So, lemmy is a project I have been following since the beggining. With federation here, it seems like everything is aligned for it to become the reddit killer, pardon my expression.
What do you think is missing from lemmy for it to have a massive engaging community?
Besides being fully finished (it’s not even on version 1.0 yet)? I’d say topic variety. Currently most of lemmy’s content is very techy stuff, which is enough for people like me who are into that, but reddit has active communities for a lot of interests. Lemmy stuff is like, privacy this, linux that, tor this, development that, while reddit is more like, privacy this, conlang that, drawings this, water that, politics that other thing, etc
I think this is the kinda stuff that will come over time as people start using Lemmy, tho. Art nerds, water nerds, bird nerds, etc will come around and create communities for their interests, and people who are interested in those things will come to share their interests too
Diversification of content certainly is a good thing, which we should work on. But remember, politics brings with it the r/conservative and /pol/ type of people, and so it becomes a risky affair.
As for wholesome life stuff, personal development, hobbies and cat memes, yes that would be amazing.
On @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml 's COVID comment, there was recently a user samuraikid who contributed lot of posting in privacy sections, but posted pointless copypasta conspiratorial garbage, so those are risky things too. And there is hardly any useful information hidden from us, considering how much it is in news and in daily hour long calls people do these days to avoid IRL anti social depression.
On reddit, some people got tired of r/worldnews and created r/animetiddies, branching away from the shitty racist echo chamber that worldnews is.
Lemmy does not need to be merely an alternative, but something that stands on its own and for a set of values, that no reddit alternative has stood for. This is also a reason why I support solely Lemmy out of all these, due to the admins here being on a very similar wavelength with me, on the lines of noticing and wanting to change the forum internet landscape filled with toxicity. I am not sure even admins fully realise the depth of “the good for the internet society” they are trying to achieve here.