Lemmy suffers from the same discoverability issue... so we aren't exactly the best place to tell others about obscure websites. From the start we've inherited an open-source community that leans liberal, and aside one very large recent shift that means that the community also leans mostly Democrat.

What does that have to do with discoverability? Well, one look at a front page can clue you in. (gosh I hope these screenshots shrink in size for display)

IT, Politics, and Star Trek all over the front page of my instance. Possibly worse on others. Imagine if your 80 year old great-grandma landed on this page. All she knows is what Fox News says. Instant close on the website. Not even going to open one discussion. But let's say she did open the one about the FBI director being missing:

oh my

Now let's see a competing website:

Oh, new Chinese food place! Remote work isn't working? Carrying your dog to pick up food? that's silly! 2.7 million of wine! She must have really hated that job!

So what is my point? How can Lemmy increase it's discoverability? I feel like community diversity would be the #1 concern. Well... one obvious action is to sanitize the front page of the popular instances. I'm going to assume that's a highly unpopular opinion, because then it wouldn't be Lemmy anymore. Maybe perhaps there is a different frontpage for logged out and logged in users? With politics being an opt-in for active sessions? Or maybe we should just post more cute cats.

What do you guys think? Am I completely wrong about community diversity? What changes would you make to Lemmy? It's not an easy answer.