Popularization of Lemmy among non-english speaking users
What ways do you know to attract users?
Perhaps there are those here who have been with Lemmy since its inception. It’s interesting to hear your experience in promoting your community or instance.
Easier said than done, and I'm not myself a good example of that, but:
Create and maintain communities where users can talk about popular topics. Specially OC. Mild word-of-mouth advertisement of those communities and the platform as a whole, be it in other social media platforms or even offline.
Make sure to discourage the participation of certain types of users, because they will chase away the others. I can go further on that if anyone wants, but I think that the most important ones in this context are users who target others based on race, ethnicity, native language, where you're from, or government that you pay taxes to.
Language and homeland should never be conflated, unless you want to tell linguistic minorities to fuck off (don't do this). It's fine to create a community for a specific language, or for a specific region/country/etc., but not both at the same time.
Make sure that the interface is translated to the target language. And if it isn't, consider contributing with it.
I share your views.
I don't think I've seen open racism or discrimination here on Lemmy, yet. (Except for those people that have strong opinions on communism/China perhaps.) Have you or other people witnessed something like that here?
Since you wrote that in bold letters: Do you have some personal insight on linguistic minorities? Or was it more a general statement... (I mean I have my own perspective. But I'd like to hear how things are for other people in places where I don't hear too much about.)
I don’t think I’ve seen open racism or discrimination here on Lemmy, yet. (Except for those people that have strong opinions on communism/China perhaps.) Have you or other people?
I've seen a few. Way less than in Reddit, it's mostly low-key, and instance admins get rid of them fast. However I often see people here saying that we should allow them in, and I think that it's a mistake, specially if trying to promote Lemmy among non-English speakers. Because a lot of them will be somehow the target of this sort of discrimination, and they won't stay here if they feel hostility against them.
Since you wrote that in bold letters: Do you have some personal insight on linguistic minorities? Or was it more a general statement…
The problem with that conflation between country and language is that it alienates linguistic minorities badly.
I'm not a minority speaker myself, mind you. But I got close ties with Talian (a cluster of Venetian varieties) due to familiar background, and I've interacted offline with the folks from the examples below.
Sometimes it's external prejudice; a Kaingang speaker "speaks injun" so she's assumed to be primitive and dumb in comparison with Portuguese speakers.
Sometimes it's internalised prejudice; like Talian speakers claiming that they speak "broken Italian mixed with broken Brazilian" instead of a variety from Veneto.
Sometimes it's questioning allegiance to the country; like "fuck off back to your Nazi country" if you speak Hunsrik (a German variety).
Sometimes it's erasure, like people claiming "minority speakers? Everyone speaks Portuguese here. I never saw one." (Pragmatically saying "I'll pretend that they don't exist because I don't think that they should exist on first place.")
Often it's also practical matters - like online services not allowing you to access the service in your native language, even when available (often there isn't), because you're assumed to speak something else based on your country. Or expecting you to consume content from somewhere else than your homeland, because of your language.
And, from online discussions plus reading, I conclude that it's the exact same deal elsewhere. It is not just "shit Brazil does" or even "shit New World does", it's everywhere - from Galicians to Okinawans, Saami to Xhosa, Pennsylvania "Dutch" and Maori speakers. Often with that feeling that you shouldn't open your mouth, that you belong to no place, that you coexist with people who hate you, that even if your language is part of your identity your identity is wrong anyway. It's gut-wrenching how much linguistic minorities get the short end of the stick because they're expected to speak the country language instead.
[Sorry for the long text.]
Back to Lemmy. Those people want to consume social media as much as everyone else. Specially in their native languages, as it gives them the sense of belonging to a community - "this was made for us, by one of us!". Memes, shitposting, a thought-provoking text, a meaningful discussion. And yet traditional social media consistently neglects them, I think that the Fediverse should welcome them with open arms - not just because it's convenient for them, but also for the ones already here.
However when "we" [the Fediverse] create instances that tie languages with countries, we're effectively telling them "nope, you are not welcome here", exactly like the traditional media does. "We" can and should do better.
Letting YouTube and reddit and Shitter and co do their thing while making sure all the great advice on how to avoid them is easily accesible on Lemmy..
We should create instances for countries. Like old reddit. That way the language won't be an issue for newcomers. Unfortunately we lack the manpower. But I believe that with time it will pick up steam
We already have that. There are lots of feddit.de .it .nl .something. And We have communities for politics in Europe / Gemany / ...
I see lots of fellow germans here. So no issue from my side...
French speakers also have a quite active instance with jlai.lu (je l’ai lu) which translate to I have read it … Reddit …
Spanish communities seems to grow as well.
Yeah, I'm talking more about smaller countries. We have plenty of Europeans and North Americans, but for example people from South America, I don't see a lot, same goes for the East side
saying that there is all the good content of Reddit with the bad content filtered out
Would love to hear about more instances and communities! I think that's a big part of it for other parts of the world, reddit has a lot of those as well.
I'd also love to see some automatic translations built into the Fediverse. Something similar to the Firefox local translation would work, or maybe a cached version on the server once it's been requested by someone. There are a lot of cool creators on Mastodon and Pixelfed where I have to copy and paste to see what is being said.
What's wrong with Lemmy UI? It has one of the best UIs in the wild...
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
I think that the standard look of web UI, for people accustomed to the look of modern social networks, may not be attractive.
I hate it a bit, its so confusing and has way too many buttons everywhere, the search hidden away etc.
https://blog.erlend.sh/lemmy-frontend-alternatives-are-popping-off
I think lots of them are better for general use, while the official one is most often the best supported. I disagree that many frontends are so great
There are alternate web UIs?
Photon: https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon
Old reddit style: https://old.lemmy.world
Voyager: https://vger.app
Alexandrite is my favorite. Can also self host it.
This is wrong, Lemmy consists mostly of posts talking about Reddit /s