Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan but it seems like the fediverse could theoretically exist with like 5 users whereas a commercial company needs users for revenue. It feels like we are using the masters tools to try to destroy the masters house

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[–] krayj@lemmy.world 91 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A lot of community types just simply don't work without a minimum critical mass of members.

Imagine asking a programming question on a software development community of just 5 people. You end up with 3 people who aren't active enough to see the question, 1 person sees but doesn't have an answer and doesn't respond (classic lurker), and one person sees it and responds that they don't know the answer. Now imagine a community of 5 thousand people...it's suddenly much more feasible to even bother asking the question.

Sure, fediverse could exist with just 5 people, but it would be worthless and pointless.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 29 points 1 year ago

yea the reason to want more users is for niche communities, I don't need a billion people just for memes or news, but when you subdivide your users down to niche communities suddenly you'll want more

I wish there were more people on Lemmy talking about Deus Ex, The 7th Guest, DOS games, Randomizers, or specific TV shows that I'm currently watching (Reddit always had a pretty active sub for each and every show)

[–] samae@lemmy.menf.in 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One could make the argument that 5000 users is still not mass adoption. If that is enough activity, then mass adoption is not a requirement for the fediverse to be a nice social place to be.

[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

5,000 users in a niche community would need hundreds of millions in the wider network.

This is how bulletin boards used to work. The most successful were focused on a niche and one with 5,000 users would be big enough to be of use to people interested in that niche. But when your niche is part of a much larger community covering all niches, that community needs to be vast to get 5,000 subscribing to any given niche.