Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:
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I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
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Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
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Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I’m willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.
Yes, I don’t need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.
Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.
There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.
If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.
What about now?
Still visiting several subreddits that don’t have corresponding active lemmy communities. Once of them actually has an “official” lemmy community (run by the same mods) but none of the people moved over, so it’s empty,
My problem with Lemmy is the lack of activity in niche communities. You’re right that there needs to be a critical mass and arguably Lemmy has it, but only for the most mainstream, generic type of content. It doesn’t have the mass to sustain any sort of niche, outside of maybe tech related topics because of the way the userbase is slanted.
I find myself going back there often because of that, but I hope that the userbase for generic content enough to sustain and grow, from where more active niche communities can spring up.