a.k.a. the 90–9–1 principle. Does the Fediverse follow this rule, or are there more creators here as early adopters? Are you a creator, a participator or a lurker?
I think that 1% rule is a bigger problem for Lemmy than other platforms, because you have the same communities on multiple instances, making it harder for each community to reach critical mass.
This seems like an inevitable QoL improvement, I’ve seen so many comments pining for it. A bunch of apps are getting ready to hit the App Store, can’t wait to try them and see them evolve
i wondered about that too, though people seem to be finding the communities and federation seems to be doing its job. it's nice seeing users from other servers actively participating. only time will tell whether it's sustainable but i think slow and steady growth is a-ok for real community building
Having multiple instances which all are able to make the same community isn't a bad thing, it makes things more divers and prevents censorship.
It does get taxed harder by the 1% rule, to get access to all the content you need to join the same community on all instances, other platform that concentrate the content is a single place doesn't have this issue.
From a lifetime of small message boards It's easier to drive engagement in smaller groups. If there's less overall exhaustion with the basics in any niche, splitting the new members is a good way to keep differentiated material. Also growing communities can end up boxing out their regulars. It might be hard to get started, but the small communities tend to be resilient at some point, they just migrate service to service.
Most of the people who moved here were especially motivated to overcome the barriers to entry to, so I'm not sure the numbers still hold.