I’ve been using Lemmy for a couple years now, and unfortunately I’ve noticed a significant decline in the niche communities that were originally active. When I first joined I saw much more variety when browsing the All feed. But over time, the communities I liked have faded as shitposting and meme communities have come to dominate the platform.
I think this shift has changed the culture of Lemmy. There seems to be more of a herd mentality now, where people downvote reasonable opinions they disagree with. The discussions don’t feel as nuanced. Some people have even been attacked for innocuous comments that don’t align with the prevailing groupthink.
The niche communities that made Lemmy special are fading away, and the resulting monoculture makes me less inclined to participate. I want a platform that supports substantive discussions in my interests, not just memes and shitposting.
I don’t know what the solution is on a platform level, but a culture shift is needed if Lemmy wants to retain users like me who valued the diversity of opinions. I may have to move to a platform that allows better filtering and proportionality between niche interests and funny or stupid content. I want Lemmy to succeed, but right now I’m finding myself drawn back to Reddit because the niche communities there seem more active. I’ll keep checking in, but Lemmy needs to recapture its original spirit if I’m going to make it my main home.
Squabbles had a really good approach in this to motivate lurkers to comment and post. I don’t see a similar coordinated effort for that here.
How did they do that?
They had a community/place for “former lurkers to cheer each other on as we work together to overcome our hesitation when posting and commenting”. People shared stories how for example “I have never posted on Reddit but today I posted here in a community that interests me” and would get positive encouraging comments.
It seemed to work, the other communities benefitted from it.
Well why don’t we do that then? What should it be called?
Lurker’s Lounge?