It’s worth noting that some users might be attracted to Lemmy due to its smaller, more niche communities and the sense of belonging that comes with being part of a smaller, specialized group. Others might be drawn to Lemmy’s technical aspects, such as its use of ActivityPub and its potential for customization and modification.
Some users might also be deterred from Lemmy, but please do not let this distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
We often talk about toxic newbies, but sometimes we don't pay enough attention to how we ourselves changed as a result. Make them feel welcome, and see how much Lemmy changes back.
If you (yes, you, reader) are new to Lemmy, have my wholehearted "Welcome"! Hugs on demand, cookies right there, make yourself comfy :)
Avoid politics-oriented communities unless toxicity is your thing. Start with any instance (most likely you chose lemmy.world as your starting point?), but explore others and what they have to offer. You can even be on several of them if that's your thing! Enjoy!
Are we growing though?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats shows MAU (monthly active users) decreasing - we are now at 43k, last month was 45k, the month before 47k, etc. Total servers also decreasing - now 540, was 552, 579, etc. Overall posts and comments are slightly up though - so we're seeing increased activity from fewer users, rather than an increase in actual users. One could argue whether we're truly "decreasing" vs. merely flat, but either way I don't see us increasing.
And 3 of those users are myself, all active and only 2 of which I had a week ago, speaking to how alts are most definitely a thing. Also, federation issues especially staying in sync with Lemmy.World may be causing people to shift instances (or to leave entirely?). If so that would be a good thing bc 0.19.6 promises to help address that. (Although in my case, I wanted an instance that allows custom blocks of any instance I choose without needing to rely on an admin team, and that isn't dependent upon the Lemmy codebase.)
For one thing, people might be turning away due to the upcoming USA election, in which case depending on who survives that, they could return? But every person I've ever recommended to check out Lemmy has looked at me in disgust and actively chided me for having recommended it when they see some of the political extremism here. e.g.:
Whenever I go looking for examples of such I usually find it in 0-60 seconds, by going to Lemmy.ml and browsing by Local.
Your instance is doing wonderful work keeping such out - I wonder if that image will even render for you:-). But overall, across the wide Fediverse, people are not willing to put up with such, and seem to be leaving us overall rather than find some other way to deal with whatever it is that was bugging them.
And with such trends, and the way we treat normies, I don't see us ever going mainstream. Maybe PieFed and Sublinks, along with Mbin and ofc Tesseract on e.g. dubvee.org will help turn that around? That would be so nice?:-)
Btw what will we call ourselves then, if it does - will we still be "Lemmy"/Lemmings, or just general Fedizens? Either way there's great hope for the future, but also a lot of work to do to reach that point.
It's easy to forget how bad it can get.
One day I wandered into /r/kotakuinaction over some linked comment on the Tomb Raider animation, and the Fallout TV series, and... yeah. I remembered.
And that's a pretty mild example.
Head over.to Hexbear and say you like south park or something. You're welcome.
tfw somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
Uh yeah welcome, could you leave that baggage outside tho? kthx
Welcome! In my biais view we're less toxic but still far from perfect.
Don't hesitate to post on smaller communities. People will be so happy to see a post they will forgot to be negative.
I look forward to read from you again (^_^)All I have to say is fuck Reddit mods.
Permanently Deleted
Just the other day I had to block this idiot from harassing me, claiming I was faking ignorance about Trump's stance on Israel so I could "bait Americans into a discussion", for some reason. I'm European, I don't follow presidential candidate policies very closely at all. This tool was also European, and Palestinian. I don't know why they were insisting so hard I would do this inexplicably weird thing, but maybe their emotions were running high. I'm against genocide btw, of course. ✊
could be applied to some mods as well
eternal "eternal september" september
As an ex-Reddit I get it, I was a refugee of Apollo.
Still have that legend on my phone and is now a memorial of what used to be.
🤣🤣🤣👍👌
The truth of the matter is that you can get rejected and banned on Reddit for absolutely no serious reason, so I don't think reddit refugees are all toxic people
I for instance was permabanned from both my accounts because the mods on a subreddit I was banned reported me to reddit admins for ban evasion when I didn't even know something like this existed, when at the same time I was talking with the mods to lift the ban! I had both my accounts for at least a year so surely I didn't have any of them for evading any ban, reddit mods are arrogant and so full of themselves because there are millions of people there and at the same time they forget that the people made it what it is
