It's time to take advantage of Reddit's decline

ToadCultist@mander.xyz to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 915 points –

It's no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it's still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could substantially increase the amount of people who discover the fediverse. What's more, I don't think this is would be a hard sell considering many mods are already pissed off with Reddit due to their API changes. I believe that this is the time to act, so this is a call to arms, to help grow the fediverse into the future of social media!

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I might have a controversial question: but why? Do we really want this mass exodus to the Lemmy community? I think we have a nice little thing here. People will keep coming anyway, slowly, if they really are interested in what this is about

It’s a nice little thing, but there so much to miss compared to Reddit. Sure, we have memes, technology and news. But there is very little other discussion going on, even for big things like food, sports, finance and relationships (picked some on the top of my mind). Huge communities on Reddit. Barely anything here.

Overall Lemmy is very much a disappointment when it comes to “niche” communities, if you can even call those large subjects that. But it’s even worse for smaller subjects.

There is a super active niche subreddit that I miss terribly. There is a Lemmy alternative with 3 subscribers only and a post every 5 days or so. I would love to see it active but me posting there feels the same as just screaming into the void. I know that to grow it I need to be active on it but if I'm the only one there then what is the point? I also don't want to go to the subreddit and say "hey, check out Lemmy" cause it feels I'll be sending them to a graveyard for that particular topic.

I agree with this. The fedi communities as they exist appear to be happy with the niche. We don’t need to be the replacement of a corporate owned social network. Nor should we be.

Places like mastodon or lemmy should grow organically over time if we all want a healthier online culture.

I don't want them here. I continue to promote Lemmy on a one-to-one basis. No mass-market appeal, no calls for the masses. Don't poison the well.

You mean you don’t want communities infested with bots promoting thinly veiled advertisements and reposting crusty old content to farm upvotes to make their accounts look more legitimate?

Exactly, I enjoy the high quality discussion currently found on Lemmy and I feel the masses would only bring the average IQ down.