…relative to Reddit’s size?
I see so many posts and comments voicing disappointment with Lemmy’s lack of massive expansion.
I too want to see Lemmy gain more users, but I do not want it to grow to Reddit’s size. If Reddit is the yardstick, I’d say that a population that large attracts a lot of negative behaviours; degeneration of discourse, amplification of echo chambers and hive mind behaviour, etc…
I started on Reddit in 2010 and found that by 2016 things were really bad in comparison. A fun and engaging site was experiencing an obvious devolution that persists to this day, accelerated by Spez’s enshittification of the platform. Obviously the fediverse insulates us from that occurring here but I think you get what I mean.
Do you you think Lemmy is too small? I don’t. I’ve been here since the great migration last year and have had a really good time. I see a lot of familiar names in the comments on a daily basis. It actually feels like a community here. I guess I just don’t understand the fixation on the size of Lemmy’s user base. Curious to hear your thoughts.
[EDIT] Thanks for all the responses, everyone! Lots of perspectives I hadn’t yet considered.
One day, this too will turn to shit. But when that day comes, people will just drift to different instances. Not including federation and niche communities, this is functionally equivalent to reddit for me
In my case…
I just left a instance (which rhymes with seesaw) because one of the admins accused me of “starting a fight” and “not being nice” because I didn’t agree with an article that was posted.
It was however perfectly acceptable for someone to instantly accuse me of wanting to kill an entire group of people and of being a bad person (I won’t be specific, but it was a very clear exaggeration and the comment was overlooked by the admin). But, I wasn’t being “nice” because I calmly explained my perspective on the lawsuit the article was about (and apparently having a difference of opinion is considered “fighting” lol). And honestly, my opinion wasn’t extreme in any capacity either (in fact, it half agreed with them)…
And it was such a pity because the other admins there seem so cool, and I loved the idea of the instance (I actually donated originally)
So, yep, I can definitely agree, it’s so easy to move around.
So far, I’ve actually found the people on other instances to be really cool actually (which I wasn’t expecting, because my original instance portrayed the rest of Lemmy as a bit of a cesspool at times honestly)