10mo ago

Should Lemmy buy ads on Reddit?

fedidb.org FediDB, Fediverse Network Statistics

FediDB is a cutting-edge service providing detailed statistics and insights into the Fediverse network.

User count has plateaued at about 420K

Active user count rose significantly between 2/24 37K to 3/24 51K

Hopefully users who signed up last year are coming back to use their accounts.

Maybe because they're tired of ads on reddit?

Should we put together a collection and and buy an ad campaign on Reddit?

I can see it now:

"Ads suck. We're ad-free forever. Join Lemmy."

and

"He'll never get us. Join Lemmy." or "Don't let him get you. Join Lemmy"

Fediverse @lemmy.world

mesamune @lemmy.world

1mo ago

Anyone know why lemmy user counts looks so strange on fedidb?

fedidb.org /software/lemmy

47 2

56 comments

ads cost money to increase users to eventually profit from them later.
how would a decentralized lemmy profit from the increased users.
Any money spent on ads would be better off hiring more engineering resources and improving lemmy for the next time Reddit does something dumb prompting an exodus.
- June is incoming. Some shit is bound to happen.
  
  I'm probably ootl: why June specifically?
- The idea is for some users to pool some money together to buy ads, not for the platform to do it. I guess the idea is that as users, we benefit from the additional content that comes along with more users.
  
  Because of the flat and nonprofit nature of Lemmy "users pooling money together" is the platform allocating budget.

No. We should not give them our money.
If anything then we should post more links to relevant original Lemmy content on other platforms.
- OC is needed and should then shared on Reddit. But Reddit has changed to incentivize content posted on Reddit, so any OC will probably be stolen.

Do not give Reddit money.

My reasons against that
we'd be directly giving money to Reddit
users dislike the places they see ads about, and it would appear extra desperate because of the point above
money is better spent supporting developers and content creators on here
Not to mention that Reddit will probably shut that down
That doesn't mean we don't do anything though. A number of subreddits continue to have automod messages and pinned posts directing people elsewhere. There are a lot of people on Reddit who WANT things to succeed here.
So some other ways to help.
On Reddit:
work with subreddits to set up parallel communities here, and ease the transition of people moving
find subreddits that benefit from backups / fediverse communities, and work with them to improve things
On the fediverse:
write up guides and update existing resources to help newcomers
Post interesting content on the fediverse. People use things they get value out of, and new people won't stay if things are quiet here. Set up an RSS feed, share the cool videos you see, write about your thoughts on casual communities.
Specifically financial:
Donate to the development of a project you like. If you can, reoccurring donations provide stability for the developers to work on things.
Donate to the instances that are running the services and platforms
TLDR:
Money can help, but paying for ads isn't the way to go (at least not yet)
- I do like your ad ideas nonetheless @zabadoh@lemmy.ml. If we were swimming in money, it could be more of a discussion
  A near black screen with small text at the bottom would be fun. "Ads suck, so we removed one for you. Come to the Fediverse for ad-free social media"

I'm probably the weird one, but I specifically make it a point not to buy anything I've seen in any ad.
- I do this, too. I've noticed local companies who advertise heavily on local TV/radio often charge 2x as much as the competition who don't. And the aggressive advertisers are often arrogant and difficult to work with.
  And it pisses me off when I see giant insurance companies spending millions on celebrity spokespeople and Superbowl ads. That represents a lot of denied claims.
  Beyond all that: fuck reddit. Don't give money to spez.

Fight enshittification through enshittification? Not really a good idea, if you ask me.

I don't want users who come over due to ads.
- I actually think users who click ads are probably the ones who most need to learn about the alternatives!
  
  yeah good for them but not for me.

What would be the point of trying to increase the user count, beyond "line goes up"?
- Niche communities
  
  Niche communities really only have value when they grow organically. Trying to artificially inflate them won't make them better.
- I find Lemmy is better with fewer users just like Reddit used to be.
  I kinda miss a few subs but they’ve been replaced by new things I discovered here.
  The websites can coexist and users can do as we please.

Lemmy(software) shouldn't buy ads but I don't think there's any reason an individual instance shouldn't buy ads if they choose to. Whether or not that will bring users that are worth having, is a different story entirely.

No. You don't want people's first exposure to the fediverse to be something annoying.
Also, anyone with a modicum of understanding is already blocking ads. Do we really want the dregs of the internet that don't do so?

Why the growth fetish ?
- It's fear of calcification. Lemmy is tiny, in terms of our user base.
  If we don't get fresh blood, and most importantly the rare active contributors, we'll just get used to talking to each other, we'll get bored or burned out and leave.
  
  I understand. I suppose it is a risk, but I prefer the arguments against inorganic growth, put by others here.
  A compromise could be, seeking to grow individual subs - so people come because of their interest superbowls for example - rather than an effort to attract every yahoo with nothing better to do on the internet.
- One of the effects of capitalism is that people are conditioned to think as growth in quantity is the end goal of all human activity.
  This makes it harder to realize that, as far as the Fediverse is concerned, at very least, Lemmy and Mastodon have achieved viable self-sustaining networks and that driving inorganic growth by targeting users in other platforms would reduce the viability of the network because it makes onboarding new users harder. An example of this even inside reddit was when a subreddit got a sudden large influx of new subscribers they invariably lost what made them stand out in the first place.
  
  self-sustaining
  I'm hesitant about that. It's still run by volunteers, and that'll end when the volunteer gets tired of paying the bills for whatever instance.
  I think Lemmy needs to find a way to disassociate instance hosting from some individual kindly paying the bill. It doesn't need to be profit driven, just a way to get people to donate enough to keep the servers going.
- !leagueoflegends@lemmy.world I want more then two others to discuss my hobby.

"are you sick of ads? Heres an ad!" Doesn't have the same impact you think it does.
Also, food for thought: you really want to invite the kind of people who can't use adblockers here? Barriers to entry aren't necessarily a bad thing. You want quality, not quantity. More people isn't necessarily better. And the people who stuck by reddit and spez through all of that?
- "Ads suck, and Reddit sucks. So we paid Reddit to show you an ad."
- Have you used Lemmy before June 2023? I've been using it since late 2022 and it wasn't fun
  
  And you think that the people who already saw entire subreddits shutdown in protest, with Lemmy plastered all over the place as an alternative, who decided to stay after all the content creators left, THOSE PEOPLE, are the ones you want to now court over?
  Again, quality vs quantity.
  We already gained the quality contributors from reddit. Advertising now is just drawing from the bottom of the barrel.

The kind of people who would join this place are also the kind that would block ads.

Nah, fuck that. This place is already too much like reddit.
- It will be like reddit for a bit, then new instances will spin up and we'll still have the choice the fedeiverse offers

Give them nothing, take everything.

A study just came out that was posted in Hexbear showing at least 15% of Reddit content is corporate botting so we should just have some fun with LLMs and AstroTurf it instead like everyone else is doing
- I'd posit those numbers are much, much higher, and some guys who used to do our Megathreads over in r/Android now keep getting random bots commenting against months, even
  posts - https://archive.is/OmW0f
  I spotted em years ago over in their many test subreddits and reddit actually outsourced them as a QA testing.

Besides the reasons already mentioned by others here: not all users are the same, and we're better off if some of them remain in Reddit. And yet this sort of advertisement is bound to attract people who are at the very least completely clueless (otherwise they wouldn't be seeing ads), if not worse.
Instead I think that a better approach is to simply use the platform. Create posts, insightful comments, use the voting buttons. Also, discourage people from derailing non-political threads with political content.

I get the idea. I'd like to see more users on Lemmy too but I don't think ads are the way to go. The best bet is probably more OC content and questions being answered as I've started seeing Lemmy post appear in Google searches.
I would love to see a collection of donations for Lemmy to get more developed which I think would be a much better use than ads.
I think currently the best way to get more users is word of mouth. For now...

Up to you. But i wouldnt waste the time or money unless you want your site's iq to fall at an accelerated rate

I think just trying to gather any redditor is a bad idea, there are really bad twisted redditors.

I wouldn't put it passed r*ddit to accept the transaction then only push them to some group that makes them look bad so if that group leaves they can claim they successfully cleaned up their platform.

No.
Fuck reddit, lmao

Only if it attracts Mike Pondsmith only.

Might as well, the bots, trolls and nazi's are here now anyways.

56 comments