by fedidb.org
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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It was founded by a Communist, and decentralization appeals to leftists. The non-Communist lemmy is Reddit, basically, or making your own instance or finding an anti-Communist instance.
This is why Lemmy will never be anything more than tiny a niche platform. It's a place for the far left by the far left. There's nothing here in place for anybody else. I don't just mean politics wise, I mean everything. There's nothing for fandoms, shows, movies, sports, or anything really. You have to be privacy/tech nerd or some left wing extremist to really enjoy this place more than Reddit. Since the portion of the population that this platform is trying to appeal to is extremely small, this platform will always be small. There's little to not attempts by the devs or the community to make this place appeal to everybody else.
What, exactly, could be done to make it appeal to non-leftists, structurally? Addition of advertisers? Lol.
There are few things the developers could do. For example, they could make the platform easier to use. Many people don't even reach this place because they're not that tech savvy or simple don't care enough to figure it out. It's much easier for them to just create an account and get started on Reddit or elsewhere. This leaves extremists with nowhere else to go and tech bros... which are the two groups that dominate this place. The process of getting on board and finding instances/communities needs to be easier. There needs to be something like centralized site/app that is easily accessible and shows all the different instances and communities in one place.
It's not that complicated, go to an instance and sign up.
What actually dominates Lemmy are groups of people that value bottom-up organizational structures, decentralization, FOSS, and other general structural decisions made with creating Lemmy. This leaves people that like these principles, and actually care enough to move to an instance despite mass adoption of a more top-down, Capitalist site like Reddit.
Decentralization isn't left wing or right wing, that's just a moronic analysis. Decentralization has a wide appeal but unless it gets simplified and standardized it will never become adopted by the mainstream. Places like Lemmy which are littered with gatekeepers like you doom this place to forever being a niche. If this place ever hopes of rivaling reddit, it needs to appeal to more than political extremists and tech nerds
Decentralization is far more left than it is right, hence why Lemmy has a ton of leftists. It wasn't just chance.