I get it, especially for users that have always been more on the lurking side (and this isn’t judging, that has always been the majority for any platform) - it can be a bit empty. As someone who has been here since 4 years ago (now I’m on a new account on my own instance), the first two years of that basically just visiting every few months out of curiosity, I can slowly see more diverse communities popping up recently, beyond the established strong points of Lemmy (FOSS, Politics, LGBTQ+ memes). And this time, unlike the first Reddit exodus, I have more confidence in them not immediately dying from lack of conviction and activity.
But of course, the sheer gargantuan user count of Reddit comes with many advantages. For many obscure topics, there will still be enough people, that a sufficient amount of “super users” congregate to provide content and moderation, so that lurkers can usually participate and still post sporadically. The latter is of course also a giant advantage, millions of people posting occasionally still provide lots and lots of posts and comments. And of course, it will take a long time and more fuckups for Reddit not simply being “the default” if you want to create a forum for a community around something. (Also, waaay too much of our knowledge is on that platform, we carelessly gave answers to help fellow humans, and now the answers are on Reddit for them to appear in countless internet searches, and for them to do with as they please.)
Where Lemmy currently has its strong suits is enthusiasm of parts of the user base, fewer issues getting noticed at all among the millions of (bot/re)-posts, and where there is activity, I’ve usually seen it panning out being able to handle actual discussions. (Though, lets not kid ourselves, of course the Reddit-like structure also still encourages circle jerks. I don’t even think that is that large of a problem, but it’s a reality.)
If you feel you end up having the energy to keep a community alive through dry spell, sure, be the change you seek, but it’s okay and understandable if you don’t want to invest the energy and work (at the moment). In that case, just stay tuned, check out the communities that pop up in all/scaled or all/new for interesting ones currently getting more traction, the Threadiverse will take a long time before it can replace a giant like reddit, but it has a few good stones for its sling up its sleeve.
I’ve only been here a couple days, but from what I’ve seen so far, lemmy is significantly more left wing than reddit at large (which is really saying something), and I’ve seen basically zero pushback on that.
Obviously we don’t want to encourage extremist right wingers to come in and trash the place, but it also wouldn’t hurt to have some more mainstream appeal.
if you notice this, then reddit has been banning “left leaning accounts for a while” there are right wingers, but they are concentrated, segregated into thier own instances, much like r/conservative has thier owns safe space, they have it here, i block those communities. all of them fled here.
Try to start curating your block list. Whenever you see a post or a community that rubs you the wrong way/you aren’t interested in block it. Try to identify key words that help you blacklist the stuff you dont want to see.
The overwhelming Lemmy biases and echo chamber ideologies can be a little grating for sure. The longer your here the better curated your feed and the more you will find/contribute to nonpolitical communities which drastically improve the experience.
if lemmy communities were more diverse and entertaining yeah i’d agree
Be the change you seek.
I get it, especially for users that have always been more on the lurking side (and this isn’t judging, that has always been the majority for any platform) - it can be a bit empty. As someone who has been here since 4 years ago (now I’m on a new account on my own instance), the first two years of that basically just visiting every few months out of curiosity, I can slowly see more diverse communities popping up recently, beyond the established strong points of Lemmy (FOSS, Politics, LGBTQ+ memes). And this time, unlike the first Reddit exodus, I have more confidence in them not immediately dying from lack of conviction and activity.
But of course, the sheer gargantuan user count of Reddit comes with many advantages. For many obscure topics, there will still be enough people, that a sufficient amount of “super users” congregate to provide content and moderation, so that lurkers can usually participate and still post sporadically. The latter is of course also a giant advantage, millions of people posting occasionally still provide lots and lots of posts and comments. And of course, it will take a long time and more fuckups for Reddit not simply being “the default” if you want to create a forum for a community around something. (Also, waaay too much of our knowledge is on that platform, we carelessly gave answers to help fellow humans, and now the answers are on Reddit for them to appear in countless internet searches, and for them to do with as they please.)
Where Lemmy currently has its strong suits is enthusiasm of parts of the user base, fewer issues getting noticed at all among the millions of (bot/re)-posts, and where there is activity, I’ve usually seen it panning out being able to handle actual discussions. (Though, lets not kid ourselves, of course the Reddit-like structure also still encourages circle jerks. I don’t even think that is that large of a problem, but it’s a reality.)
If you feel you end up having the energy to keep a community alive through dry spell, sure, be the change you seek, but it’s okay and understandable if you don’t want to invest the energy and work (at the moment). In that case, just stay tuned, check out the communities that pop up in all/scaled or all/new for interesting ones currently getting more traction, the Threadiverse will take a long time before it can replace a giant like reddit, but it has a few good stones for its sling up its sleeve.
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I’ve only been here a couple days, but from what I’ve seen so far, lemmy is significantly more left wing than reddit at large (which is really saying something), and I’ve seen basically zero pushback on that.
Obviously we don’t want to encourage extremist right wingers to come in and trash the place, but it also wouldn’t hurt to have some more mainstream appeal.
if you notice this, then reddit has been banning “left leaning accounts for a while” there are right wingers, but they are concentrated, segregated into thier own instances, much like r/conservative has thier owns safe space, they have it here, i block those communities. all of them fled here.
Try to start curating your block list. Whenever you see a post or a community that rubs you the wrong way/you aren’t interested in block it. Try to identify key words that help you blacklist the stuff you dont want to see.
The overwhelming Lemmy biases and echo chamber ideologies can be a little grating for sure. The longer your here the better curated your feed and the more you will find/contribute to nonpolitical communities which drastically improve the experience.