shrugal

And which algorithms would that be?

I'm referring to recommendation algorithms, the bad thing about them is that they can be used to manipulate people. Algorithms in general are fine of course.

Personally I think it's more important to break big-tech's hold on online communication. Every single user who leaves a centralized platform to join the Fediverse is a win in my books! Another thing is that we never had a mainstream decentralized, nonprofit and non-algorithmic social network before afaik, I'm actually not sure if the climate will evolve like it did with the other networks.

I think they would welcome Reddit users with open arms. As I said back then, the problem was not the content of the posts, but the fact that bots were posting them. The fact is that we perceive communication differently depending on the sender and the context, even if it's the same message content, basically 1st semester communication science in a nutshell. You just can't reduce communication to a simple exchange of ascii characters and make assumptions based purely on that.

Yeah I really quite enjoyed this discussion! I know I can sound a bit mean sometimes, but I truly hope your plans to promote the Fediverse work out!

adapting to a new scenario

I still think it's a bit arrogant of you to assume you have the right to tell people how they are supposed to use Lemmy. Imo the bots started being harmful/annoying, but you stopped it at that point, idk how it would have evolved if you didn't. And ofc being blocked by LW didn't really make things better.

I honestly see it as a moral imperative

I actually think you're completely right, but people act according to their own opinions and not necesarrily moral standards or logical reasoning. It won't make a difference whether you're morally correct or not if they just don't agree and you keep pushing.

This is not about taking the first step, this is about what direction to pick in the first place. You proposed one, I (and others) pointed out what might be problems with it. If you still think it's the best course of action then by all means go forward with it. Just be mindful that you can also do harm if you overdo do it, like giving Lemmy a bad rep by trying too hard to convince people to switch. Or ... you know ... creating a million bots or something.

Not entire communities. One.

So? You still need to convince the people of that community that it's a good idea, or do you think they will just follow a handful of mods blindly?

I don’t mind criticism, I do mind getting sidetracked with arguments and objections that are not related to the proposal.

Idk what you think critisism is, but imo it's mainly arguments and objections about things you might not have thought about. It's fine if you don't agree with them, but maybe don't ask for criticism and then lash out when it's not what you wanted to hear.

It’s silly to dismiss a whole thesis based based on your concept of “typical” or “average” anything when the whole idea is to find and reach outliers in a large population.

I thought the whole idea is to make entire communities migrate to Lemmy, and obviously those that don't yet have enough incentive to make the switch, no? You'll need to convince the majority of users in those communities then, and that means just catering to some outliers won't cut it.

Sorry for the personal callout, but are you always this negative?

I'm not negative, I just try to think about how it might play out based on my understanding of how things work. Should I tell you how great your idea is instead, even though I think it has some major shortcomings?

Can you please at least try to see how it could work instead of spreading misery everywhere?

I'm sorry, maybe you're not used to this kind of critizism. I'm not saying it can't work, I just bring up things that I think are problems, so you can take them into account and decide if you agree or not. As I said, I do think it's worth trying.

Moderators are taken advantage of, but they also get a free platform to host their community, and they can always step down if they want to. Most apparently have no issue playing by Reddit's rules, and therefore have no immediate need to switch to another platform.

I don't think the typical Reddit user cares much about shorting Reddit stock to make some money, they just want to talk and be entertained.

Those are things YOU care about and would motivate you to move, not the Reddit users you are trying to convince.

The one thing you're missing is a REASON for people to migrate to Lemmy. Network effect is a thing, and people won't move against it unless they have a good reason. If decentralization is important to you then it's easy to make the case for Lemmy and the Fediverse, but if not then these migration campaigns will just come off as annoying and like some kind of cult or fandom for an obscure alternative platform.

I mean think about it, from the perspective of an average Reddit user you are trying to lure away people from an established community to your own platform, breaking the existing community in two in the process. They will only support this if they think the trouble of going through a migration will be worth it, and the community has a good chance to completly reform on the new platform. They just won't come unless you can convince them that that's actually the case.

I also have my doubts with the approach of migrating one mid-sized community at a time. I get the idea that you want to build a lively community around a topic here, to make it worth people's time to participate. But people are usually part of more than one community, and I think they'll only migrate for good if MOST or at least a good portion of the communities they care about are well represented here. It's a textbook chicken-and-egg problem. But it might end up being better than other approaches, so maybe it's worth a try!

The reality is that we have the network effect and centralization efficiency stacked against us, and there is no magic plan that will make those go away. Imo the best things we can do are focusing on building and forstering our own communities here, thinking about how to create value that centralized and monetized platforms cannot easily replicate, and being on the lookout for opportunities like the Reddit protests to trigger migation waves.

That's just the nature of giving someone access to private content though. Even a single user could mirror everything to a public space and completely ruin everyone's day. You just have to take into account that you're giving access to the user AND the instance admin when approving a request, and that you trust them to do the right thing.