I know the word normies may have weird connotations, but I just mean that, regular everyday people.

I’ve been enjoying Lemmy a lot and even recommended it to a few close friends who are working in tech. But I would like Lemmy to be way bigger, maybe have those makefriends communities like reddit has, be it gaming friends, just for chatting, for voicecalls, etc etc…

But I also wonder, could growing Lemmy indiscriminately be a bad thing? As you relax filters and barriers to entry, yes, more people can come in, but I have a feeling the quality of the people might go down aswell.

Is a clique-like platform what Lemmy is supposed to be like? Or is it supposed to try and absorb as much users as possible and be just a user-managed user-owned reddit alternative with no ads and less censorship?

I believe the answer may lie somewhere in the middle, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, as I’m a total newbie on here.

(Also I understand private dms on Lemmy are not secure, but you can keep the idea of the “r4r” community and just drop a matrix or session link in dms, not perfect as the admins can be what username you sent out, but at least it ends there)

  • RedEye FlightControl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    I think there are some similarities, but also some differences.

    Lemmy will probably eventually attract the normies of which you speak. And that’s not a bad thing. Bad things happen when low quality content and ad farming are prioritized. The nature of sharing culture, information, and entertainment will always attract new audience.

    Because communities here aren’t being monetized by corporate ownership, and because you can selectively add or block instances that don’t meet community standards, I don’t think Lemmy will fall prey to the same enshitifcation that slowly ruined reddit.