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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Totally fair point, but I also think you are highlighting something really important - Lemmy is absolutely not ready to “replace” reddit, from a pure scale and number of users perspective…not even close. This is not at all an admonishment or knock on anyone working their butts off (as devs, as instance owners, as admins, as mods - almost all as volunteers!), just a statement of fact. I will admit, as a user of that platform for ~15 years, at some point, I kind of stopped paying attention to just how many people were there. This technology community within Beehaw, for example, is currently ~20k strong and there are a few other communities across the lemmiverse of similar size - in contrast /r/technology has, after an exodus, ~14 million subscribers and is not even considered among the most popular subreddits. So yes, it may feel like a shit show, and honestly, I won’t say it isn’t, but that’s how new, emergent technology usually goes, generally, and we (collective we, not just beehaw, all of us looking for our new home) should be mindful of that, which I know is easier said than done.


  • Very good point, especially for casual users and pure discovery/exploration.

    edit: to expand - for someone interested in rolling their own, individual instance, for example, you will need to do your own discovery across the lemmiverse to find instances and communities that your are interested in or which resonate with you, actively seeking them out to federate with your instance (which in *most *cases should just be as simple as searching and following.) One benefit of larger instances is the crowdsource effect of many people having already blazed many trails like this.





  • I can see how it may appear that way, but we are hoping this is just a temporary state until mod and admin tools can catch up to the scale. Open signups and a flood of users in some of the big instances is not necessarily a problem by itself, but the moderation tools Lemmy has today are pretty rudimentary at the moment. This is certainly the case intra-instance, but is exacerbated once cross-instance moderation comes into play, especially when each instance has its own culture, rules, etc.




  • Yup totally agreed.

    I am also starting to pick up on the fact that (I think) a large amount of users never really went beyond the front page or /r/all. So, sure there are “main” subs for specific topics, but there is a very, very niche world of communities, and to your point, purposeful fractures of communities. I saw it a lot with the game-specific subs, where you might have a sub for news about the game and general discussion, one for memes, one for pvp or competitive, one for lfg or clan recruitment, etc. - it’s a good thing.

    That’s also the nice thing about federated content and instances in that no single instance needs to (or should imo) try to be everything to everyone and it gives everyone involved so much more flexibility. I also think that last part is what some folks are struggling with as well - when there isn’t a clear winner or “main” sub for <topic xyz>, but rather, quite a few options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities each with their own culture and vibe, it can certainly feel overwhelming. Reddit provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like.

    [edited for grammar]