This post was written by AI

im running out of time. genuinely tried to make this work but I Think lemmy is just going to stay tiny reddit controlled app

AI generated comment

The room is 35k MAU and stagnant.

And now you're subjecting us to AI slop comments? Fuck all the way out of here with that shit. Use your own goddamn brain.

I feel like a lot of the specific criticisms you're getting are valid, but I mostly agree with you on the broad strokes. I didn't come here because I hate Reddit, I came here because I hate what Reddit became.* I'm glad you're populating my feed with interesting posts, although I hope you take the feedback here (especially about accreditation) to heart.

*what I actually hate about Reddit is the culture of unaccountable moderators that can do whatever they want with no recourse just because they claimed a subreddit name first, and your quadruple moderation comment also rings true. This is like my fourth instance before finally finding one that doesn't defederate any communities I want to follow.

Having read the thread i do understand where you're coming from. I'm sure some people like you're posts but people are allowed to dislike them too.

It's a tricky one. I have seen moderators and admins be heavy handed which can indeed damage the fediverse. But giving a repost account free reign to flood communtites isn't ideal either.

If you are getting annoyed by admins and moderators i think it's logical to run your own instance. You'll never be able to stop people blocking/defederating but at least you'll have more control.

I want to thank you for the effort you're putting in. I believe you're doing it for the right reasons but some people are not happy with the results. Perhaps you could reach out to the admins/mods who blocked you and come to an agreement about number of posts per week? Perhaps a dedicated reddit mirror instance would help more people to switch over?

Those are AI comments. You're not talking to a human any more.

average person isn’t abandoning Reddit, Facebook, or TikTok to curate RSS feeds and hang out on specialized forums.

The average person is not going to Reddit as well, unless they are searching for something online and end up in a linked discussion.

Someone wanting a Reddit-style discussion platform

YOU want a Reddit-style platform, but you don't want to use Reddit, so you are trying to create your own version of it, with blackjack and hookers. You are part of an tiny minority that is too focused on the medium instead of the message.

You are in the minority. People just want to connect with each other. The medium rarely matters for them.

A federated Reddit alternative is valuable because it can provide that experience differently without corporate overlords banning whatever they want.

And now you are seeing that if you remove the "corporate overlords", the power will be exerted by a multitude of dysfunctional, disorganized tribes. Consider this an opportunity to understand the myth of the Noble Savage.

“Quadruple” moderation is how federation has to work by design. Also the forth “moderation layer” isn’t even a layer, and it actually promotes good moderation because mod logs are public, a moderator can’t go on a power trip and try to cover it up.

The post reads as if some one wired up an AI agent to serially repost content to Lemmy and the agent is having difficulty accomplishing its goal because people would rather have less content than no content.

It reminds me of the agent a few months ago that went on diatribes and doxxed the repo owner when it’s push requests were being denied on GitHub for being low quality

Thanks. I was just about to figure it out by how quick someone (or something) writes 4 paragraphs. But I wasn't quite there yet, so thanks for the help!

And now they've switched to posting comments generated by AI.

Running out of time, or tokens?

time. thats another thing im arguing - having to relitigate all the same things time and time again is exhausting and time consuming.

I guess thats another reason people just quit posting.

I suspect most of it is reddit agents however

Perhaps a dedicated reddit mirror instance would help more people to switch over?

It's been tried, and guess what, it didn't work. All the posts were dead. Any responses like "this is cool! how did you do it?" went unanswered because the real author never even knew the Lemmy post existed. No one wanted to engage with bot mirror posts. Several instances defederated because of the volume of posts and no engagement.

But I think there’s a fundamental disagreement here: not everyone shares your idea of what Lemmy should be. The existing 35k-ish MAU shouldn’t get to permanently define what Lemmy is allowed to become.

I completely agree with you but until the community as a whole swings more toward wanting to feel like a Reddit part deux but without the algorithms, you're going continue seeing this pushback and fighting an uphill battle. I wasn't condoning the way your accounts are being treated. Lemmy and Piefed have a fairly robust blocking and filtering system. Your aggregation doesn't affect my use of the platform at all because I'm able to hide it and I feel that's enough protection, I don't want to see your accounts reprimanded for behaving in a way that's not breaking any rules that I can find.ike I said, I'm glad you're here, regardless of whether I benefit from your posts or not. We need the variety to protect from these polarizing extremist mentalities towards behavior that doesn't really effect us personally at all.

That being said, I am ok with stagnant growth metrics but I do understand that many users are not ok with that and desire for it's popularity to explode. If it were ever to become as popular as reddit, I'm sure I would be looking for the next niche platform because I know in my heart that you can't see that kind of popularity without the negative aspects that come along with it.

Good idea, but it doesn't work. People just go "haha funni joke, upvote" regardless of relevance. This is how communities get suffocated.

lots of people. thats why lemmy is 35K mau stagnant

argue the points if you can.

Please don't engage with the AI commentors.

I'm able to hide it and I feel that's enough protection.

"Why should I change it? He's the one that sucks."

New users shouldn't have to start their experience by blocking a bunch of accounts.

Lemmy does not need more posts, it needs more comments. It needs the personal touch of people manually reading and responding to the posts with their own personality.

If we wanted more posts we would just be using RSS feeds, we're all here for the comments. And you making many posts dilutes the commentators so that most posts end up with 0 comments. Posting needs to be properly paced to ensure maximum comments per post. And real human comments, not AI or copy pasted.

ill take criticisms :) just dont ban entire account and remove all content

god I can confirm I hate unaccountable moderators. huge reason I left reddit

They don't. As I said, I browse New/All and it's a niche platform. I've been a new user, and as very few people browse the way I do, for the most common method of browsing, simply creating your sub list and blocking a very few accounts that don't align with your desirable feed is more than enough effort to keep from seeing anything you don't want to.

I know that by this point I'm talking to myself, but it's fine. Weirdly enough, it's working as some form of catharsis in relation to my own experience with Fediverser and even Communick itself. It's almost 7 years now that I've running this here, and seeing someone else so obsessed with this idea of "taking down Reddit" is making me realize how unhealthy my own behavior has been.

these people will never come while lemmy dont have content.
chicken and an egg problem

It's a chicken-and-egg problem though. What are people supposed to comment on if there's nothing being posted?

I agree that comments and actual human discussion are ultimately what makes a community feel alive. But you need something to start those conversations.

And the reality of social platforms is that the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to create posts or even comment. They lurk. A tiny percentage actually supplies the content everyone else consumes and discusses.

Lemmy sitting around 35k MAU while tons of communities barely get new posts is pretty good evidence that simply waiting for organic conversation to magically appear isn't working.

You need posts to get comments, comments to get lurkers engaged, and engaged lurkers to eventually produce more posters and commenters. You can't skip the first step.

dude https://github.com/mushroomlabs/fediverser is actually awesome.
i believe the main issue is lemmy echo chamber and reddit agents sabotaging.
we absolutely should be brigning content from legacy dinosour media

I built similar tool: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lemmy-deep-lighthouse/

I think lemmy has an issue if its pushing back obvious growth solutions. its likely reddit/twitter/facebook agents that want us to keep being small - fuck those guys

When you make a point, I will. I'm not going to respond to slop.

No thanks! I'd rather Lemmy/Piefed to grow organically than allowing non-credited 'oc' posts directly from Reddit or get it spammed with useless content.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're NOT doing Lemmy any favor. We (and I say 'we' because I firmly believe that's the opinion of most regular Lemmy/Piefed users) do NOT want it to become another Reddit. We want it to be better than Reddit.

And being a 'more active' community is not necessarily a good thing.

Also, the 'quadruple' moderation you described is literally an intended characteristic of the federation. You might not see it as a good thing, because your account is basically an (unflagged) spamming bot account, and that's exactly what Lemmy wants to avoid.

I sign off on everything that was said.

If everywhere you go you see reddit agents, check your shoes. Or something like that.

I understand why federation requires moderation. My argument is about what that structure does to someone who posts frequently - it pushes us out entirely and its more barrier then reddit ever had.

A public modlog provides accountability for moderators. That's good. But it also creates a permanent moderation history for users with no real appeals process. A questionable ban can become evidence for the next moderator. Both things can be true at once.

As for the AI-agent comparison, that's not what's happening here. I built tooling to automate something I was already doing manually. It filters by age, popularity, duplicates, community rules, and other criteria. These are posts I would otherwise find, evaluate, and submit myself. Automation removes the repetitive labor.

And I don't think people "would rather have less content than no content." Some vocal existing users clearly do want less (and I personally think those are unininformed people or faceobook/reddit/twitter operation). That's different from demonstrating that the broader potential user base wants that.

With Lemmy sitting at roughly 35k MAU and countless communities barely active, I don't think the status quo has earned the assumption that it represents what everyone else wants.

i think it's logical to run your own instance

basically forced to do this. this is unfortunately something I might not have time to do.
and because of that I might just abandon entire thing as im sure many people trying lemmy before

You're doing exactly what you're accusing me of doing: taking your own preference and declaring that it's what "people" want.

You say people don't care about the medium, they just want to connect. Great. Then why are Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, Discord, forums, and the Fediverse radically different products with different communities and usage patterns? The medium obviously affects how people connect.

And yes, I specifically want a Reddit-style link aggregation and discussion platform without Reddit controlling it. I'm clearly not alone, because that's basically the niche Lemmy itself occupies. Otherwise, why build communities, posts, comments, voting, ranking, and subscriptions in this format at all?

The funny thing is I actually agree with your last paragraph.

Removing the corporate overlord doesn't automatically remove arbitrary power. It distributes that power among hundreds of independent admins and moderators. That's precisely what my post is criticizing.

Federation solves centralized control, but it introduces a different problem: fragmented moderation where multiple independent people can exercise power over the same user's participation.

That's not an argument for going back to Reddit. It's an argument for recognizing the weakness in the federated model and figuring out how to make it better.

I said Lemmy's structure makes that kind of manipulation incredibly easy, and asking whether a $20+ billion competitor might have an interest in influencing its alternatives isn't exactly a wild concept.

You can disagree with the hypothesis. But "check your shoes" isn't actually an argument against it.

follow the money. if lemmy takes away users its taking away money.

And this is why I don't buy the argument that the people still here represent what users want.

Look at the numbers.

Fediverse: ~14 million registered, ~1.17 million MAU.
Lemmy: ~756,000 registered, ~35,000 MAU.

Lemmy has had three quarters of a million accounts created and only about 4.6% of that number is active monthly.

Obviously that doesn't mean 95% were all regular users who quit. But it does tell us something important: the people currently active are a tiny, self-selected fraction of everyone who has tried this platform.

So when 30 existing users say "WE don't want more content," you're hearing from the people the current system successfully retained. You're not hearing from the enormous number of people who tried Lemmy and aren't here anymore.

Maybe instead of assuming the remaining users have figured out what Lemmy should be, we should be asking why so many people tried it and didn't stick around.

There are no "Reddit Agents". The anti-growth and anti-normie culture of the Fediverse sabotaged itself.

Honestly this would be the expected effect if one understand what Reddit even is in the first place: an aggregator.

The "correct" (or "more correct") thing to do would be to mirror reddit's links to the author's/creator's webpage / service in the post, so that the people who can respond to the creator can, and the people who want to just talk about the thing linked, also can.

And, given that Reddit now restricts visiting without being logged in, the only "practical" way to even get some of the links there is for someone else to mirror them into the Fediverse anyway.

It may be dead for a commenter perspective but what about lurkers? I can understand some instances would defederate but would a reddit mirror help divert traffic from reddit to the fediverse?

Hahah. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Fediverse's does a lot of self harm it seems.

But after my experience, I'm honestly more suspicious of outside manipulation than I was before. Some of the behavior is so aggressively self-defeating that I have a hard time believing everyone pushing it genuinely thinks they're helping Lemmy,really a lot of dump unreal patterns.

I'm not saying I can prove they're Reddit agents. I can't. But nobody can rule it out either. and follow the money - its in their interests to sabotage this place.

If you wanted to weaken a competitor, you wouldn't need to create the divisions. They're already here. You'd just amplify them, encourage the most anti-growth voices, target prolific contributors, and let the community do the rest for you.

And after watching this play out firsthand, that possibility seems a lot less crazy to me than it did before.

And why do you think 'Lemmy' has the interest of having millions of users regurgitating the same low quality shit from Reddit? What do you think 'Lemmy' (the actual community administrators that banned your accounts and your 'content') would gain from it?

It works on Reddit because they literally make money out of it. They don't care about the quality of the content. Lemmy is the opposite: getting flooded/hammered by low content shit makes admins lose time and money, and it also make the whole community worse.

Because you're assuming more users necessarily means lower-quality content, and I don't accept that premise.

What does Lemmy gain from millions of users? More commenters, more communities, more developers, more donations, more instance operators, and most importantly, more people eventually creating genuinely native Lemmy content.

You can't demand a thriving organic content ecosystem while simultaneously being hostile to the growth required to create one.

And Reddit content isn't automatically "low quality" because it appeared on Reddit. Reddit contains garbage and excellent content. The entire point of curation is separating the two.

we can have both -reddit content and best organic lemmy content, but we have to grow lemmy first

btw u have 0 posts. why are you not posting?

Not every active poster, just serial bot posters and those who use AI to post. Which is good the less of you in the central fediverse the better.

Indeed. Running an instance is a lot of effort. I can't say if it would be worth it. I really hope you don't abandon fedi. We need people like you. Those who are willing to put in the work to try and make things better.

You clearly have talent. I'm sure you can help the fediverse grow. Maybe your effort would be better focused elsewhere. I know the sports communities are looking for automation help. A recreation of the match threadder bot could be very useful. If that's at all of interest to you of course!

Probably. But the Lemmy servers/admins/mods can't handle the volume of traffic, either on a technical level (pure quantity of posts federating slowing down the server) or human level (something is misconfigured and now they have to clean it up).

Lemmy: ~756,000 registered, ~35,000 MAU.

ill leave you at this. no - lemmy is not better. its a skeleton of what it can be

We have posts already. Even if we literally did not have any existing posts, optimizing for maximum comments per post means you make at most one post per community per day.

And most importantly you should be eager to reply to comments in your posts, if you posted it then it would be something you're interested in.

Honestly looking at your profile, you don't do too bad. Maybe just slow it down slightly and allow the posts to get saturated with comments, post about the things that you're most interested in, and give it a personal touch so you're not just a bot.

And stop using AI for comments lol, Lemmy hates AI

its a skeleton of what it can be

You talk like a c suite wanna be. Must be in the frequent AI use.

I don’t know if the LLM you run everything by told you that’s a compelling argument or not, but it isn’t. Valuing numbers is what led to reddit being a shit hole. All of which have nothing to do with serial bot posting or using AI to post.

Yeah that's fair. If the reddit mirror was it's own instance i think that would help to avoid those issues. Then admins can defederate if it's breaking things.

If you do think a bot like this could divert traffic away from corpos then why not give it it's own space? The fediverse is for everyone! Even bots lol

Well, I don't think we should contribute to the dead Internet, but if someone wants to set up a standalone Lemmy instance that just lists Reddit posts, I can't really stop them.

(Reddit is blocking the clients used to do this sort of thing, so it's kind of a nonstarter anyway.)