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Is there any downside to being subscribed to dead/inactive communities? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works to c/newtolemmy@lemmy.ca

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On Reddit, Reddit would randomly pick 50/100 communities from which it fills your home feed. Your other subscriptions do not matter until Reddit decides to refresh the list of subs its pulling from.

In theory, if you're subscribed to a bunch of inactive subreddits, your home feed is potentially being held back by these (since, as opposed to Reddit grabbing posts from 50 active communities, it's only grabbing posts from - say - 30 active communities with the remaining 20 being inactive and taking up the spot of your other active subscriptions).

On Lemmy, is there any downside to retaining subscriptions to inactive communities?

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[–] streetfestival@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: There is no algorithm on Lemmy or Fediverse generally. The (edit: ~~local~~ subscribed) feed pulls from all communities you're subscribed to. All sort options (new, active) don't boost any community over any other*, so abandoned communities should have no effect on what you see in your feed - they simple won't contribute to it, if you're viewing recent content.
The exception is the "scaled" sort option, which boosts smaller communities, I believe

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Scaled seems to favor newer content, so inactive communities won't show up because there isn't anything new to show. Scaled works better for low activity communities since they will show up when something does come up.