I feel like having many communities works well on large platforms, but on smaller ones it fragments the already limited content, which in turn makes most communities inactive and reduces engagement.
I feel like having many communities works well on large platforms, but on smaller ones it fragments the already limited content, which in turn makes most communities inactive and reduces engagement.
It’s a fundamental problem with the fediverse, it’s funny that one of the fediverses biggest features ‘decentralisation’ works against it
Someone had a similar question before about how the place was getting smaller and I actually posted about it somewhere but the original post has been deleted so here’s a repost of my post in response to someone:
You’re 100% right to be concerned and to be honest I have doubts lemmy will ever crack more than a few million users, the same thing happened with Mastodon, something that relies so heavily on volunteers running the infra almost inevitably results in burnout because the fediverse works on a disincentive basis:
Basically the more popular a server is, the more funding it requires, the more admins it requires, the more work it requires, and all of this is on a slim margins or more likely requiring on people to donate time/money/effort ‘for free’ is a huge ask.
The supply of people sitting around doing nothing all day who care enough to dedicate their time/effort/money to running a social network… for free… is a very small group, almost as small as the amount of people who are willing to donate every month to a social network.
You can find mods of communities are usually fans of the communities they mod, it’s a topic they enjoy and so the incentive for them to invest their time is to keep their community clean and great. But running a social network which has hard costs not just time is a whole other thing
This is opposed to a regular website or social media network, where as it gets bigger, it makes more money through ads/subscriptions, the incentive is to get bigger to make more money
And then they can simply pay people to do the shit no one wants to.
The reality for me is that the money has to come from somewhere, you can do a paywall like newspapers do or beg for donations every page visit like the guardian/wikipedia do, or the usual suspect allow advertising, but the money has to come from somewhere.
Thus the fediverse has a disincentive to growing larger, it is simply easier and more sustainable to remain small
So sadly we’ll just have to enjoy our fragmented, over-moderated, over-dramatised, sometimes slow, sometimes down, sometimes goes out of money, sometimes the server owners just burn out, little spot until something better is invented
As a general user I have not really seen many calls for donations / volunteering / help requested, I think more people would be willing to pitch in if tangible needs were presented clearly - but maybe I’m alone in my willingness to help.