Has community engagement dropped off suddenly?

TheFonz@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 156 points –

I don't know if others are experiencing a similar situation. My all feed is very sparse with engagement. If I sort top six hours or by top 12 most posts have between 5-10 comments. I feel like there was more in the past? Is engagement dropping off? I'm on lemmy.world as my instance.

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I've noticed that some instances, including lemmy.world, are getting more aggressive with blocking other instances (also due to assumed "spam"). At the same time, the /all/ feed is only populated by the communities that other users of your instance are subscribing to. I'd look in some newcommunities communities to subscribe to more interesting communities so that they pop up in your /all/ feed. Another reason is probably also that many people are moving away from lemmy.world to smaller instances.

This is how I see things as well. I moved away from lemmy.world because one of their updates completely fucked my account, and since then I've noticed more people doing the same, or complaining about issues with federation.

Anyone who expects Lemmy to become the new reddit is both setting themselves up for disappointment and missing out on the enjoyment of a smaller community imo. People can use reddit/facebook/twitter for doom scrolling if that's their thing.

When people say they want Lemmy to become the new reddit, they are not talking about the reddit of today, more like the one from <2015.

I miss the crazy shit that there used to be on reddit. Not that I liked or agreed with all the subs at the time but it really did feel at the time that there was a sub for everything. Now reddit feels stale and sanitized which makes me feel bored when scrolling through or searching for random subs.

Reddit just feels like Facebook these days. Niche subs are not affected as much, but the vast majority is just low quality trash, gossip, selfies and unhinged political discussion.

Some people probably mean that, while others want a literal transplant or reddit without spez pulling the strings. Part of the challenge of new communities is figuring out what you are, and I think Lemmy is still deep in that stage.

I am enjoying the slower pace of posts, and higher level of quality engagement. I also enjoy zero ads, far less toxic behavior and general niceness on Lemmy compared to Reddit.