I love the fact that federation means we could have a grandma-focused instance that applies all my hypothetical filters by default. It’s possible… but there is currently no desire to become the front page of the internet. We’re a niche, and that just means we aren’t the place to try to advertise for the little guy.

Lemmy suffers from the same discoverability issue… so we aren’t exactly the best place to tell others about obscure websites. From the start we’ve inherited an open-source community that leans liberal, and aside one very large recent shift that means that the community also leans mostly Democrat.

What does that have to do with discoverability? Well, one look at a front page can clue you in. (gosh I hope these screenshots shrink in size for display)

IT, Politics, and Star Trek all over the front page of my instance. Possibly worse on others. Imagine if your 80 year old great-grandma landed on this page. All she knows is what Fox News says. Instant close on the website. Not even going to open one discussion. But let’s say she did open the one about the FBI director being missing:

oh my

Now let’s see a competing website:

Oh, new Chinese food place! Remote work isn’t working? Carrying your dog to pick up food? that’s silly! 2.7 million of wine! She must have really hated that job!

So what is my point? How can Lemmy increase it’s discoverability? I feel like community diversity would be the #1 concern. Well… one obvious action is to sanitize the front page of the popular instances. I’m going to assume that’s a highly unpopular opinion, because then it wouldn’t be Lemmy anymore. Maybe perhaps there is a different frontpage for logged out and logged in users? With politics being an opt-in for active sessions? Or maybe we should just post more cute cats.

What do you guys think? Am I completely wrong about community diversity? What changes would you make to Lemmy? It’s not an easy answer.

right right. Totally agree. The community here hurts it’s discoverability. My criticism is only in the way to the post was worded.

I had this big explanation, but I realized it’s not worth it. I already covered what I wanted to say.

Even if the post is true, it was the worst way to present it. It reads like trolling:

Call out people’s politics with grandiose rhetoric, not backing up any claims with links to evidence.

Declare the other side is unbiased.

I mean, Internet 101 would dictate you downvote and disengage. It’s not going to generate a discussion that would change minds or be constructive. Even now we’re not talking about small website discoverability, but instead downvotes.

EDIT: I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. I’ll try the same post.

I wonder if they think RPCS3 is currently too volatile a project to deliver a static database with the download.

I know a few people who are always “latest is greatest” but it is nice to have a matching config to what is being installed.

Yeah, Microsoft’s patching schedule is so rigid that it’s a meme. Anything outside of Tuesday is a patch for something under active exploit.

I swear, I did it by mistake

I’m just lucky the guy in front of me didn’t have his truck configured to roll coal, giving me a smokescreen in addition to blinding high beam.

!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!

You’d have said goodbye to your head as well, because that lifted truck isn’t going into the rear of the small car… it’s going up and over.

it’s all fun and games until they pull out the real gun.

I called the incident into the police station but it was before I had the dashcam so they just shrugged (and were probably blood related anyway).

I’ve… seen this? Well, not an AI model, but I know I’ve seen something where it takes common words and gives you the best guess on commands, and even common typos.

Yup… drove a small car back from college and two truck bros decided it’d be fun to sandwich my car between them. One rode my rear bumper with high beams, the other slowed down and rode the middle line so I couldn’t pass. Then he’d start slamming his brakes.