Hello Lemmy! So, let’s talk free speech, and social media networks. I’m quite curious why Lemmy and Raddle seem to be the only two (as far as I can tell) alternatives to reddit that are not as toxic compared to other alternatives, like Communities.Win, or ruqqus. I’m aware that Lemmy has a no bigot/hate speech rule, which is great. Raddle seems to support free speech also, but to an extent. How come some alternatives survive and others slowly decline?
My theory is based on the 1:9:90 internet “rule”, meaning that you have a core group of people, typically 1% of the users that are highly active, some further 9% that post & comment occasionally and the vast majority of 90% only lurks (but might share a link in their social circles).
Taking that into account, I think why some sites fail and others not is mainly about the 9% occasional posters. If the 1% hard-core users (due to ideology or lack of moderation) manage to alienate these “casual” users then the site goes into a death-spiral that is hard to recover from.
So besides stricter moderation, I think the hard-core users of more left leaning communities are also typically less offensive/toxic then those of some other communities who often thrive on 4chan like meming and in-jokes that really only work for the hard-core user-base.
Good point.