Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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

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 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.

It really depends on who or what gains.

I think it's already very hard to change our own habits. I would not hope to change other people's own habits.

I would like Lemmy to grow if only for one reason: I don't care being part of any niche (no more than I care being part of not highly popular communities, mind you). I enjoy exchanging ideas and chatting with interesting people much more than I need to feel 'smart' myself because of the tools I'm using and for any chat to happen one first have to meet people. So, the bigger Lemmy, the better for me ;)

I joined Lemmy/I left reddit only because I realised I was not OK with the way reddit changed policy (the way they control our content) and because I was not happy in the way they made their website evolve. That said, I do miss the few subs I was following and participating in on Reddit. I miss them a lot, as they were/are often very interesting and rich.... of their participants.

Can Lemmy become comparable? I don't know, I have some doubts but I also have very little intention to come back to Reddit, at least not until they change a few things.

After I announced I would not be posting on those subs anymore, a few months ago, two people contacted me to tell me that would be some kind of a loss and they were sad to see me go, asking me to reconsider. As far as I know, none have created an account here on Lemmy so we could keep on discussing stuff. Of course, I can't be sure of that but to be 100% honest the opposite would have surprised me a lot more. I had the same lack of reaction a few years ago when I quit Twitter and the likes. That's fine.

Changing habits is hard. Even more so online, I reckon.

Yes

yes. i like the idea of federated communities. even obscure interests have its place as long as there's a community or enough interest to set up an instance.

It wont

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

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.

Want as much niche stuff as Reddit, but with a general culture that's just less dominated by straight men

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 don't really care either way. Like Digg and Reddit before it, Lemmy will eventually kill itself in confusion and another will take its place. I don't really care if it grows or shrinks in the meantime 🤷‍♂️ it is what it is

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.