I’ve been using Lemmy for a couple years now, and unfortunately I’ve noticed a significant decline in the niche communities that were originally active. When I first joined I saw much more variety when browsing the All feed. But over time, the communities I liked have faded as shitposting and meme communities have come to dominate the platform.
I think this shift has changed the culture of Lemmy. There seems to be more of a herd mentality now, where people downvote reasonable opinions they disagree with. The discussions don’t feel as nuanced. Some people have even been attacked for innocuous comments that don’t align with the prevailing groupthink.
The niche communities that made Lemmy special are fading away, and the resulting monoculture makes me less inclined to participate. I want a platform that supports substantive discussions in my interests, not just memes and shitposting.
I don’t know what the solution is on a platform level, but a culture shift is needed if Lemmy wants to retain users like me who valued the diversity of opinions. I may have to move to a platform that allows better filtering and proportionality between niche interests and funny or stupid content. I want Lemmy to succeed, but right now I’m finding myself drawn back to Reddit because the niche communities there seem more active. I’ll keep checking in, but Lemmy needs to recapture its original spirit if I’m going to make it my main home.
its obvious that things more people like, i.e. memes and whatnot, will grow faster and take a larger spot on any platform. that is normal and unavoidable.
small communities are small and hinge on people staying active in them, which they often stop being when everything is said and done. they dont regenerate as much as say, a meme community which has high visibility and low barrier of entreance.
i’d love to hear what niche communities you actually mean, i always find it sus when people make a reasonable sounding point, then move on to ‘unpopular opinions get downvotes’ and are afraid to actually name what kind of unpopular opinions they mean. meme and shitposting growing and vague unpopular opinions being unpopular ultimately aren’t related.
Haha, good point. I can’t say I find, for example, Nazi views being downvoted a bad thing, no matter how reasonably they are presented.