We’ll figure it out together. If we don’t comment and post content, I fear that we’ll never really sustain the kind of success we hope to replicate from the other place.
Sorry for the late response! Totally agree, I only lurked on the other place but there was always an endless steam of stuff to lurk through since there were so many people. With this community I’d feel more responsible to maintain the consistency by at least being active within posts people are creating so I’ve been trying to do that more. It’s a group effort and totally think we can do it if we keep this up!
I love the whole thing to be honest. I am happy to have replies days later. Reddit posts would go “stale” so fast and even if you did comment, you were more than likely to be torn to shreds for existing. It isn’t perfect here, but that is because we are people. Getting even half a voice is far better than the anxiety inducing nightmare the Internet tends to be. If I don’t want to argue with someone, I just don’t respond. If I or someone else end up replying days later, awesome!
I feel a lot more comfortable chiming in once in a while here. The Internet will always be the Internet, but getting even a tiny bit of human connection is amazing. Going from letters, phones, AOL, to now is a miracle. We may be fucked as a species, but sometimes the little things are enough.
Now, go watch Contact. That movie is my absolute favorite movie of all time. Ghost hugs for all!
It’s been really great here! I’m just getting started trying to be more active but this post alone has just been amazing (although it may be an outlier). This is the most activity I’ve gotten from any online thing I’ve done, so it’s pretty huge to me!
Everyone here seems to have the right frame of mind for why we’re here and what we left and what to expect here. It’s just a matter of encouraging each other to continue to be active when we can and support each other and the platform as a whole!
This is my delayed response, really appreciate your thoughtful reply!
Also will add contact to my list of stuff to watch (isn’t there such a finite time to experience all the media out there??).
I always want to comment but notifications can be so stressful that on most platforms I usually end up just lurking. Lemmys been pretty decent so far, it reminds a little of early internet messageboards where most people were more into discussing something interesting than trolling or one-uping someone for internet points or ego boosts or whatever weird reasons people are assholes on the internet. It’s probably the least toxic platform I’ve been on since the livejournal days
I’ve learned to no longer fear comment notifications thanks to Lemmy. It still has some assholes, but people tend to pile on and call them out on their bad behavior. It’s nice, I like it here.
Something I’m terrible at as well! I don’t think there’s a DM feature in Lemmy which is what I would say is the way to become more “friends” with someone than following them down comment threads.
Not trying to self-promo but I do have a Twitch channel and discord server of the same name (link in my bio) if you feel like stopping in and chatting more and whatnot! Open to anyone else who wants to be part of that community too!
Edit: realized there is a message feature, but it’s not available for me on the Memmy app for iOS, but appears to be available in the browser version of LemmyWorld!
I wouldn’t dream of replying to you, that would be a nightmare to do such a thing that would go against the wishes you have of not being replied to at all, again, a thing I would absolutely not do, as to retain your respect!
no screw you guy! And I won’t just reply with “no” or "ok’ like someone from Reddit would, I’ll write a decent sentence which adds to the comment chain instead of repeating another comment which got lots of magical internet points.
Truly though, keep up user interaction and content generation on Lemmy, it’s good for the site
Lurkers using third party apps were in many ways worse impacted by the API changes than those actively participating. The high cost of API access is only worth as much value as the service is to you, and if lurking that’s going to be lower and less likely to be worthwhile in the few third party apps switching to the subscription model.
I was a lurker on the first-party reddit app for the 99.9% of the time I was on there. The ads had just gotten out of hand with not being able to block an ad to get a different ad, I was so tired of getting “He Gets Us” trash so I switched over to Apollo. A week later they announced the API changes. I work in software dev so it’s just frustrating seeing this happen to all of the people out there trying to support their hard work.
Yep, I used Relay Pro previously but seeing the cost breakdowns the dev posted for the new subscription was disheartening. The dev’s portion of the subscription fee is near zero if you use near the limit of you subscription’s monthly API requests. So at that point even subscribing isn’t really supporting the dev as much as supporting the company that forced these changes upon us. So I chose to not take part.
Lemmy definitely isn’t perfect, especially for smaller communities. But it’s definitely workable and something I’m happy to contribute to.
Yeah Reddit really made the cost just impossible for any slightly active app unable to continue without any form of meaningful profit. I would have loved to support whatever Third Party app but yeah wouldn’t have been enough to keep them afloat.
For Lemmy not being perfect, it feels like it’s just more of a number of users issue vs an actual technical problem. Sure fediverse stuff can be complicated, but after signing up and searching communities you can pretty much do some normal Reddit feeling stuff IMO. I’m trying to revive the Twitch Lemmy community if anyone wants to help with that (I have no clue what to do)!
Edit: also adding that I didn’t think about moderation or tools that Lemmy may or may not have in place since I’ve never been a mod for any of that. So maybe a technical problem somewhere.
I lurked on the reddit app for a year or more before I started contributing. One of the first things I learned about ‘internet forums’, is that you lurk first, until you get a feel for the community. I began contributing more because the 3rd party app I started using had me more engaged; which meant that reddit gained more content
But Reddit made the API changes for 3rd party apps unsustainable, to push people toward their own ad revenue. They assume that they’re too important to fail, and that the loss of users/content was worth the squeeze of those who didn’t know how to leave. A standard cost-risk scenario. It’s a short-term goal to try and carve out a piece of the centralized internet that the big corps envision. A move toward trying to win at monopoly
The “forum” is a relationship between “user contribution” and the host’s ‘personal time, money, effort’… a personal cost-risk for anyone that hosts. Is it worth my time? Do I enjoy what I’m hosting?
When the goal becomes so obviously “increase host revenue”, without increasing user experience; you create an imbalance.
We all lurk online until we find something we wanna talk about. Reddit was trying to use (is using) their influence to increase profit for themselves, and (the way in which they chose to do so) actively decreasing user experience. The ‘host’ only gave a shit about themselves and decided that user-created content was a ‘benefit’ of being there, rather than the reason.
Lurkers are half of the equation. Lurkers often become contributors when they enjoy the community. Contributors bring more lurkers. That’s kind of how the balance works
Reddit feels they can do without the lurkers who refuse to use their app, while simultaneously increasing ad revenue. And they’ll be fine financially in the same way Facebook is… clinging to the smallest user-base that makes them the most profit, while slowly becoming irrelevant.
Because contributors will move on eventually, and so will the lurkers.
Case-in-point… my comment. I’m a lurker, until I’m not.
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