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.
Oh, absolutely. And this goes for the Fediverse at large as well (and also Gemini.) You need more casual content, more art, music, games, conversations, spaces to socialize, etc. That’s what makes online communities popular.
EDIT: So, to the downvoters, I’m assuming that private, FOSS social spaces should only ever be used to discuss privacy and FOSS? Lmao. This is ridiculous.
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.
100% correct. This is the unfortunate current reality of alternative platforms. They are either dedicated specifically to tech discussion, or they are harbors for human garbage to spew diarrhea from their mouths. If we could get more normies on the Fediverse it would eventually snowball and it would be very popular, but the question is just how to get that started.