this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.

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I don't think we should strive to have as big a userbase as reddit. (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by themobyone@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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Many of us have seen it happening in the last 4-5 years. reddit subs, and reddit in general has become a bit s***. Of course there are still good subs, especially the truly niche ones can often have a small helpful crowd. But with 100s of thousands of users, some sub drown in hate and negativity.

I've been thinking about why. With the offical reddit app, reddit is as easy as facebook, many people even refer the the platform as an "app". Perhaps this ease of use attracts the wrong kind of people. This place is currently very far removed from this. You applied to get in, you chose this instance on the fediverse among a selection of other instances.

Calling it a concern would overstating things, but I think maybe we shouldn't strive to become as ubiquitous as reddit has become. A couple of 100K users on this instance and maybe a couple of million spread across the fediverse is enough users. The 'gate' you have to go through to register actually makes this place so much better than reddit.

What are your thought?

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[–] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree. There are millions of topics that you just can't discuss on the fediverse, because you won't find anyone interested in them.

While having more people obviously makes some things more challenging, just because Reddit failed to deal with that doesn't mean the fediverse will. As evidenced by recent decisions, Reddit is run by idiots. Over here on the fediverse, we can require instances be run by people who know what they're doing - or be defederated. We're already seeing that happen.

Yes, there will be growing pains. I think it's worth it.

Also - you can have your cake and eat it too. An individual instance, maybe even one that decides to defederate itself entirely, can have a small number of users. Those instances will exist if that's what you want.

Also, I don't think we really have a choice. This is a good community already. People will discover it and sign up. We can't stop it (well, we can't stop it on the full fediverse, maybe we can here on Beehaw).