The problem is that we have too few users, so most topics you’d want to discuss aren’t going to have existing thriving communities to chat with you. All of Lemmy put together is dwarfed by single reddit communities. for niche topics.
I’m not complaining, because the barriers to entry and lack of popular awareness keeps the user base here smarter and more interesting to talk to. But for the good of humanity I do think we need open tech like this to get widespread adoption, and it’s going to take a long time. Reddit had almost two decades’ head start.
And looking at a timeline, at this point in Reddit’s history a few years in, the most popular subs with the early adopters were politics, programming, abe science. Sounds familiar, lol.
The concept of Lemmy being servers was easy for me to understand (thanks MMOs, I guess?), but having to jump through hoops to actually sign up with many of them was the primary difficulty. Nobody wants to have to write an essay on why they should be accepted to a server.
It’s sobering to consider how tiny Lemmy is. Both the Linus Tech Tips forum and the Crackberry forum are bigger and more active than all of Lemmy together.
Back in the day, even something niche as the Blitzbasic forum was bigger than Lemmy is now.
It’s probably a good thing too, since both performance and in the way moderation needs to be done on Lemmy is so inefficient that it’s right now already at the point where instances are getting closed down because they can’t handle the workload and cost.
Lemmy being small works for me. Reddit is horrendously toxic now, so I’ll occasionally lurk, but refuse to interact with it. I don’t want Lemmy to become Reddit.
There are great discussions here.
The problem is that we have too few users, so most topics you’d want to discuss aren’t going to have existing thriving communities to chat with you. All of Lemmy put together is dwarfed by single reddit communities. for niche topics.
I’m not complaining, because the barriers to entry and lack of popular awareness keeps the user base here smarter and more interesting to talk to. But for the good of humanity I do think we need open tech like this to get widespread adoption, and it’s going to take a long time. Reddit had almost two decades’ head start.
And looking at a timeline, at this point in Reddit’s history a few years in, the most popular subs with the early adopters were politics, programming, abe science. Sounds familiar, lol.
I saw bluesky take off and get millions of users right away. Appearently they have 38 million users now.
I guess advertising works… :p
It is the barrier to entry - most people probably stopped on “choose a server”.
The concept of Lemmy being servers was easy for me to understand (thanks MMOs, I guess?), but having to jump through hoops to actually sign up with many of them was the primary difficulty. Nobody wants to have to write an essay on why they should be accepted to a server.
I wrote one sentence
I did a few times before I figured it out.
Me too, only my hatred grew my resolve
That’s what did it for me. The admins are the trolls and protect their troll buddies.
Bluesky isn’t open tech. The masses will flock to low barrier to entry walled gardens. They can have them.
It’s sobering to consider how tiny Lemmy is. Both the Linus Tech Tips forum and the Crackberry forum are bigger and more active than all of Lemmy together.
Back in the day, even something niche as the Blitzbasic forum was bigger than Lemmy is now.
It’s probably a good thing too, since both performance and in the way moderation needs to be done on Lemmy is so inefficient that it’s right now already at the point where instances are getting closed down because they can’t handle the workload and cost.
Lemmy being small works for me. Reddit is horrendously toxic now, so I’ll occasionally lurk, but refuse to interact with it. I don’t want Lemmy to become Reddit.