lemmy looks like it does now because it’s first of all and most importantly small.
the reason why it’s small is that there are barriers for entry, be it effort needed to understand federation for the first time or choosing instance. “ooh just choose anything it’s not that hard” shut the fuck up. it’s a barrier because you can see that numbers are quite low, and just because you’ve come through it already doesn’t mean it’s not there
but there’s bigger issue. depending on instance and how do you count, some 95%+ of new active users could have been rexxiters. this means that by coming there they have to leave reddit, and that means leaving communities that were there
average person isn’t stupid or malicious or unenlightened plebeian. average person is just. average. because of small lemmy’s size people there are subject to strong selection bias, namely on gaussian distribution of “how much do you care about moving there” that’s far right tail that sits there. what are reasons for that, for every person that would be a bit different. some of these are FOSS enthusiasts or techlibertarians or softcore anticapitalists. this has some serious implications. some were banned from reddit but want replacement (some of these were shown door already, like exploding-heads).
now, crossection of “people who cared to come there” and “programmers” is reasonably big, as evidenced by programming.dev, but for any other unrelated topic there’s much less. crossection of “people who care” and “people who are good at identifying mushrooms” or “aviation fans” or whatever is small, maybe too small to form new community. these people would need to leave reddit and their community and come there, doing nothing because they have no other fellow mushroom identificators to talk to. so, many don’t. there’s also probably negative selection of specific kind of people like some conspiracy theorists, at least for now
if you want to see lemmy grow, you would see dilution of that concentrated techbro sentiment with people who are otherwise average, but these people are also there to form new, specialized communities. you might want to gatekeep them out with some eternal september scenario, but it most likely won’t work. personally i think that lemmy needs to grow a few times over for these “unrelated communities” to form, and then things will get pretty sustainable
another thing is that there’s no ads and no selection for hostile content or conspiracy theories, and that might be related to how lemmy’s algorithm is not driven by engagement, at least that’s how it looks like
Great post.
Lemmy right now reminds me of Reddit 15-16 years ago. Mostly tech workers or tech hobbyists who know far more than an average person and thus aren’t put off by something new and different. I don’t think Lemmy is very complicated as a concept and it boggles my mind that people are saying “making a new account on Lemmy.world or Kbin.social is too complicated for normal people.” Yet I see it written all the time, sometimes here but mostly on reddit. And who knows; maybe the latter is a disinformation campaign since we know reddit pulls sneaky shit like that all the time (and targeting Lemmy, like with the warnings they placed on links at one point).
Lemmy’s barriers to entry also somewhat remind me of early Facebook after they expanded to several universities. You needed to have an email address from one of those univerisities in order to create an account. So, not so much self selection in that scenario but another gate to keep people out.
I can respect Tildes’ decision to become invite-only (with a very limited number of invites) for that reason. Lemmy, I think, is prioritizing growth at the potential cost of future community. Tildes is doing the opposite. I don’t think one is necessarily more correct. And, with Lemmy, there are tons of alternatives waiting in the wings. Hopefully a balance can be struck.
I think the real test comes when the first wave of good third party apps are released. Sync, in particular, seems very promising given the developer’s reddit app. Anything that can make it easier for people.
Hey I just said I reqllly found your comment really informative and insightful, and albeit I have some vague ideas on how it is part of survivorship bias, i can’t quite tell what you refer to?
What I’m talking about is mostly negative bias so I might be wrong
if you want to explain why lemmy looks like it does now, you can just look at the people who got there, but if you want a clearer picture you should also look at people who didn’t. failure to do that introduces survivorship bias. currently most of new users comes from reddit, so you already have ready-made set of failed lemmy users
and also there’s obscure reference to scarfolk council
lemmy looks like it does now because it’s first of all and most importantly small.
the reason why it’s small is that there are barriers for entry, be it effort needed to understand federation for the first time or choosing instance. “ooh just choose anything it’s not that hard” shut the fuck up. it’s a barrier because you can see that numbers are quite low, and just because you’ve come through it already doesn’t mean it’s not there
but there’s bigger issue. depending on instance and how do you count, some 95%+ of new active users could have been rexxiters. this means that by coming there they have to leave reddit, and that means leaving communities that were there
average person isn’t stupid or malicious or unenlightened plebeian. average person is just. average. because of small lemmy’s size people there are subject to strong selection bias, namely on gaussian distribution of “how much do you care about moving there” that’s far right tail that sits there. what are reasons for that, for every person that would be a bit different. some of these are FOSS enthusiasts or techlibertarians or softcore anticapitalists. this has some serious implications. some were banned from reddit but want replacement (some of these were shown door already, like exploding-heads).
now, crossection of “people who cared to come there” and “programmers” is reasonably big, as evidenced by programming.dev, but for any other unrelated topic there’s much less. crossection of “people who care” and “people who are good at identifying mushrooms” or “aviation fans” or whatever is small, maybe too small to form new community. these people would need to leave reddit and their community and come there, doing nothing because they have no other fellow mushroom identificators to talk to. so, many don’t. there’s also probably negative selection of specific kind of people like some conspiracy theorists, at least for now
if you want to see lemmy grow, you would see dilution of that concentrated techbro sentiment with people who are otherwise average, but these people are also there to form new, specialized communities. you might want to gatekeep them out with some eternal september scenario, but it most likely won’t work. personally i think that lemmy needs to grow a few times over for these “unrelated communities” to form, and then things will get pretty sustainable
another thing is that there’s no ads and no selection for hostile content or conspiracy theories, and that might be related to how lemmy’s algorithm is not driven by engagement, at least that’s how it looks like
Great post. Lemmy right now reminds me of Reddit 15-16 years ago. Mostly tech workers or tech hobbyists who know far more than an average person and thus aren’t put off by something new and different. I don’t think Lemmy is very complicated as a concept and it boggles my mind that people are saying “making a new account on Lemmy.world or Kbin.social is too complicated for normal people.” Yet I see it written all the time, sometimes here but mostly on reddit. And who knows; maybe the latter is a disinformation campaign since we know reddit pulls sneaky shit like that all the time (and targeting Lemmy, like with the warnings they placed on links at one point).
Lemmy’s barriers to entry also somewhat remind me of early Facebook after they expanded to several universities. You needed to have an email address from one of those univerisities in order to create an account. So, not so much self selection in that scenario but another gate to keep people out.
I can respect Tildes’ decision to become invite-only (with a very limited number of invites) for that reason. Lemmy, I think, is prioritizing growth at the potential cost of future community. Tildes is doing the opposite. I don’t think one is necessarily more correct. And, with Lemmy, there are tons of alternatives waiting in the wings. Hopefully a balance can be struck.
I think the real test comes when the first wave of good third party apps are released. Sync, in particular, seems very promising given the developer’s reddit app. Anything that can make it easier for people.
i think the biggest barrier is leaving fully formed communities on reddit, not technicalities of lemmy
for more information, please re-read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Hey I just said I reqllly found your comment really informative and insightful, and albeit I have some vague ideas on how it is part of survivorship bias, i can’t quite tell what you refer to?
What I’m talking about is mostly negative bias so I might be wrong
Thanks for your time :)
if you want to explain why lemmy looks like it does now, you can just look at the people who got there, but if you want a clearer picture you should also look at people who didn’t. failure to do that introduces survivorship bias. currently most of new users comes from reddit, so you already have ready-made set of failed lemmy users
and also there’s obscure reference to scarfolk council