Ask Lemmy
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More users to accommodate more active niche communities
Truthfully, Lemmy doesn't even have enough users for some mainstream interests, like sports. Lemmy leans very tech and selects for a certain type of user. But I'm sure plenty of people here are happy to have a place without daily NFL and NBA news.
Yeah, there's a few subs that I miss — particularly the ones for my city and my state — but r/twobestfriendsplay is top of the list. It was by far the sub that I most enjoyed interacting with since I joined years ago. Lots of power users who I'd immediately recognize by pfp.
The actual group that it's named after broke up a decade ago — they've been disbanded longer than they were a thing — but it was still loosely connected to a couple of the guys' ongoing careers, particularly two of them who host a podcast and stream separately. More importantly, it was a hub for discussion on games, movies, shows, comics, whatever, niche or popular, even if the relevance to the group was tenuous; the mods tried to block some topics but lost the battle on vtubers after the guys had Mori Calliope on the podcast, lol. I imagine it's even more lifted now that one of them streams with several vtubers.
tl;dr yeah I really miss some niche communities I'd been subbed to for years.
If it means anything, I know at least I don't participate in a lot of stuff because of AI
More users is not necessarily more better.
... but I do agree there are very few active communities.
The focus should be on making the fediverse the best it can be, rather than focusing on attracting users.
The issue is without some mass, small communities will likely not prosper. I can’t imagine if someone wants to create a community on spoon collecting that it would do well. We may just have to accept that for the next 5yrs the fediverse may just be larger communities with lots of smaller interests lumped in together.
Yes but more users doesn't necessarily make a spoon collecting community more viable.
Am easier pathway is to encourage existing users to visit this type of community.
Additionally, consider carefully whether the fediverse can support a spoon collecting community, or perhaps you should just post about spoon collecting in the general "cutlery collecting" community.
More users provides more diversity - More diversity provides the potential for more niche interests to arise - More active niche communities provides more reasons for existing users to stay - More active users staying on the platform inevitably attracts more new users.
More users also increases the appeal for bots, purveyors of misinformation, trolls, and assholes generally.
And the Fediverse doesn't have all of those already?
These are inescapable in the modern age internet unfortunately, however the decentralisation of the Fediverse should help in alleviating those symptoms of an open platform.
Of course we have them, but the ratio will increase as user numbers rise.
Federation does not protect us from these issues in any way. In fact it's very susceptible to misinformation through federation.
only if lemmy was the only 1 aggrgated site it would be more pervasive. but reddit is still too big right now.