Comment on Science Journalism
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 day agoThe really reputable outlets will phrase it “'this [Lemmy] is… Journalism”’ claims user of the increasingly popular reddit alternative, in post positing the decline of all other forms of media."
OpenStars@discuss.online 1 day ago
Are we increasing though? I thought we plateaued or even dipped. e.g. lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats even says we dropped sharply, like 51k monthly active users in April compared to 47k now (this ignores the halfyear stats that iirc were affected by some technical changes), and the total users tanked from 1.9 mil to just 1.4 (though we surely don’t have that many lurkers, so a lot of those were surely bots/alts), and even servers went down.
Everyone that I’ve mentioned Lemmy to irl gives me a horrible look like why would you tell me about this TruthSocial-like place (except leftist instead of right-wing as that one is) that actively calls for public beheadings of e.g. landlords?
So we’ve got some… issues that are blocking our future growth, from reaching more mainstream audiences.
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
I’ll be honest, I hope Lemmy doesn’t reach a mainstream audience. It’s nice having a smaller site away from all the bullshit that will inevitably come with mainstream attention. We can say “just defederate! Join another instance” but when we get to a point where giant corpos are running instances that host 95% of users and 99% of content, we’ll be in the same boat as now if we defed, except that Lemmy will then have a mainstream (and thus mostly right of center) image. If this, or a little more, is all we’re ever really going to get on an open source platform that feels open source, I’m okay with that. I like seeing the same usernames around, and feeling like I found the internet equivalent of Stars Hollow, CT
OpenStars@discuss.online 21 hours ago
It’s a double edged sword, that.
On the one hand, we’re kinda awesome the way we are.:-) Perhaps a bit more content would be good though?
On the other, there’s like 50 people that generate virtually all the content, and they won’t necessarily be able to keep up that pace forever. If we aren’t sustainable, this project will die off. And I don’t mean like cease working, but rather lose our uniqueness, like what happened to Reddit, which technically remember still exists:-).
I hear you about “fully mainstream”, but I think we could stand to grow a bit more. What’s going on with mander.xyz and scientists/academics is awesome:-).
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 20 hours ago
I’m not familiar with what’s going on with that. Care to enlighten me?
And I totally get what you mean. More content would be great. I specifically miss my philosophical and spiritual communities from Reddit. I love learning about mythos and different religions, especially the more esoteric stuff, as well as political philosophy. That content just isn’t here in the same way (or sometimes, at all). It would be amazing to have that here. But I’d also rather go without certain things if it means not feeling like I’m being sold a story. Reddit felt like it wasn’t social media in the same way as Twitter and Facebook, but the moment I left it for Lemmy it was this scales-from-my-eyes kind of moment. It was crazy how toxic reddit was for me, and going back a few times, and looking at my old profile, I do not like the person I was there. Always on the defense, always on edge, always prepared to argue a point because I knew some asshole was going to attack me for no reason, and make me defend myself. It’s like it activates the caveman part of the brain and put me in fight or flight. I’d love for Lemmy to get big enough to have awesome content, but not so big as to devolve into that. But I’m not smart enough to know what that balance is, or if it’s even an issue of size, or just culture.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Damn, you’ve mentioned lemmy irl? And other people have known about it?
flora_explora@beehaw.org 15 hours ago
I’ve mentioned lemmy irl, too. Various times actually. Obviously no one knows it. But they usually don’t even know of mastodon or the fediverse either. And even reddit is just a name they’ve heard before. Everyone I know irl is on Instagram though.
OpenStars@discuss.online 22 hours ago
Never once have they known about it already:-).
The horrified looks come on our subsequent visit, and then they refuse to talk about it again. I suppose it’s our dirty secret… that we use Lemmy btw.:-P
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I’ve only met maybe five people in real life that even know what Reddit is. Like yeah that’s that super nerdy site right?
I’ve never even tried to mention Lemmy.
bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
But if you look at messages it has raised, so less accounts but more active. And I don’t know the rest but I’m not in a hurry to see Lemmy become as big as Reddit. I can wait a couple of years to grow at a faster rate.