this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
328 points (96.1% liked)

Fediverse

28395 readers
253 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

This is going to be a short and sweet little history of Reddit. Reddit was founded in 2005.

Take a look at what Reddit looked like in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20061206235353/http://reddit.com/

Note that it didn't have subreddits back then because the user base was too small.

Look at Reddit in 2008 (December 31): https://web.archive.org/web/20081231080128/http://www.reddit.com/reddits/

Politics had just 72,314 subscribers. Technology had 85,678 subscribers, and the "Nicher" Food subreddit had only 4,438 subscribers.

Lemmy/Kbin follows the same path. Initially, generalist communities like Politics and Technology will have the most momentum and gain subscribers, just like Reddit did back then. As the user base grows, "niche" communities will be able to sustain themselves.

Let's not think about the Reddit of today, let's think about Reddit of old. Rome wasn't built in a day.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Fragmentation will be a huge problem if we want Lemmy and Kbin to succeed. We can't have 45000 technology communities with 45000 duplicate posts with 45000 different discussions under these posts. We need a way to unify all this in the clients and that, to me, seems like a pretty big issue as you can't just get all the posts and merge them without ddosing all the Lemmy instances or without other unwanted side effects

[–] DrAnthony@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not saying Lemmy/Kbin are perfect but fragmentation is a red herring. Reddit has a HUGE degree of fragmentation, look at how many news subs there are or wrestling versus squaredcircle ect. It's not really an issue either, take the wildly different approaches Games takes to Gaming; each community serves a related, but unique purpose.

The true battle here is userbase and thankfully those numbers are climbing at a sustainable rate. If we ever get into the hundreds of millions of users it won't matter how many cooking subs there are, there would be enough unique and viable ones that everyone would have just the one they were looking for.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

There was always a main one though, the others were splinters that happened after the main one succeeded. The problem here is they are all small, all the same name, and competing with each other to become the main one.

[–] travysh@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

You can have /r/technology and /r/tech and /r/technews etc...

It's a problem that resolves itself. One community or the other will "win".

And if not, whatever. On Reddit, my home city has two subreddits. The content between them is slightly different (different mod teams) and the comments on duplicate posts are different. I subscribed to both to see slightly different opinions and avoid echo chamber.

[–] starlinguk@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't help when the same user posts the same thing over a bunch of instances. It's obnoxious.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

This is what drives me crazy. Just pick an instance to post on.

[–] PeleSpirit@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

That's not a bug but a feature, I love having other options if the main one goes batshit or corporate.

[–] Mereo@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I disagree. To me, instances are like countries with their own constitution (rules) and police (mods). This means that two communities in different instances may seem the same, but they are not, because they have to follow the rules and culture of their instance.

Just like a PS5 club in Germany will not be the same as the PS5 club in the US because they will be culturally different. I think it will take some time for the Fediverse to think this way.

For me, this is better. Instead of having one giant technology community where your comments and posts are drowned out, we can have different technology communities with their own culture and norms, just like we visit different countries. Your comment and posts will be not drowned out.

It is a different paradigm to the centralised one of Reddit.

[–] assayer@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 year ago

I still think getting to those other "countries" will be a challenge, but can be overcome.

[–] dbilitated@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I saw an issue that would allow admins to just point a sub to another server, if that community grows more. seems like a reasonable idea.

[–] iquanyin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

why can’t we?

[–] thal3s@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Users will only subscribe to a couple of those though, so It’ll be a competition amongst them all. Collections with the best content, discussions, and moderation will win.