Obviously a few years ago, the API changes caused the reddit community mods to strike, and caused a mass-blackout of most reddit core communities. Eventually Reddit removed a handful of mod teams on some notable subreddits and caused the rest to chicken-out. But it did birth the Fediverse properly.

I suspect Reddit will make another step at some point which causes another comparable exodus. This time, if they do, the Fediverse is far better developed to handle it. What do you imagine it might be?

  • mehquestion@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    So tangentially to the post, I guess the implied question is: when will Lemmy see another explosion in its userbase.

    And to that…I don’t know.

    I’ve been trying to get away from reddit for a while and the problem with Lemmy is two fold

    1. Very minor: it requires me to unblock cloudflare when I’m using noscript

    2. More major, I still don’t have an intuitive understanding of how lemmy works. On reddit if I was interested in knitting, going to old.reddit.com/r/knitting would be a good starting point.

    I’m still confused about multiple instances, why bifurcate the community (are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).

    I (perhaps foolishly) consider myself slightly above average in terms of tech literacy; if I’m this confuse I do wonder how are others going to fare.

    • eleitl@lemmy.zip
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      It won’t, most likely. Old users are rather going offline than migrating. And the federated nature of lemmy and having to deal with censorhappy instance admins and dying instances keep communities lose members each time when forced to migrate.

      • Skavau@piefed.socialOP
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        2 days ago

        As far as I know, lemm.ee was the only notable instance that was shut down - and I believe most communities on there successfully migrated to a mixture of piefed.social, lemmy.zip and a smattering of others.

        • eleitl@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          Yes, our community has had the bad luckof having had to move three times. Shedding members each time. The last move was due to the sudden shutdown of lemm.ee.

    • Skavau@piefed.socialOP
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      2 days ago

      I’m still confused about multiple instances, why bifurcate the community (are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).

      To prevent the centralisation of power into a single instance. If Lemmy.world was the only instance and the owners and admins would have full power. Because the fediverse is centralised, if the instance goes bad - or some moderators on communities there go bad, they can be replaced on another instance.

      (are there multiple instances of knitting communities on lemmy?).

      Yes, but none of them are active.

      • mehquestion@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        No I totally understand the benefit of decentralization; however on the user end, I just want to consume content.

        To that end, can I post on one knitting instance and that’ll reach all knitting communities on Lemmy? How do I get the most engagement, which instance is the most popular

        (and by the way, knitting was a random example on my end, but I am surprised that there aren’t any active instances to what I would assume, is a fairly popular hobby).

        • Skavau@piefed.socialOP
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          2 days ago

          To that end, can I post on one knitting instance and that’ll reach all knitting communities on Lemmy? How do I get the most engagement, which instance is the most popular

          No. Not through Lemmy. But Piefed, which reads Lemmy communities - has feeds that users can make that combines communities into a single feed. Incidentally, I have made a knitting feed.

          (and by the way, knitting was a random example on my end, but I am surprised that there aren’t any active instances to what I would assume, is a fairly popular hobby).

          Tbh Lemmy/Piefed is pretty nerd orientated. It is popular, but not with the audiences here. In any case, there are centralisation efforts on here from time to time designed to unify communities of the same topic across multiple instances by locking cloned communities. When there is demand, but split, this does happen.