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Why are so many people so fixated on Lemmy's growth? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by AstralPath@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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...relative to Reddit's size?

I see so many posts and comments voicing disappointment with Lemmy's lack of massive expansion.

I too want to see Lemmy gain more users, but I do not want it to grow to Reddit's size. If Reddit is the yardstick, I'd say that a population that large attracts a lot of negative behaviours; degeneration of discourse, amplification of echo chambers and hive mind behaviour, etc...

I started on Reddit in 2010 and found that by 2016 things were really bad in comparison. A fun and engaging site was experiencing an obvious devolution that persists to this day, accelerated by Spez's enshittification of the platform. Obviously the fediverse insulates us from that occurring here but I think you get what I mean.

Do you you think Lemmy is too small? I don't. I've been here since the great migration last year and have had a really good time. I see a lot of familiar names in the comments on a daily basis. It actually feels like a community here. I guess I just don't understand the fixation on the size of Lemmy's user base. Curious to hear your thoughts.

[EDIT] Thanks for all the responses, everyone! Lots of perspectives I hadn't yet considered.

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[-] GreenSofaBed@lemmy.zip 51 points 3 months ago

For example the Formula 1 live threads during a race has like 10 comments on Lemmy, while on Reddit it's in the thousands. Just wish some communities were a bit more popular.

[-] Throw_away_migrator@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Yes. For communities that on Reddit were small to medium size there was a critical mass of people to sustain large, lively threads, particularly during live events. Lemmy currently lacks that, outside of the letter tech, politics and meme communities. And for the smaller communities, activity can be almost non existent.

Then the federated nature of Lemmy allows for duplicate communities on different instances. This is not inherently a bad thing, particularly for larger interest areas as it helps prevent a particular sub group from dominating discussion in an area. But fracturing of smaller communities can make just finding an active one more difficult. I know that this is a feature in many ways, but it does have tradeoffs that have to be acknowledged.

[-] baatliwala@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Serious question, would having 100 comments every few seconds kill smaller instances? How well will the federation scale?

[-] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 months ago

Interesting as you are on LW. The current main issue with LW is that it is too centralized, so sometimes instances located geographically further struggle to keep up to date as LW doesn't update them fast enough

A post on the topic: https://lemmy.world/post/13967373?scrollToComments=true

[-] baatliwala@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Yeah, I just joined as a reddit refugee because lemmy.world looked appealing. Had no idea it would effectively become the "defacto" instance of lemmy. Would be nice if communities spread out more.

[-] steeznson@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Sports are definitely an area where the sublemmies get less traffic. I quite enjoy posting on the rugby union sub but there are like 4 of us there.

this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024

309 points (93.8% liked)

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