/r/StarTrek founder and primary steward from 2008-2021

Currently on the board of directors for StarTrek.website

  • 92 Posts
  • 1.13K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Clickbait is a push-away factor for me. I’m not here for outrage.

    I think most users here would agree with you (I certainly do). There are dozens of apps out there that scroll the same memes endlessly and trying to make Lemmy competitive in the marketplace for attention by imitating that format will fail. I think the best strategy for Lemmy-growers is to lean into the strengths of the Fediverse by hosting discussions and communities that the Reddit algorithm suppresses.


  • This is a good thought provoking post, but I think most of the methods you describe here actually work against the Fediverse, both in terms of desired outcomes and actual growth.

    • If a user comes to Lemmy (for example) and sees the same stale meme feed and engagement bait they see on Reddit, what’s the incentive to switch? What makes Lemmy unique?

    • Of the users who are here and understand the reasons for not using commercial social media, most are probably trying to avoid the bulk of the sort of content made by the suggestions you give.

    • Growth-for-growth’s-sake puts more burden on instance admins for reasons that don’t involve growing a sense of community (presumably the reason they are investing time in the first place).

    My point is that Lemmy can never compete with Reddit in terms of attention and distractability and trying to build “community” around that here will always fail. We should lean into Lemmy’s strengths, focus on growing communities and discussions and the kind of thing the Reddit algorithm suppresses.