In the months since I deleted my Reddit accounts and joined Lemmy, the lack of user base growth has made it clear that we need some users to stay on Reddit as a means of shepherding more users over on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, Reddit simply got what it wanted: less users who make a fuss about how it manages its platform without losing users en-masse.

In doing so, however, does Reddit shadowban posts that mention or promote Lemmy? Googling mentions of Lemmy on Reddit mostly brings up posts from around the time of the blackout, suggesting that mentions of it since then have been suppressed. Before I return to Reddit to promote Lemmy, does anyone know for certain one way or the other?

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[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (11 children)

Not enough users left Reddit after the blackout to either make a difference there or establish communities on Lemmy that are big enough to encourage people on the fence to switch over. To turn Lemmy into a viable alternative, we need to convince more Redditors to switch over by mentioning Lemmy in the right threads, making sure to explain features of Lemmy in terms of Reddit analogs to avoid the usual complaints of Lemmy being difficult to understand. Most people won't care, but the ones that do will be vital in bringing the userbase to the point where people will want to join Lemmy due to it having active communities rather than it just not being Reddit.

[–] ghostrider2112@lemmy.world 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (8 children)

When I ended up at Reddit 16 years ago after Digg, I don’t recall it being a huge community immediately. I think it helped that there weren’t subreddits yet. So, probably seemed like more people. I think it took a couple of years for the transition to hit critical mass.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Yup, this is the answer. We know enshittification will continue apace because history has shown that these companies will never change their behaviour. They are fundamentally fragile systems.

The way to deal with this is not some big marketing push - that's a centralised approach - but to make an antifragile system that will slowly gain users and not lose them en masse. It's the tortoise vs the hare.

Lemmy is the tortoise.

I'm not even too worried about corporate entryism - although I do think we should block them - because they will only make fragile instances and they will be outlasted as long as we keep independent instances alive and healthy.

[–] ghostrider2112@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Precisely. Excellent points!

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