With Reddit just announcing ai mods for sub reddits I think it’s finally time I fully give it up. I’ve been slowly trying to transition back into the fediverse but damn is it hard sometimes. Listen I have left leaning politics but does every other post have to be about some political shit on the all tab, I feel like I’m forced into this box that is my subscribed feed or I have to actively search out new communities because all is just a political circle jerk that I don’t care about. Not to mention the moment I came back I saw a fucking flow chart on the instances drama of the week. If I wasn’t so dedicated to dropping Reddit I think the average Joe would have left by now seeing all of this. And YES I have been trying to be the change I want to see if you check my profile I regularly post in meme subs non political just funny memes to be like “lmao” and people can move about their day. I’m not saying there ISNT other type of content on lemmy or piefed it just feels like the stuff that floats to the top is political
However, neither are going to happen, without enormous efforts to buck the existing trends. See e.g. these recent comments from a community that was considering whether to switch from Reddit to the Threadiverse (https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/):
Sadly, these seem representative of how people think of us here. You can see it for yourself too: simply browse most instances from an account without your existing blocks, in order to see what it is like from the eyes of a Redditor. Worse, they are primarily Christian centrists, and not only do they not FEEL welcomed here, but… in truth… they AREN’T ⁉️
There was a brief moment when Lemmy had ~65k active users, immediately during the Rexodus. That quickly fell to ~55k, which then fell to a more stable ~45k, and nowadays we are down to ~35k. And this is despite how Reddit is even in a process of killing off old-reddit, which is what we all said was going to be the signal for the end of Reddit and the great migration here. Tbf it is still early in that process, but it’s already started, it’s not some future date it’s happening now. And the people there say that there is no way in hell that they will come here. Maybe Bluesky, but not Lemmy.
Perhaps that’s fine - perhaps we are collectively okay with remaining niche, and most content (even some of the morenhighly technical stuff) staying on Reddit, but since your comment expressed the opposite desire, I thought I would try to point out that it is simply not going to happen - not unless there is a major change (bc otherwise simply doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result tends to not work out so well).
Perhaps the upcoming release of Lemmy v1.0, when moderator reports will finally begin federating out to other instances, can help create spaces that are more free of the types of behaviors that are currently causing people to avoid us here like the plague. I somewhat doubt it but… it’s possible? Lemmy will always remain tiny, so it is perhaps best that we make our peace with that. Sorry, it is what it is.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion. Maybe one day more people would lemmy, but you do have a point there
A lot problems are going to have to be addressed and one day more people will use lemmy,
Maybe one day people realize that not everyone on lemmy is a tankie and once that happens more people would use it
That’s the thing, many of these people self-report that they have tried. These are the ones who got over the hurdle of “it’s too complicated” and bravely dived right in. We here who use Linux btw aren’t afraid of such, but ofc to many people that is still daunting. But anyway, there are MANY who did come here… only to nope right back out, some of them retuning to Reddit.
And at least some of those - at least it definitely does not seem rare or even uncommon (it may even be fully common if not quite average) - remained here for years. They did not simply pop in for a day, not like what they saw, and popped right back out: they stuck with us, if not visiting daily then at least off and on for multiple years.
And then they abandoned the Threadiverse, going around trashing our reputation to anyone who will listen. And, given the several posts related to this topic just within the last week alone, not without good reasons. Even we who remain here (for however much longer) don’t like what we see.
Perhaps part of the problem is how we talk about it: I don’t care about discussions with “tankies” in relation to whatever political beliefs someone may have, I care about discussions with “trolls” and “incels” for whom no means push forward harder, who do not respect any boundaries and so turn people away from this platform, sometimes the moment they set foot here while other times in the longer term sense. We don’t so much have a “tankie problem” (that is in reference to a famous title of an old post here several years ago), we have a… what exactly? Though if we go down that route, it’s not a simple, single explanation but rather multiple - like trolls (hexbear) and doomerism posts and incels (meh, all social media has those though, it’s just that our overall lack of moderation tools allows them to thrive more here than elsewhere). The word “tankie” has come to symbolize all of those, in part bc it fits, if not extremely well then at least better than any other singular word?
But I want to stress that we do not merely have an image problem, so much as major structural ones. For the people coming here, having to choose between man vs. bear (our often unmoderated spaces that in many ways resemble 4chan, vs. the overly moderated fascist partners like Reddit and X that heavily limit what you are allowed to say), despite how we might think that their choice is “stupid”, even so they have chosen the bear.
Yeah, this unfortunately. But I’m a bit cautiously optimistic about the fediverse. It’s not perfect, lemmy is not perfect, it has flaws yes, there are some bad people who use the fediverse yes, however in my opinion not enough people use lemmy and the fediverse
Oh the Threadiverse will definitely continue, and arguably it being smaller is even a good thing, helping to avoid attracting bot spam on the same level as corporate enshittified platforms. But I don’t think very many additional people will use it than this - in fact all prior trends since the Rexodus have shown quite a dramatic decrease instead - and therefore the topics covered, especially apolitical ones, are going to have to be “carried” by an ever-smaller and smaller subset of people who are willing to put in the work to add content. Which itself is daunting bc then whenever you post or comment you expose yourself to downvotes and toxic insane dumbshit replies, or more commonly merely silence in return.
People are only willing to put up with such for so long, before reaching for other alternatives (like going to a local library and reading a physical book?). And btw this is not unique to the Threadiverse with tankies, it’s an extremely prevalent effect across all Fediverse platforms - e.g. here is a very interesting article talking about the identical effect (maybe less on the side of outright trolling) on Mastodon as well: https://wingolog.org/archives/2024/09/24/fedi-is-for-losers. Fwiw I kinda like that terminology, except it can be so easily misunderstood: like we aren’t merely “losers” here as in opposition to “winners” as the article claims, but rather in opposition to “gainers” as in greedily trying to always grow, especially at any cost. Sometimes it’s okay to just sit there and be who you are, without trying to grow or expand further.
So no I don’t think that we will grow. But maybe that’s okay? Either way it is what it is - we can’t force people to come here against their will, only try to be as welcoming as possible so that they can feel at home here if they do decide to visit.
Yeah, well said. You hit the nail right on the head