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
Kbin, on the other hand, has too many issues.
No offense to Kbin’s developer Ernest, who is working hard, but Kbin is still in alpha stage, and it often has server errors (in fact, kbin.social is down right now, and it has been for the whole day), and the userbase and engagement are far behind Lemmy. There are also federation problems between Kbin and Lemmy sometimes. Kbin is also trying to be a more all-in-one product, with both microblogging and forums, and the users there like to have both, which is fine, but Reddit users are mostly forum users and they seem to prefer Lemmy more.
It was not fully down and this completely ignores the issues that Lemmy had when they updated to the next version a while back. Really unnecessary bashing.
But I realized later that this was a misunderstanding on my part, and that this is not an issue as long as the project is open source, with an open development, and as long as you avoid instances like lemmygrad.
Totally not suspicious, but at the minimum a bit ignorant on how open source software development typically goes. And it isn’t just Lemmygrad, but even their allegedly more moderate main instance Lemmy.ml, which is really just more of the same as far as users and moderation issues go. More problematic is the fact though that you’re still supporting the devs and their problematic views simply by supporting their software and its development by directly using it, and this won’t change until a proper fork from actually decent people is going to become the main used Lemmy software.
And overall, no one won this, because the whole protest was a failure as way too many people just remained on Reddit.
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.
The good thing about Lemmy is you can create your own instance.
Doesn’t really help with how other instances are moderated/administered. Sure, I’m in control of what I see or not, but user interactions are by and large the same regardless of where my account is created.
Yeah, I mean… I can’t control what type of food you’re going to eat, but I’m ok with that. We’re still having a converation, and that’s the important part.
Well, in defense of Lemmy, it’s nice to feel like I’ve got a lower chance of encountering Nazi rhetoric when in one of the anime/manga related instances
Oh I didn’t mean to say that Lemmy is bad or wrong, far from it.
This is my biggest issue with lemmy. The userbase is not particularly one I want to interact with or even read their comments most of the time. And it seems there is very little room for nuance or any real differing opinions. And worse, it seems most here are convinced they are correct (though that could be everywhere). There are a few niche communities devoid of that, but they are so small that there is either very little content or the same handful of people are doing all the posting.
Love the idea of lemmy as an alternative to reddit. In practice, it’s absolutely not a place I want to fully spend my time.
This place is more of an Echo chamber than Reddit at this point. By far.
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.
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.
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.
You perfectly illustrated the point
The “point”
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
I understand this comm is about Reddit… But you guys really need to just let it go already. You put so much effort into “owning” Reddit it’s actually kinda sad.
Don’t spend seven months talking about your ex.
This is par for the course though. We shit on Digg for years after everyone had migrated over!
there were other options?
Hello from /Kbin
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.
OMG reading through that comment chain - no not this one, the one on old-reddit.com - makes me remember what Reddit (outside of the tiny niche subs) is like, <shudder>. Leadership flows down-hill, and it is not just spez over there, it is his entire empire of hate, small-mindedness, and bigotry. Who on earth would see what Elon did to Twitter and think, “me 2!” (then overthrow the mods who loved the communities that they themselves built, replacing them with scabs who ban the humans and upvote the bots)?
Edit: for those who cannot bring themselves to go THERE, I brought it here for your amusement - you’re welcome:-P.
A bit of a self aware wolves moment as Scott Adams frequently says ridiculous, smug, inflammatory and poorly researched things on the internet.
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.
-
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?
-
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?
1- yes.
2- I don’t know
-
calls Lemmy and Reddit a forumAs a forum user, please don’t…
Forums are so much better than whatever Lemmy and Reddit are, the problem is none exist in the same “everything in the same place and people can create subsections” form.
Why don’t we have federated forums then? The technology should be more or less similar.
Are you sure you’re not a little nostalgic about your old forum years?
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…
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
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.
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:
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
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
I know this comment could receive some negative feedback, but Lemmy lacks diversity in its userbase, compared to Reddit (or Tumblr in the old times). It’s just a feeling, when I scroll through comments and posts on Lemmy, I picture most of the users as 16-46 yo white males.
EDIT: changed “45” to “46”, see comment below.
Not much we can do about that. That’s just the demographic an experimental decentralized platform like Lemmy attracts.
I get more of an impression that lemmy is full of far left leaning programmers. I think that is a good subset of people to have on a social media platform. But if we had more subs on other topics it should bring in other types of people.
The reason you don’t get many “normal” people here is that the community is absurdly hostile to anyone on the “normal person” spectrum.
If you’re not a software-pirating techbro obsessed with “privacy,” a leftist, or a furry, this place generally shits on you.
I very frequently post incredibly lukewarm takes for any mainstream community, and literally get called a Nazi. I have stalkers lol.
I, personally, tend to have “normal” views but significantly more resilience to online communities than “normal” people - which is why I still come here. Most normal people left back before this place even defederated from Hexbear. They ain’t coming back.
Until mods of what are essentially “default” communities get serious about growth instead of wanting “their” spaces, Lemmy is never going to grow. Most people don’t find getting blasted with piss-takes by Marxists funny the way I do.
Case-in-point from this thread
https://lemmy.world/comment/6400270
Oh and one directed at me, right on schedule.
Posted the bigot using the device created and coded by nerds. Do you fail to realize that “nerd” is what idiots call the smart kids? Of course you do.
Your example does not show what you think it does, though. Are you sure you posted the right link?
Dude made a simple joke in the same vein as the other joke and was downvoted because it didn’t “toe the line” so yes it’s exactly what I wanted to link.
If you can’t shitpost, there’s another huge chunk of people gone.
You’re delusional. And needlessly aggressive. They’re harmlessly joking.
I’m defending that person’s joke.
Read the screen names involved. It’s a decent hip-fire joke, but people took it the wrong way and downvote-spammed him
If you care about downvotes, then I could see your point about the Fediverse being hostile to some more mainstream opinions. I’ve made some pretty vanilla comments about markets/politics that have gotten downvoted for not being left-wing, but I don’t really care about that.
I’ve never been called a “nazi”, but I don’t go out of my way to antagonize anyone and try to add to the conversation and if my reply is something along the lines of “socialism sucks and you suck” then I don’t post it.
I think what it comes down to though is that the fediverse experience requires some curation and restraint compared to other larger platforms where you can go pretty much unoticed and can pretty much always find a group of people of similarly ideologically minds
If you care about downvotes, then I could see your point about the Fediverse being hostile to some more mainstream opinions.
I don’t - that’s why I’m still here. Most people do.
I regularly get called a Nazi just for saying Israel is demonstrably either not committing genocide or is so laughably bad at genocide that the claim is irrelevant.
30k people dying is bad, and the war is especially brutal, but the US killed nearly that many civilians in Mosul, and that wasn’t genocide - the topic was never even broached. Modern war is horrific for civilians. That’s why war is not seen as a good thing.
That take will absolutely get you called a Nazi if you post it in Politics or News/World News. This is a very normal position to have, and a significant majority of people will agree with everything above in the real world - these people aren’t going to hang out here.
I think what it comes down to though is that the fediverse experience requires some curation and restraint compared to other larger platforms
Yes, this is why it will stay small and insular until changes are made, which is what I’m advocating for.
I regularly get called a Nazi just for saying Israel is demonstrably either not committing genocide or is so laughably bad at genocide that the claim is irrelevant.
This being the internet, you might be simply being downvoted because you are wrong. As the old adage goes, the easiest way to
raise engagementfind the answer to a question on the internet is not to post the question, but to post a wrong answer.That might be relevant if my point wasn’t the hostility, rather than the disagreement. I don’t give a shit if you disagree with me - you’re allowed to believe whatever you want.
The hostility costs this place users, and this is a thread about advertising for more users.
Perhaps consider reading the entire comment before posting.
Maybe you should try jumping on Truth Social and suggesting they’d have a larger userbase if they’re were more tolerant of left wing views?
Why is it always “leftists” who are supposed to welcome any and all political views with a warm mouth?
What exactly are you offering in return besides entitled posts complaining “these people I’m stereotyping with open contempt weren’t nice enough when they replied to my unsolicited opinion with opinions of their own”?
It doesn’t appear to be posts, moderation, money, code or insight.
Maybe you should try jumping on Truth Social and suggesting they’d have a larger userbase if they’re were more tolerant of left wing views?
Does Truth Social have threads about wanting more people to join Truth Social? Because this is a thread about advertising for lemmy.
Why is it always “leftists” who are supposed to welcome any and all political views with a warm mouth?
Hexbear exists and you can join it.
What exactly are you offering in return
Growth. The thing this thread is about.
Does Truth Social have threads about wanting more people to join Truth Social? Because this is a thread about advertising for lemmy.
Yes. Brainstorming how to “redpill” people is one of the far-rights favourite past times, right up there with using slurs and obsessing about strangers having the correct opinons about their own genitals.
Did you very carefully dodge using the word “discussion” in your reply? Because this is a thread discussing the growth of Lemmy but it looks like we were supposed to just grovel at the feet of your opinion.
Hexbear exists and you can join it.
Have you forgotten which one of us was having a big teary about not feeling welcome because this thread right here was too left wing? I’m fine where I am thanks.
Growth. The thing this thread is about.
Yep. Growth and growth only. The user count goes up by one and we can pretend “bigger number means better” like we’re sad little middle managers.
My contribution to this discussion is making it clear just how little genuine value there is caving to your slimy little guilt trip.
Getting down voted for saying disagreement isn’t tolerated on this site. You can’t make this shit up lol
This comment will also receive some negative feedback but I don’t care about diversity in my social media platform. I actually want people to enjoy the same things I do, like Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc.
That’s the opposite of diversity I guess. More like a community where people have similar interests. That’s what I like about it.
Um, that isn’t the definition of diversity being used here. They were suggesting some demographic diversity not interest diversity. Unless you are suggesting only young white males are into Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc. In which case, fuck off with that bigotry.
That’s the vibe I always got from Reddit. But yeah, the vibe I get from Lemmy is that there are two demographics.
19-45 white male tech enthusiast and 19-45 white trans female tech enthusiast.
I’m not sure yet which one I am ಠ_ಠ
Oh damn, your certification ran out?
There’s also the leftists who decide very narrowly what opinions will be tolerated! Don’t forget them!
Hey that’s me :D
It’s such a hilariously leftist trope to fuck up your own community’s growth with purity tests
The only material I’ve seen heavily moderated by leftists is misinformation, regardless of political orientation (although American conservatism is more heavily moderated since much of it IS demonstrably misinformation currently).
I’m willing to be proven wrong if you have any examples you could recommend.
I just wish the rules were clearer. I’ve posted memes that I thought were in good taste but if the content has to do with a minority group then you better be fanatically praising them. That’s one of the reasons I stopped posting to !memes@lemmy.ml .
although i’m a white male in the age group i am neither of these… i know you didn’t say everyone is in these groups, just here to represent us anti trans folks who don’t know shit about computers. And they say commenting helps lemmy grow, so i’m doing that too.
“anti trans”
You mean “non trans” (‘cis’ being the technical term), right? “anti trans” implies hostility towards trans folk
That’s how Reddit was for a long time too, and Reddit still is more like that than the other social networks. For whatever reasons that demo is more likely to be early adopters of this kind of platform. Diversity comes with growth.
Because Reddit was made for nerds, until more recently it didn’t try to attract the mass with shiny interfaces and promises of social recognition like FB and Instagram.
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.
Encourage more niche reddit subs to move to Lemmy.
