Best thing you can do is make your own communities for topics that we haven't already got one for.
Also going on reddit and just going "join lemmy join lemmy join lemmy" over and over again probably helps, right?
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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Ask Lemmy
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Best thing you can do is make your own communities for topics that we haven’t already got one for.
Plenty of people did just that, then came to realise that it's usually quite the job to keep their sublemmys running and build them up over time. Bot posts don't work very well, either. Hence all the dead communities across the FV.
A related issue is that the FV strongly needs people with more community-minded spirit than the typical Reddit user. IMO it's important to 'be the change,' and to try to help each other out as individuals, and help communities we appreciate. Being more of a 'lazy Reddit asshole who clutters threads with lame DudeBro jokes' isn't ideal at this point.
I don't think this site is for everyone. You need your own internal reason to use this site (anti-enshittification, banned from other places, or whatever). On a regular social media site, you log in, and you immediately are shown a feed of fun and interesting content. Unless you're like really into programming, Lemmy doesn't have fun and interesting content. Of the content that is here, people don't engage with it much, and it's poorly moderated (actual calls for death and abuse, weird sexual anime stuff, etc). Lemmy is also not easy to use or understand. Most people don't understand what an instance is, and why do I need to read paragraphs on federation just to use the site? The only way this place could compete with polished, plug-and-play social media is if the US continues getting so authoritarian that regular social sites become exorbitantly censored to a regular person's perspective.
It is possible to increase the userbase without inviting the whole world. Lemmy may have a bigger learning curve than, say, Instagram, but that is fine. Maybe not having people who can't understand how lemmy works is a good thing. There are, however, many many people who would understand how lemmy works that have not yet learned about it or have but are not using it. Those are the people to whom we should cater.
We should still, of course, improve the UI/UX as much as possible. Though I feel like Piefed is better for this. Lemmy devs are not receptive to suggestions, not at all. I tried. If the idea did not come from their heads, they reject it.
This is a good point. understanding a fediverse is a bit of a learning curve and not for everyone. Some support in this area…even just the sign up process is a bit daunting.
Nothing.
Twitter was fine until it got popular, as was Reddit.
Trying to convince people I know to join the Fediverse is like, well, it's a lot like trying to convince people to switch to Linux. They're not gonna do it and I'll look like a jackass if I talk about it too much.
If there was an easy way to grow this platform overnight, we'd be doing it. Reality is there's no shortcut, all we can do is continue building community with the people who are here and hope that we see some slow and steady incremental growth.
I think instead of promoting Lemmy as a whole, promote individual instances separately (but evenly)
Stay federated and up prayed.
you can link to posts and comments here on other platforms if they are interesting or funny or cool
you can also post your dingus on the NSFW one
We don't need more usebase, we've got perfectly good userbase at home.
Honestly it's a double edged sword. The tight-knit feel of Lemmy is really cozy, but with a larger user base it will allow for more posts/interaction on niche communities.
Post more sexy pictures.
honestly, the real answer
Occasionally I'll tell one of my friends about it. I point them to one of my low-politics / low-tech feeds:
I mean for me it was a recent decision to delete for-profit and algorithmic social media. But that was internally driven as I realised they were making me more miserable and I couldn't stomach the advertising anymore. But I've always failed to replicate that feeling in other people who are stuck in a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and boiled frog status, no idea how to do it consistently.
Biggest thing, make it easy to understand.
I STILL dont really get the fediverse. Ive had it explained to me multiple times and I'm still shaky on how to explain to a normie.
Reddit is easy. Fb is easy. Lemmy has to be easy or it will never work. Humans are above all lazy.
And, give them a reason to leave. Why would my friends leave reddit or x, where the content is? (They dont care about bots or fascism). Lemmy has way less content.
Just keep using it. Ask questions, post solutions, as time goes on they will be more relevant.
Post everything here.
Today I Learned is a good one for old info, as people post repetitive stuff all of the time, so when people look up an unusual fact etc.. They get brought straight to one of those.
DIY, Woodworking, hobbies etc. and all the main things that people want to look up.
You make a very good point. I myself have noticed sites like Lemmy.world are a bit of a ghost town compared to other forums. I think the main reason is that sites like Reddit are still more popular. And that's either because people started using Reddit when it was actually good and are clinging to nostalgia, or because people don't know that Lemmy exists. Or both. I recently saw a post on Reddit where someone claimed that Reddit is the only usable forum on the internet.
To answer your question: Convince people that Lemmy is what Reddit was trying to be back in 2006.