Great post. Lemmy right now reminds me of Reddit 15-16 years ago. Mostly tech workers or tech hobbyists who know far more than an average person and thus aren’t put off by something new and different. I don’t think Lemmy is very complicated as a concept and it boggles my mind that people are saying “making a new account on Lemmy.world or Kbin.social is too complicated for normal people.” Yet I see it written all the time, sometimes here but mostly on reddit. And who knows; maybe the latter is a disinformation campaign since we know reddit pulls sneaky shit like that all the time (and targeting Lemmy, like with the warnings they placed on links at one point).
Lemmy’s barriers to entry also somewhat remind me of early Facebook after they expanded to several universities. You needed to have an email address from one of those univerisities in order to create an account. So, not so much self selection in that scenario but another gate to keep people out.
I can respect Tildes’ decision to become invite-only (with a very limited number of invites) for that reason. Lemmy, I think, is prioritizing growth at the potential cost of future community. Tildes is doing the opposite. I don’t think one is necessarily more correct. And, with Lemmy, there are tons of alternatives waiting in the wings. Hopefully a balance can be struck.
I think the real test comes when the first wave of good third party apps are released. Sync, in particular, seems very promising given the developer’s reddit app. Anything that can make it easier for people.
Comprehension skills are severely lacking in a significant number of Americans. We know it based on the typical adult American reading level being so pathetically low. We know it from the interactions we see and have online with other Americans.
I firmly believe that comprehension gap is why people go hunting for perceived slights. Everywhere they turn is an opportunity for a new fight.
And it seems even worse with teens if we take Tiktok into account. The adults there aren’t much better. It is all really an indictment of the American education system.
Lemmy’s few hurdles are seemingly enough to keep these people out (for the most part). There also isn’t the critical mass of people to spark that mob mentality, at least that’s how I feel about it. People here are mostly chill overall and it truly reminds me of Reddit 15+ years ago.
That is inevitably going to change, for the worse, as apps refine the sign up and usage processes. That is inevitably going to change as bad actors, like Meta, are allowed to federate and push their low quality into our spaces along with advertisements disguised as posts and comments. We all know this is going to happen; threads will be used to run influence campaigns. That’s what happens with all of their properties, and with Reddit.
And people influential in Lemmy are signing NDAs with bad actors to allow it to happen.