What can we do to change this? I don't think chapo.chat will ever be huge, but it would be nice for it to be consistently active.
I think that's a byproduct of the active sorting system. It makes it look empty. If you sort by hot or top it looks a lot more populated.
Is that so? For me it's the opposite. Active sort: top posts with 10-50 comments each. Hot sort: top posts with 0-6 comments each.
Isn't New sort the default setting though? That one looks super dead. Make the most active-looking one default.
the chapochat fandom is DYING
share if you're a real hog poster
dank left hasan_piker genzedong genzanarchist shitliberalssay
yeah it'll be similar to thepiratebay in that sense
oh wait I thought you meant spamming new chapo reddit-like sites. for yknow legal reasons
The place is a bit too visibly Lenniny to recommend to my normie friends the way that I could with CTH.
Yeah, CTH was a left unity sub, this place is very tightly grouped ideologically. Or it at least feels that way.
Kind of hostile to anyone not being exactly in line with it, either. Maybe that drives people away? idk just spitballin
I think we can do better, but we're not doing bad here, either. A big plus is no mods stepping in to enforce ideological purity of one type or another, and another big plus is a lack of running ideological feuds between individual users. From what I've seen we might have a struggle session in one thread but we largely don't carry that over to other threads.
idk about that it seems pretty similar to me, what was different? If anything i see more takes on here that wouldnt have made it to the front page on the old sub
I’m curious! Are we going to be ashamed of Lenin? I think we treat him fairly.
Which parts do you think are off-putting for your friends? Maybe you’re underestimating them? Give us the reality check
we have the idea that there’s great idealist distance in time and space for political belief: but people already agree with leftism, they just don’t know it. Anyone is capable of changing their minds to any other position at any point in time. There is no real distance.
We should generally try to position ourselves relative to the truth, not lies, and not waste effort imagining that the same socdem pipeline exists in the same way now that we’re off Reddit.
People will use Chapo.chat if it’s fun and distinct from Reddit, which is miserable and dying, so I think what we should be doing is trying to cultivate a socialist experience to draw out this contradiction. We can be smart/fun proles without the dogmatic elitism of “leftist politics” or any of the angry internet fascist vibes that makes everyone pissed off and guarded.
We can pull people straight from neoliberal and idealist mindsets much faster as the community grows if we give them the materialist truth, which they all want, and which is exclusively ours.
also Chapo.chat seems active to me, but maybe Hot by default would look better to users coming from Reddit?
Anyone is capable of changing their minds to any other position at any point in time. There is no real distance.
I don't think this matches reality, and it certainly runs counter to any sort of empirical research on the subject. One example of this is the consistency principle, which has been extensively researched, and shows that people strongly desire to match their beliefs with what they've done or thought in the past. Anecdotally, I'm sure we've all had those conversations where someone agrees with you on every step of the way up to a logical conclusion, but then rejects that conclusion anyway. Shit, this is so common there are at least two memes about it (from Friends and SpongeBob).
We have to put in real effort to change people's minds, and that includes careful consideration of the best ways to pull them leftwards. Too much too fast is a real thing. If you say "Stalin committed literally zero crimes" here you can have a rational discussion about the merits and shortcomings of the USSR; if you say it to anyone who's not an extremely-online leftist they're just going to tune you out.
Okay, fair point, but what if you can completely validate what they’ve done or thought in the past with therapeutic and relativistic psychoanalysis, provide systemic explanations for faults, re-education, pharmacology, changes in material conditions, new social media environments... yes, real effort. Always struggle. Ideas can change quickly.
You can absolutely persuade people -- it just takes time, though, and effort. And throwing them in the deep end (e.g., "Stalin committed literally zero crimes") is a risky strategy at best, and a losing one for most people in most environments.
I absolutely agree.
My favourite part of The Tempest is when the dark sorcerer Prospero drowns all of his magic books.
That’s why we say we treat Stalin and Lenin and Mao fairly. They were all complete fucking assholes. Stalin a lot, Mao probably less so, Lenin barely at all - truly the Gonzalo archetype.
i think a lot of people have stopped coming here, check the megathread comment numbers
People shit on SocDems and DemSocs... but I used to be very reactionary... and the MLs never appealed to me back then, in fact I used to laugh at them and "destroy" them at debates... but the SocDems and the DemSocs got me to change my mind.
The SocDem pipeline is an important part of building the left, or any community... CTH included.
I come here and there are a few shit posts, but it seems like some of the more factionalist members are just too aggressive towards people who may not be as far along as they are.
It serves to drive people away, rather than making them change their minds.
Lenin is a spooky Soviet dictator cartoon villain that most people have never thought of outside of that context.
Real-world Lenin was pretty cool. Which means treating him fairly means saying he was pretty cool.
Saying this guy is pretty cool is jarring to people who've never thought about him outside of a vague cartoony version from old propaganda they consumed when they were kids.
When you link someone a random internet community, the way they consume it is not sitting down and critically analyzing everything they're presented. They skim through things and get a rough impression - what're they talking about, what's the general tone, are they funny, do they roughly agree with me? If the first thing they see is a bunch of things way outside of their weirdness filter / radicalism filter / overton window / whatever you want to call it, then they'll just close the tab and move on with their life (and lower their opinion of the linker a bit).
That’s all in your head, though!
This is the internet. People watch ISIS recruitment videos and you still think being open about support for Lenin is too far for them to go, because they’re so delicate. You don’t actually need a really high IQ or the gentle brain massage of a deceptive multi-year leftist psyop to understand why peasant uprisings are cool.
What kind of argument is that? Yeah somebody watches ISIS recruitment videos. If I link a random person I know to one of those, they're going to call the cops. The fact that people who are comfortable with that content exist doesn't mean they're common.
so I mean obviously the core issue here is that you have some fear people will phone the cops on you for Communism. Fair.
we’re not posting ISIS recruitment videos here and you should be more confident in your fight against liberalism
Communists are not common
your plan to sell Communism by hiding Lenin from the masses is silly.
No I mean... you're just putting random thoughts in my head and not reading what I'm saying.
how else would I be putting thoughts in your head if I didn’t read what you’re saying?
You’re saying Lenin is too scary. For them of course, not you. Can we all tone down the Lenin to make everyone comfortable?
Holy shit work on your reading comprehension.
Accusing me of being uncomfortable with Lenin in the thread where I said he was cool. What the hell.
Maoism is really big on combatting liberalism and psychoanalysis.
When a person walks by and says Lenin is too scary for everyone, he’s telling the truth.
I’m sure you’re comfortable with Lenin, you’re just not listening to him. You have to be open with your views, and militantly so.
The largest communist-leaning internet community that has ever existed was created by making a pipeline that was comfortable to socdems.
Any strategy that revolves around ignoring this fact and doing something else is anti-materialist.
If you start listening to Lenin maybe other people will listen to you about materialism
Socialists have much higher standards for invoking the “materialist argument” - insisting that you can solve a new problem without modifying the old solution isn’t a consistent position and isn’t socialist
No one is saying tone down Lenin. We're saying file the serial numbers off. There's a hostile superstructure and yes openly confronting it is important. But in terms of recruitment we need to get people on board with material substance without associating that substance immediatelt with uncritical support of someone who's been demonised by 100 years of propaganda.
It's not Communism. It's "economic democracy"
It's not revolutionary politics. It's "direct action"
Once they're on board with the basics, you make them look at Cuba and Vietnam, and then slide them into how the USSR was good.
Like, there's a reason it's easier to radicalise with Bread Book than State and Revolution, even if I think the latter is more useful overall.
Yes, perfect!
But let’s be honest: those people are much more mad at Comrade Stalin, revolutionary tyrant, than they are Comrade Lenin, revolutionary founder.
That’s why I was surprised at “Lenin”. Yes. Absolutely re-aestheticize socialism. The USSR is not appealing thanks to propaganda, there’s too much history to explain, and we don’t have the time. It’s not suitable imagery for mass work just yet
The former.
I think the success of the original CTH shows that primarily anti-capitalist top-level posts and actual theory in the comments can work.
one thing about communities is that you have to let them grow organically (not in size, i mean in nature)
not saying it's gonna work, i'm saying trying to "steer" chapo.chat is the only sure way to make it unsuccessful, while letting it be can either work or not
So I almost entirely agree with you, minus the parts I'm quoting. Agreement takes fewer words than disagreement, please don't let that skew my emphasis.
So to “correct” that bias in your view these people should act and post and approach this community differently
I didn't say that. I'm identifying a problem (one reason this place isn't growing). I didn't suggest we should fix it by everyone behaving in a way that's unnatural to them. I didn't suggest any course of action to fix it. I don't know a good one.
Let this community develop its own balance and health and find its place, maybe it will attract unexpected growth , maybe not. I dont think we are in some kind of “wrong track” here, just an uncertain one.
It is entirely possible that the natural balance of the current model of this community is an increasingly dwindling number of users. If this is acceptable then okay. If you don't like it then you might have to figure out something to do about it.
the old CTH was a red-fascist psyop on a white supremacist website
yeah it worked
I say "wrong kid died," every time Joe mentions Beaux Biden, and frankly my SO is tired of it.
I also have a strategy: tell people to cool it with the China genocide posting.
Stop dividing it into a million communities. @Beatnik
This is just one subreddit, it needs to stay that way.
Copy how T_D served their community because it clearly worked. They made a site functional and very close to Reddit, regardless of content. Didn't subdivide it, didn't censor users, made a functional light mode! (Light mode still fucked here by the way.) Default dark mode for converting users from a default lightmode site is very stupid.
People keep dropping off here and improvements are being made, but subdividing a site with so few users is a very bad move. Focus on making the front page, the new feed, and megathreads perfect first. Some kind of infinite scroll for the front page would be an improvement. Thank you for getting rid of the constant updating sort for comments.
And fix the front page algorithm to be WAY slower. It updates so often that it really makes the site seem damn empty with the top post currently having only 90 votes (on a site with supposedly 8100 users). You need a slow algo that gets people on the same page about posts and jokes even if they only check the site once a day, which is what most people do.
Top move would be to abolish communities, quick. Lock them or something to go back to an active main page with everyone on it, like a subreddit, you know. Then go back to communities when we have 10,000 active users again. But not right now with 500.
Default dark mode for converting users from a default lightmode site is very stupid.
Can confirm - the strongest reason why I considered NOT joining is the dark mode, which was new, grating, and disorienting. I get that it's enviro-friendly... but none of the sites I'm used to do that, so it's like working with the lights off suddenly.
And if you're used to going to settings and changing from light to dark and vice-versa - cool. But the rest of us derps aren't.
Full support for focusing on the front page and KILLING AUTOUPDATE that makes everything jump every 20 seconds.
The meme of 'dark mode master race' is humorous, but a terrible move if converting people from Reddit.
Unfortunately, the first impression has been made now and all those people pinged on Discord will have been turned off by the site's appearance already.
And switching to default light mode now, (which you should @Beatnik ) will cause users here now to get mad about it. Though you can just tell them to change settings.
"Enviro-friendly" is nonsense, if that's a reason anyone is giving that's laughable.
The worst part is the "base" light mode option looks like THIS currently: https://i.imgur.com/vq72G3Q.png
So I'm forced to keep using dark mode. Insane that fixing the fucking light mode site isn't a priority.
Yeesh, that's a rough-looking light mode.
And switching to default light mode now, (which you should @Beatnik ) will cause users here now to get mad about it.
Ideally you could grandfather in existing users to dark mode, although I have no idea how technically challenging this would be.
Far more challenging than telling people "change settings to dark mode" and explaining how dumb of a move it was to make it default.
Subdivisions' purpose are to relegate certain posts to certain communities.
Flairing system is a good way to 'sort' for specific posts, but not by splitting a 500 user community into 20 sub communities even smaller and less active.
Yea, I guess. Semantics really because we both mean the same thing. Still maybe'd you want some moderation possible per tag/sub/flare
Overreacting. The various communities are ok as they are currently, just a touch quiet. They'll be fine though.
Some actual data here, things haven't changed much at all in the last month: https://hexbear.net/post/22647/comment/166641
I think some of your suggestions are good, but the comms are fine and stable right now. There are lots of improvements to be made but rolling back into one single comm isn't necessary.
From a subreddit and Discord with over 10,000 users, 600 active users is really shameful. Those 10k are people who were active enough to seek out a transitional community and wait. It should have translated to far more activity here, but so many problems present with this website have driven them away.
That was going to happen one way or another. Not everyone from the subreddit made it over to the discord and not everyone from the discord is making it over here because they've discovered they like the discord. A painful issue but one nonetheless.
Calm down. It is a marathon not a sprint. People haven't been "driven away", the data objectively shows otherwise. There's a very very slow user churn occurring which is typical of all communities from videogame audiences to random internet spaces. We're only just about equalling that churn, maybe falling slightly below it, but either way the site is health and doing fine.
The devs and everyone is working flat out on a host of things, the primary of all being to just keep the thing working in the face of many technical problems. More dev time can not just simply be magicked up for all the different issues, give it time.
Just because people haven't made the site part of their daily routine immediately doesn't mean they should be considered permanently lost users anyway. They'll be back. You can absolutely count on people wanting to see the takes here as key election things unfold, while the dem convention was ongoing the whole site had an uptick of engagement that dwarfed engagement immediately before and after it.
In my opinion retention isn't the primary problem of the site, growth is. While retention is indeed important there's not enough effort being put forth into spreading the site right now. There are tonnes and tonnes of people over on reddit that don't know it exists yet. Additionally to that we're not performing outreach to influencers right now which probably has the largest potential to generate big new-user waves using the same methods /r/iama uses to trade advertising to reddit's audience for influencers bringing in their audience to reddit for interviews. Every person that does an iama brings their audience with them, this was a core component of reddit's growth strategy and I've already vocalised the need for the site to follow suit, I don't have the personal time to run it alone or even as a primary person on it however. There's also a whole bunch of other things that have been discussed and thrown around from what I've gathered but the primary barrier is time.
Calm down. It is a marathon not a sprint.
It was a large pool of people waiting for a Reddit alternative served a broken, alienating site experience that drove them away.
Maybe at least jog to giving us a functional light mode.
the base theme works fine for me after the latest update. can you check it out?
oooh, i see the weird grey thing. odd bug! i'll log it
Friend, you are way too focused on this lightmode being broken thing I'm not sure if this is a bit anymore. It comes across exactly the same way it would come across if someone claimed that the site having a broken darkmode was killing a website. It is neither killing the website which is objectively proven by the data nor is it the biggest priority. The biggest priority, as I see it, is influencer outreach. There are people with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in their audiences. Attracting them to the site and giving them an incentive to promote the site to their audiences is the priority. Yes there are other problems. I agree with you. Problems that will slowly be worked through bit by bit by the team. They are working at maximum capacity and no amount of frustrated angry posting will change their maximum output.
Extreme negativity on the other hand could demoralise people. Please try to be a little constructive.
This is just not true and half the comments here are detached from reality, I've been tracking daily data for a while. Here's the data for the last 4 weeks with the exact numbers hidden but seeing the line is enough for you to see how little has changed from now vs a month ago. As you can see this is not true.. Ignore the dip into the negatives of the daily user gain graph, it didn't actually dip into the negatives there was a database rollback that messed up one day of data, I think that was the day the kerrys managed to mod themselves?
Anyway, don't get worried about this. The site is fine. You're probably logging in at various times of the day where peak and off peak periods occur, this gives very different ideas of overall activity as there are very different activity levels when people are asleep and awake or working in different areas of the world.
I do encourage brainstorming ways to increase growth, growth has definitely taken a dip, but there is a steady stable influx of new accounts. DO brainstorm ways to grow the site though, that should be a constant effort and any big waves that can be created will be extremely beneficial. I just wanted to make sure nobody gets demotivated -- Activity is currently extremely stable and healthy.
Lots of people in this thread are overreacting terribly because their perception is a bit warped. The activity is still here but your perception of it has changed due to some homepage algorithm changes.
Algorithm feels a bit weak, not catapulting things up the comment section hard with enough force.
Either way. This is a good thread with lots of thoughts that are still worthwhile. One thought I'm having about some of the drop-off is that we need a method re-engage people that drop-off. Having something like a weekly or bi-weekly email that goes out with a list of the top 10 or 20 threads would remind people that we exist for those who might accidentally fall into user-churn due to daily routine changes that can affect user habits.
User churn is going to happen one way or another, activity is a permanent downward slope in every community, we need to grow faster than user churn while also finding ways to re-engage the users that do churn. Lots of people don't intentionally stop viewing a site, they just drift away for one reason or another because something else takes their interest or something in their life (work or school changes) causes a routine upheaval. Everyone only has x hours per day to dedicate to various different things and because we're humans we're creatures of habit so we build routines around the things we do. But when people's routines go through an upheaval like that it opens a bit gap where anything else can accidentally replace things that were formerly part of routine.
On that note too we should be routine-building. Though I think the megathread does that and generally speaking coming back to view the new hottest threads once per day is also a natural routine-building format that reddit's format is built around. Although ChapoChat seems to present a much too quickly moving bunch of threads, I still strongly believe we should have at least 4 of the top of the day threads on people's front page at all times.
I think what someone else suggested here about default light theme has merit. It's preference to people, those that like dark themes will switch to dark mode.
Different for each graph because the numbers are wildly different for each. User gain is 0-500ish. Posts are 0-800ish. Comments are 0-6000. The huge spike in user gain I'm guessing was probably a mass creation of accounts intended to attack the site with but I'm only guessing, I never got an explanation and I don't expect to get one as it's the kind of information the devs/admins should keep to themselves.
Like, create a hall of fame of good posts that first time visitors can see
A similar idea that I've seen work on some subreddits is a "Post of the Week" thread. You nominate cool shit you've seen in the past week (perhaps via a sidebar link to a thread that's regularly reset) and users vote on what they liked best. Maybe winners get some sort of special username flair, but I kind of like the "the points don't matter" approach we have going. IIRC /r/DaystromInstitute and /r/HighQualityGifs do something like this and it seems like a good way of encouraging engagement.
Does ChapoChat have an official twitter account? Maybe we could catch some that way...
Idk, maybe famous leftish users/podcasters, cool politicians/movements leaders from all over the world, chairman Daou, cool philosophers/scientists, horrible politicians just for the lols, horrible "philosophers" to dunk on them, the several leftist army veterans accounts, Daily Updates on Marg. Tatcher Health, etc.
Try if you want/can not to be so US-centric.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Btw, Flutter is you ally if you want to cut development time and make the app multiplatform.
It’s a beautiful framework and language
Completely agree with you, comrade.
i'm actually working on a client api that will support both our api and the lemmy api using kotlin multiplatform. should help make it really easy for people to develop apps that let you log in to both for both iOS and android.
The key to chapo.chat's success is going to be getting chapo trap house to complain about it.
The official stance of Chapo Chat is that Will Menaker is a doo-doo head.
Ok, maybe it should interact more with other important twitter "leftists" or "lib-to-left pipeline" hub accounts?
Yes it should. It should post more generally. Hog or otherwise.
I don't know who would be allowed to post in ChapoChat behalf, maybe just retweet and like other cool people posts.
Maybe the chapo bear should become a sentient, feral, leftist mascot like Gritty.
There is rumored to be one single true leftist somewhere. If only we could find them, they could post in our name.
Giving it to a random Chapo user each day would be pretty funny.
Bonus points: make it anonymous.
That's the most democratic option, and it will also lead to a big number of hogs posted online so yeah, absolutely
How about a weekly mega thread where everyone can submit tweet suggestions?
"I don't have a twitter account mods post my hot take on our official twitter!"
