this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Why bother, if they want a good community they will seek one out. Growth isn’t necessarily good for this place.
Overgrowth certainly would have some drawbacks, but stagnation probably isn't good either
I find the fediverse to be quite lively (more than reddit) even if it doesnt have 5 posts a second. Quality > Quantity. Would rather have 1 good post that gets engagement than 10 shitposts nobody ever sees.
goes back to lemmy where every 10th post is a shitpost about beans
https://youtu.be/7ZWQMvHNOnI
Bump. (he he he) :p
I'd say the fediverse is somewhat protected against the drawbacks of growth in a way Reddit isn't.
As long as instance owners can handle the traffic, yes.
eh, kinda? Decentralisation means one instance can learn from the failures of another, and there's bo one thing that can bring the entire Fediverse down. But that's a worst case scenario.
What I fear is this: A spike of interest in the fediverse leads to many instances being overwhelmed, and the general newbie experience quickly turns many people away, leading to lots of people leaving with a sour taste. In the meantime, instances successfully adapt and new ones spring up, but most users aren't coming back.
Imo that's a more realistic scenario than some grandiose failure, and you could say it's already happened several times.
ee was overwhelmed and it was a large instance apparently.
they could just disable signups when they get too many users, or maybe use an invite system to limit signups
Well yeah, that's what being overwhelmed means
It'd be a good way to get people to spread out and make sure they don't all join the same instance
Blåhaj has that, works pretty well
we do need growth because its quite stagnant and contracted since instances keep disappearing. the problem with reddit is they allow alot of botting, astroturfing going on. with the last big instance shutting down i noticed it became super stagnant.
we at least need to make sure we don't shrink, which can sneak up on you and be difficult to stop, better to maintain some growth
Also we need a stream of new users to replace leaving users (there will always be churn), especially when an instance goes down many users won't signup again
Agreed, make the place too big and it will become unmanageable the same way it went for reddit.