IMO. Small subs are dead because they simply can’t show up on the front page with most of the sorting algorithms that Lemmy has. That limits how much you’ll see in your feed and also makes Reddit a better product (due to all the niche subs it has that actually show up on the front page).
That’s a very good thing.
And to be honest, as selfish as this will sound, I wouldn’t want Lemmy to grow too much - unless the eternal september crowd can be contained.
I disagree. While I do like that the discussions and top level comments are not nearly as homogenized as Reddit eventually became, I’m really missing the niche communities. I wasn’t subscribed to any large subs on Reddit, so my feed was basically just a curated list of discussions for my hobbies. No memes, news, pop culture, internet drama, or politics. Right now, that’s just not possible on Lemmy due to the low population.
Give it time. Lemmy is still very fresh, but I’m confident smaller niche communities will keep popping up and it will eventually add up. Region and country locales seems to be doing well.
Yeah, the lack of many of my favorite niche communities makes me constantly wonder if I should just “suck it up” and go back to Reddit. I miss so many of them. If I wanna discuss a particular TV show or video game, often I just don’t have much of an option here, cause the community specific to that TV show or game is very likely dead.
We also don’t yet have many interesting text post subs that I liked to read on Reddit, like AITA, Best of Legal Advice, Best of Redditor Updates, Hobby Drama, etc.
Similarly, my local city sub is pretty dead (and never shows up on the front page cause the sorting algorithms suck). So I barely have any local interaction anymore! I met real life people on Reddit and it was great for getting advice from others who live in my city.
I’ve had the same thought, but sucking it up would mean using the official Reddit app or old Reddit on my phone/tablet (at least until they kill that, too), which are both just too annoying of an experience to be worth it to me. It’s not a principle thing, it’s a usability thing.
For the time being, I’ve just accepted that it’s gone and I’ll miss it for a good while. I’ve been browsing some old school forums for my random hobbies (Gear Page, Hard Forum, Steam, Fresh Loaf etc.), but otherwise, I’ve found other things to occupy my down time until either Lemmy’s smaller communities take off or something else fills the anonymous-niche-hobby-social-media void. Got me some cool books and Picross on Switch.
Understood. That’s why I said:
I think I get your point but from a larger perspective, Lemmy (amongst several others) is just a means to an end:
Free the internet of corporate control.
A steep goal but a worthy one if you ask me.
So I say make it grow as big as possible even if that means it is not as intimate as it is right now.
In a large federated place, there will be infinite amounts of smaller/niche hosts to migrate to.
The idea imo is that we need to focus on our goal here: stop the infinite brainwashing happening through mobile devices.
Feel free to disagree. Its just how I see it. Have a good one.