In the months since I deleted my Reddit accounts and joined Lemmy, the lack of user base growth has made it clear that we need some users to stay on Reddit as a means of shepherding more users over on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, Reddit simply got what it wanted: less users who make a fuss about how it manages its platform without losing users en-masse.
In doing so, however, does Reddit shadowban posts that mention or promote Lemmy? Googling mentions of Lemmy on Reddit mostly brings up posts from around the time of the blackout, suggesting that mentions of it since then have been suppressed. Before I return to Reddit to promote Lemmy, does anyone know for certain one way or the other?
Probably not. But from their POV it’s at least a competitor, albeit an insignificant one, and pushing too hard to “let people know” is… pretty much spam. They’re used to handling spam and have mechanisms in place (fewer now, though. snort.)
I don’t know how frequently this happens, but my experience is that a link to a lemmy group was deleted by mods. It was very politely worded, and suggested and alternative community on Lemmy, and also noted that there’s no reason that somebody couldn’t read both communities. It was still deleted as “spam or self-promotion.”
That could just be a maturity issue with the mod who deleted it. It could also be that Reddit itself is doing it and simply said it was done by the mods of the group.
Not reddit as a whole, it is individual moderators with the automod. My small community has a pinned lemmy link that is visible and the posts to the sub are restricted.
They definitely used to delete links to popular Lemmy instances. I posted a few as a test one time and found the comment to be shadow deleted. It looked like it existed to me, but if I logged out, I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t banned, though. Idk if this is still happening.
No, they don’t. The /r/KDE subreddit has their automod mention the Lemmy community on every post.
Tbf it could be that automod is exempt from such automatic banning/removal.
I think the reality is that no one on Reddit gives a shit about Lemmy. I used to see if my comments were being deleted by a mod by opening the permalink in a private browser window. I don’t know if admin removal has a more complicated way of masking it or not.
Not enough users left Reddit after the blackout to either make a difference there or establish communities on Lemmy that are big enough to encourage people on the fence to switch over. To turn Lemmy into a viable alternative, we need to convince more Redditors to switch over by mentioning Lemmy in the right threads, making sure to explain features of Lemmy in terms of Reddit analogs to avoid the usual complaints of Lemmy being difficult to understand. Most people won’t care, but the ones that do will be vital in bringing the userbase to the point where people will want to join Lemmy due to it having active communities rather than it just not being Reddit.
When I ended up at Reddit 16 years ago after Digg, I don’t recall it being a huge community immediately. I think it helped that there weren’t subreddits yet. So, probably seemed like more people. I think it took a couple of years for the transition to hit critical mass.
Yup, this is the answer. We know enshittification will continue apace because history has shown that these companies will never change their behaviour. They are fundamentally fragile systems.
The way to deal with this is not some big marketing push - that’s a centralised approach - but to make an antifragile system that will slowly gain users and not lose them en masse. It’s the tortoise vs the hare.
Lemmy is the tortoise.
I’m not even too worried about corporate entryism - although I do think we should block them - because they will only make fragile instances and they will be outlasted as long as we keep independent instances alive and healthy.
They don’t shadowban, but they’ll auto-remove comments mentioning it. I posted the Join Lemmy link in a comment a while back, and that comment was immediately updated to [removed by reddit].
This could be a automod setting that community admins can add. I’ve mentionned lemmy and didn’t get remived comments, I might try again
I’ve tested this on r/lemmy, and it still got removed.
“Removed by Reddit” implies admin action though.
At most they suppress them, no shadowbanning. There’s a whole lemmy subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Lemmy/ and it gets mentioned on r/RedditAlternatives all the time
No shadow ban, but auto-removal of the posts
I cant say for sure but it would make sense that they did a regex or something. We could go around that the same way spammers get around spam filters. By writing L3mmy for instance or something else entirely.
I think links to world dont work at all (just a rumor I heard) so we could use link shorteners.
I’m sure people will stampede and trample each other on their way to try out a website that uses spammers’ tactics for promotion
Oh you mean like every other successful business? Yeah, you‘re probably right. Nobody will use it.
ah yes, all those successful and well respected businesses selling V1agra, this is the model we should all look up to
Could make use of Unicode lookalike letters (е and у in this case) to write Lemmy as Lеmmу.
Random thought, do Lemmy posts show up in searches?
I’m pretty sure that’s how I ended up at reddit. After so many google searches lead me to the site, I decided to check it out some more
I have totally deleted all my Reddit contributions (still squatting on the username) and so I can’t really answer whether mentioning lemmy gets your comment shadow banned. We don’t really need more redditors, just need to wait for the first scandal and people will start googling “Reddit” alternatives (which ironically are all Reddit threads) and Lemmy is at the top of most of those lists. People should come here organically
Right? Personally, I want people who come here to care. Not the masses.
