Comment on The lemmy.ml Problem
Blaze@reddthat.com 3 weeks agothere are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.
Agreed. To address this, I started this thread to see which lemmy.ml don’t have alternatives on other instances: lemmy.world/post/16235541
Hopefully that can help people who want to avoid lemmy.ml.
I guess at the end of the day, people should be able to choose whether they go to the lemmy.ml communities or the alternatives
kabe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
See, now that’s a much more positive approach. Users making informed decisions and organically migrating is much more in keeping with the Fediverse spirit than admins wielding the defederation hammer, IMO.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Agreed, but let’s also be honest about this:
The smaller, less visible alternative communities seldom grow. It’s the classic case of the biggest and oldest trees getting all the sunlight, while the saplings in their shadow are stunted.
We saw this on Reddit, too. Alternative subreddits, usually born out of protest of the moderation on the original, popped up all the time and never grew. Some did, some even overshadowed the original, but that was rare.
Unless there’s an effort made to give more visibility to the smaller and less established alternative, there’s a good chance it goes nowhere.
So in reality the user choice you’re describing is less about choosing between two communities, and more about choosing between a community or a DND group that gets together once a week, but half the people flake out anyway.
Blaze@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
LW communities are already much more active than lemmy.ml ones, there are just a few missing, I wouldn’t worry too much.
kabe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Absolutely agree, which is why I would advocate against defederation. It’s is better to let users organically migrate away from problematic moderation than for the LW admins to preemptively make the decision on everyone’s behalf.
Lemmy is still a relatively small community, and too much defederation is only going to be detrimental to it’s overall health.