I don't run my own instance, but one concern I see grappled with by instances, at some time in their existence, is how to handle image storage and embedding. I won't pretend to know the options or have opinions on which to use or how to resolve the larger issues, but I see that as a large hurdle to mainstream, in addition to the points referenced by OP.

Yes, because I still have to go to Reddit for gaming content. It's getting more and more, but on Lemmy they are still small or some don't exist. I try my best to interact with content on Lemmy, but sadly I'm not much of a post submitter.

People against it have a valid reason but at the end we should admit, communities in the size of a Discord, don't have too mich value, as one might just go on Discord than. Communities here need to grow to get independent from controlled social media platforms. It's the future.

Lemmy is already the same quality of conversations as Reddit, as long as you spend some time curating your instances and block some communities. Subscribing however would be much better, but right now there's a bit too little content.

Yes, I would like Lemmy to grow organically with people who share interests.

The way I feel about it is that I don't want Lemmy to grow for growth's sake. I want people to understand how important it is to use open protocols and free software to communicate with others and that is what will lead Lemmy and other Fediverse applications to grow.

Yeah. This is such a better experience than past community tools I have used.

In particular, I hope we can attract the Do-It-Yourself repair community, before the current platforms lock all of that content away.

More people more better. Would also like to see a more balanced political bias here.

Yes and no. Would be nice to have more active niche communities, but I don't want this place to become full-on Reddit.

I think the big thing is that Lemmy isn't nearly as monetizable as other social media. What that means to me is that if we do grow, it'll be largely organic. It'll be at a pace where the culture won't change overnight. If we get big enough to have real issues, we can meaningfully splinter to more manageable sizes, or moderate shit stains into instances with no reach beyond themselves.

In short, so long as we maintain interoperability standards, I think we will have all the tools needed to keep things from enshittification. We might just grow out of pure longevity as other social media enterprises slowly but surely kill themselves.

But that could be wishful thinking. Who knows!

Absolutely. I think the setup of the Fediverse in general as well as the outlook on it by the majority of admins would allow Lemmy to keep its charm even when it grows to a much bigger size.

Of course I want the communities I enjoy to grow but not at the expense of the platform. Too much growth and it'll turn into another reddit situation with a bunch of unoriginal dipshits reposting meme responses to everything over and over. I'd rather things stay as they are then turn into that. At least now you can have interesting discussions with people when you do actually get a response.

I like it how it is. There are a lot of us who are non-tech. I see enough cat posts and cannabis-related posts seem to be increasing recently. I could use more knitting and crochet content and more 3d printing would be nice but I'm ok waiting for those to grow slowly.

I like it niche and I'm here when it is niche but I'd love to see it grow. I'd honestly love it to complete replace reddit and be even bigger. I doubt that'd ever happen but it'd be cool. I'd love to see Lemmy be the new thing to find answers from people in any topic just like reddit was for a while

Yes. No to the Reddit's size though.

Yes, but slowly. Every time I go to the Reddit front page and just see astroturfing and vapid pop culture stuff, then go to the comments and see 75% repetitive bot comments, I realize how much that place sucks now. I want more niche discussion spaces, but I don't want reddit again anytime soon.

Lemmy should be the replacement for reddit IMHO.

Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying the recent influx since the recent reddit migrations, while still staying niche. And I'm appreciating being amongst like minded, generally leftist communities here.

But if it requires opening up the floodgates to idiots, fascists, and trolls in order to kill reddit, so be it. As long as there are no algorithms, advertisers, and spez's, I'm all for more lemmings.

I want Lemmy to grow. I want federated ActivityPub-based communities to eventually be the general public's default way of asking and answering questions, sharing information however obscure, i.e. replace not just reddit, but most web forums, Facebook groups, etc. too. I have liked things based on open standards for all my life, and will never stop wanting them to be widely adopted.

I want to see the fediverse grow to enter the mainstream. For forum stuff specifically, that means as big or bigger than reddit. The more people discover and work on this federated form thing, the better. There will be better moderation tools, better filtering, better website experience and design, hopefully more developers enjoying opensource, etc.

And most of all, I want to see how this network will cope with not just a few thousand people talking but millions, maybe billions. If it can survive becoming mainstream, stay opensource, and ad-free, that I think we'll be a step closer to a better internet.

Growth is a secondary concern to me. I'm not against it but quality is much more important to me than quantity. And I mean quality in terms of content AND respectful interaction.

Historically, if one can even use the word for such a recent thing as the internet, techies are usually first to a new thing. And these types of conversations inevitably follow at some point as though growth at all costs is the only way to stave off death. And then a decade or so further on we end up with Xitter, Meta and Reddit where the anger is palpable and the interface revolves around pushing monetised hate at you and exploiting your private data for another source of monetisation.

I'm enjoying being able to go somewhere everyday where I don't have awfulness pushed to a platform curated feed I can't opt out of. If people want those things - fine they exist. I hope the fediverse does all it can to avoid interacting with or devolving to those places and that any discoverability tools that might get developed are for people not algorithms. I hope it remains an alternative to that mindset, not just another place to fling shit at each other.

Yes, I do want Lemmy to grow .... but to grow organically and naturally over a very long period of time instead of artificially in a short period of time just to make some idiot or a small group of idiots a bunch of money.

Growing over a long period of time will also allow developers, maintainers and managers to grow with increased size over time. Instead of panicking over sudden exponential growth, they can slowly build stronger more robust systems over time. Also, if something is grown over a long period of time ... it will also take a long period of time for it be destroyed, dissolved or disregarded. If you grow something way too fast, chances are the risks increase for it to disappear just as quickly.

Yes, absolutely.

The nice thing about Reddit was that if I saw a new TV show, read a new novel, or picked up a new hobby, there would be an existing community of people already talking about it. Lemmy is great, but it doesn't have the critical mass of people needed for that to be possible.

Yeah. I came here after the Reddit API debacle. I hoped Lemmy would be a good substitute, but we don't have enough users or enough posters.

Im pretty alright with how it is honestly. If it grows then so be it but I am not going help it grow

More niche communities outside of the closed platforms would be great, but doesn't have to be lemmy per se. Anything federated would be great.

I'd love for it to be large enough to have an r/stalker type sub again. I loved that community on reddit and niche game communities don't really exist here. I've never met a single person in North America who has played that series, so I don't have anyone left to discuss it with.

Short answer: yes.

Medium answer: yes because I want to not use Sync for Reddit to get into anime, Plex/Kodi/Stremio/Real Debrid/Arr stack, and handhelds communities.

I could care less about trending shit and reels reposting... But that is the downside of exponential growth I guess.

I would like it to grow but I really really don't want it to be like reddit. I like the small vibe so maybe growing to like 100k or 200k but not 10m that would fuck shit up.

Eh... I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, it sure would be nice if there were more gamers here and every individual game had its own community, that was actually active, like Reddit does.

On the other, I've seen literally every space I've ever used get ruined by having too many people watering down the fun and altering the vibe. Eternal September fucking sucks.

I suspect if it does get a big pop bump there will be a few communities that get a lot of attention and start appealing to big numbers and broadest audiences, and new communities will begin for rules like no memes or image/video posts etc for smaller niche communities and sub communities.

I like this place without Trumpists who never fail to give me headaches

It wont

It really depends on who or what gains.

I'm happy with current population. Bigger is not going to be better. You can look at any big platform to see where it's heading when they become big.

It would be much more users who are not very used to how to behave on more intelligent social networks.

I rather not see this place become Twitter.

Not really. It's pretty good. Growth will just bring more bot wars. But I guess bot-immigration is just a permanent trait of the internet now.

I think it's grow or die, just like everything. So I think we'll have to grow, but I'm just curious how. Will it stay like it is now? Will it become even more niche? Will there be some capitalist instance who's gonna take over the whole fediverse? Will there be mainstream news broadcasters mentioning Lemmy posts or users? Will "This is awesome, Lemmy post this online" become a mainstream saying?

I think that it'd be nice for it to be larger, but it's also hit a critical mass where it's large enough to generally serve as a replacement for conversation for my use of Reddit, so it's not a overwhelming issue for me.

I'm not in a "better small/restricted" camp.