I don’t think this looks very good, but if we want a fighting chance, we can definitely do two things:

1. We need to make using other instances of Lemmy and kbin extremely easy. Seamless. Two taps on your phone simple. Sign up with Google. All that jazz. Then the most basic user will have an easier time choosing a non-Threads instance.

2. We need to, ironically I guess, advertise our LACK of advertisements. No matter how they do it, I’d bet anything Treads will integrate ads somehow, so this is a way we can quickly stand out.

On another note, users will want to go where the content lives. Of course, that makes this much more difficult. We all know Threads will be big, almost immediately. So, should we defederate with Threads like many of us are planning? This will keep us “safe” but we’ll lose all the new content. Or should we instead remain federated to keep seeing the content? Of course this doesn’t stop Threads from defederating from us themselves, so I truly don’t know the answer.

No matter what, I think we need to stand out to average social media users in a big way. I think my two points above are just a start, though. We need to offer more.

I don’t have high hopes, but I’m planning to fight like hell for our little paradise in any way I can.

Oh my God! I live baby ducks! Do you have some names in mind?

Yes, this exactly. I’m starting to suspect that either someone very misinformed or someone with an agenda started spreading this rumor.

It just takes one person to reaffirm that it really is “too much work to switch” and “you aren’t lazy for not trying” to keep a lot of folks in place.

Hmm this is also a good point. I’ve been explaining to redditors that Lemmy is not that complicated and only takes a couple minutes to get started. But reading this, now I’m hoping Lemmy can find the balance between number of active users and quality of content. I’m wondering if my spreading the word on reddit was a bad idea.

Maybe the “work” required to make the jump to Lemmy will be enough to keep lower quality content (for whatever reason) at bay for a bit longer, though. Of course, it won’t last forever. All we can do is make our communities good spaces from the get-go and try to maintain them carefully as we grow.

Spooky! Mine too was 9 years! Feb 13, 2014. It was fun over there, but I like it here better.

I had the same thought this morning! I also wonder if there’s a similar phenomenon with older redditors that came from digg. When was that?