It's time to admit Lemmy has won the "the biggest reddit alternative" award, why it's time for all of us to consider supporting it (here's why) + reopening r/LemmyMigration

That’s the vibe I always got from Reddit. But yeah, the vibe I get from Lemmy is that there are two demographics.

19-45 white male tech enthusiast and 19-45 white trans female tech enthusiast.

I'm not sure yet which one I am ಠ_ಠ
- Oh damn, your certification ran out?
cmon dont call me out like that :3
Which is interesting. On the early days of Digg it was the same demographic, although more politically center. Then in the early days of reddit the same thing happened. It was mostly Linux and tech. So having the same starting demo is not a bad thing, but the question is, will it grow to adopt others
I think Lemmy skews towards the younger end though. Of course I could be very mistaken as this impression is entirely unscientific and is based solely on the levels of knowledge and general discourse that are prevalent on Lemmy.

To my eye, a large percentage of Lemmy's users are both relatively low-information and lacking in real life experience. They also tend to be very ideological which in my experience is something that tends to diminish with age.

Again, I could be very wrong about this.
There's also the leftists who decide very narrowly what opinions will be tolerated! Don't forget them!
- Hey that's me :D
  
  It's such a hilariously leftist trope to fuck up your own community's growth with purity tests
  
  Eh, some communities are more/less leftist than others. There'll always be a cutoff point of course, and that's necessary.
  
  News and World News are my two main communities. Those are communities that, in any serious community-building sense, should be heavily moderated so as not to alienate normals.
  
  Right? With friends like these...
- The only material I've seen heavily moderated by leftists is misinformation, regardless of political orientation (although American conservatism is more heavily moderated since much of it IS demonstrably misinformation currently).
  
  I'm willing to be proven wrong if you have any examples you could recommend.
  
  I just wish the rules were clearer. I've posted memes that I thought were in good taste but if the content has to do with a minority group then you better be fanatically praising them. That's one of the reasons I stopped posting to [email protected] .
although i'm a white male in the age group i am neither of these... i know you didn't say everyone is in these groups, just here to represent us anti trans folks who don't know shit about computers. And they say commenting helps lemmy grow, so i'm doing that too.
- "anti trans"
  
  You mean "non trans" ('cis' being the technical term), right? "anti trans" implies hostility towards trans folk
  
  Check some recent comments, they used the correct term to describe themselves.
- i believe this to be satire... i hope

That's how Reddit was for a long time too, and Reddit still is more like that than the other social networks. For whatever reasons that demo is more likely to be early adopters of this kind of platform. Diversity comes with growth.

Because Reddit was made for nerds, until more recently it didn't try to attract the mass with shiny interfaces and promises of social recognition like FB and Instagram.
- This is where the major problem is. Most people simply don't care about anonymously discussing stuff. It's always about status. You simply have to show off your flashy avatar and your NFTs.
  
  I like how reddit thought NFTs were going to save them
I mean the whole concept of the fediverse is inherently going to attract the more paranoid of people who don't want to have big tech down their throat 24/7. The people most aware of this are those that work in/adjacent to big tech, and have enough understanding to be genuinely concerned about the state of the internet. Not that you have to be in tech to use/enjoy the Fediverse, but Lemmy is inherently inconvenient and less content rich than Reddit so it's going to create more niche/less diverse communities who have common interests.

Tech also has a very large trans demographic compared to the general population, and you can see that reflected on Lemmy too. The whole platform is largely going to reflect tech demographics until it is well known by the general public.

I'm just glad most people here are nice and willing to have open discussions. I've seen more threads of people disagreeing and reaching common ground than anywhere else.
- I also don't really want Lemmy to get as big or have the same exact demographic as Reddit. I do want it to get bigger and more diverse than it currently is since there's still not enough activity (although it's way way better than it was) and not enough niches. There are only so many star Trek memes I want to see.
  
  One issue with Lemmy is that it's too anonymous that it doesn't really support content creators who actually want to be known. I know influencer is a bad word, but platforms do need people to share original content, and there's less motivation to do really high effort, high quality content when you can't verify yourself. Lemmy has no lack of memes but nobody is using it as a platform for quality OC that takes more than a few minutes to create. I think that could be fixed by there being an instance dedicated to hosting verified users for people who want a non anonymous account, so when you see a user is from that instance, you know they're the real deal, and that would encourage content creators to establish a presence. Right now, how am I supposed to know a handle is legit when there are thousands of instances that can have the same usernames, and people can even create their own instance?
I think you're right, maybe I'm just being impatient. I just appreciate the mix of points of view, I think it helps to see things differently.
Diversity doesn't come when the userbase is outright hostile to outsider POV.

Why does it feel like every pocket of the Internet is a separate echo chamber these days. I just want to hear nuanced opinions that aren't on either extreme of the political spectrum.

I get more of an impression that lemmy is full of far left leaning programmers. I think that is a good subset of people to have on a social media platform. But if we had more subs on other topics it should bring in other types of people.

The reason you don't get many "normal" people here is that the community is absurdly hostile to anyone on the "normal person" spectrum.

If you're not a software-pirating techbro obsessed with "privacy," a leftist, or a furry, this place generally shits on you.

I very frequently post incredibly lukewarm takes for any mainstream community, and literally get called a Nazi. I have stalkers lol.

I, personally, tend to have "normal" views but significantly more resilience to online communities than "normal" people - which is why I still come here. Most normal people left back before this place even defederated from Hexbear. They ain't coming back.

Until mods of what are essentially "default" communities get serious about growth instead of wanting "their" spaces, Lemmy is never going to grow. Most people don't find getting blasted with piss-takes by Marxists funny the way I do.

Case-in-point from this thread

https://lemmy.world/comment/6400270

Oh and one directed at me, right on schedule.

Posted the bigot using the device created and coded by nerds. Do you fail to realize that “nerd” is what idiots call the smart kids? Of course you do.
- I block those people all the time here and it's made the experience very enjoyable. It's a small enough community where blocking is highly effective.
  
  I’ll have to review who sh.itjust.works has defederated.
  
  I browse All’s top posts without blocking anyone, and my biggest comment would be duplicate news stories.
- If you care about downvotes, then I could see your point about the Fediverse being hostile to some more mainstream opinions. I’ve made some pretty vanilla comments about markets/politics that have gotten downvoted for not being left-wing, but I don’t really care about that.
  
  I’ve never been called a “nazi”, but I don’t go out of my way to antagonize anyone and try to add to the conversation and if my reply is something along the lines of “socialism sucks and you suck” then I don’t post it.
  
  I think what it comes down to though is that the fediverse experience requires some curation and restraint compared to other larger platforms where you can go pretty much unoticed and can pretty much always find a group of people of similarly ideologically minds
  
  If you care about downvotes, then I could see your point about the Fediverse being hostile to some more mainstream opinions.
  
  I don't - that's why I'm still here. Most people do.
  
  I regularly get called a Nazi just for saying Israel is demonstrably either not committing genocide or is so laughably bad at genocide that the claim is irrelevant.
  
  30k people dying is bad, and the war is especially brutal, but the US killed nearly that many civilians in Mosul, and that wasn't genocide - the topic was never even broached. Modern war is horrific for civilians. That's why war is not seen as a good thing.
  
  That take will absolutely get you called a Nazi if you post it in Politics or News/World News. This is a very normal position to have, and a significant majority of people will agree with everything above in the real world - these people aren't going to hang out here.
  
  I think what it comes down to though is that the fediverse experience requires some curation and restraint compared to other larger platforms
  
  Yes, this is why it will stay small and insular until changes are made, which is what I'm advocating for.
  
  With sensitive, charged, and tragic topics such as the Israel-Hamas war; that same vitriol is going to be thrown on any platform. And in my experience is worse on other platforms like tik tok and Reddit.
  
  There is discussion to be had on the topic but probably not on social media. Politics and News communities typically have to be heavily moderated. Even on old school forums the politics thread/board is usually just as vitriolic. I usually don’t participate in those threads anywhere.
  
  I feel like more of the stuff that is egregious is commenting or posting something along the lines of “I like cars” or “I like my job” and someone comes from the All feed with a “fuckcars” or “antiwork” reply. The unnecessary antagonism outside of their community is what bothers me. But even then, those are easy to ignore.
  
  Politics and News communities typically have to be heavily moderated
  
  Strong agree, and I also agree that things will be tense and some leeway should be given. That's not the line we're walking here, though.
  
  I regularly get called a Nazi just for saying Israel is demonstrably either not committing genocide or is so laughably bad at genocide that the claim is irrelevant.
  
  This being the internet, you might be simply being downvoted because you are wrong. As the old adage goes, the easiest way to ~~raise engagement~~ find the answer to a question on the internet is not to post the question, but to post a wrong answer.
  
  That might be relevant if my point wasn't the hostility, rather than the disagreement. I don't give a shit if you disagree with me - you're allowed to believe whatever you want.
  
  The hostility costs this place users, and this is a thread about advertising for more users.
  
  Perhaps consider reading the entire comment before posting.
  
  Lemme cap this: showing a defensive (or counteroffensive) posture against people who sport passive support for genocide "costs users"... and not wanting those users is somehow bad?
  
  Sounds quite simple math to me: while we could mayhap be advertising for more users, we don't need to cater to everyone.
  
  Not agreeing with you does not imply support for genocide.
  
  Disagreeing with someone saying there is a genocide happening, when there is indeed one happening, is not just a matter of opinion, it is effectively denying the suffering of thousands, or giving it some legitimacy. You can't just complain about hostility when your opinion, whether consciously or not, carries its own share of violence.
  
  Disagreeing with someone saying there is a genocide happening, when there is indeed one happening
  
  That's your mistake.
- Getting down voted for saying disagreement isn't tolerated on this site. You can't make this shit up lol
- Maybe you should try jumping on Truth Social and suggesting they'd have a larger userbase if they're were more tolerant of left wing views?
  
  Why is it always "leftists" who are supposed to welcome any and all political views with a warm mouth?
  
  What exactly are you offering in return besides entitled posts complaining "these people I'm stereotyping with open contempt weren't nice enough when they replied to my unsolicited opinion with opinions of their own"?
  
  It doesn't appear to be posts, moderation, money, code or insight.
  
  Maybe you should try jumping on Truth Social and suggesting they’d have a larger userbase if they’re were more tolerant of left wing views?
  
  Does Truth Social have threads about wanting more people to join Truth Social? Because this is a thread about advertising for lemmy.
  
  Why is it always “leftists” who are supposed to welcome any and all political views with a warm mouth?
  
  Hexbear exists and you can join it.
  
  What exactly are you offering in return
  
  Growth. The thing this thread is about.
  
  Does Truth Social have threads about wanting more people to join Truth Social? Because this is a thread about advertising for lemmy.
  
  Yes. Brainstorming how to "redpill" people is one of the far-rights favourite past times, right up there with using slurs and obsessing about strangers having the correct opinons about their own genitals.
  
  Did you very carefully dodge using the word "discussion" in your reply? Because this is a thread discussing the growth of Lemmy but it looks like we were supposed to just grovel at the feet of your opinion.
  
  Hexbear exists and you can join it.
  
  Have you forgotten which one of us was having a big teary about not feeling welcome because this thread right here was too left wing? I'm fine where I am thanks.
  
  Growth. The thing this thread is about.
  
  Yep. Growth and growth only. The user count goes up by one and we can pretend "bigger number means better" like we're sad little middle managers.
  
  My contribution to this discussion is making it clear just how little genuine value there is caving to your slimy little guilt trip.
  
  Yes. Brainstorming how to “redpill” people is one of the far-rights favourite past times, right up there with using slurs and obsessing about strangers having the correct opinons about their own genitals.
  
  Cool then yes, if I could tolerate those people as much as I tolerate leftists, and thus hang out with them, I would make these same posts. I struggle to do that because when they speak I want to put a hammer through my skull.
  
  Have you forgotten which one of us was having a big teary about not feeling welcome because this thread right here was too left wing? I’m fine where I am thanks.
  
  You still seem to think this is about me, and it is not.
  
  Yep. Growth and growth only. The user count goes up by one and we can pretend “bigger number means better”
  
  It literally does. I support the fediverse and thus want it to grow. If you need a place just for you, you can find one that aligns with you or create your own.
  
  You still seem to think this is about me, and it is not.
  
  The longest paragraph in your comment literally starts with "I, personally".
  
  Scattered around that are your opinions about why Lemmy isn't bigger, that you're insisting this thread was created to solicit.
  
  But the moment someone does the same thing, in the same thread, but disagreeing with you about the reasons? "This thread isn't about that".
  
  We can play the game if you want though. Was reddits growth -- literally the measuring stick in the discussion -- thanks to it peppering the centre right with gentle kisses every time they blessed the site with a visit?
  
  Nope. It was about as left-wing as Lemmy and if you said something that was demonstrably bullshit, 8 different people would tell you to fuck off.
  
  The reality is that it became a centralised location for memes and pornography.
  
  Whatever "growth" it saw by giving brave little conservatives a place to call their own had to be repeatedly undone because they just couldn't stop using slurs, brigading threads and advocating terrorism.
  
  So they moved to Voat instead, instantly turning it into a cesspit of mask off neonazim and "not technically child pornography but we're going to use it as child pornography anyway".
  
  How did that "growth" work out for them? Oh right, terminally.
  
  It literally does. I support the fediverse and thus want it to grow. If you need a place just for you, you can find one that aligns with you or create your own.
  
  Yet your solution wasn't "someone should make a center-right server that is more tolerant to our completely reasonable views and harmless slurs", it was "all these perverts and nerds should be nicer to us".
  
  You know, that exact thing I mentioned. You've just made it clearer that your take genuinely is "this platform is overrun by leftists who need to be nicer to us poor oppressed conservatives and if they're don't like it, they can create their own space just for themselves".
  
  I assume the next step is that you join that new instance, complain it's full of leftists and insist they go somewhere else.
  
  Nope. It was about as left-wing as Lemmy and if you said something that was demonstrably bullshit, 8 different people would tell you to fuck off
  
  Early reddit was not left wing. It was techbro-libertarian. The famous Ron Paul "It's Happening" gif comes from reddit lol.
  
  I'd love for this place to be as openly welcoming as early reddit.
  
  I understand you don't like when normal people come into the frontiers, but that just means you'll constantly need to find new frontiers.
  
  Such is life for people who move to the frontier to be alone. You're not unique, this has happened throughout all of human history, and it'll happen to the fediverse too.
  
  You'll always have Hexbear tho. For want of a frontier, it's easy to have an island.
  
  I'd love for this place to be as openly welcoming as early reddit.
  
  Don't worry you can start your own server, just like everyone else who disagrees with you is supposed to.
  
  I understand you don't like when normal people come into the frontiers, but that just means you'll constantly need to find new frontiers
  
  Nah, we can just keep calling them Nazis. That's your entire explanation for why those "normal people" aren't here remember?
  
  You'll always have Hexbear tho. For want of a frontier, it's easy to have an island.
  
  Yeah it's pretty clear that your faux-wisdom is nothing more than a premise to label people as undesirables.
  
  Don’t worry you can start your own server, just like everyone else who disagrees with you is supposed to.
  
  I'm already on our server, Comrade.
  
  You're the one unhappy with new people
- You hit the nail on the head.
  
  Honestly, I couldn't even recommend it to anyone in its current state to normal everyday people.
  
  If you have normal, moderate political positions you will get shit on constantly here. Doesn't help that everything needs to be political on Lemmy.
  
  Meme communities are like 50% "hurr durr normies bad" or "everyone nazi"
  
  Add the Linux circlejerk and that's about 90% of the content I see on here. I don't care to engage a lot with that and I just hope more normal people migrate....
But if we had more subs on other topics it should bring in other types of people.

Is that actually desirable or just growth for growths sake? Rage comics and lolcats brought huge numbers of new users to reddit and the quality of content immediately began to decay.

Maybe a social media site that runs out of content is a good thing.
- Is that actually desirable or just growth for growths sake?
  
  It's actually desirable. Without subs on more topics (which should also mean people discussing those topics), Lemmy is not a viable alternative for the people who want to focus on content. And this is particularly relevant for more niche subjects because of how the scale of conversation works. I should know. I created two communities (technically magazines on kbin, but same idea) but until people come to them, I'm ~~mostly~~ fully just waiting there, fingling fingers.
- Well, I figure "growth" in this case means increased diversity in communities and users. Maybe it's a double-edged sword, maybe the quality decay is avoidable - maybe not, idk.
  
  I just think it'd be cool to see things other than linux, lefty, & star trek memes on here sometimes.
  
  I just think it'd be cool to see things other than linux, lefty, & star trek memes on here sometimes
  
  If you're not happy with what you're being spoonfed, there's an entire world of content out there waiting for you.
  
  Millions of songs, books, comics, movies, short films, podcasts, video games, board games, documentaries and every other kind of content. Much of it available for free or pocket change.
  
  My favourite books and bands have zero mentions on reddit. I didn't learn about them from social media, so I inherently learned about them while not scrolling social media.
  
  And of course don't forget you can build things too. I've made some games that do turn up on reddit occasionally and while it's pretty cool to connect with fans and read the discussions, none of the knowledge, inspiration, connections or thoughts that went into them came passively from social media.
  
  What do you actually want to see/feel/discuss? Because it might not be a thing you can find on social media, sandwiched between memes and Overwatch pornography, no matter how many people use the site.
  
  I don't need to be "spoonfed" anything, and it's a little weird for you to assume so. I interact with all of that media, watch film & anime, read books, watch documentaries, etc. on other platforms. I share my music and artwork, I write video games as well. This isn't about what I am up to.
  
  Lemmy is a discussion site. I just think it'd be cool if we discussed more than what we currently discuss here. I think other prospective users might want to discuss other things than the current fare, and yeah - when it's not here, when wanting to discuss it is dismissed essentially as entitlement & wanting to be "spoonfed", they'll do it elsewhere: reddit.
  
  Yeah that's fair. Sorry. I was pretty burned out on comments saying "there's not enough content, we need to shove more content into this one place, more and more content forever so we can be more like that other site with all the content in one place only we hate it".
  
  But thank you for elaborating on what content you actually want. There are niche communities that aren't very well served on Lemmy, but I never found them all that valuable on reddit either, often being overrun with low effort memes, "look at this photo of a 3080/PS5/whatever I bought" and a daily posting of questions like "how can I program an MMO".
  
  Chasing some vague, unconditional "growth" just seems like people are rushing to recreate the worst parts of reddit.

Not much we can do about that. That's just the demographic an experimental decentralized platform like Lemmy attracts.

This comment will also receive some negative feedback but I don't care about diversity in my social media platform. I actually want people to enjoy the same things I do, like Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc.

That's the opposite of diversity I guess. More like a community where people have similar interests. That's what I like about it.

Eh, that is kinda the appeal of Reddit, and its alternatives. Finding smaller communities of likeminded individuals that you can group into a tailored feed.

I always say the magic of this model is that it's not just a firehose of every possible interest, it's more like a shower of dozens of tiny handpicked jets. It just happens that on Lemmy, the "All" feed is still reasonably tailored to the main demographic here. That being tech nerds who dislike Reddit's recent decisions enough to make a change.
- Finding smaller communities of likeminded individuals that you can group into a tailored feed. the main demographic here. That being tech nerds who dislike Reddit's recent decisions enough to make a change.
  
  That's exactly why I simply cannot not go back to reddit from time to time. Lemmy is nice and all but all communities that are not focused on tech stuff are complete ghost towns. Sure, one could say, that I should create the content and post it here. But I'm simply not that kind of person. I seldom come up with interesting stuff to share, but enjoy interacting with the posts of other people, writing a comment here and there. And I'd say many if not most others are similar.
Um, that isn't the definition of diversity being used here. They were suggesting some demographic diversity not interest diversity. Unless you are suggesting only young white males are into Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc. In which case, fuck off with that bigotry.
- No, only a subset of young white males are into linux if you exclude trans women
  
  And there is the bigotry I smelled.
- Haha it would be hard to know what everyone looks like behind the keyboards and I don't care whatsoever. One of the best things about tech culture is that you are judged by what you actually know and how well you can work with others. :)
  
  Ah, so it was simple bigotry. Great, now kindly fuck off.

Do fledgling communities typically START diversified? I would imagine it always starts this way. You invent the thing. You send it to your like minded friends, they send it to their like minded friends, etc. I feel like diversity inevitably requires time and numbers.

Yep, and in lemmy’s case, it was created by FOSS enthusiasts. And then it’s run on servers administrated by similar enthusiasts.

there's no way you could even guess the skin color of a person by reading their comment. i could be a 70-year old asian man for all you care.

maybe because "race" just isn't discussed as much because it's also basically a social construct besides minor evolutionary differences.

People of different background have more chance to have a bigger diversity of point of view. You may not be able to guess the background of a single commenter, but you can spot things missing. Also, I wasn't actually thinking about race, but gender identities and sexual orientations as well.
- Well then you're nutso because. Blahaj and such have a huge smattering
  
  A 'smattering' is a small amount of something. You've described a huge small amount.
  
  A ginormous smidgen. A massive skosh. An anemic plenitude.
  
  A large boulder the size of a small boulder.
  
  Ah "skosh"...I'm not sure I've ever seen it in writing, but my first mentor at my first career job used it all the time. Every amount of distance under a foot (in a structural discipline) was a skosh of some sort.
  
  Just a bit of a skosh, a slight skosh...a good healthy skosh...
  
  Brought back a good memory there.
  
  Fun fact, "skosh" comes from the occupation of Japan after WWII, from Japanese "sukoshi" 'a little bit'.
Race is a social construct that impacts so many people in a very real way. The race that you're sorted into affects so much of where you can go, what you can do, and how the government treats you.
- Jesus dude what country do you live in? That sounds terrible

Yeah there is not nearly as much to be learned here which is the major appeal of reddit to me. I already know what the comments will say before I open a lemmy post

I agree completely.

I don't have examples at hand now, but I feel like I see so much like minorly-sexist talk. Or at least the stuff I only imagined horny men write, in so many threads.

Reddit was the same like ~10 years ago and I don't miss that part of it.

I don't feel like we're ever going to get past that until we can make the sign up process very nearly effortless. Reading about signing up for an account on the fediverse can be a lot of new info. Choosing an instance can feel like a lot when new to the fediverse and at the point that it becomes something difficult or confusing, a lot of people just lose interest.

I agree. I am a techie, have been following Lemmy for quite a while before the Reddit exodus. When I made my account, first I had to understand that each instance manages its own accounts and there are many instances. My initial thought was to look for one of the higher population instances, but I read that this was not necessarily the best idea. Then I searched out why its better to pick an instance outside the high population ones and that whatever instance I picked, I could view/comment/vote on posts from other instances. I don't have a problem doing research, but I don't know anyone who is not a techie that would continue past my first question, and that is a serious problem for adoption.
- Looks like we made the same choice! It's blazing fast too.
- And then the smaller community that you created an account if defederates from a large part of the fediverse, forcing you to make a new account

It definitely lacks diversity. But at the same time it reminds me of the early internet where we had dedicated forums like IGN. Most people weren't on these forums nor cared to be there. The problem here is sometimes Lemmy is not welcoming because of the way it is designed. You have to host and run your own instance or join someone else's instance. That is good because we, the users of Lemmy, own it but bad because we become very protectionists. We want to protect our instance from bad actors but some users take it to the extreme and protect the instance from people who aren't like them and think differently.

I totally agree with you. Feels like 4chan.

Reddit has that AND the 16-45 days old repost spam bot base covered.

Youngin's.

Younger for me. They're either pro Palestine or really pro Palestine, which to me is the idealism of youth. I'd say mainly 16-30 first world or equivalent males.

Strange take tbh. The non-idealistic view is they both shitty (evil Jews vs evil Muslim terrorists), with normal people paying the toll as per the norm.

No one is justified in any of this carnage.

So far from what I've seen in a year is that anyone who points out racism gets downvoted