Forget growth, lets enjoy what we have
There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you've been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren't talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive "community" ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don't need to focus on it.
Build a good community, the growth will come
As always.
While a part of me doesn't think this will last forever, it's nice to be a part of a growing community in which you were a part from the relatively beginning (of an exodus, if we'll be more specific about it). It makes people feel more involved and closer to each other, and see each other beyond just being a random name or a number or a statistic. Honestly, the fact that there isn't a million eyes looking right now and scrutinizing every word I say gives me more confidence to simply... comment. Put myself out there. Like what I'm doing now. I've probably commented more in the past two days than I have from years on Reddit.
And I feel like even if it does get bigger (maybe not exponentially; I honestly doubt Reddit will lose a lot of people as some people just don't care for change. Look at Twitter :/ ), I feel like the fact I've been here from when it was in its infancy to whatever point it may become in the future would give me the courage to keep expressing myself.
Just my two cents!
I feel that. This platform doesn't feel like it will necessarily be one to make it big. Or be mainstream. Or get all of reddit to move over.
I think what the platform does feel like is something I'll remember fondly. When I think of my time on reddit, I mostly just think of arguments, power hungry mods, and spam. This feels like a community and I wouldn't be happy to lose it to growth.
It can be the forum to rule them all
The longer ive stayed off reddit, the more I have grown the love the benifits of Lemmy. Discussions are civil, the vibe is a lot more chill and if anything, it invites users to participate. I wasn't sure if I would manage to avoid reddit given how addicted I was to it. Suddenly, I feel like I've found a better place...
Honestly, both sides of the coin have merits. A quiet place where people recognise each other is perfect for making friends, but bigger communities collect more information and participation. It'll be significantly less personal, but it has its upsides.
Lemmy does deel a lot better than Reddit though, I have to agree :D
To me, the real benefit of growth is the ability to have active communities focused on niche topics, like discussion of a single book series rather than a genre or books in general.
I don't know if it's possible get there without creating an Eternal September situation in the broader communities, but it would be nice if we could.
Don't get me wrong, reddit was amazing until it's CEO wanted to cash in on the hard work done by its community. I don't have an issue with being profitable, the means used simply isn't acceptable.
I was just going to say this! I follow a few subreddits that involve a lot of theories and sharing of video game information. Those would be absolutely gutted/non-existent with a small community because discoveries would be too slow to maintain interest for most.
The gaming instance on beehaw is picking up steam! But yeah it will take some time before it's able to compete with r/gaming but I am here for it!
I probably posted and commented a combined total of five times a year on Reddit. Maybe I’m just a lurker by trait, but I definitely feel like the vibe here is much more inviting and I feel like I may participate in more discussions.
I feel the same, I don't know if it's just me but Reddit feels somewhat hostile at times when people misinterpret a small detail in my comment and proceed to rip me to shreds and it ain't fun!
I'm personally looking forward to growth here because I want niche communities to form like they did on reddit. And you can only do that when there's enough critical mass of users.
Yes, very much this. I was able to reach out to a very small community before this blew up and the advice I got there was extremely impactful to a sensitive issue I'm navigating with my family.
It's really the thing I'm most upset about losing.
It's difficult to find spots to congregate and commiserate online when you or someone you love has an experience only shared with 0.1% of the population.
1 out of 1,000 and then only if they also want to talk about it.
If reddit still exists, and if I go back to it at all, that would be the only reason.
I know it's not the same, but if you don't see a community you like, why not create one and be the first? There may be someone else in the same boat as you.
This isn't niche by any means, but I recreated maliciouscompliance (one of my favorite communities) because it wasn't available and I wanted to see more posts haha.
(and if you're interested -
/c/maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance
Or type the following in the search bar at the top: !maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world )
One of my favorites too, subscribed! I probably should start a few, there's definitely some I'll miss having regular access to.
be the change you want to see!
Better, not bigger.
Im old enough to miss chat rooms on aol. Anything like that still exist?
@dreamsindigital01 @andobando Remember yahoo chat rooms? :P Me and my Ex would use them all the time to stay in communication when she was alive. Many years ago
I feel like discord is the closest thing I’ve seen, minus the bots flooding chat and IMing you to warn your account. Ah, the good ol days
Yes, on Matrix/Element there are chat rooms.
I still post on Web forums.
I like getting to know the people I'm chatting with.
In general, I prefer quality over quantity. I never joined Reddit, and only visited under duress (i.e. troubleshooting Linux install & Reddit was the only place w/the info I needed).
For some reason, using Lemmy feels like I'm using old-school forums like EZBoard (I know...dating myself). I don't think that it needs to "become the next Reddit" to be an effective community platform.
Kind of a weird analogy, but it's like Mallrats...practically NOBODY saw it in theaters, but over time, it found its audience.
Just focus on quality community interactions, and the user base numbers will find the right level.
I agree. I'm still hoping some subreddits will move over to Lemmy, but I'm really enjoying Lemmy anyhow. The Lemmy communities seem generally really positive so far and there is enough content for me to enjoy. It even helps with reducing my time lost on the internet while still providing me with the community and information-influx that I enjoy. Quality over quantity. I also really love the idea of the technical parts: federated, open source and self-hostable.
I guess it depends on what you're here for. I'm not really looking for friends as much as insightful comments from people of similar interests. Quality posts need a certain amount of people to show up. Like the guy spending months and years making the perfect photo of the moon. Would that happen in a forum with ten people? I don't think so. Not to say that quality content wont happen here. It's all up to each and every one of us in the end, and people seem to leave longer comments of better quality and substance. Lets do our best and see where it goes!
I think you're 100% right, but frankly this issue is more important than just a nice home for us
Social networks are being pressured to start extracting value with interest rates no longer being nil, and their efforts aren't just inconvenient, they're bad for mental health.
And how long until they start selling control over debate to the highest bidder? Musk has pretty explicitly gone over plans to do exactly that - he wants to charge per-user to send out tweets to your subscribers. He says there would be a large limit before you have to start paying, but this is a great way to control voices that rise out of the crowd
Social media has been a disaster, but there's no putting it back in the box - it's the primary way we communicate. It's terrible for mental health and can be leveraged as a tool of control, so a decentralized system is very important right now
That being said, I think it'd be great if the fediverse encorages fragmented groups instead of a main subject monolith and refugees in fringe groups - smaller communities are just healthier and more fulfilling
Agreed. I feel bad as someone who advocated for the adoption of this technology for many years only to see the shit show that it has become. It's terrible as it is and I think some of this return to smaller communities will humanize things a bit more and that definitely seems to be happening with what I've seen so far.
This is a new era. Welcome to the Great Rehumanization of the internet.
Oooh I like that, it's got a nice ring to it.
Sort of sounds like my little Arizona town. "No, we don't want this economic opportunity, we like the town small and manageable!" The average age ten years ago was 55, and now it is 65. What is going to happen to the town in 20 years?
Also things are a bit harder if you have a niche hobby. I started a community for back country skiing and I am still hoping that we get more content posters.
I agree and congrats for starting that community. My reason for being here is to connect with other flashlight enthusiasts. The other site has a large, tight-knit community and already a surprising amount of posts have come up on Lemmy. c/flashlight I hope yours continues to flourish.
The original post alludes to that point, where they mention logging in after years had passed. Sounds like the community fizzled out, much like every irc chat I frequented bank in the day.
I get being wary of growing into something recognizable, but the growth is already happening. Hopefully that growth can be community oriented and organic.
This place is exactly what I have been looking for Glad I quit reddit
I'm here for good. I quit reddit for a year and started peeking back again a couple weeks ago and saw all this drama unfold. This place is exactly what I have been looking for since reddit went south (years ago imo). Cheers everyone :)
I don't need size, but I would like diversity of communities. That implies a size to fill out niches, but it doesn't require it. It just needs niches to move. I can do without the default subs here happily.
I can definitely agree with that. My favorite part of reddit was everyone's niche interests having large groups, and sometimes seeing those groups make it high enough to see -- and then getting to learn about something I'd never thought of even existing before.
A la https://xkcd.com/1603/
Totally agree. We should worry less about coaxing redditors or about how many users joined etc etc. Interact with people. Post and comment. Create good content and share it. That's what drives engagement, and all of the other concerns depend on engagement.
Somewhere some old Lemmy User was annoyed about the new members posting junk content. There seemed to be the opinion that if something has been said by someone else, there is no need to say it again.
I disagree, i feel that with every comment i enrich this community
Yup! It's not a wiki with a 1:1 correspondence of topic:discussion. It's a forum. 100 people can say 100 different things on the same topic. That's the beauty of it.
I've read somewhere that Lemmy veterans are already fearing another eternal september. As a r/efugee myself I already love it here and will at least try to actually behave
You're right. I think there is a lower limit of required users, but if all the world moved to Lemmy by some miracle, most of the problems would be brought with them. I have the feeling Lemmy is a colelction of people missing the internet from before the big sites like facebook or reddit. It's been missing a long time and this is our chance to get it back :)
I think this is the beauty of decentralization is that individual servers can still maintain smaller communities and still be part of the broader network
I've seen a lot of posts about how having the same community across multiple servers is a bad thing, but I disagree for this reason (and others).
I am not interested in irc chats. Reddit was home to many interesting niche communities that are not replicated here.
On one hand, yes, it will be nice to not have posts or comments go unseen because they are lost amongst the masses. But without those masses, there is not enough to cover specific topics that have only a small community associated. This is even a larger problem due to to nature of the fediverse, were similar communities are being founded on different instances rather than a single community on the topic.
the real treasure is the lovely human beings all around us
You can even say...the real treasure is the friends we made along the way?
/c/AngryUpvote
Ooh I have a sense this will all be very good here.
Indeed, my friend.
i like that i almost dont see any short form video content, like why does evertything needs to be a tiktok clone now, give me text and pictures
"Forget growth"
Helps grow lemmy
A concern that I haven't seen mentioned is Eternal September. Right now, Redditors are the school kids who are barging into someone else's space and trying to make it their own, without first knowing what the community is like.
The same thing happened on Reddit. I've always seen the Obama AMA as triggering Reddit's Eternal September, though it can be argued that it was happening before that. The influx of users killed the Alot Monster, and forget about anyone helping with grammar; they'd be ridiculed and downvoted into the negative. Then, Reddit got rid of the up/down counter altogether, so nobody coming from Facebook would end up with hurt feelings.
Anyhow, there's a risk that Redditors are going to ruin the fediverse. I'm new here and can already see it happening. Fingers crossed though, I'm staying optimistic!
Thank you for bringing up Eternal September. I feel like it's one particularly relevant to the situation right now. I'm new here and I'm just jumping in and seeing what happens, but I'm aware that I should probably read more than I write.
maybe, this is definitely a respectful way to enter a community. but i think no matter what, people are going to feel like any community was at its peak right when they joined and they'll impose the eternal september flag upon whatever next the influx after they joined happens to be.
I was happy with a handheld CB radio hoping to catch a conversation with passing truckies, so yeah, you're good with me.
One of the major flaws of R*ddit was the upvote/karma feature, which turned posting into a performance and a popularity contes, as you've mentioned. I hope as Lenny and the fediverse develops, we can shed those features in favor of a more simple and equitable system.
In the end, we will always need a way to sort content. that could be from engagement, comments, or some kind of Karma system.
Its just unfortunate that that was then tied back into your account.
Using upvotes to sort content is one thing. That doesn't mean the score has to be visible to everyone.
I read this the other day and thought it could be a cool idea: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-social-media-distrust-buttons-misinformation.html
Sounds very cool. I haven't read the study, but I think a key part of this is how the post is promoted. If more "trusted" posts are promoted, could the button effectively become the new like button? Can bots abuse this system? "Distrusting" a post demotes it? All those things have to be taken into consideration specially when accounting for bots and brigading. Nonetheless, looks promising
In principle I agree with karma turned posts into people gaming the system.
However, I've heard one of the struggles for Lemmy Communities is to keep people from lurking.
Karma might be a stupid feature but it is/was a cheap way of driving participation - it could help Lemmy (especially at this early stage). Even if karma encouraged people to just up voted, it still raised visibility on the more interesting topics.
Agree completely. I was thinking about keeping the upvote/downvote but just using them for content ranking, but hide the actual scores in the UI. Then its up the instances to decide if they want to show it or not.
Completely agree..... I see so many posts with "I would like this feature from Reddit etc." But honestly, it's quite refreshing to have something different.
The API changes were just the straw that broke the camel for me as after 13 years plus on the platform, it didn't even resemble what I initially signed up for.
I legit hope Lemmy doesn't turn in to a Reddit 2.0 where every reply to question is someone trying to be a smart ass and where not conforming to the ideology of the masses gets you nuked.
I too remember the days of IRC and I remember sitting in certain channels where we would all take turns in staying silent and allowing someone on the chat to hit the record voice and play a Jazz song they loved. I would sit there all night listening to and sharing music with people from all over the world drinking beers and chatting among ourselves.
Man, the early days of work arounds and early internet I miss. Every night of surfing was seriously exciting as you never knew what you would stumble on or find. Now it's the same dozen websites over and over rinse and repeat.
Anyhow, nostalgia and gripe over..... I agree 100%.
I'm really enjoying Lemmy as is and don't want to be wishing it away any time soon !
Can't agree on this.
Small irc network and reddit-like public communities are vastly different. Both have their worth. Lemmy is surely capable of either of them.
I miss IRC. I wish I could have my mIRC days back.
What if I told you IRC is still alive and well
@RedEyeFlightControl @abraxas @lemmyworld I use IRC everyday
Why not hop onto https://libera.chat/ ? If you're into self-hosting, check out https://thelounge.chat/ so that way you don't miss any goings-on while not logged in.
I might give it a try. Though, the Lounge app is kinda minimalistic. I used to love being a mIRC poweruser
Agreed. I don't want this place to explode. Smaller communities are ALWAYS better.
I agree somewhat when it comes to the giant subreddits, but the best thing about Reddit is that there were vibrant communities around an absolutely high variety of interests. Some of those communities were reasonably sized, but provided excellent discussion. On a smaller service like Lemmy, those small communities become ghost towns, with 1-2 people in there, and that's not fun at all.
Thats true, my guess is instances end up being more specialized. Instead of every instance trying to be reddit, an instance becomes a gaming community, another a movies and tv shows, etc
I agree completely. I like the feel of what's here so far. Changing to be appealing to the masses is exactly how Reddit got to where it is today
I think the beauty of a community-of-communites platform like Reddit/Lemmy is that we can have both in a way. Sub-communities should be encouraged; where high-level communities can grow for the increased engagement and content while sub-communities can remain small and connected.
That's a good point. Smaller niche communities with more personal connections will inevitably sprout when the 'main thing' hits a high user count.
I couldn't agree more, feel much more at ease here than on Reddit.
I was not contributing anymore there, too many things going on , the sheer number of people , the rage , the bots..
Maybe my posts and comments won't be as articulated or good as others but hey I am engaging again and I don't mind at all the small size if it mean more quality interaction.
As a "reddit refuge" I agree with this. I showed up on Lemmy a few days before the blackout, and even that small amount of time has been enough to notice a difference. I know people are hoping to recreate the things about reddit they love/miss here, but I really hope it doesn't become a carbon copy of that place. Like many have said, I didn't feel the urge to engage on reddit since it just felt a bit pointless, no one was gonna read it. Here I've felt like I can actually have good conversations with people, and have been doing so. Ultimately things will be what they will be, but I hope we can maintain that friendly community feel for a while longer.
first comment, but im enjoying my time on the fediverse. ill keep on interacting here, hoping to eventually find my communities here.
Samesies. Overly large groups tend to get a bit impersonal. Not always, but it's a tendency I notice.
Absolutely on point. The intimacy of irc servers is nowhere to be found on these massive boards nowadays.
Lemmy and other federated solutions will get a big boost in users, but it will only very be a tiny fraction of the reddit userbase.
And 98% of those users will probably just head back to reddit in a week or two.
Subreddits that have closed and moved with be replaced with new subs on reddit.
I think in the end it will be a healthy boost for Lemmy, but so far I suspect don't think we are at "Mass Paradigm shift" yet.
This is not going to be Digg > Reddit
only time will tell. it's still early. but i'm frustrated that the subs i loved closed, and the alternatives suck.
I kept getting pm's on reddit. None were worth responding to.
In all my years of Reddit I've only ever gotten one PM I thought had the potential to not be spam. I feel it is used maliciously far more often than not.
I agree, communities take time to grow
Ye flipping gods irc chats were great. Personally, I like it here. I’ll do my news checking, throw some comments around. The nice thing is I get responses here.
You do yes :)
Kind of agree! It definitely gets to the point where it gets overwhelming, I remember early days reddit used to be a chill place to hang out, even after the great migration from Digg it was still not overwhelming as it is now.
I think you're pretty much right. Communities need to be big enough, not necessarily the biggest.
i tried to become active in mastadon and i realized pretty quickly that the majority of the conversation was about mastadon growth and adoption. i just didn't care enough about that to stick around. i hope there is more here.
We don’t need to recreate Reddit. Lemmy will revolutionize that idea of communities and make it a nicer place.
You and andobando make good points. It's fun because I noticed myself paying a lot more to usernames since I've started using Lemmy. Maybe it's because of how people are engaging with it, I'm not sure, but it totally does feel like I'm actually engaging with multiple individuals here as opposed to some vague entity.
It is something I have noticed too, the feeling that I am engaging with people not something. Also for the first time I am starting to pay attention to usernames, I can even recognise a few commenter. It's amazing
I've noticed that with Lemmy and a couple other alternatives it feels like the first days of 4chan and Reddit. People are actually being civil and conversations are happening instead of people staying quiet because they know their comment will be lost in the thousands.
It's really relaxing tbh.
Relaxing is a great way to put it. It feels like meeting up with some friends at the park and hanging out. Just shooting the shit until the street lights come on
You've got a very good point here that I don't think a lot of people have considered. I'm glad someone had mentioned it -- it could very well be just what we need.
I have nothing else to add that wouldn't be portrayed as negative so I believe putting efforts frontwards to bettering what currently is, is a great course of action.
From my POV all we need to do is post and comment and create good communities. The people will come naturally if we do that.
I loved IRC! I'm sure it's not super popular these days, especially with the rise of Discord, but it was super fun. I always used PurpleSurge as the server which is now gone. Maybe it will come back into fashion?
Using Matrix/Element with rooms is usually similar to IRC
I totally agree with you. Genuine participation > growth for the sake of growth.
(Long-time reddit user, and former IRC (and ICQ!) user here too)
I don't think I will ever forget my icq number
Yes i was amongst the irc chat netizens from back then and I like the retro style feel now!
This is one of the biggest things I have been saying. While a bigger community is great, I’d be happy with a community of just 1% the size of Reddit. The small community vibe really gives me memories of the older days. Glad to see other people feel the same way.
I can see what you're saying and I do agree on some level. However one of the things I liked most about Reddit was how pseudo-anonymous it was.
There was too many people to know who everyone was, so I feel like it mitigated that unwelcoming cliquey-ness that you tend to get in the kind of smaller communities you tend to see on discord. It felt as if everyone equal, whether they had just joined a community or been furniture for a decade.
Entirely willing to suggest this might just be my own perspective and not a very common one
You are absolutely right, you are hitting the nail on the head with the issues I had with Reddit too. I was pretty much just a lurker because it seemed like every time I tried to reach out or make a connection with a community, it was largely unseen or ignored.
Cheers to a new start friend!
I kinda love the anonymity of Reddit, I could talk about my personal life with strangers who won't remember me within 5 minutes so I felt safe being open about things I can't talk about IRL even if I didn't get any feedback. I'm hoping that regardless of size, the communities here allow me to do that and still feel safe. Obviously I'll be more cautious here with a smaller user base, but I was still cautious on Reddit too because bad actors who would do you harm exist everywhere and can't be totally avoided if you engage online at all. Sometimes a larger user base simply helps alleviate the stress because you are just another random user rather than a recognisable user for people like me, but it definitely cuts both ways and sometimes people forget you are a human too. The quality of the community is absolutely the most important thing tho, and good communities will grow naturally.
To be fair I think the whole federation aspect has potential to work very well in this regard, i.e. the community will expand but you can decide which elements of the fediverse you want to engage with.
Absolutely, I suspect we'll see lots of duplicate communities to begin with and some will grow large, some will remain small and tight-knit, and some will just fade away. I'm still getting to grips with the whole fediverse thing but what I've experienced so far has been great and I think it's starting to make sense the more I use it so I have a good feeling about it. Some teething problems but overall it seems like a great place to be even if it doesn't totally replace Reddit.
Agreed. I think something that will help is if people suggest xpost opportunities when they see them. Like yesterday I posted on !rpg@lemmy.ca and someone suggested xposting on pathfinder.social, which I didn't know existed! So I've grown my subscription list by one more community.
I miss the days of messageboards and IRC rooms. Back in the day, Nintendo had a messageboard (the Hyrule Town Square and then the NSider Forums) and I was somewhat active on both of those. I even ran my own messageboard and made some good friends I still talk to to this day on another forum. There was an IRC room I'd hang out in a decade ago before they mostly all moved over to Discord.
A man who trusts everyone is a fool, and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools, if we live long enough. - Lewis Therin
Kek for now I just recognize @communist@beehaw.org because he's everywhere
Happy to help!
how did beehaw allowed you?
Why would they not?
One of the most useful things about reddit was that due to the sheer size of it you could quickly get answers on a myriad of different things from health problems to what kitchen appliance is better, often with very good arguments and trustworthy reviews. This is immensely useful and I hope we can replicate it here over time. It's nice to have a small community, but if it's good it will grow. There's not much that can be done about that. You can always start a new group based on some subsection of what the big groups cover to stay nimble.
yup, I agree. I forgot how much better smaller communities are now that I haven't used reddit in about a week. much less garbage on my feed that will eventually start to grow
The great news is we will get both with an instance for everyone.
Absolutely. And as much as I am saying this, I would love to see a proven alternative to massive corporate tech. I worked at one of these companies before, and I despise the them with a passion
Cannot stress enough how organic this place feels in comparison to Reddit, no "your post was removed due to karma" bullshit, no dumb comment chains, no "sponsored" or "related" fake posts embedded in the sub listing. Only raw user participation and community building. Feels wonderful.
Which one? And how was your experience?
Tinder. It was and probably still is, a great place to work. One day at the height of BLM, someone posted an article how another one of Match's companies was removing ethnicity filters in their app to keep out racists. I said wait, who are we to making these kind of societal decisions? Why are we removing users personal decisions because we don't like it? It turned out into a huge argument but it got me really thinking. Were not philosophers, sociologists, etc. Its a couple people from a very certain background making decisions that affect millions of people globally. Who are we to decide?
Then I thought about the fact that these kind of decisions were not even made for ethical reasons (which I don't even trust them to get correct), but were fueled entirely by money. Every single decision was entirely based on how much money it earns Tinder, with zero regard as to how it affects its users, in a very personal and important aspect of their lives. All the KPIs were money, internal projects called "Project Whale", zero discussions on relationships, experiments to get users addicted to the app as possible, etc.
If there ever was a decision that would help people but would compromise profits, profits will win, and if there ever is a concern that a decision is hurting users, it wont ever enter into the discussion.
Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future.
Damn, I knew dating apps were a shitshow and that corporations rigged them to make them as addictive as possible, but this is a whole another level of sinister. Tinder is known for being engineered from the ground up to keep people dependent on it with all sorts of dark patterns and obscure algorithms. This is just a reflection on how big tech's business model is ruining Internet and society as a whole.
There is nothing explicitly sinister there. I liked everyone there, everyone was really nice. In a sense that highlights the issue that this is an inherent problem with corporations. No one was explicitly trying to do harm, in fact people were trying to do good in terms of bringing saftey for women, advertising for racial/trans equality, etc. The problem I see is everyone is so focused on growing the platform and profits, that no one is thinking about what theyre doing wrong.
There are no explicit algorithmic tricks either, and there doesnt even need to be. The matching algorithm is actually dead on simple. But because the core metrics are profits and user engagement, even the corp running random experiments will end up naturally turning the platform more and more into a cash cow, with no regard or care as to what its doing to people.
What I mean is there doesn't need to be a room full of people thinking about how to exploit peoples psychology to use the app more, just the fact that the core goal of the whole organization is to make money, any actions it takes will naturally lead to that. If there's ever a compromise between humane values or profits, it will be profits.
Very insightful points. You're essentially identifying one of the mechanisms by which capitalism allows people to benefit from unethical behavior without taking responsibility. The corporation is a black box which takes in well intentioned individual work and input, and spits out dystopian corporate products and systems. No one person can be held responsible and the corporation becomes the scapegoat for the collective unethical behaviors of it's constituents.
Most people participate in this transmutation unknowingly, but some sharks fully understand that they can afford to be extremely shady and dodge the consequences through the corporate shield. Thus you end up with perfectly good people who become complicit in horrible shit.
That's why I don't have a job 🙃 (But I actually do and that seems worse to admit rn)
Oh one more example.
Tinder advertised a ton globally with the message of "Single, Not Sorry". Does Tinder know if being single is actually good for everyone? Is this a message you'd blatantly tell all your friends without knowing them? If there was a study saying this was harmful, would they care enough, cut back and tell people to use the app less/more considerably? No because like I said, if it interferes with profits, these kind of considerations will never be talked about.
Few other things. We released a feature where you pay $3 to see if someone responded to you, and the other user would know. Clearly you're fucking yourself over doing that but they don't care. We released a feature where you can see if someone is online, because it increases engagement.
You'd never see shit like this in any organization or community run by people.
You're goddamn right. I've been single until very recently for a real long while and I didn't enjoy it at all. Profit driven business and infinite growth is harming everything.
How the fuck can you paywall LIKES? Tinder seems not too different to gacha games and lootboxes. This is why I'm so blatant on actually moving to federated services. These do not need to be run by megacorps since costs can be distributed through instances.
Small services that aren't federated eventually become too expensive to run and that's why I dislike Tildes in favor of Kbin/Lemmy. What is the next step? You already know.
Me too, really hoping this stuff works out.
I agree, I think we shouldn't be focused so much on "growing" the network and more just making it better. I think it's unlikely we'll reach particularly high user counts, and that's okay. We can have a nice little comfy community.
Someone posted a link a while ago to an article called killing community. I believe it speaks what I've been thinking for a while. I've quit so many social media over such a long time but I'm also part of a small community of friends. We Have our own little corner of the internet with file sharing and things like password manager and chat server and so on. We've been going strong for 15 years and going. Growth at all costs destroys communities.
think the difference is community vs attention (or lack there of). while i personally am not currently looking for the latter, don't think i appreciated how much i enjoy the former until this whole spez driven melt down happened.
am sure things will evolve as they're meant to, in the meantime just happy to be here.
Bigger is not always better. Smaller communities are exactly why the old internet used to be better. Less centralization of userbases meant more productive discussion and friendlier communities.
yeah, looking back at it now that you mention it, the only names I really recognized in reddit were the famous/infamous ones, or the ones that were obnoxious enough on the subs I subscribed to. in reddit, over the 15 years I used it, I created a new profile every year or two - had to, I kept getting banned from top-level subs. a profile name generally meant nothing inasmuch as it was required to use the platform...
/U/vargas /U/rogersimon10 /U/shittymorph and their stories shall be handed down long after Reddit kicks the bucket for good.
Edit: can't forget /u/poem_for_your_sprog Was always a joy seeing him pop up.
Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I'll just lock it for now.