this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Question for subreddit moderators (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'm pretty happy with the experience on Lemmy so far as I joined even before the blackouts started happening. The trigger was the dumpster fire of an AMA with the CEO. I tried kbin first because it's supposed to be newer and more interoperable with other federated platforms but I found the instance I was on wouldn't properly load content from Lemmy and I couldn't find a kbin Android app. So I'll be here for the time being.

During the shitstorm on Twitter and the exodus to Mastodon, I tried out Mastodon and felt that it was a similarly welcoming experience. But I kept reading comments on Reddit that the Fediverse was too complicated and it was too hard to find people to follow because you needed their username as well as their instance to find them. I hope people have realised that it's not that much harder during this current Reddit shitshow.

Everyone understands that Reddit/Lemmy/kbin is built on community, and the growth of this community has been fostered by moderators, not Reddit itself. So my question to any subreddit moderators is: Is there something about the Fediverse that would prevent you from moving your community off Reddit? It seems pretty clear that people will try Reddit alternatives even before their favourite subreddits have moved. Users are engaged with the communities that you have built and loyal to the 3rd party app developers and we don't give a fuck about Reddit as an organisation.

Discussion open to everyone, but curious to know if any moderators are also using Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Forgive my comment for being a bit... crass.

Lemmy & the Federation are emerging technologies.

Early tech adopters are never "average people", they are disproportionately geeky 18-to-35 year old middle-class white males with spare time to tinker around. Or basically... me.

It's less likely they are ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, disabled individuals, elderly, women and/or other disadvantaged groups. So Lemmy is at a demographic disadvantage right now.

It took a very, very long time for the "average person" to accept Reddit as an accessible & safe online platform for anyone that doesn't fit the 'early adopter' archetype. Heck, I still know folks that think of Reddit as a sort-of 'radical' space where Hackers cosplayers use tech-jargon to communicate all day. And it wasn't that long ago where this was more true than lies.

In any case, there's a reason why Lemmy's most popular communities are things like Technology, Gaming, Linux, Piracy. There's waaaaay less human-interest stuff. Way less stuff that appeals broadly.

An example:
Do you know how many subscribers there are in /c/relationship_advice right now ? There are four. There are zero posts.
Meanwhile, r/relationship_advice has over 9 million. And it's pretty close to 1:1 ratio for men and women contributors.

Over on Reddit, I help mod a regional community of 65K subscribers. It's a casual place with casual people. People hop in asking for tourism advice, recommendations for school districts, questions about traffic or local quirks, etc. These people aren't always tech-literate.

So the thing that prevents me from moving my community off Reddit is... they're not ready for it yet. I suspect a lot of mods feel the same.

In the meantime - we can focus on making Lemmy into the best space it can be for when those users are ready. We have meaningful dialogue, we respect our differences, we keep the place clear of ads & spam, and clear of bigotry.

Once there are high quality, extremely simple apps that allow everyday users to browse Lemmy without having to explain any advanced tech jargon, I'm hopeful the Federation will take off. The demographics here will shift, and with that - communities will be more eager to move over. We might see things like "Hi Lemmy, I'm an old Korean War survivor. AMA!" instead of "Plex is giving me an unsupported codec notification, did I download the wrong DLLs?".

Hope that rambling made sense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks. Yes I understand where you're coming from. But I also agree with your other responder. I wouldn't be too quick to underestimate people. I'm not white, I'm over 35 and in a sexual minority.

I think that if someone has made the effort to learn how to use Reddit because they were able to find a community they belong to outside of Facebook or Twitter, understanding Federation isn't a huge learning curve if you're already using email.

Even if you're a non technical user, there are enough of the massive subreddits that went dark that these people wouldn't be able to easily ignore what was happening, or be at least mildly interested in why it was happening.

To me, the changes with Reddit's APIs simply highlight the disconnect between Reddit as an organisation vs Reddit as a platform for building community.

Maybe it's a naive view, but other than the moderation tools, the reason that communities have grown to be safe places is because of the unpaid work of moderators, not because of Reddit's leadership. If users appreciated why moderators and 3rd party app devs are pissed off, they would understand that the power of their community comes from the bottom up and moderators hold a lot of influence.

Regardless, it will be interesting to watch moderators wait for other moderators to decide which should come first, the chicken or the egg.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I also agree with your other responder

For clarity, I appreciate the points and don't disagree!

As a fact, I don't know the demographics of this place, other than seeing what the most popular communities are currently - and making assumptions informed by my experiences with emerging technologies of the past.

I would find it very difficult to believe that Lemmy is closer to being representative of the general population than Reddit. Clearly there are going to be plenty of people that don't fit the 'archetype' of early adopters, which is a great thing! Diversity is a requirement for us to thrive.

understanding Federation isn’t a huge learning curve if you’re already using email

The reason I don't give people credit is because.. well, it's like this.
Skype has been around for 20 years. Zoom pops up in the pandemic. 3 years later, people still can't manage their zoom calendar invites, someone is always unmuted when they should be muted, "how do I screen share?" or "how can I turn my camera on?". This is like 1/3 of all meetings. And if there are breakout rooms... it gets worse. People aren't good with tech..

I would go a step further and say that understanding the Federation isn't actually relevant. Most people just want a convenient product that does the thing they want it to do. Whether it's getting breaking news or a cat picture.

the reason that communities have grown to be safe places is because of the unpaid work of moderators,

100% agree.

If users appreciated why moderators and 3rd party app devs are pissed off, they would understand that the power of their community comes from the bottom up and moderators hold a lot of influence.

I really want to believe this, but I'm more pessimistic than you. My experiences would tell me they don't understand and don't care. They just want the thing they're comfortable with to work.

I've tried to explain it clearly and simply. I've gotten, "I never even heard of 3rd party apps before this. I've been on the official app for 8 months and it's just fine. It'll be fine, sheesh!". If you try to explain that they indirectly already benefit from independent developers like Imgur, they won't care.

When r/NBA went dark during the Finals, mods were receiving threats. They opened it up to public comment and people really couldn't comprehend why any of it had to inconvenience their ability to have a dialogue during their important event.

As an NBA fan, I'm empathetic to those frustrations. But is the average Reddit user empathetic to ours?

Going full circle - that just means we have to make this place great. Great third party tools and apps, great dialogue and simplicity. I'm hopeful that Federation is the future of online communities. The timeline will depend on how fast Reddit implodes,

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

A first step in removing bigotry is perhaps to let go of the stereotypes. There are a lot in your post.... None of which you can back up with hard data. It may be hard for you to sympathize with, but always getting confronted with the supposed "fact" that you are the odd one out when you are not male, white, middle-class, does not exactly make for a welcoming stance.

The same goes for stereotypes about who is interested in what kind of topics (supposedly). It doesn't help anyone to repeat these stereotypes again and again. But it's offputting for people who get put into boxes like that.

Have some faith in people who do not fit your archetype or you. They are more capable than you think. When we would all stop to basically tell them "No don't try, this is too complicated to you and you are interested in other stuff anyway!" that would help a lot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The subreddits I moderate are all quite small (about 2-5k subscribers) and on relatively obscure topics. For now the Lemmy communities I've started are on pretty broad, general topics. I'll consider official moves for them if the Lemmy userbase gets big enough or if Reddit really does die.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

As long as my sub is getting traffic on Reddit I will unfortunately keep a Reddit sub. I have however, opened an additional one on Lemmy and I have a discord for my sub now as well. That way, we don't only exist on Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is there something about the Fediverse that would prevent you from moving your community off Reddit? It seems pretty clear that people will try Reddit alternatives even before their favourite subreddits have moved. Users are engaged with the communities that you have built and loyal to the 3rd party app developers and we don’t give a fuck about Reddit as an organisation.

I don't currently moderate on reddit, but I can tell you that the larger subs I used to moderate will likely not be moving to lemmy in the foreseeable future. The moderation tools currently available for lemmy are extremely limited compared to what you get with reddit and the toolbox extension. What lemmy has now is okay for smaller communities of up to maybe a few thousand subscribers, but I think the level of spam and trolling you'd see with even tens of thousands would be completely unmanageable with the tools currently available, let alone any more than that.