I don’t run my own instance, but one concern I see grappled with by instances, at some time in their existence, is how to handle image storage and embedding. I won’t pretend to know the options or have opinions on which to use or how to resolve the larger issues, but I see that as a large hurdle to mainstream, in addition to the points referenced by OP.

Yes, but quality over quantity. I was a redditor back in the early days, pre Digg migration. Being a redditor meant something back then, almost universally meant you were tolerant, usually but not always somewhat liberal, and with a very strong sense of fairness. I remember a good friend of mine started dating someone and when they mention their new partner was a redditor I am immediately thought oh good, that means they are very likely a good person (they ended up married). Reddit has of course grown since then, but not all of the growth is good. I used to go there for engaging discourse, knowing that I was surrounded by other relatively smart people and we could have respectful discussion on almost any subject. Those discussions are few and far between now.

So yes I would like Lenny and the fediverse to grow, but I am more interested in what kind of people we attract than simply growing numbers. When I would rather do is create a reputation that the fediverse is a place to come before respectful discourse and sharing of ideas, not just scrolling through page after page of mindless content like on a big tech social platform (FB / Insta / TikTok / etc).

Growth is a secondary concern to me. I’m not against it but quality is much more important to me than quantity. And I mean quality in terms of content AND respectful interaction.

Historically, if one can even use the word for such a recent thing as the internet, techies are usually first to a new thing. And these types of conversations inevitably follow at some point as though growth at all costs is the only way to stave off death. And then a decade or so further on we end up with Xitter, Meta and Reddit where the anger is palpable and the interface revolves around pushing monetised hate at you and exploiting your private data for another source of monetisation.

I’m enjoying being able to go somewhere everyday where I don’t have awfulness pushed to a platform curated feed I can’t opt out of. If people want those things - fine they exist. I hope the fediverse does all it can to avoid interacting with or devolving to those places and that any discoverability tools that might get developed are for people not algorithms. I hope it remains an alternative to that mindset, not just another place to fling shit at each other.

Yes and no. Would be nice to have more active niche communities, but I don’t want this place to become full-on Reddit.

Yeah. This is such a better experience than past community tools I have used.

In particular, I hope we can attract the Do-It-Yourself repair community, before the current platforms lock all of that content away.

Absolutely. I think the setup of the Fediverse in general as well as the outlook on it by the majority of admins would allow Lemmy to keep its charm even when it grows to a much bigger size.

Lemmy should be the replacement for reddit IMHO.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying the recent influx since the recent reddit migrations, while still staying niche. And I’m appreciating being amongst like minded, generally leftist communities here.

But if it requires opening up the floodgates to idiots, fascists, and trolls in order to kill reddit, so be it. As long as there are no algorithms, advertisers, and spez’s, I’m all for more lemmings.

Yes, but slowly. Every time I go to the Reddit front page and just see astroturfing and vapid pop culture stuff, then go to the comments and see 75% repetitive bot comments, I realize how much that place sucks now. I want more niche discussion spaces, but I don’t want reddit again anytime soon.

Yes, I do want Lemmy to grow … but to grow organically and naturally over a very long period of time instead of artificially in a short period of time just to make some idiot or a small group of idiots a bunch of money.

Growing over a long period of time will also allow developers, maintainers and managers to grow with increased size over time. Instead of panicking over sudden exponential growth, they can slowly build stronger more robust systems over time. Also, if something is grown over a long period of time … it will also take a long period of time for it be destroyed, dissolved or disregarded. If you grow something way too fast, chances are the risks increase for it to disappear just as quickly.

Yes, absolutely.

The nice thing about Reddit was that if I saw a new TV show, read a new novel, or picked up a new hobby, there would be an existing community of people already talking about it. Lemmy is great, but it doesn’t have the critical mass of people needed for that to be possible.

Eh… I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, it sure would be nice if there were more gamers here and every individual game had its own community, that was actually active, like Reddit does.

On the other, I’ve seen literally every space I’ve ever used get ruined by having too many people watering down the fun and altering the vibe. Eternal September fucking sucks.

More niche communities outside of the closed platforms would be great, but doesn’t have to be lemmy per se. Anything federated would be great.

Yeah. I came here after the Reddit API debacle. I hoped Lemmy would be a good substitute, but we don’t have enough users or enough posters.

I’m happy with current population. Bigger is not going to be better. You can look at any big platform to see where it’s heading when they become big.

It would be much more users who are not very used to how to behave on more intelligent social networks.

I rather not see this place become Twitter.

I like this place without Trumpists who never fail to give me headaches