I plan to, but I also plan to do it fully - going through saved links and bookmarking or documenting relevant recipes/guides/etc, removing all the comment history, etc etc.
I’m not really good at doing that in a timely manner. I have so many big projects, and smaller projects, that have been postponed for so long. It’s just another thing on the list.
Bonus for Lemmy being federated, though - if lemmy.world or lemmy.ml no longer gives users want they’re looking for, you can start your own flangscrawchl.er and choose whether or not you want to federate with them.
Corporations will have their own draw; shittification is a thing they do after they have majority market share and their users are entrenched. A new social network service could rise (even one made by Google for Facebook) that is easy to use, has QoL features that network it with its corporate siblings, etc. It sees increased traffic, it gets big… then it shittifies again.
As long as users are following corporate interests, this cycle continues. It’s a slow-burn likeness of competing ISP sign-up contracts throwing in Xboxes. (Though I hear the US has service deserts, so that mightn’t happen there.)
Lemmy probably won’t shittify to the same degree; while larger servers like Lemmy.ml can house a huge percentage of Lemmy users, it can’t ‘go rogue’ in a way that means anything to Lemmy as a whole.
It also can’t offer the same QoL features a corporatized service can, because those can afford to operate at a loss while building market share. A subsidiary can be used as a ‘loss leader’, ie: it doesn’t matter if it costs more to run than it earns directly, because it gets users into the door for things that do profit.
What you describe can, and mostly likely will happen. But Lemmy’s nature makes it more responsive to user interests.
Sounds like an interesting read; thanks for putting it on my radar.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I would expect that a platform without an app to push will have a usable mobile-friendly site at least. (Most users are mobile, so it would be strange if they didn’t.)
For those homed on other instances, search !china@latte.isnot.coffee to view the c/ from your home portal.
One of many examples of how profit-driven platforms care about engagement quantity over product quality. A lack of stopping points feeds FOMO and keeps people trapped longer, but I doubt many people actively enjoy it.
I disable it on any platform that lets me - besides, pagination can be cached to return to later. Doomscrolling can be binged but not suspended.
I’m rapidly coming to appreciate it.
Maybe it’s the demographic of users (young vs old, tech savvy vs casual, w/e) but threads here have far more activity in ratio to the number of subscribers and members.
Reddit just feels like a popularity context. Tell your ‘I also choose this guy’s dead wife’ joke, get your karma, and for god’s sake DON’T USE EMOJIS! Subs rapidly became echo chambers, or lose identity as they get larger.
Lemmy however… while not all threads have activity (it’s small after all), the activity is legitimately interactive. People actually discussing ideas. We’re talking like thinking adults, and I’m enjoying it.
Lemmy is decentralised, so there’s no way to establish the concept of a ‘super community’ without decided a specific instance plays that role - an instance that, ultimately, is hobby run and just as vulnerable to outages as the others. What happens when the instance running the Super goes down?
There’s also no way to make a Super any more official than any other. It can handshake a bunch of instances, but unless a user registers to the Super, they still need to search for them like they do now to introduce them to their own instance. A ‘Super’ may as well just be an instance deciding to put a Megathread of federated servers in its own Support community.
If the Super federates with a bunch of different instances, it also limits those instances abilities to defederate from each other. We’d end up with one of the following:
I’d suggest users subscribe to duplicates, for a few reasons (ultimately about federation and safety in redundancy).
1. Connectivity.
Until an instance first reaches out to introduce itself to another instance, communities are not visible. Somebody on lemmy.ml can look for ‘gaming’, but until somebody searches for !technology@beehaw.org to introduce lemmy.ml and beehaw.org to each other, then beehaw’s communities like beehaw.org/c/gaming will not be in the results.
Having duplication helps communities find people across many instances. While it’s true that one will likely get bigger than the other, people cross-posting in them or being active in both will allow them to act as bridges to each other, improving how instances network.
2. Longevity.
Lemmy is federated. That means we have dozens of different servers running in different homes, basements, hobbyist offices. It’s not centralised, and they’re passion projects. So not only is decided which instance should be the ‘official’ one meaningless, having at least two active somewhat-duplicates provides a level of redundancy if one of them shuts down. (Say, the owner dies, or goes bankrupt, or their office is hit my a natural disaster.)
3. Community.
So you raised the idea of each smaller community having duplicates. This is a problem for a platform that wants an aggregate that reaches as many as possible, such as a tech support community. But for social communities, the smaller ones have their own niche. You might not get as much volume in cat pictures (you can always sub to more cat subs if you wish) but the c/cats on your own instance is going to develop it own instance-specific community, where you know each others’ cats by name. Hey @kittypaws@lemmy.meow, how is Madame Biscuits doing today? She seems to like her new bed!