Perhaps I’ve misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I’ve got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!
I’ll try and explain this with an example comparison to Reddit.
As a reddit user I can go to /r/technology and see all posts from any user to the technology subreddit. I can interact with any posts and communicate with anyone on that subreddit.
In Lemmy, I understand that I can browse posts from other instances from Beehaw, for example I could check out /c/technology@slrpnk.net, /c/tech@lemmy.fmhy.ml, or many of the other technology communities from other instances, but I can’t just open up /c/technology in Beehaw and have a single view across the technology community. There could be posts I’m interested in on the technology@slrpnk instance but I wouldn’t know about it unless I specifically look at it, which adds up to a horrible experience of trying to see the latest tech news and conversation.
This adds up to a huge fragmentation across what was previously a single community.
Have I got this completely wrong?
Do you think this will change over time where one community on a specific instance will gain the market share and all others will evaporate away? And if it does, doesn’t that just place us back in the reddit situation?
Disagree. Look at the number of true or actual subreddits. Fragmentation allows for communities on the same topic to approach things differently. Like one can be a meme community and the other be a serious discussion.
Having more options is always a good thing and is frankly needed so we don’t setup another reddit situation where everything is one spot and if the people who control it change views we struggle to move.
Having options is good. The difference between /r/guitar and /r/guitars was insane because if the people in charge. But different strokes for different folks.
Yup totally agreed.
I am also starting to pick up on the fact that (I think) a large amount of users never really went beyond the front page or /r/all. So, sure there are “main” subs for specific topics, but there is a very, very niche world of communities behind it all as well, and to your point, purposeful fractures of communities. I saw it a lot with the game-specific subs, where you might have a sub for news about the game and general discussion, one for memes, one for pvp or competitive, one for lfg or clan recruitment, etc. - it’s a good thing.
That’s also the nice thing about federated content and instances in that no single instance needs to (or should imo) try to be everything to everyone and it gives everyone involved so much more flexibility. I also think that last part is what some folks are struggling with as well - when there isn’t a clear winner or “main” sub for <topic xyz>, but rather, quite a few options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities each with their own culture and vibe, it can certainly feel overwhelming. Reddit provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like.
[edited for grammar]