When the Reddit strike started, I tried Lemmy for a few weeks.
Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself (both criticizing the owners and extolling the platform). I was interested in programming posts but there was almost nothing interesting there :( so I was quite happy when Reddit came back (it seems to have come back to normal levels now).
> Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself
I call this the new social death spiral. When meta-discussion dominates for too long, it kills the community. I'm surprised Mastodon has lasted for as long as it has for precisely this reason.
Yeah, this is kind of a problem with a lot of 'alternative' social media sites and platforms. They become places where the majority of discussion is "why the existing site/service is trash and why the people using it are idiots/wrong"
But that's not an interesting topic to discuss, at least not for very long. A community based on negativity towards an existing community is built on sand, and probably isn't going to last very long.
So they need to find a way to attract people who discussing 'normal' things, and don't spend every waking moment of their life being obsessed with the platform/the old platform.
Looking at https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy The Reddit exodus brought "active users" from ~0 to 70k. Half of them have left again since then.
That matches my subjective perception. Activity has significantly waned again. Larger communities are good (e.g. !europe@feddit.de). Smaller ones (e.g. !rpg@ttrpg.network) were good but are dying now.
It would be good timing for another exodus scandal by Reddit now.