this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024

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Futurology

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How can this community leverage its access to the 20 million subscribers in r/futurology on Reddit? (images.cnbctv18.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Lugh to c/futurology

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As you probably know from the sidebar this site was started by moderators from the r/futurology subreddit, and some of us moderate both. We initially thought most of the site's growth would come via Reddit, but it hasn't happened that way. Our main instance - c/futurology - gets most of its subscribers from elsewhere in the fediverse. Despite several attempts with pinned posts that a few thousand people have read, only 20% of our userbase joined from Reddit.

We don't want to spam the subreddit user base, but we have access to things like pinned posts and comments to promote this site.

We'd like to grow subscriber numbers for here from Reddit. Any ideas as to how to do this more successfully than we have previously?

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[–] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How about linking some posts to the Lemmy post about an article, rather than the article itself? I don't know if people will like that, but it might make them aware of this platform

[–] Espiritdescali 2 points 5 months ago

Thats a good idea, I like that

[–] MaximilianKohler 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Do the admins care if there are automod comments in every thread notifying people about the benefits of open-source, federation, and your community here? If not, that may be one of the better methods.

I remember how you guys were one of the first big subs I saw use automod comments in every thread, instead of one sticky at the top of the sub, because you recognized that most people visit their homepage, not each individual sub.

EDIT: I would include information about how it's dangerous for a single entity to control so much public information.

[–] Lugh 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's 2 issues here.

We want to be very selective with our use of automod & pinned posts/comments. It can easily move to accusations of spam.
We've tried emphasizing the open-source, no-tracking aspect before. It doesn't seem to attract much interest.

Most Redditors are casual users there for content. Only a small minority care about the issues that motivate the fediverse. What we'd like to do is bring some of the large group here; but they will have to be motivated by something else.

We have regular posting here now, often with topics not on the sub-reddit. My hunch is that an approach like - "Like r/futurology? - come to our other site for extra content" - might work better.

[–] MaximilianKohler 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have you discussed how it’s dangerous for a single entity to control so much public information? For example, Youtube now randomly removes comments, including from the channel owner. So it's impossible to have discussions and share information on Youtube now. Yet moving away is so difficult since they have a huge monopoly + the network effect.

Explaining to people that they should take steps to prevent this from happening on other platforms like Reddit should hopefully motivate some more people.

You may also want to mention that Reddit's automated systems are faulty, and many people are at risk of losing their accounts and subreddits, and thus years of their work.

I listed my reasoning here https://maximiliankohler.blogspot.com/2023/06/reddit-is-dangerous-humanity-needs-an-alternative.html for why people should be moving away from reddit and other large social media companies.

You could even include examples of how Facebook and Twitter have declined and become problematic. The same principals (enshittification, etc.) put the entire internet at risk.

We have regular posting here now, often with topics not on the sub-reddit. My hunch is that an approach like - “Like r/futurology? - come to our other site for extra content” - might work better.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all. You could create an automod sticky in every thread that says "Many of our content creators moved to our Lemmy instance for X reasons, so feel free to join us there for extra content".

[–] RA2lover 2 points 5 months ago

I wouldn't put the decentralization aspect of Lemmy in the spotlight as its implementation has signifficant flaws. Lemmy hides posts and comments from users in defederated instances even if they're posted on communities that would be otherwise visible, and this makes the optimal behavior for visibility be that of creating accounts in every instance you're posting to.

The previous accounts i've used on this instance, RA2lover@burggit.moe and RA2lover@kbin.burggit.moe, had far less activity on posts/comments compared to posts/comments made by others at similar times, because the instances they were from were defederated by nearly all lemmy instances over accepting lolicon. This issue was bad enough to be one of the reasons that made them leave Lemmy entirely.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A risky move would be to intentionally make the Reddit experience worse (delayed posts?), while advertising Lemmy.

A safer approach would be to keep the Reddit experience roughly the same, but promote the advantages Lemmy and draw attention to the disadvantages of Reddit.

The folks over in !fedigrow@lemm.ee might have some interesting ideas. You should consider crossposting.

[–] Lugh 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks, I subscribed to them.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, if you do it successfully, you'll probably get a message from admins about how corporate loves you and loves your community on Reddit, or else.

Ignoring that, the trick for ordinary users is getting here with minimum clicks. That's pretty much always how mass internet works, right? Is there a way you could make the instance compatible with Google logins and similar?

I know, I know, they're evil, but they're also in charge of you right now unless you happen to be a die-hard hacker.

[–] Lugh 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Google logins and similar?

I've never seen that done, but I'm going to look into it, as it would be good.

trick for ordinary users is getting here with minimum clicks.

Yes, added to that the clunkiness of finding and subscribing to other instances is a huge turn off. I wish we could have "special" accounts for new users, that were already subscribed to a top 50-100 curated instances. Sadly, AFAIK You can't do that.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Hmm. It shouldn't be too hard, without looking again at the source to be sure. I assume there's just a table for subscribed communities, and you could make a little script that copies default rows into it.

[–] RA2lover 1 points 5 months ago

I think most users leaving reddit over current grievances have already done so, just not necessarily on this instance.

IMO the best idea would be waiting until reddit does their next majorly unwelcome change and only try to move users from it at that moment. Creating a new account on a different website has its friction, and i don't think any amount of pushing within /r/futurology's own capabilities can overcome that on its own.