this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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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.
I think that's inevitable of all such social media type sites eventually though - as they grow, the 'popularity contest' feel grows with them, initially as a way to be heard in the every-growing crowd, and later as an end in itself.
It'll probably happen to Lemmy too at some point - but if it does at least it will mean that Lemmy has managed to survive and grow. And people here in the early days will have the pleasure of being able to say "Lemmy wasn't like this at the start, I'm leaving for Flangscrawchler" (or whatever)
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.
We should implement the no emoji rule here though...
ππ€ π€¨πΆπ€
No, thanks. Emojis can still communicate in ways pure text doesn't, or provide humour, or imply tone on text that is otherwise ambiguous. That last point in particular would probably defuse a lot of misunderstandings.
Reddit's obsession with emoji being universally bad feels like a kneejerk reaction to me: they associate excessive emoji with young people, tiktok, or insta; and therefore emojis are bad because being associated with young/tiktok/insta people makes them feel yucky.
But then Reddit does things like πππ ZOOP and now its acceptable because that's a Reddit thing so we can make an exception. The emojis themselves aren't the issue, the other online cultures Reddit is trying to segregate itself from are.
Banning entire dialects of online communication out of a superiority complex - no, not here on Lemmy thank you. There's no reason we can't use both together, so long as your intent is communicated who cares if you put emojis in it. π