How can we make it more popular?

  • sirfancy@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It’s essentially a brand new platform. A tiny dip a month after the initial boom is far from “losing users” and is not indicative of trends. I don’t understand why everyone is so obsessed with growing Lemmy as fast as possible.

      • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You also lose users when you’re basically asking your userbase to be alpha testers as you build from scratch. It’s fine, it’s an open source project.

        People that are thinking this is some finished, capable competitor already are a little out of touch though. Which is unsurprising, given we’re all in a weird, dark corner of the internet atm.

        • cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          The app ecosystem has been getting so much better, and people are starting to grok federation, and frankly this app would be dead if some of the recent drama happened if it had way more users.

          We are definitely on the early adopter curve for this tech.

  • demlet@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Meh, if it drops it drops. I’ll never have the relationship to social media I used to, because I don’t want it anymore. If Lemmy can give me a few posts a day of things I might not normally see, that’s enough for me. It doesn’t need to be the next Reddit or whatever. After quitting Reddit I’m getting back into things I haven’t done in years. I don’t need that again.

    • DTFpanda@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Damn, this is exactly how I feel. Well said. I honestly feel free after spending over a decade on that god damn website.

    • Sektor@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Amen brother. I was so addicted to Reddit i saw the things in the real world like Reddit posts. I’m glad I’m out and I’m not coming back, at least not to endlessly browse or get in any kind of content posting. It’s still great for niche hobbies and solwing lots of issues with hardware, health, unbiased product reviews.

    • DrQuint@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Plus the graphs actually show that posts are up despite active users (people who make at least one post) being down. That means the people sticking are generally more willing to post and comment.

  • eltimablo@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Stop advertising the site as a place to go when you get banned from reddit for being too insufferable even for them.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      This. I feel the drop in users are the people who came here thinking it was a place for “free speech” and are upset for being downvotedfor shit comments.

      In reality it’s probably people who checked out the site, saw its mostly software/tech and political communities, a handfull of communities for trans people and reposted memes, and a dash of “the West will fall and China will prevail” communist communities, and decided to leave.

      Also the porn is hidden too well, and even when you figure out how to find it, the porn that exists is 90% furry and hentai. Reddit has a huge amateur porn community that I’m certain keeps much of their users coming back.

        • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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          10 months ago

          I recommend Connect for lemmy if you have Android. Can put in filters to block communities that contain any keywords and posts that contain key words. And block entire instances.

          When it comes to social media filtering is important to curate out the filler you don’t want.

          • deleted@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            It’s not about filters. It’s the community it self.

            News in Lemmy is biased at best.

            • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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              10 months ago

              What place isn’t. If you want unbiased aggregate of news the only option is a rss. There isn’t a place for an unbiased social media for news if it is user submitted and driven by voting or algorithm based.

              • deleted@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                I said biased at best because it’s cancer at worse. To me, it’s pure democats media and everything should be reported as such.

                I live in the other side of the world so I don’t care much about US politics btw.

          • Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            A great feature, but with a small userbase making a small amount of content, filtering those things out leaves you with not much left.

        • squiblet@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          Makes sense as yes, Elon and republicans fucking suck. Not sure what else one would say about them.

        • TeaHands@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Definitely recommend subscribing to stuff you’re more interested in and browsing that way. All is always going to be a bit lowest common denominator, same as on every similar site.

        • DudePluto@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Damn dude, that was such a spot-on summary I feel like I don’t need to log in to lemmy for a month lol

      • eltimablo@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        It certainly feels like it is, because the user base seems to be made up of exclusively the type of person from reddit that made me want to commit war crimes.

  • Shadow@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    This is pretty normal, you get a surge of users and then it tapers off a bit as people don’t like it.

    Could be a lot worse, take a look at the user graph for threads.

  • Jargus@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    No wonder since most topics on all are:

    • Capitalism is bad
    • Landlords are evil
    • US Politics
    • Linux

    It’s a huge circlejerk here and there isn’t that much engagement in other smaller communities. And I highly doubt that it will change for the better since I already see that a lot of the remaining people love this little circlejerk and don’t even want more people that could diversify the content. More power to them, I have already given up on Lemmy as a Reddit replacement.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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    10 months ago

    Trying to make a place popular for the sake of popularity is putting the cart before the horse, and will always be a losing battle.

    Make your Lemmy instance a place worth spending time. Don’t worry about user counts or popularity.

    • krayj@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I think you are missing a big piece of the bigger picture.

      Much of the ‘utility’ of the lemmy alternatives is the significantly larger user base, which is what’s necessary for more niche communities to get off the ground and actually be viable. Without that userbase, lemmy is just another alternate place to discuss the basest common topics, that can be discussed anywhere. I mean, technology and news are nice to have, but it’s the variety of the niche community that are what keep people still hooked on reddit.

      So in the end, making a place popular for the sake of popularity actually does serve an important purpose.

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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      10 months ago

      IMO, Lemmy doesn’t need to be super popular. Large numbers don’t automatically mean great quality, while great quality can result in greater numbers.

  • mattomattic@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    How can we make it more popular?

    By not doing the things that corporations do to make things popular. Do we even need Lemmy to be popular? I think we concentrate on trying to keep the Fediverse and Lemmy user focused and privacy friendly and people will naturally come over as they get burnt on the ever increasingly enshitified corporate data-theft sites. We need to be something different than the big sites. A breath of fresh air. I think people will be OK with putting up with a few quirks to escape those toxic environments. I think Lemmy is progressing just fine and I’m enjoying it.

    • Nobsi@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      Do we even need Lemmy to be popular?

      Yes otherwise this will become a tech and tankie echochamber shithole

        • Nobsi@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          Do i need to?
          Reddit was great because it had everything from baking to bombmaking and itwas popoular in its own communities. Lemmy only has bombmaking and even then nobody in the bombmaking communities go to !bombmaking@lem.ee or !bombmaking@lemmee.to or !bombmaking@federationsite.websitedomainending
          They go to reddit/r/bombmaking. Because thats where the people are.

          Lemmy is supposed to be a better reddit alternative. But all we have right now is a big majority of “socialism is the best, all problems stem from capitalism” people. And while i totally agree with the sentiment, i do not want to have the 1000th discussion on why capitalism sucks.
          Especially not if the discussion is brought up everytime by capitalismhater@capitalismhate.capitalimshate who highjacks all threads to speak about why capitalism is bad.

          Edit or rather adding onto my “rant”: I do not mean that the majority is literally “socialism is the best”-people. But we have a strong and loud majority of enthusiasts for their fields that are nieches at best in ““the real world””

    • LeberechtReinhold@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I don’t think Lemmy is more privacy friendly. In fact, its, arguably, even less privacy friendly that others.

  • scottywh@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    How about instead of worrying about making it more popular we concentrate on making it better?

    Eliminate all the shitty worthless content and spammy replies that people brought over with them from the shit hole that shall not be named and focus our efforts on creating quality content that users (particularly the ones that are already here) actually enjoy and engage with.

    That’s my two cents on it anyway.

  • jray4559@lemmy.sdf.org
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    10 months ago

    Honestly, the main problem for popularity’s sake is the un-diverse userbase.

    It’s a bunch of techy redditors, the same way that many other services that splinter off from reddit are. Almost all the communities are literal clones of reddit ones. So for someone who wants a similar style of place and doesn’t have a hatred of reddit corporate built-in, why would they not go to reddit, which has the same kind of userbase but with 100x the users?

    Honestly, other than “Open Source Master Race!!!111!!!111”, there isn’t any reason, especially not one that the average person will care about.

    Another one, and I fucking HATE saying this, not enough zoomers dragging their friends along. This place feels like a place for the 30-something instead of the 20-something. Which isn’t bad, of course, but in terms of network effect power it is, because peer pressure is huge for social media.


    But, separate from all that, do we actually want it to be that kind of popular? Maybe we should stay under the radar for the most part. Keep it from becoming stale and condescending like lots of Redditors can be. Keep the advertisers from sinking claws in. Maybe that’ll be better for the site as a whole than needing ads to support a service 100x the size.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Modern capitalism has made us overly concerned with anything other than constant and rapid growth. This does not concern me.

  • ram@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Stop with the doomerism.
    “Lemmy is losing users” -> Lemmy has a stabilizing base of communities developing their own culture after a great exodus from several centralized platforms. Original, high quality content is finding its home here as users engage with one another on thousands of federated, interoperable, transparent websites.

    • Jelloeater@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Like the quality of content has gone up over the last month… Like a lot! So don’t sweat it. We’ll get there, but it’s gonna take a few years. In it for the long haul. Heck I was on Reddit for like 7-10 YEARS, this is brand spanking new ❤️

      • metallic_substance@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, I’ve noticed that things are stabilizing a bit too. Maybe some if that has to do with hexbear idiots not sticking around? Either way, it feels nicer around here after that initial glut

        • Wahots@pawb.social
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          10 months ago

          What happened to them anyways? Did everyone just mass defederate them? Or did I somehow block them entirely?

        • Jelloeater@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I’m one of the admins. I run the infrastructure team though, and mod a little here and there when needed 😋

  • Digitalprimate@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    More upvoting of posts.

    I know that sounds a bit dumb/lame, but when I first got here and every post had like 5 upvotes, maybe 20 and then maybe once a week you’d see one with more than 100, it was jarring. Made the place feel empty and without interaction. Which it’s really not, but that was my and I think perhaps a lot of peoples’ first impression.

  • InternetTubes@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    In other words, lemmy population isn’t just an ever-increasing growth slope, let’s panic.

  • keanu0396@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    One that that has made me unsubscribe from several communities here is when they are just bot-lead reposts of the equivalent subreddit. This makes these communities on lemmy objectively worse than the reddit equivalent because there is not the population to interact with the sheer volume of posts, and it just becomes spam without engagement.

  • mintiefresh@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Keep calm and continue posting and commenting. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.