I was looking for a Reddit alternative for years. I would have been cool with anything non-corporate, but figured it would take ages to build.
It’s incredible what Lemmy has turned into so quickly. A Reddit alternative went from being impossible to actually existing within a matter of weeks.
As much as that makes a great story… The groundwork for lemmy goes back years. It’s true that lots of issues were addressed and client apps were ported after Reddit started going down hill, but a ton of work was done beforehand to make that all possible.
client apps were ported after Reddit started going down hill
For me, this can’t be overstated. I don’t work in an office/at a stationary computer and 99.9% of my Reddit time was mobile. I checked out the “mobile apps” for Lemmy, and hated them. I probably wouldn’t be active here at all if it wasn’t for good dedicated apps like Sync.
I haven’t used Reddit since the blackout. Thankfully Sync for Lemmy was out within a few weeks. Sort by TopDay and there’s enough content on here to scratch my itch.
Boost for Lemmy as well
Damn straight. I tried out Jerboa and was so disappointed that until Lemmy Sync was announced I just assumed I would no longer have a Reddit style app for a while.
Voyager for Lemmy is really good and open source. You should try it, might get a better mobile experience.
Will do, thanks!
You can also have a look at https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/
There should be one that you’ll like
Lurks in sync
Well said
Work started on lemmy way back before lemmy could be a good alternative to Reddit
I agree with you on the technology part of it, but I’m wondering if OP meant “existing” as in how relevant of a social media platform it becomes.
Plus building it is kind of the easy part – the hard part is getting people to migrate over and having enough active posts / users that people feel it’s worth their time to stay and post as well. Migration will inevitably splinter communities as well, especially small ones, where not enough people move over (or don’t move quickly enough). I’ve seen so many alternatives where the userbase was too small or not posting enough or just right wing trolls or the site was unusably buggy. lemmy managed to be good enough in all those categories at the perfect time - when reddit spat in the face of their users.
It’s the niche topics that need more activity. I love science - mostly space/physics - and it’s mostly a ghost town. Once the unique corners grow their activity, it’s going to be great.
I would have assumed spacey topics would sell like hot buns.
I guess Physics are more of a niche and you would probably find more armchair physicists here than actual physicists.If things need more activity try posting, it works great
Agree.
Even simple things like subs for particular cars/car brands were thriving on Reddit but don’t exist here.
except no one comment and no one posts
Regarding the content problem, I see the repost bots are still active, I wish they could be either turned off or have their rates severeöy limited.
At first glance they make Lemmy seem active and vibrant, but since they are just bots few people vote on the posts and fewer comment on them, they post so much the any original Lemmy content in those communities gets drowned out by the bots reposting Reddit threads.
During the influx of users after the apikalypse these bots where probably needed to not scare people that there was zero content from different subreddits, but now they just seem to be holding those communities hostage.
Easiest is yo block them, so they won’t show up in your feed.
Yeah, I know, but they make Lemmy look like a place full of fake content
Plus building it is kind of the easy part
I mean… not entirely. I’ve been on quite a few reddit alternatives over the years. Most of them passion projects by indie devs, and start struggling the moment they hit 4 digit users. Ruqqus was nicknamed “dumpster fire” because it would go down every time a new wave from reddit came over.
The software existed for years, but yes the instances that popped up and the dev work to make it actually sorta stable at scale did happen quite quick.
It’s incredible what Lemmy has turned into so quickly.
This couldn’t have been possible without the help of Spez and all the board responsible for the APIcalypse, thank you very much!
What if he was secretly a good guy?
Spez being wholesome? The plot twist of the year.
Directed by M. Night Shamalyan
It’s what makes me want to donate to keep my home server alive. It’s the first open source thing that I’ve ever donated to, and I now have a monthly donation to help try to keep this alive since Lemmy is the alternative we all deserve.
Impossible? The only moat with Reddit was the userbase, the site is just a link sharing site with nested comments…
It’s worth stepping back a moment to appreciate that it’s actually worked. Whether it will continue is another story, but Lemmy became a successful and viable alternative to Reddit. That’s worthy of praise and celebration, and it couldn’t be done without the admins and mods of .world who’ve made this place into what it is.
After seeing other potential alternatives, then seeing how LW and a few other instances took off, credit really goes to protocol devs, fediverse devs/admins, and LW is a standout for the praise you just mentioned as well. It’s a culmination of so many things going right to make such a diverse and expansive community. We’re already seeing the tech question help phenomena that Reddit has right here on LW, where some search engine queries can be magically made better by appending lemmy.
Let the migration continue! I haven’t missed Reddit since coming here.
Yeah, Lemmy isn’t anywhere near its final form, but it’s already a success my eyes. This place is a lot of fun because it’s full of nerdy shit I like.
If it keeps growing and becomes the new Reddit but free and open, then good for Lemmy and all the new users, even if the average post/comment quality goes down.
Lemmy is like 1/2 of what reddit was able to do for me. I haven’t gone back to reddit since the exodus, I deleted all my posts and my account and never went back. But even now when I need information on anything from a community it’s always reddit that pops up with the information that I need. I understand this is because of userbase and interacting with it but lemmy has not been able to do that effectively yet.
Granted I did post about a fish for my fishtank here and it was answered actually pretty quickly.
I think I’m just not understanding what instances and the feddiverse is. Most posts I’m interested in have like 1 or 2 comments, and half the time they’re not useful interactions. It just feels kind of dead here. And again I understand it’s because of the lack of interaction and userbase. But to say it’s better than reddit or the best alternative is being a little frivolous.
Feels kind of dead
The frustrating aspect is that it isn’t dead here. I’ve been on dead forums where you make a post and nothing happens. On Lemmy I’ve posted on seemingly dead or near dead communities, and received a flurry of response in the form of votes and comments. There are definitely people subscribed, and willing to comment, but very few people posting threads. It is a bottleneck to have users all waiting for somebody else to post something.
I hope anybody reading this comment understands that in a smaller ecosystem they can’t just passively wait for content to fill the feed. There needs to be more contribution in the form of posts, and hopefully posts that go beyond just memes (memes are great and fun, but Lemmy desperately needs posts that go beyond just that) or arguing about politics (politics are important, but exhausting). More activity on interest, and hobby communities, especially with original content adds uniqueness here.
The one thing I’ve noticed, at least on the lemmy.world instance, is that posts I make in whatever dinkum communities I’m in show up on the front page right there as bold as brass, which never happened on reddit. I think that’s where some of these comments and upvotes are coming from. After I started noticing this I looked to see what communities the other random stuff I’m seeing on the front page is coming from and in quite a few cases they’re also from tiny communities.
So that’s pretty cool. Making a post in your niche subcommunity of choice is not necessarily just shouting into the void, and some people might actually see it even if they weren’t looking for it.
Some of it absolutely is from the frontpage, but I consider that a reason communities need more posts. Posts from a niche community actually have a chance at wider visibility. People who interact with the posts are more likely to be the kind of people who would like the community I figure.
My new year’s resolution is to post more threads in “dead” communities I care about. Thanks for the perspective.
I’ve taken one and tried to post something into it daily. Its kind of a fun project.
Rather than trying to find a specific community to ask a question. Ask it in a general community. Specific subreddits were only born when generic ones became too big. But as the generic ones are much smaller it makes more sense to ask your questions and make posts there.
That’s helpful thank you. If I had a question for example for a specific video game you’d recommend going to the gaming community over the game specific one?
As of January 2024 that is still the recommended way of doing it (mostly because of the overall network size).
Yes absolutely. Ask in the general game community.
For example I wanted to know about HaikuOS. It’s an open source OS. There’s no community for it but I know Linux users are the most likely to know about it and the Linux community is huge.
So I asked in c/Linux and found users of the OS.
If I didn’t get a response I’d ask in c/AskLemmy
I’ve done the same with anime and games.
That would work for asking, but it wouldn’t help if you wanted to discuss community specific things. For instance if I wanted to discuss the new Heroic lineup after Stabby imploded the previous core I can’t just post this into gaming. People are going to look at it, think “what the fuck did I just read?” and ignore it. That post requires a CS2 community and that community doesn’t exist yet. There have been attempts but it’s never taken off.
I think such communities are important for growth because those are the communities of you stick around for. I probably wouldn’t be on Lemmy if the Formula 1 community wasn’t active here. General communities are great for a general news feed, but the “niche” communities are the glue that keep people together.
You think the gaming community doesn’t have CS gamers?
See my other comment where I do just what you say you can’t:
For example I wanted to know about HaikuOS. It’s an open source OS. There’s no community for it but I know Linux users are the most likely to know about it and the Linux community is huge.
So I asked in c/Linux and found users of the OS.
If I didn’t get a response I’d ask in c/AskLemmy
I’ve done the same with anime and games.
This is insightful. Also some of the niche communities that came over have probably found it hard to recreate the experience with less participants - whereas when they were historically established on Reddit only when was enough traffic to justify splitting off from a more general topic.
Perhaps over time the members of smaller niche Lemmy communities will drift into more general topics. For example if there’s not enough participants to maintain a vibrant ‘wearing feathers in your hair’ community, those members would probably be welcome, and valuable participants, in the larger ‘head ornaments’ community. Since I’m slightly invested in the success of Lemmy, I certainly hope that’s what happens rather than people going back to ‘/r/featherhairwearing’.
My Reddit account is 16 years old but I have abandoned it. Lemmy is what Reddit was like 10 - 12 years ago. People were nicer for the most part and there was light discussion on random topics.
Yeah my account was about 15 years old. Reddit definitely decayed into worse and worse and I have no regrets leaving. But it did leave a little bit of a hole that’s yet to be properly filled. And lemmy is definitely doing a good job, just hasn’t filled it yet.
Yep. Need a bit more engagement, but not as much as Reddit/FB/etc.
But even now when I need information on anything from a community it’s always reddit that pops up with the information that I need.
Lemmy devs should prioritize SEO optimizations to make the platform more visible on search engines. This will boost traffic and leads to a positive userbase growth.
punching you punching you punching you
Yeah, I think it’s just the critical mass that makes a space feel lively. The discussions I participated in felt great (actually felt like pre-digg reddit). It’s a trade-off. I similarly minimized my own reddit usage, but I still browse it on my desktop (much less than before). And that’s fine. I also stopped using Twitter, and Mastodon is a similar story: fewer, but better interactions. I don’t mind it, and it also might be by design. It’s not a for profit service and it does not need to make the engagement line go up all the time. I have more time to do what I actually want.
Half of what reddit was able to do for me is being overly generous, but my experience is the same.
Did you try to use alternative search engines like tailsx or searx?
Encourage more niche reddit subs to move to Lemmy.
It isn’t about “winning”. Lemmy can coexist with any Fediverse application, and that’s the beauty of it. Everyone on the Fediverse wins.
Not every “Reddit alternative” is on the Fediverse.
Honestly in the current landscape, any alternative to an already popular platform that isn’t federated in some way is doomed from the start.
True even for megacorps for Facebook; hence why Threads is federating.
To the people who want Lemmy to be more active, if you want that, you have to be part of it.
The internet adage is that on any forum 10% of users comment, and 1% post. Lemmy needs to break out of that paradigm, and users should be disproportionately active compared to user/activity on Reddit.
People like posting in places where other people are already posting. It’s a snowball effect. That’s why meme communities have managed to take off; the 1% of users can pump out a huge amount of memes in a short time and make the place feel more lively than it actually is, which in turn kickstarts it and makes it lively for memes.
I make posts mostly in non-meme communities because I think Lemmy should have that too. Some posts are just links but a lot of them are original content. I think it adds value but I simply cannot, as one person, post the kind of volume that memeposters can. These more niche communities need people to post.
If you are subscribed to an interest community, I strongly encourage posting new threads there.
TLDR:
As a fairly longtime lurker on Reddit now bought into Lemmy, I’m making it a resolution to break that habit and post/comment more. Thanks for the PSA!
What should I post? Like legitimately, I’m mostly into sports, but short of copying what’s getting posted in /r/NFL and /r/hockey, what should I do? Or maybe it’s just that? Pick some of the best posts from those subs and bring them here organically (none of that dumb mirror/bot shit that discourages people from commenting)?
the 1% of users can pump out a huge amount of memes in a short time and make the place feel more lively than it actually is, which in turn kickstarts it and makes it lively for memes.
Just like the stock market!
Stocks only go right.
Absolutely right, engagement is key!
Yes! In the spirit of posting, some of the things I’d like to see more engagement in (and I’ll do my part) are television, movie, and book communities. On reddit I loved discussing the latest episodes of my favorite shows or hearing about theories in the books I’m reading.
This “the alternatives are great” gaslighting stuff has got to stop. We’ve all tried it and we’re all still here, for good reason. Reddit sucks but the fediverse sucks even more.
Oh the irony in this comment… The only person being gaslit is yourself.
And secondly - a lot of people don’t know that you can now block instances individually and that defederation/blocking is not really that big of a deal anymore.
Reading the comments in that thread made me realise how little I miss Reddit. The sub is RedditAlternatives and there’s a whole lot of people in there whinging that people are talking about alternatives to Reddit. Lemmy has it’s problems, but Reddit is toxic AF.
I guess you could say the people who actually moved away from Reddit aren’t on /r/RedditAlteratives anymore
if you think fediverse is worse than reddit you have issue
There’s a certain demographic of people who crave a constant flow of outrage to fuel their social media addiction. I know because I’ve struggled with this myself.
Reddit has a slew of bots and artificially promoted posts to provide this to increase engagement.
I guess we have bots here too, but it’s trivial to block them, and obvious spam/ads tend to be removed on sight.
There’s far less outrage fuel here than on reddit, and also the comparatively slower flow of content encourages actual engagement and participation vs. merely consuming.
I can see why someone who’s balls deep in reddit might be disappointed here.
I may also be completely wrong about some of this, but that’s my observational take.
As someone who went from a daily user of reddit for a decade and now hasn’t used reddit basically since the app’s red wedding, I really don’t think this is it. As much as I hope the fediverse and Lemmy take off, currently I’m extremely pessimistic about that because if anything the problem is the reverse of what you describe. My current front page on Lemmy (all/active):
- an article whining about Elon
- an article about Fox News/trump
- a post complaining about charging for XBL/PSN
- an article about Tesla being banned from driving schools
- an article complaining about DoorDash
and so on. And to get to this great non-rage bait content, I had to go through the trouble of even figuring out how to use the fediverse and which instance to sign up for (and then still hop instances a few times) and spend my first week just blocking like I was getting paid for it because language settings on this site mean nothing, more or less, and there are a few “communities” that pop up here that provide all of the intellectual stimulation of jamming a q-tip too far in your ear.
And if those posts alone don’t paint a clear picture about who the user base is here, heading to the comments will. Most of the comments read like they’re posted by “lefty white linux bro” or “communist trans linux they/them” who have decided that those are their entire identity/personality. While none of those things are bad and I tick a lot of those boxes myself, it creates a real echo chamber that borders on hostile to anyone that isn’t in that category. The other side effect I’ve seen on this is that this place can offer up some real doozies of takes in a way that is likely to make anyone who actually knows anything just up and leave. I saw one the other day that was talking about greatest people in the FOSS space and uncritically lists RMS that was heavily upvoted. At least someone brought up why that’s problematic in the comments, but imagine hopping over to the mainstream sites and talking about best musicians and seeing R Kelly on the list…
Anyway, while I don’t mind an echo chamber now and then, if Lemmy in particular is to grow and be useful for anyone outside of this base, I’d suggest the community adopt something closer akin to “reddiquette” which is probably the main reason why reddit was able to get somewhat past this in the early days, and some of the “niche” communities were able to grow. I put niche in quotes here, because as it stands now Lemmy doesn’t have even very vibrant communities for fairly mainstream things (music and TV, movies, etc.)
So while I personally choose to spend my time here instead of on reddit, that’s mostly an ideological choice and I view as a sacrifice because I’m missing out on tons of other content that I enjoy. Even your post is a form of this – “reddit bad” (sure) “because of bots” (also sure) “and Lemmy has less outrage content and fuels engagement” (uh, no.) Lemmy has as much or more, and it’s only fueling engagement on those that don’t immediately bounce off, but since you posted “their team bad, our team good” you’re getting upvotes and probably will continue to.
That you accuse leftists and marginalized groups of “mAkInG iT ThEiR wHoLe IdEnTiTy” tells me everything I need to know about your privilege and worldview, and explains immediately why you’d prefer reddit, a notorious alt-right platform.
We’re generally not welcome on reddit, so the fact that bigots and transphobes or right-wingers get immediately dunked on here is actually a good feature, and makes this far less toxic overall.
FYI I’ve blocked you, so I won’t see any further hot takes from you and therefore won’t respond. My time and sanity are far too valuable to waste on someone like you.
Ah perfect. Sets up a strawman, completely misses the point of my post, says one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard (reddit being an alt-right website*) and then immediately moves to block in response to me saying this place is a hostile echo chamber. 10/10, no notes, illustrates the point I was trying to make better than I did.
Just to be clear for other readers, I was not saying that any of those things are bad I was saying that this place has a purity test that borders on stupidity which this post illustrates well.
* just how does one come to this conclusion? It’s less lefty than Lemmy, but not by much. It’s alt-right communities are usually either banned, quarantined, and regardless of the technicals of the website or how the admins run it, they’ve always been outcast and if you say “vote for trump” in any but the clearly right echo chambers, you’re going to get downvoted to hell.
It’s fine for actual bigots to get dunked on. But Lemmy users will dunk on you: literally for liking the “wrong” piece of software. The echo chamber is real.
I’ve not noticed. Can you provide an example? You mean Chrome?
Honestly, I wish more people would switch to Firefox, but I’d never dunk on someone for Chrome. I might try to talk them out of it though lol
You perfectly illustrated the point
The “point”
“But I like my corporate cage 😭😭😭”
I don’t know what current Reddit looks like but old reddit is still irreplaceable so far.
People on Reddit are simply too addicted to the content. That’s the only real reason I can see what could bind someone to the platform. It all boils down to that - content. (And you probably don’t need me to repeat the usual “for more content we need more users” lol)
The old reddit is purely a technical thing at this point. I believe in the popular opinion that it’s a matter of time before it gets shut down.
I’ve personally been a user of it on Apollo and Relay and to me it was the way to use it. Rarely have I interacted with the website. So I imagine it’s a similar thing with the old mode users.
a lot of people don’t know that you can now block instances individually and that defederation/blocking is not really that big of a deal anymore.
I’ll reshare my thoughts on this from a comment I left in a completely different context a few days ago:
My question about that option is: what effect does it have? My understanding is that if we defederate, they can see our content and reply to it, but only other users on their instance will see those replies.
Does an individual blocking them do the same thing? If so, perfect.
But if, as I suspect, it still allows them to see and reply to comments and everyone else in the fediverse can see it, I cannot support it as a solution to dealing with the kind of bad faith interactions which would make me want to block or defederate an instance. It allows them to continue peddling their rubbish without even enabling the person they’re cribbing off of to respond.
Yeah, I’m so weary of this argument but you’re dead right.
If I and all my neighbours close our curtains then we won’t see all the garbage, rats, dead bodies, and other refuse piling up in our street, and then congratulate ourselves at the lovely community we share.
It’s absurd. As though everyone expects that corporate encroachment into the fediverse is going to come with a big sign that says “threads” or some such.
Honestly, there’s a reason hype has died down. The site has all the same problems as other alternatives.
After the initial hype, it’s only as big as a reasonably large individual subreddit. In fact, here are the top weekly posts of lemmy’s federation partners and T_D’s exodus site. The latter edges out the former slightly in upvotes and much more substantially in comments, and it’s just a single community. Even in the fairly small category of “biggest extant reddit alternative”, lemmy doesn’t take first prize.
Same content problem as all the others: roughly half of the posts are politics of a uniform orientation, and the other half are reposted facebook memes.
Reddit’s killer app is the presence of a sizable community for every little niche thing, and that’s not there. Unless your only interests are politics (within roughly .3 standard deviations of the median Huffpo writer) or Facebook memes, it’s not a viable alternative.
Competition: Sure, it’s federated in theory, but the block-happy, drama-centric culture means that, if an alternative were to pop up with the userbase of 2012 Reddit (or even 2018 Reddit), it’d get defederated almost immediately. Open federation solves the “dozens of sites competing for the same thousand-or-so people” problem. Closed federation just pretends to do so.
This is basically all the same issue: not enough users. It’s so dumb. “Lemmy isn’t as good as Reddit because everyone isn’t there yet. But ya, Reddit sucks.” /face-palm Then come over and get users to come over instead of saying there’s not enough people.
Hey, it’s not all politics! Star Trek is doing great here! I just saw a post about how the Bell Riots are going to…wait…
Lemmy right now actually feels like it’s the same size as when I started using Reddit, before the Digg migration. It was so much better then.
well it doesnt necessarily need to be politics, the biggest subgroup for lemmy users are usually people into tech (a lot of tech and tech adjacent communities are fairly sized on lemmy) as they are the ones more likely to make the jump. Easiest way to tell is to go to the communities page, sort by all communities and count the number, or even just get an eyeballs search to know that a common thread between many communities is either memes or tech
Not only not enough users, but there are certain users on here that are generating constant spam and/or propaganda. That becomes half the feed if you don’t block them.
Fair enough. But thats also understandable since there’s no single entity moderating. I think we should accept to get wet when showering.
I‘m pretty sure we can use blocklists for instances that suck like mastodon. Its very easy although masto doesnt do a good job yet to promote blocklists.
Which means that when more people come in here, there will be more spam and more propaganda, reaching the feed more often. And you won’t really stop people like that, they’ll simply go to a different instance and do the exact same thing.
Well, the same as always. They evolve, we evolve. Its an arms race.
Its already way past that as well. Bans of the largest instances federate through to smaller instances. So if you manage to get banned on instances I federate with, I don’t see your stuff either.
Works pretty well already.
That’s Reddit, too. World News there is basically all Israeli propaganda right now. It becomes a lot more diluted with more users.
Some of the people in that reddit thread are unreasonably angry that some people moved to Lemmy.
I’ll never understand loving a company so much that anyone who doesn’t like it is automatically deemed a bad person. Why is a stranger’s choice of social media so personal to some of these people? Why are they so livid?
I’m not even going to quote the specific comments I’m referring to just in case I get banned. One of them was comparing the entire lemmyverse to the subreddits that were banned over explicitly only having content about hating strangers for existing.
I’m happy I left if that what I’m “missing out” on.
I love it because the apps are much better… The regular reddit app has too many notifications, and red reader is too boring, and laggy. I’m using liftoff and it is so much better
Same. If they kept RIF I never would have known how crappy Reddit is and I left and never looked back.
Yeah, when RiF stopped working I just stopped using Reddit. I didn’t want their app with their random irrelevant notifications, nft shit and all the rest.
Can’t believe how many people went through the same steps. I miss reddit, but post RIF, it was unusable
I use it on occasion on mobile. Oh boy is the UX bad. UI is too cluttered as well but manageable.
The mobile UI before the exodus was fine imo.I use the full width/height card UI in Sync. The old style isnt my thing and I use(d) lemmy/reddit during lunch break.
Same. I was a dedicated user of Boost for Reddit (before the API Armageddon) and the only reason why I’m using Lemmy now is because they made an app for Lemmy (which I’m currently using).
Boost is such an amazing app and made Reddit tolerable
deleted by creator
But Liftoff doesn’t seem to be getting updates.
When this happened I went back to Eternity, a fork of Infinity, the app I used for reddit. That’s also the beauty of Lemmy, there are lots of third party apps unlike reddit that banned every single one
Everyone in that thread has Stockholm syndrome. They’re so used to being force fed shit that they couldn’t possibly believe that an online platform could be run any differently than Reddit.
And, everyones total misunderstanding of the fediverse. Yea, no wonder it’s all tech people here, dumbass
When I was recruiting people during r/place and the protests, I found most of the issue being proper user guides to get people to sign up. Lemmy may be pretty confusing, especially to non-techies.
I still don’t really get what people find so difficult about picking an instance. Most people seem to manage getting an email account, which requires picking an email provider like Gmail, Outlook, etc. Joining Lemmy isn’t that much different.
picking an instance
I’d hazard a guess and suggest the word “instance” confuses most and puts them off.
Could continue with the email analogy and call it “provider”?
I suspect that would help
A Lemmy provider. Haha, guess that works
It is like picking an email provider, but it’s like picking an email provider in the early days when there were no big players. People are more comfortable picking a provider that has a big name backing it. You even just mentioned providers from Google and Microsoft. No such options exist for Lemmy so people see all the instances and get overwhelmed. Personally it doesn’t bother me because I don’t care that much about my account history, but if you’re a content creator you don’t want to lose your account so it can be a deterrence, and other people may worry more about picking the wrong instance. I think it’s also not very straightforward what the implications of picking an instance is and a lot of instances don’t do a good job explaining their policies.
I remember trying Mastodon first, and my first reaction was, “What the fuck? I have to choose a specific sub/server?”, and as I read through the list of each server that said things like “This is a community for camping enthusiasts”, I found myself extremely off put, as I don’t believe (at the time anyway) that anything said the server didn’t matter and I would still have full access to the other boards. It sounded as though I would have to pick explicitly between a camping-centric community, a tech-centric community, a car-centric community, etc.
Lemmy was a little easier to grasp, though I did gravitate straight to Lemmy.ca because that sounded like the most practical option given what I wanted to access and where I live. But the setup process was definitely a learning curve. Eventually I wound up really liking it, but it didn’t truly fall into place until Sync dropped. Now my experience is nearly indistinguishable from my past ten years on reddit, minus the constant angst, hostility, and doom scrolling.
I tried to get my tech-savvy brother on here to no avail. He showed up when a bunch of servers were being defederated and I guess he thought it was setting a bad precedent right off the bat. I’m assuming he was unknowingly on one of the bad servers and was being exposed to their bitching and complaining without realizing what was really going on with them.
We need a service called LemmyIn that does everything for you and places you in every available instance it can find, save for anything inherently bad or controversial.
It’s because, like with email, the average person doesn’t give a fuck what provider they choose. They want to use “Lemmy”, they don’t care if it’s lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, etc.
It matters even less than with email, if they’re using a third-party app like Sync, because it’s not like they’ll ever look at the instance their name is hosted on.
Because people don’t explain it with good analogies like that. That’s the first I heard it put that way, and I found it helpful.
One thing I had an issue with when I migrated was actually understanding the differences between instances. A few aren’t obvious as to their purpose. If you randomly pick the wrong one to look at first, you may get a negative impression of the fediverse because of it.
What was your negative experience?
Getting banned from ML for saying that Russia is commiting war crimes in Ukraine. And then again for saying that the US revolution didn’t generally involve mass rape. And then again for calling an obvious troll out.
This last time, the ban reason was literally “Socsa.” Which I guess is flattering, but being put on a short leash for not breaking any rules, while tankies are free to troll threads with pig shit gifs is not a positive experience.
The stuff you’re talking about is why a lot of people are turned off period. Which people have already made that point in this thread.
You’ll get banned on ML for much of anything. I’m banned in the memes community of all places. This is not dependent on the instance you decided to use.
There needs to be groups of communities you can block or subscribe to. I couldn’t give two shits about Linux or sports teams or gross anime porno. Seeing all that will put off most casual visitors. After 6 months of blocking communities I have a fairly decent front page but still block weird anime shit daily. 99.999% of people will just flounce.
This is where the real problem is. Lemmy users act like there’s no issue, because you can block anyone you like, but to most users exploring the platform, that’s not helpful at all.
People generally don’t want to have to spend an hour making the feed into something useable, much less 6 months. What will draw people in is a feed that is already interesting and useful, which they can customize as they go.
I think the solution would be a set of default subscriptions, and even a default block list. Something that instance admins can curate themselves for the new user experience, but users can still customize as they see fit as they get to know the platform and communities
Absolutely. Even just blocking languages you can’t speak would help.
I’m still confused by the need for blocking communities. Maybe it’s because I use Sync, but I only subscribe to communities I’m interested in, and I use trending/new community pages to find new ones to subscribe to. My front page is my subscribed communities, so I am never subjected to all the other content I don’t care about
I browse everything and block things I don’t like. That way I get an endless scroll, like reddit, and don’t have 5 posts from my subscribed list. That let’s me see everything and I can subscribe to things I might otherwise never see. Just a different approach. There is a metric fuck-ton of dreck though.
This is a symptom of the problem, I think. The idea of a social media platform being confusing enough to even need a new user guide will be enough to put people off.
I think the conversation needs to be framed differently. Most new users aren’t going to care about federation or decentralization when they first look at the platform. Don’t tell people to choose an instance, just recommend one that you think is good. At that point, the only thing that will draw people in is to see interesting conversations and communities when they visit.
To me, that means feeds that aren’t dominated by niche interests by default. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Trek and I appreciate Linux for what it’s good at. But if I wasn’t into those things, I would think those are the only communities being represented here.
In that respect, the sorting algorithm needs work. The votes are a good way to start, but it’s become pretty clear that in the new user feed, some communities need to be weighted differently than others. The initial experience should probably show more actual conversations, and fewer communities that live off bot posts.
People were really excited about being able to make bots that repost entire rss feeds or repost other site content into everyone’s Lemmy front page, and those are fun projects to work on. But those need to have a lot smaller impact on the default feed that instances show
Yeah, lets wait til the bugs in 0.19.1 are ironed out too please 😌 (well, the big federation bug at least).
With over a million users, I personally don’t feel an overwhelming urge to make more people come here, I prefer a more organic growth, but that’s maybe only me.
Good. It should be difficult. Means it keeps out the smartphone influencer types. Make this place too accessible, it’ll be ruined. Guaranteed.
Like I do want everyone to be able to use the internet, but I do want a space that requires some minimum level of technical competency. It’s a very easy filter to find people more like myself.
I agree. Let the people who want to use their phones to access twitter / instagram whatever. I don’t want this place opening up and exploding into popularity, that’s when shit is going to go downhill fast.
I feel all you guys, but, if it ever reaches the stage where it’s mainstream, we could all move to a more techie instance amongst ourselves.
I always have to laugh when I see an ostensibly pro-lemmy comment that says:
“Reddit mods are out of control”
Do these people understand that basically the whole idea behind a Federated system is that community owners have significantly more moderation power than they do on commercial platforms? If someone’s main problem with Reddit was unchecked mod power, I have some bad news for them…
Eh, it’s not that the moderators are out of control on Reddit. It’s that they’re under control… by a single corporation.
A moderator here could potentially move their community to another instance if the owner of the instance tries the asshattery that Reddit Corp does.
Users choose the communities that have mods that are cool, the mods choose the instance that’s owned by someone that’s cool. The second half of that sentence isn’t true for reddit which turns it into a top down power dynamic.
Eh there are also power mods on the platform that have a lot of control over loads of large communities there who are an issue in Of themselves in the ways they can control or stifle narratives on the site.
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I think many of those people are conflating subreddit moderators with reddit site moderators/admins. On many platforms, “mods” refers to the top level people.
Yup. Mods here are forced to have public mod logs, and people can create the same community under a different instance. Even instance admins have less power than Reddit admins.
So yes, if you hate mod abuse, Lemmy is better
The mod log is public and transparent.
No, they don’t realize, because their sense of where the proverbial line should be drawn matches the mods. If you’re a moderate (or heaven forbid a conservative) then you likey won’t stay long or post these views often.
You hit the nail on the head. People can’t seem to see themselves, especially when they’re using the same language as their proclaimed enemies. They’ll oppose with all the same tactics while calling the other side fascist.
Edit: I think I’ll start referring to them as kettleblacks.
Except if I really have a problem with the mods here I can set up my own instance with blackjack and hoo…wait.
The problem with Reddit is the centralized corporate control. The company can, at will, make all the community apps useless, and they did.
I mean the sentiment in the comments in that thread is not at all positive. The damage the tankies/hexbear/lemmygrad has done to the reputation of lemmy is not negligible.
imho It’s important to help people stear away from those places when they join lemmy except if that is their intention.
Lemmy went stronger when center-left people joined the platform. .ml and Lemmygrad will remain far-left. There are many server available to suit their needs. I was once on .ml until I joined the server set by people who were active on r/piracy before.
What about the spam and propaganda generated by users on lemmy.world? We have so much of it here lemmy becomes either empty or unusable depending on if you block them.
What kind of spam? I don’t see much of any of it.
In the same vein that Hexbear users don’t see their own posts as spam or propaganda. They fit your narrative more so you don’t notice it.
propaganda
This would be ”making you look at the shit Israel has been doing", right?
The straight from highly biased often misinformation websites, yes it’s propaganda. The fact that lemmy is being flooded in it by a few select individuals makes it propaganda. The straight up lies being told around here makes it propaganda.
or “people don’t believe that communism would work”
The Hamas defence here is inexcusable and I’m not surprised many people are turned off by this.
Generally I don’t like how lemmy.world is being hijacked by fringe politics. This has ended all other reddit alternatives (like Voat). We have a good thing here - let’s not let bad actors to hijack it.
Condemnation of Israel’s response is not “fringe politics” (nor indeed “Hamas defence”) and if you believe it to be so then whatever media bubble you’ve been placed in is working, other than this place. I’d be glad of that of I were you. America makes up a loud and influential portion of political opinion but it is 4% of the world and even there not a universal truth.
If you consider anyone with a different politics to you to be “fringe” or a “bad actor” then it is you who are not useful, not them.
Thats not what I said.
Why are you twisting my words with this strawman? There are literally comments defending Hamas.
If anyone did any twisting of words you did by making the connection that criticism of Israel is defense of Hamas. You can be anti-hamas and anti-Israel and you can even be pro-Palestine and anti-hamas.
I haven’t seen a lot of people defend Hamas (and the ones I’ve seen are quickly beaten down). However I have seen a lot of people argue anti-Israel takes are pro-hamas, which just isn’t right.
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Ok, so your response to me was irrelevant twisting words? Because I didn’t mention Hamas, you did. I’m not the one trying to change the topic of conversation.
Leaving reddit was a good idea, joining Lemmy, I’m not so sure anymore.
The userbase here is not really diverse in itself, so the whole platform gets this large echo chamber vibe. And with “not diverse” I don’t mean hostile or anything, just very homogeneous. Overwhelmingly left and far left on the political spectrum, embracing all things LGBT+, high nerd & tech factor; and if you don’t belong to or identify with either of those factions, you get downvoted to oblivion, and worse yet, mod removed and banned for no factual reason.
What made reddit strong as a platform was that you had the right kind of diversity and a big enough userbase to not spiral out of control, unless the top management fucked up.
On Lemmy, instance admins are (or become) often the worst offenders, making any interactions with users on their instance tiresome, unless you regurgitate the same stuff that has been said there over and over and over again.
While Lemmy is gradually growing and the whole federation is a pretty good concept too I have one question about lemmy and it’s future.
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Since it’s just two devs maintaining the whole project (I know there are many open source contributors but the project is on them right?) what if they get tired of the project or go MIA? Can a fork be made and that can be maintained as a replacement of lemmy?
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How are and will be the SEO of the lemmy’s instances? Reddit reached a wide audience due to that. It’s nice to have a niche set of audience at the start but that should not be the case forever right?
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