Replying to @⁨speedythefirst@lemmy.zip⁩

Certainly. Don’t know how large and when, but a significant (relative to our size) bunch of people would likely show up. That plus people who dabble in both would increase their activity here. The threadiverse is more or less guaranteed to grow and form a solid contrubutor base. We don’t seek to increase profits YoY so our services are only going to get better over time. For-profit socials have to grow profits over time, so they are going to get worse. Increase in service quality for for-profit platforms is a temporary stage of their development. The threadiverse will be around in 5-10 years time, in some shape or form and it’ll be larger and better than it is today. This is why I keep pushing the vote buttons and type words every day. Deliberately spending more time than I’d like. 😄

Replying to @⁨avidamoeba@lemmy.ca⁩

This is simply not true.

  1. nothing in life is ever fully “guaranteed

  2. our numbers have been actively decreasing since the Rexodus - from 60k (edit: 65k actually) at our peak down to ~35k now

  3. PieFed now shadow-censors all votes with a daily vote quota, thereby limiting such interactions

Not everything always moves in a positive line. We might improve here, especially if we put in the efforts to do so, but it is not assured, especially without having put in such efforts.

Replying to @⁨OpenStars@discuss.online⁩

  1. That’s my bet for the reasons I outlined. It’s not a bet in vacuum. I think it’s strong enough to consider it “certain,” colloquially speaking. Is it certain in mathematical terms? No, as you said - nothing is certain.
  2. That’s not inconsitent with my bet. We can get into why but probablt don’t need to.
  3. No idea what that’s about, not using PieFed. They limit what? Why do they do that? I read your explanation.

E: BTW I’m not unaware of the ability of for-profits to siphon people away from existing corporate platforms into new corporate or corporate-adjacent platforms, for example. E.g. Twitter -> Bluesky. I think that would be insufficient in the long run to halt the fediverse growth because every time this cycle occurs, some people fall off into the fediverse and that’s usually the more aware people. They tend to create more content.

Replying to @⁨avidamoeba@lemmy.ca⁩

Most people either seem to be happy with the way things are and don’t even want to grow at all - certainly not “at all costs” - or else they naively think that we will grow merely bc Reddit sucks, with zero effort required beyond that. I am glad that you are aiming at a blend of optimistic realism.

Though in that case, #2 is where the heart of the issue lies: so very MANY people overcame all the hurdles, figured out how to use this place, created an account, even posted here for multiple years, only to leave and now bad-mouth us over on Reddit. Overwhelmingly the sentiment there whenever a community decides to migrate and people ask where should they go, and Lemmy is suggested, the response is “oh HELL NO!!!”

And ofc many more people don’t even make it as far as that - but people are willing to put in a lot of effort, when they see that there is VALUE in doing so. Hence, our reputation being so poor, deprives us in many more ways than just the one, if the goal was to grow.

And I honestly don’t think that we will actually. Maybe in 10 years yes, but not in 1-2. And I, like so many others, have made my peace with that. Especially bc we aren’t really willing to lift a finger to do anything about the main problem that plagues us here - again, our reputation on Reddit. So, we shall remain small (the direct and immediate consequence of that), since collectively that’s what we have decided to do, whether consciously or no.

en