The truth is most internet communities which found and advertise themselves as an alternative to Reddit die.

To be honest, there were damn good reasons why Voat, etc, died in a massive fire. The Reddit exoduses in question were from huge chunks of the userbase effectively being kicked out for being massive bastards/racists/bigots, etc. The communities that they spawned after leaving were absolutely horrific and nobody else on the internet wanted to go anywhere near them.

The current exodus is made up of actually normal people (at least, normal enough), and the reason we're here isn't just because we're all joined by hatred (weeeelllll... maybe a hatred of u/Spez in a lot of cases, ha!), but because we're genuinely looking for a better forum-space than what's been available recently until now.

Sure, there are similarities, we're still here because we find corporate control over the forum-space to be "oppressive" (just what an incel/racist would say, right?), but it's not because our views aren't tolerated there, it's just because we're really fucking tired of the cost of having somewhere to actually discuss things is that we're endlessly sold as a product, followed by our discussion area being destroyed by corporate greed. Over and over again.

The reasons why this place is getting busy is fundamentally different than the reason why the previous migrations created places like Voat or Parler, etc. We're already in a massively better position due to that alone.

Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats

I agree with what you're saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn't eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit. Memes can be fun and all, but sorting a lot of otherwise really great niche-subs by top of all time back there was often a case of finding nothing of value at all because there were 50 pages of fucking memes at the top of the list. Personal preference, of course.

I just need a little more time. There will likely be a technical break announced tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Along with the migration to new servers, we will be introducing new moderation tools that I am currently working on and testing (I had it planned for a bit later in my roadmap). Then, I will address your reports and handle them very seriously. I try my best to delete sensitive content, but with the current workload and ongoing relocation, it takes a lot of time. I am being extra cautious now. The regulations are quite general, and I would like to refine them together with you and do everything properly. For now, please make use of the option to block the magazine/author.

What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?

It is likely that most users will end up on a few big instances. That's not inherently bad, but it can be an issue if those instances have poor moderation.

You'll be able to see content from any instance that isn't defederated from your instance. The main thing this means right now is that you can't see new stuff posted to beehaw. Beehaw defederated lemmy.world and shitjustworks because of high moderation load due to open signups on those instances leading to a lot of troll users coming from them. They may refederate later when moderation tools for the platform improve or if those instances get more of a handle on the trolls, or they may not.

Since there are some big established communities on beehaw, you might benefit from having an account on an instance that is not defederated from them. Or you might not, if those specific communities don't interest you.

You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there’s one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that’s where I’m subscribing.

How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?

A quiet instance is fine (great, even), as long as it's federated with the busier instances that have the content you want to see. The best place on the fediverse is

• An instance with moderation/rules that you feel comfortable with
• Which is federated with all the instances that have communities you want to see

In terms of which communities I join, most communities aren't that active yet, so I'm joining all the ones that look remotely interesting. If the volume gets to be too much as the userbase grows, I'll drop the ones that aren't as fun/interesting.

One thing to note is that when you search from within your instance, the "subscriber" account for communities on other instances doesn't necessarily reflect the total population of subscribers, you'd need to click through to that instance to see the real number I think.

Also, since the total userbase is small relative to reddit, folks are going to be pooling more in general communities rather than specific ones. So for example, you might actually find more xbox related content in the general "gaming" community at Beehaw (20k subscribers) or the one at lemmy.ml (11k subscribers).