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Why are so many people so fixated on Lemmy's growth? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by AstralPath@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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...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.

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

Reddit took over a decade to get to that size, it's not a fair comparison.

[-] _pete_@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

Reddit also didn’t have Reddit to compete with, which certainly makes things harder.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Well, there was Digg, then Digg imploded.

[-] _pete_@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Yeap, but Digg was still pretty early in it's life and was very much catering for tech nerds.

Reddit is basically the home of all communities these days, its swallowed what used to be individual forums from around the web and put them into a single place.

Building those new communities across multiple lemmy instances also adds to the complexity.

this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024

309 points (93.8% liked)

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