Why are most subs so utterly dead (devoid of comments) and how to fix it?

submitted by justvisiting from self.AskSaidIt

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[–]yetanotherone_sigh 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (5 children)

There simply aren't that many people regularly visiting the site and interacting with it. There were a couple of waves of new signups that happened corresponding with subreddits being canceled on reddit. But those people need to have a group of people to interact with, to comment on each others posts and other comments. Since that startup threshold wasn't met, they all left (mostly) after being here for a brief time.

The people who are actually here are outcasts of other social media (here and on poal and gab and parler) that have been kicked out or left reddit and twitter due to censorship and cancellation.

This tends to create a feedback loop, as some saw on voat. Only the outcasts were at voat, which means a very small group on a free speech site, and the really vocal, really unpleasant people tended to have extremist positions. As they grew more powerful, they were emboldened and they grew louder. This drove off more "moderate" or "reasonable" free-speech loving folk. Over time, this effect was amplified x 100, until only the true Nazis and scum of the earth were on voat. This has already taken over poal, and is beginning to happen here.

So the most populous sub on this site has about 39,000 subscribers, but almost all of them are gone. Hard to get any good metrics on the engagement each participant has on this site, but I'd bet that there are less than 1,000 people regularly reading and probably less than 500 active participants and commenters. Poal is even smaller. Since the Q people took over, the most populous sub has only 800 subscribers and probably less than 100 active participants.

You have to hit a critical mass early on in order to have a snowball effect of people joining and more people joining because there are people already there. If you don't hit it within a certain amount of time, you're not going to. And I think saidit and poal are both going downhill due to the extremists taking over the political discussion on the site. If you don't pass their purity test, they actively go against you with more than just downvotes. I had my life threatened on multiple occasions on voat, due to having an opinion that did not line up with the purity test. That scares most people off, and the site dies a slow death.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

The people who are actually here are outcasts of other social media

I feel like I was a victim of my own popularity on reddit. Once you hit a certain level you either only say the blandest most neutral inoffensive things ever, or just a small % of people complaining when it's hundreds of thousands of readers means a lot of complaints.

I do still have a reddit account, it's not like I have to be on Saidit. I just find I like it better here.

[–]wristaction 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

It's like a long weekend in Savanna.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

That's super coincidental, there's a stripper with me named Savanna.

[–]Node 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Huh, that's weird. I was just viewing some pics of a furry pussy on savanna.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That is some fine pussy.