how can we make Lemmy as popular as Reddit

That's not what she said :'(

It's a reoccurring statement but I miss the niche subreddits. Yes I know I can start my own but Im not looking to become a moderator.

Just look at every single big subreddit lmao. The only way to use that site is to leave every single default and join smaller communities.

I agree somewhat in the context of centralization. But the spread of the fediverse is a good thing. If Lemmy grows, alongside decentralization, then it should stay true to its roots.

Because of a severe lack of content. On Reddit you can find a community for basically anything. On Lemmy there are only a few alive ones. E.g. there are very few alive country communities.

+1

Reddit can keep all the gigasubs. Let the niche fandoms trickle over here…

I would say it’s slightly more than this: The vast majority of Lemmy is comprised of only a few things—politics, tech, memes—and it’s hard to find discussions or opinions about almost everything else. The main value of reddit to me is (was?) that you could find a lot of input from people involved in a wide variety of fields, from niche hobbies to more generic areas of interest like history, philosophy, or medicine.

I’ve actually found that there are people on Lemmy with similar levels of expertise, and they’re willing to share it just as well, but they have fewer opportunities to do so, because very few threads get posted outside the 3 main topics. Several times I’ve come across useful and interesting insight, but it was in the comments of posts only vaguely related, so it would have been difficult to find intentionally if I hadn’t run into it.

So, perhaps, this is what could improve Lemmy: starting more discussions about different topics. Perhaps this will attract more people to read them, which might attract more people to post.

There only thing Reddit has over Lemmy is their awesome niche subreddits I mean, to me at least that's 99% of the point of a platform like this?

Exactly. I sort through the top 6 hours or top daily. There’s not a lot of posts, but they are all high quality ones.

Reddit is the opposite. I have to go through trash to reach a few good posts. Bigger =/ better

There's a whole instance dedicated to porn, isn't there? At least there used to be, is it still live? My instance is defederared from it so idk.

It worked for VHS

If we could somehow keep the bigger Communities the same size they are now, while growing niche Communities, that would be ideal. It's logically impossible though.

I don't think the community is a reason to migrate away. If you end up disliking the community in lemmy then you are probably on the wrong instance, just chose the instance with the community you prefer.

For me I'm not using lemmy because I dislike the reddit community, Although that might be because I haven't spent enough time on reddit to hate it. But I am using lemmy because it has better privacy, it is not enshitified and it is not likely to ever become enshitified and it follows the ideals of decentralization and free software.

Reddit is a for profit website owned by rightwing idiots pretending to be a community space rather than a volunteer effort to help rich reddit chuds train their AI crap.. so the problem isn't inherently about the popularity here.

Regardless though, I want more people here based on the principle that when good things happen to me it is better if they happen to others and I should endeavor to destroy any barrier to seeing a fluid relationship between my wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around me.

People do not even notice things more complicated than buttons “join”, “login”, or “post”. They are lost on join-lemmy.org because >they don’t know why they should choose a server, read description, understand whatever is federation, and they’ll prefer going back >to their comfort zone.

Agree on this 100%. When I first found Lemmy I had no idea what instance to join, why it matter, or.. why it really didn't matter all that much.. It was just confusing.. and the first instance I joined ended up closing.. which was less than an ideal experience as it was without notice and the instance just disappeared. Took me days to even find out why they had closed. Then took me several more days to find the next instance to join.

Federation is both a weakness and a strength in that there may be people who get turned off by that initial complexity.

Then, some people who join may see low volumes on communities they care about and end up not joining.

I imagine it's because Reddit is closer to the format of Lemmy and it's something we're more familiar with. I also wouldn't have known that Facebook was more popular because it's not something that anyone in my circle uses, but a lot of them use Reddit.

Its like did no one use forums before Reddit? NeoGaf, Linux Questions, planet quake.

i dont think the lemmy servers would be able to hold for that long

That's what feddit does ig

The nature of the fediverse means bad actors could run rampant, jumping instances and usernames to turn the place into a shitshow.

The only reason it isnt happening already is that we arent worth the trouble.

The only way to avoid it once a certain size is reached is a paid moderation team with a mission statement to stamp that shit out, which means a budget is needed which means backers/investors/advertising... and tou get where this is going.