I’m really hoping the Lemmy community reaches its potential! But to achieve that, I realize it’s important to contribute to the content. As a chronic Reddit lurker, I’m going to do my best to comment and post to help this platform grow. It’s hard to break the habit of being a creepy voyeur after 10 years. Wish me luck!
I lurked instead of commenting on Reddit because there was always that fear that the slightest poor word choice could result in the hounds being released. Secondary to that is often not having anything unique to add to a conversation. I have been trying to contribute more here.
Fear wasnt ill founded. Jannies where wild back there. I got banned various times for getting into heathed arguments. Some as ridicolous as benches (im not joking). First time whas due to swearing but al the other ones didnt have swears. Im kinda scared right in this site since its new ground for me and dont whant to blew it since i wanna stay here for a while
A very interesting insight–thanks for helping me understand the lurker dynamic/psychology. I guess I’ve felt the fear: many times I’ve composed a post or comment–and then backed out for fear of having to deal with a shit show as a result. Being a solo mod might have some advantages in that way…
Welcome the circus. I read an interesting post that said Reddit has the bulk of the users for this type of social media, but the users who add value and post etc. are the ones you need. The users Lemmy needs to attract are not the crowd that lurks. It’s the crowd that posts and adds value. That is a much smaller group of users.
I wonder if Reddit hasn’t already started losing them. The post quality has dropped a bit and some of the comments are so confusing that it’s hard not to think they’re AI generated. They’re just nonsense.
Reddit has had a really bad (imo) bot problem for years. I’m sure at least some are AI generated comments trying to seem human, even if just to experiment with it.
Yeah, reposting bots have been rampant for a while. And I assume chat GPT and the like are about to make that problem WAY worse. That situation alone could cause a massive quality problem on Reddit. If a decent portion of active (human) users leave (or have already left), that would just magnify the issue.
I wonder if there is a threshold they’re going to hit where they hit a death spiral due to legitimate users leaving en masse. Hopefully.
On the other hand, people are creatures of habit and I could see Reddit surviving despite bots/ai/and associated quality issues.
Here’s something to consider: many of us were using reddit for several years. That’s years of exploring, building, and bonding with communities. So when you come to Lemmy, don’t expect that it will be a 100% replacement immediately. It takes time. Stick with it. Explore and post in different communities. Grow your usage gradually. You cannot reasonably expect to find everything you are looking for right away.
I mostly just enjoy reading varied opinions of others rather than having much to say, but I’ll try to start responding more!
Reddit user of 10 years here, last day of being able to use Boost over there, so just starting to figure this place out!
