Where do we really stand on supporting reddit migration? We want to get people off corporate social media right?

I'm a reddit migrant, making a move on as many media platforms as possible away from corpo ones over to more decentralized or open source ones

We should make one fully centralized mega instance and contain all the Redditors over there.

My comments in other threads are not intended to be isolationist, and when I reas others I fear you misconstrue many.

We are not saying "let them stay on Reddit and other corporate media". We are saying "teach them, preach the benefit, and when they want to come, and are ready to come, they will."

That is how you nurture a growing community, vs "make line go up."

Personally, I think the big thing is that we need a tool to see who is defederated from who. We don't want some poor sod somehow thinking that since they are leftist that Hexbear or Lemmygrad would be a good place for them.

We need to build a space for them to migrate into. Most of what I see on Lemmy is, frankly, whiny. If we want to grow we need to set a better example.

I support it because I want more people to talk about shows with

The more we can do to move people to the fediverse, thereby reducing corporate control, the better.

This is probably in response to the thread here.

I know I said something that may be taken this way, and I stand by it so I'll repeat it here:

There was something in retail I learned. There are people who will come in on sale days, and they will demand perfect customer service, and demand the lowest prices, and ask for more sales and bring coupons, all while talking about how they spend so much money there and that they’re so loyal. Then they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again

You can spend time and effort with them, the ones who only care about the cheapest place, or you can spend time with the customers who are actually there regularly. The ones who get to know your names, who are loyal, or enjoy a sale sure but also will be there even when there isn’t one.

I don’t want to attract users simply because reddit bad, and cater our experience for people who can’t bother to learn just the basic tenant of the fediverse. I want to cater our experiences for those who are here daily, and the ones who are genuinely interested. It’s the longer slower approach, but we’ll stay more true to our goals

I'm not afraid of saying that yes, that is my opinion. I've helped a lot of people migrate here away from Reddit, and I also hold the opinion that sign up is a bit daunting for users - but it's not impossible and it's gotten much easier than it was even just a few years ago.

What I see more often from people dipping their toes into the fediverse is constant complaining and whining. I've been through... 5-6 waves of new reddimigrants, and each time there are a quiet majority who pick up the fediverse and start running with it, and I've chatted with a good many of them. However, there's also a major chunk of people who immediately start complaining. There isn't feature parity, it's more confusing, it's less stable, why can't it do video - all of which have been answered a thousand times and are constantly improving.

To me it's exactly like the people shopping for sales. They come in, demand the absolute best service, complain that their niche communities aren't thriving, and refuse to even stick around for a week to see what it's like. If they aren't willing to even do the bare minimum of finding out "What is an instance?" then they're not going to stick around when we tell them that none of us can afford to host video, or that we will never have stability like Reddit, or this, or that. So I say let them leave. We came here to the fediverse because we want to build something different, and we know there are shortcomings that come with it.

If people want to join earnestly and help us build something here, curate small communities that we can be proud of, then I welcome them with open arms. If they can't even bother to read the first two sentences on the joinlemmy page, well, you make your own success there.

Currently, it seems most Lemmy users are very technically inclined, there are a lot of software devs and sysadmins. I certainly don't mind that, but I would love to see a more diverse demographic. I do feel like some people here seem to think that technical knowledge strongly correlates with the ability to have intelligent discussions, which I don't.

In reality we should.

To many in lemmy are to happy to stay in their special little corner.

In my opinion, everyone who is like "we only want more people who understand the fediverse" are stupid.

How are people supposed to learn and understand the fediverse if they don't try it?

The more people we get off of corporate bullshit, the better.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Diversity is paramount for social media, otherwise it becomes an echo chamber or worse.

Say what you will about the average redditor, but remember at a certain point they're just the average person.

I mean, love me some Linux nerds and Germans as much as the rest of you but lemmy needs more.

Who's "we"? I don't run a lemmy instance. I'm not against new users. I'm also not opposed to a lot of hard work and money going into making the experience better, but since I'm not providing either - who's "we"?

What I've seen many times is people stating the opinion that we don't need to grow. We're not some big commercial platform and we don't need to satisfy some investors. Growth will come naturally. Or it won't.

My opinion is, judging by the numbers... We aren't growing for quite some time now, so Lemmy will most likely stay what it is. I'd love if it were a super attractive place, though. And everybody would like to join.

Sane defaults are always a good idea. I'm a bit split on the "minimal effort" though. Minimal effort is letting some algorithms dictate what to consume, simple truths, and not bothering with complicated stuff like freedom or privacy.

And what I often see is people trying to solve such problems solely by technical means. And I think that's not even half of it. We mainly need a nice and welcoming atmosphere, nice and interesting people, good content...

I'm happy to stay in my weird little corner.

I haven’t seen many comments not wanting people to join but more like, we are fine even if they don’t.

When I joined lemmy, I found it to be rather easy, so I never understood this barrier to entry.

I think it’s because someone just linked me to an instance, so I just went there and signed up like a regular site.

Ideally we want more users and for the fediverse to hit critical mass but idk how that can ever happen when corporate social media sites will always have a marketing budget.

So imo it’s not the difficulty, it’s like wondering why people keep paying for certain software when there are free alternatives, cause corporate software will always be more dumbed down.

Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?

This has come up on Mastodon as well. Mastodon has a default server, which is mastodon.social. It's somewhat controversial. I think it's helped adoption but it's also putting the ecosystem more under Mastodon gGmbH's thumb...which is not great. I myself am on mastodon.social because it seemed like a sane default. I'd have chosen differently if I knew what I know now.

I'm not as plugged into what the defaults are for Lemmy or if there even are any. I'm sure there is room for improvement, but it is fair to say there are a lot of people who willfully refuse to understand how federated software works and act like it's so complicated that no mortal can possibly understand it.

Can we do a lot more to help people who wish to join decentralized social media? Yes, absolutely. Should we give people shit for acting like choosing a server is so hard and confusing that they'd rather be on fascist-aligned platforms? Also yes.

Check out [email protected] ... people there are actively thinking about ways to help people migrate. To some extent also [email protected]

I don't think the barrier to entry is all that bad.... if you install Jerboa or Boost you're immediately presented with Lemmy content without worrying about creating an account... then you can get a feel for whether you like it or not.

It's only a problem if someone is told they must choose a server and create an account to see Lemmy content at all. Ideally people would just be pointed to a server and told to select "Scaled" to get a sense of the smaller communities...

This isn't a lemmy only thing.

Seen this since the 90's and the start of Eternal September. 'How dare we change or help these constant Lusers show up. How DARE we allow for differing opinions. Our way is the ONLY right way! Why should we allow this CANCER to infect us?'

To further emphasize that point: I'm part of a tilde community. I have been working on a migration document highlighting services and other options for social media migrants. The local newsgroup is sparcely populated. So the one technical guy that's a frequent poster had this to say:

I think these followers and likes counters' places unleash the wrong attitude. People write stuff to collect these by pleasing the potential reader instead of writing just facts. Fights over points and factually wrong answers that gained a lot of up-votes drove me away from reddit and SE. Some even write BS and get terribly upset if you point them to a man page that contradicts their statements.

Communication media should fit the job. Chats be volatile and fast while mail, mailing lists and news are allowing detailed discussions in long articles.

Sending people from twitXter or FB to Mastodon does not help them evolve. It just gives addicts a supposedly more free variant of their drug instead of getting them away from it.

Less is more!

The isolationists are wrong, and to me would rather watch the world burn for the sake of being proven right in their isolation than to help people.

I found the enrollment pretty straightforward when I joined. The page I found when googling "join lemmy" listed the major instances and shortly summarized the concept of federation. I don't think even mildly tech savvy people would have an issue enrolling but it'd definitely confuse my eighty year old mom.

There's a lot that can be easily improved when it comes to cleaner default settings and usability. I'm all for what you're suggesting. But...

We can't expect people who want a perfect copy of Reddit to stick around here. We can welcome people when they come try out Lemmy, but there needs to be some give and take. For the benefit of leaving the control of spez and co., some jankiness and learning curves is the price to pay, mostly owing to resource constraints, a smaller userbase and the decentralized philosophy.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. When new users arrive here, I welcome them and regularly offer tips to make their experience better. On the other hand, if they aren't willing to put in the effort to make the experience their own, I won't cry if they go away either.

Isolationism occurs in any functioning group because people fear losing it, or being drown out by the new users. There's also the small sect of people who seem to have the vocal attitude of "well I figured it out so you shouldn't need my help," which I've run into in varying forms.

I remember it happening on Reddit too. First when the great Digg migration occurred. And at various times later in some subs that shot to frontpage level popularity.

I think we should encourage migration. Lemmy isn't going to shoot to Reddit levels overnight, we're probably seeing a growth that will plateau, then shrink as people miss their niche communities (which we have too few active users to have thrive). If we're very lucky the folks that stick around will grow Lemmy 10ish%. But every time we do that those niche communities become that much more viable and Lemmy in generally becomes more appealing lurkers.

Lemmy is undeniably smaller but it feels a lot more free, like I'm not walking on eggshells when posting here.

On Reddit I have to mince my words on a lot of subs and be careful about using certain words, lest I want Automoderator to effectively shadowban me. Reddit is ruled by tyrannical power mod assholes who likely got slammed into lockers and beaten for their lunch money in high school, and are now using their role as an internet janitor to exert a repressed power fantasy. And don't get me started on the Tintin-looking supreme cuck who owns Reddit Inc either.

Put it this way, Lemmy is a place where you can post about Luigi Mangione, or about the people involved in Elon Musk's DOGE operation without risking a ban.

It's easy to make statements, suggestions, and opinions, but it's really hard to actually do things in practice.

We all want more people here. The question is "How?", and simply saying "Make good defaults" is easier said than done (what are good defaults?) and "good defaults" is too simple of an answer to a very complex issue.

The conversation has been stuck here for over a year already as very few people are actually willing to develop and test these solutions which takes a lot of resources too.

The irony of the situation is that a lot of these solutions that have been suggested also need a central authority. For example, people have suggested creating a central hub where everyone can sign up to. Another example is creating a little quiz which begs the question "Who decides which instances goes there?".

The best effort I've seen in trying to implement a solution are Reddit mirrors which aren't well-received because nobody likes talking to bots.

As a personal anectode on "lowering the barrier of entry":

Since I started this instance (ani.social), my goal in mind was to make it very easy for users to sign up. There's no manual approval here (except when it's being flooded with trolls). Only email verification is needed -- just like every social media platform.

But sometimes when new users sign up, they comment or post on communities in instances that defederated from us.

Now I have to think about how I'm supposed to explain defederation to people, and the moment I do try to explain, that's a big turn off for many.

Trying to hide federation is impossible. The Fediverse demands a new kind of usership that understands how the network works.

Again, I'm not saying Lemmy can't improve (it can in a lot of ways), but it all boils down to developer resources and who's willing enough to test these solutions to see what works and what doesn't. On the other hand, it takes minimal effort to say "It needs to be better".

I don't think Lemmy is going to catch on. There's too much friction every step of the way, at least in my experience with it. I still enjoy using Lemmy, but I can see why the majority of people won't end up making the switch

I miss being able to subscribe to posts. That's a good Reddit feature that I think we're missing.

Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?

How else do you use a service but register? How are people supposed to help others that can't even register? Didn't they register for reddit? How can they register for reddit, but somehow fail at registering for lemmy?

It's like telling people "if you want to join lemmy, go to the join lemmy tent". People go to the "join lemmy" tent, see sign-up booths with "general", "LGBTQ", "French", "German", "Italian", "art", ... and just turn around going "OMG THIS IS SO COMPLICATED!!!!11!1!!!!!1!". Seriously, you tell me, what the hell can be done? Are they not self-filtering at that point? Do they want the server to be picked for them? They just open joinlemmy.org and are redirected to a random server or something? What if it's directed to hexbear?

Is having the freedom of choice really so complicated? I do honestly do not understand...

We just need to send them to a neutral instance and teach them the damn rules, especially about switching instances so they can go be in a place that fits their style. I vote Lemm.ee, as I agree with their “Administration, moderation, and federation policy”, and their site wide rules:

• No abusive language
• No bigotry
• No advertising
• No pornography

No one is too dumb to be a contributor: big or small.