I have never been an "online community first" person. The internet is how I stay in touch with people I met in real life. I'm not a "tweet comments at celebrities" guy. I was never funny enough to be the funniest person on Twitter. So when Twitter was accidentally purchased

It became the only reliable source of information I had. People posted links with a minimal amount of commentary, picking and choosing the best content from other social media networks. They’re not doing it to “build a brand” because that’s not a thing in the Fediverse. It’s too disjointed to be a place to build a newsletter subscription base.

  • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 days ago

    While that’s true, I don’t believe it to be a fundamental property of the medium or federation in general. I think what we are experiencing is the result of lack of mainstream attention and traffic.

    The people here are much less demographically diverse than the public at large, and have intentionally sought out this space and others like it, so they have more of a sense of ownership and community about it. The more attention it gets, the more the demographics will change to reflect the broader public, and the more it will become like a public space, complete with all the ills that come with that, like advertisers vying for attention, shills posing as enthusiasts, and influencers saying what will get them the most followers, rather than what they think.

    I believe it would take extensive moderation and amazing tools to keep places like this the same as they gain users. I haven’t ever seen a community survive that kind of growth and retain its original spirit, but I also haven’t seen one with no profit motive. If we can get the moderation tools where they need to be, there could be hope!

    • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 days ago

      There is no effective way to ban a person. As long as that remains true, moderation tools don’t really matter.

      Israel alone is putting $760 million into propaganda. Lemmy may not be big, but it’s worth 0.2% of that budget.

      And that’s just Israel.

      • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        2 days ago

        I think that’s trying to solve the wrong problem.

        If I had awesome moderating tools, identifying and deleting comments that violate the policy would be effortless. I would not need to ban a person, which as you aptly point out, can reappear forever. But, I can ban all of his violating comments, which are, after all, the true target and violation, not the commenter.

    • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 days ago

      I think the community is a good size right now. Popular enough that we guarantee getting any content of relevance I care about, but not popular enough to have all the problems you mentioned. I hope the community stays this size and off the radar indefinitely.

    • cinoreus@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 days ago

      True, Lemmy feels this way almost exclusively because it’s small and hasn’t been noticed by mainstream media enough. The second that changes this place will become what reddit was pre-ipo.

      • PlantJam@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        2 days ago

        My hope is that it will always be a little too disjointed to hold that kind of attention for long.