I got the idea of this thread because of this comment

I know it’s kinda depressing seeing all this empty communities, but I think the problem is that it’s still all concentrated around privacy and tech. To create awareness of lemmy We should create more “casual” communities and share those threads outside.

As I already pointed out in the linked comment, I’ll not dislike some cat tax.

    • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      3 years ago

      For an alternative platform to flourish, it must attract people with a wide range of interests, not just tech and FOSS. This has to be combined with good moderation policies.

      The exact opposite of this is Ruqqus: many of the platform’s users don’t have really any hobbies or actual interests. They just want to spout racist garbage together in their echo chamber, which is enabled with the platform’s reliance on “free speech” and loose moderation policies. When the racists and other idiots dominate Ruqqus, any people with actual interests leave it and any efforts for the platform to “clean up” just go to waste.

  • Jeffrey@lemmy.ml
    10·
    3 years ago

    In addition to a cat tax, I’ve been thinking about communities that could be more action oriented, and features that could make communities on Lemmy less about mindless content consumption and more about real-life and socialization.

    e.g. I’ve considered starting a sublemmy for de-pollution where users collect litter from their communities, then post the amount of trash they have collected (by weight or volume). There could be a running total updated in real time, before & after photos, and events. I don’t know if there is any interest in a community like this here.

    • DefNotPizza@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      3 years ago

      Nice idea, but there’s a privacy problem: not everyone wants to let people know where they live. Unless it’s ok to use a throw account and delete it after some days.

  • TheAgeOfSuperboredom
    9·
    3 years ago

    Lemmy hasn’t been federated for very long yet, and there are still some rough edges. I only just signed up and had to read the doc to find out how to subscribe to a community on another instance (I guess you have to search for it as !<community>@<instance_url>). I also wasn’t seeing posts on that community from my instance.

    I think Lemmy is off to a great start here, but I’d hate to see people turned off because of UX issues. It’s all solvable, but it just needs time and effort.

    As an example, I’ve been using Matrix personally for years, but it’s only in the last year or so that I feel comfortable recommending it to my non-technical friends.

    I think it’s just a matter of time for Lemmy to get enough polish to start attracting more people. And I’m really looking forward to that!

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlM
      4·
      3 years ago

      Welcome! If you can think of any concrete way to improve Lemmy (like easier subscribing to remote communities), please open an issue.

      • TheAgeOfSuperboredom
        4·
        3 years ago

        Thanks!

        And for sure! I’m hoping to find some time soon to go through the doc and browse the code. Among my many other projects :)

    • DefNotPizza@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      3 years ago

      For instances i just DDgo-ed “lemmy instances”, but I still didn’t create another account for them

    • DefNotPizza@lemmy.mlOP
      9·
      3 years ago

      Write a howto for those users how to get their non tech friends, families, co-workers on board

      That’s exactly what you should avoid lol. People don’t join because “hey, join this decentralized network, it’s free!”. People join because of content, to comment or post.

      There are a lot of ideas of communities to create, but I don’t want to associate them with my nickname (I feel guilty to not let others create them and doing it myself). But maybe I can create 2-3 “casual” communities.

  • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
    93·
    3 years ago

    I have been an active proponent of trying to steer Lemmy in the direction you explained. Lemmy needs to not just be a Hacker News ycombinator + 5% extra content. It needs to not be another Reddit either.

  • fidibus@lemmy.161.social
    41·
    3 years ago

    I think that it unfortunately has to be all tech and political for now. Some person not interested in both is very unlikely to find their home here, even if there was more cat content or idk stuff about guitars.

    I am trying to say that it imo is nearly impossible to find enough people to sustain those communities.

  • Nerd_516@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 years ago

    just less leftist politics indeed and less lemmy focused content would be great for sure