Fediverse

I think that if we want new folks, it would make a big difference is we organized the equivalent of a new member drive.

Currently, look at a default front page for your home instance and ask how enticing it is to a total newbie. There might be some good stuff, but it's foreign and overwhelming. You feel out of place.

Now imagine if the first Friday of January had been "new subscriber day". People on Reddit and Bluesky are taking about the fediverse and if it's any good. And on Lemmy there's a bunch of posts about finding the best instances and memes about being new on Lemmy. That's a much more inviting beginner experience, and it makes it more likely for folks to come back the next day.

I really think planning for bursts of new folks is the way to welcome people.

I was meaning to buy a bunch of sticker for all sort of cool stuff I support (lemmy/fedi being one of those things) and stick it around the city. Know its not much, but its fun! :)

https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/data/lemmy/users

Here's my approach: over the holidays I suggested lemmy to 3 people I know. I did so by emailing or texting them links to the following piefed feeds of lemmy communities:

• https://piefed.social/f/highsignal
• https://piefed.social/f/highmemecontent

The first is non-political, non-tech, low-meme communities (tho sometimes those topics sneak in.) The second is non-political, non-tech meme/humor communities. One peson said they thought it was neat, the other said they bookmarked it, the third didn't say anything. Dunno if they joined.

Do comments help also or we need to post topics etc.

What is that spike in activity in December, I wonder? I see a similar increase in December of 2024 as well, although there it remained sustained instead of dropping.

I hate that it's true but the people on the Threadiverse are toxic as fuck. I have almost universally always regretted making posts here, so I primarily stick to comments.

This in turn is due to the fact that the moderation tools suck ass - I hope PieFed will offer some strong hope for that, but as it is only a small percentage of the Threadiverse uses it.

PieFed also offers some hopes in other ways too - e.g. highly contentious users (who let's say receive 10x more downvotes than upvotes) have labels attached to their username. It doesn't block any content, but it helps new users from other platforms realize what they are getting into, if e.g. they engage with a known sea-lion.

And PieFed helps in so many other ways besides - e.g. a recent addition will automatically convert URLs pointing to other instances into one that will work on your home instance, where you are currently logged in and so can vote, reply, bookmark, or whatever. Lemmy will probably never add all the various features that PieFed even already offers - like post and user flairs, polls, combining comments across all cross-posts, and things like that that even Reddit does not offer. I don't mean to be annoying about all this but I said it to help illustrate: look at all that PieFed offers, and yet how many people remain on Lemmy? Now you understand a tiny bit better why someone remains on Reddit.

Plus Reddit is where the content is, and the user base too, so why would content creators want to post their stuff here, only to get trolled in the comment section? The Left always eats its own - and it rejects even more all the centrists and even ring-wingers, i.e. mainstream non-technical normie users i.e. the vast majority of content creators, who don't like to visit a Nazi bar (even a leftist tankie flavored one) and be told how they didn't vote properly or hard enough.

You said it yourself: you were one of those very people who did not want others to come. What could you possibly have said to your past self to have changed your mind earlier?