Ask Lemmy

Yes, I want to build up an alternative to big tech controlled social media so working class people can have our own voices magnified.

A lot of normies won’t be using Lemmy or fediverse in general. It is not as addictive or personalised as the mainstream social media. Plus an avg joe doesn’t know whan an instance is. If one instance starts to get too many users, it might just shut down sign ups.

Edit: Lemmy also doesn’t have an “official” app. So it adds even more friction. Yeah a few users might get excited and use it for a couple of days and then just go back to reddit.

I sympathize with people who like niche internet communities, but the main thing I want to see happen is the collapse and replacement of centralized social media sites, especially reddit, so the more people the better.

The call is coming from inside the house my guy.

A rising tide lifts all ships. A larger userbase doesn't just mean "normies", it means a wider variety of demographics, fandoms, and views.

And that in turn means that somewhere in the large userbase will be more people who match my freak. The main thing I used Reddit for was niche hobbies and fandoms, but over here I suspect I might be the only person on this platform who's into my specific hyperfixations. If the userbase was large enough, there might be a chance to try and establish communities for some of those things.

But perhaps most importantly, I want this place to grow to prove that alternatives to the corporate social media platforms can succeed. And in order to do that, we do need "normies", we need to pull them away from those corporate platforms.

I'd take "normies" any day over people who classify others as "normies".

The fediverse is about offering an alternative to the monopoly power and political control of the large corporate sites. The more people are here, the less control those have. That is a good thing and far more important than any kind of elitist snobbery people here like to indulge in.

I don't see why we would want to gatekeep the fediverse. If more people decided to use it over centralized social media, I think that'd be a positive development.

And as you know, the fediverse is far from homogeneous. I expect there will always be some very big general purpose "normie" instances like lemmy.world, and smaller, more niche ones for specific communities.

the nature of lemmy means there can be indiscriminate growth without the inherent issues that come with it. The real issue is that should lemmy grow really big, corporations will become interested. Maybe they see it as something to colonize and try to claim, maybe they see it as threat if they cant control it.

That is what we need to be ready for, not the people that are unwittingly being oppressed by those corporations.

I think there are some similarities, but also some differences.

Lemmy will probably eventually attract the normies of which you speak. And that's not a bad thing. Bad things happen when low quality content and ad farming are prioritized. The nature of sharing culture, information, and entertainment will always attract new audience.

Because communities here aren't being monetized by corporate ownership, and because you can selectively add or block instances that don't meet community standards, I don't think Lemmy will fall prey to the same enshitifcation that slowly ruined reddit.

One thing late-stage Reddit really had going for it is that, for any niche topic or hobby, you could find a sizeable active community.

I still have to visit that place from time to time, but I’d rather be on Lemmy.

I, for one, do not wish to see Eternal September ever again.

Yes, because it will fail otherwise. If only Linux nerds and tankies hang out here, than every community is just a slightly differently flavored tankie/linux community, and we'll die on the vine. We want normies to see the value in the fediverse, because then they'll start to ask why they should be giving all their privacy to big corporations.

Depends. I wish there were more normal people here myself. Because I'm not an extremist looking to live in a hugbox and I enjoy diversity. I genuinely take joy in learning other people's thoughts and perspectives on topics when they are expressed in a peaceful and thoughtful way. But I'm in a minority.

As for needing to 'grow userbase'. Not really, but if you want more content and more niches you need more users, plain and simple. Most folks here miss there niche communities from reddit.

You're asking this on .world, the normie instance. .world is the watered down version of lemmy.

But to answer your question, yes, ideally all people should move to foss versions of corpo software, if only to devalue digital data trading and advertisement space. Yes that means more instances going further right wing, and some instances choosing to no longer federate with the larger, more 'normie' ones; but the overall good to society is worth the cost.

Lemmy already has all the issues that Big Social Media has except the profit and monetization drive expectation by a commercial management team. Bad mods, bots, whatever. The difference is that we’re still small enough via instances that it is possible to segregate truly problematic instances or users by other users or instance operators. So in that way we have an advantage, and IMO unless there are some dramatic changes in how the fediverse operates I think it makes it unattractive to the people seeking to commercialize and/or manipulate Social Media. While it’s not impossible for those changes, it’s just unlikely.

I don't understand when people say "normies" this and "normies" that. What makes us any different than when we were on Reddit?

How many people were actually even using Lemmy only before they were using Reddit? I rarely used it before but when they got real shitty, I decided to move here.

So what does that even make me? What creed do I need to follow to be considered not a "normie"?

Sure, I think Lemmy could have an instance or two for the normies.
And then a dozen or so for the weirdos.

A slow growth would be preferable at the moment. Getting Lemmy to be regularly used by at least 250k people would allow more niche communities to take off.

I do not see a big problem regarding people feeling being drowned out by rising user count. There's always the possibility of going the way BeeHaw did, to curate the instances you want to federate with, allowing smaller, more isolated nodes to exist to provide safe spaces and to avoid context collapse .