This is a theory that’s previously been stated in log/39-normie-hypothesis.gmi, but I think it’s worth expanding on as it’s become very relevant with the recent Reddit shit-show actualizing just how bad that website has gotten along with social media in general. I think the model demonstrate how the ’enshittification’ process is an inevitability with any social media that is run on a venture capital model. An online community can be like a village, where you have familiar faces, collective experiences, shared values and so forth.

Great writing on the current Reddit saga. The author put down in words a lot of things in my mind I couldn’t find the right words.

  • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
    3·
    1 year ago

    to start with, ive had more vibrant, long and interesting conversations more often on a site of 300-3,000 as opposed to a sub with millions.

    • cwagner@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      1 year ago

      Millions, probably. But most subs I’m in are small, and most subscribers don’t even post. Fragmenting those further just kills discussion.

      • displaced_city_mouse@midwest.socialEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        There’s the problem of filtering as well – if I jump into a thread that’s a few hours old on Reddit, there may already be hundreds of replies. How do I filter this? How many discussions have you been in where there were several different people all with the same response, simply because someone else had the same opinion 30 minutes earlier?

        On the flip side, if you’re in a small local sub, how do you get new ideas injected? It’s the “joke #243” problem, where everyone’s heard everything already. Until more people arrive with fresh insights and ideas, the community can become insular.

      • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
        2·
        1 year ago

        i think its just another UX issues, reddit also had the concept of topics but it was rather weak and not leveraged. With a federation setup topical sorts should get more prevalence. Even getting some small communities togher might be a challenge, even some small comms dont post because reddit culture rather than the sub being small. “back in the day” you could easily find active communities of 10 users on a phpbb forum. Part of the trick? IMO, no internet points.

      • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
        1·
        1 year ago

        id disagree, this dynamic exists on discord with thousands of communities and hundred’s of redundant servers. What you are seeing as “people” is mostly “folks Stockholmed by reddit”

    • Honeyed Coffee
      1·
      1 year ago

      I can imagine small communities spread across. By virtue of its size, there are high chances of topics staying relevant too.

      I am concerned about small bubbles though. Discussions in single instances that never bounce across to similar communities in other instances but I suppose that’s putting the cart before the horse

      • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
        4·
        1 year ago

        realistically the same thing happens on reddit, any sub not big enough is very unlikely to ever be featured on the home page, and this is not always a bad thing, some communities are not interested in being featured, some are brigaded as a prize.