Unfortunately, the shadow of Voat still looms over this conversation. Redditors are wary of platforms that have a perceived radical userbase, and Lemmy as a whole has been painted as far left.

Toxic discourse in large Internet communities predates Reddit, even. It’s been a thing since before there was the web, becoming significantly more likely to find once you get to a critical mass of people.

It’s a good time in the political cycle to find and contribute to niche communities. I almost never come across this kind of thing because that’s where I hang out.

Indeed, if these places are able to survive, they’ll survive. No need to force it.

This kind of worship at the altar of efficiency is a big part of why we are losing our third places in society. Half the reason I’m here is to build. Not consolidate.

I don’t know about huge but the data on the same page supports the observation on post quantity. It’s still steadily increasing.

Comments might be currently on a stable trend.

No discussion? In the past few days you’ve commented in !games@lemmy.world and !technology@lemmy.world, two of the most active discussion communities on Lemmy. And you’re getting it here.

You also don’t have any posts in over three weeks and 13 in total over five months. People, if you want more active niche communities, you need to contribute to the discussion. You’re not going to be able to passively, endlessly doomscroll here. That level of content may never arrive, but there’s still plenty to build. Sure, it could be easier, with duplicate communities all over the place and defederation on the rise. For now, use Lemmy Explorer to see where the activity is and help us build those smaller communities.

What are some examples of niche communities that are declining?

Granted, I’ve only been here since the reddit migration, but after a short chaotic period, I’ve only seen growth in the communities I’ve been an active participant in.

!gaming@beehaw.org !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

The genre/publisher/series/individual game-oriented niche communities are generally still small but are growing. !baldurs_gate_3@lemmy.world has been active though.

What I’m seeing right now in the smaller communities is sufficient voter and comment engagement but not enough people making new posts to drive discussion.

lemmynsfw also banned CNC and is hostile to the drawn/animated side of the medium, which, if Pornhub’s numbers are anything to go by, is going to cut your participation big time. People love hentai and kink.

lemmynsfw’s admins never seemed to get that running a successful porn site means hosting content that might turn you off personally and trusting your mods to handle content control in categories unfamiliar to you.

Not surprising at all to me that a bunch of reposts and sex work ads what they were left with.

I doubt it is overall, but I’ve certainly seen more talk about it lately than I ever have. Not surprising considering how many reddit refugees I’ve been chatting with.

I started on kbin myself. It was mostly a population consideration, though I did like the downvote accounting. Community moderation is one thing Tildes does right, and that was a step in that direction.

I ultimately bailed when even the big magazines weren’t being moderated anymore (spam everywhere).

Not only that, but following the influx of new users was an assumption that just setting up niche communities exactly the way they were set up on Reddit was the best way forward (despite there only being a fraction of the userbase).

Some of these niches are going to need to merge. In some cases it’s going to happen naturally as redundant communities die off, but I’d like to see some effort to preempt that.

One big thing that hasn’t changed from reddit is that lemmy instances are still based on an autocratic power structure. Whether or not your content gets seen or you get to see other content depends on the relationships between those leaders. That means choosing your leadership is of utmost importance, and I eventually settled on lemm.ee because it was the first instance I came across that both a) seemed like it had actual adults running the show, and b) was large enough for that leadership have already faced some challenges and have an established track record.

That’s the downside to a niche instance.

I think the biggest value Reddit had to humanity was its original content. The kind of stuff that has people putting “reddit” in their Google searches for myriad topics.

As such, I’m not hung up on the numbers. If one really looked at it, that content generation is such a small fraction of what activity goes on over there. I’ll take quality over quantity here.

Why I’m encouraging anyone who will listen to participate in their fledgling niche communities here. Even if it’s just a little bit.

One can simply lurk on the niche subreddits. Growing fediverse communities need active participation.