No Stupid Questions

I really wish people would think a bit bigger. I hear "I don't want regular people here/it doesn't need to grow" all the time but don't you wonder how much better things would be if the average person wasn't constantly on a platform designed to enrage and exploit them?

Like a lot of people here have already said, I think a different space is being created for those that are more in the know. The average person just isn't as invested or versed in what's going on to move to a different platform when the current is working fine for them.

I've been on Lemmy for about five minutes; I think that in time it could take a really strong market share from Reddit, because Reddit, even in its success, is kinda niche. The platform just needs to be functional; the communities are what makes it worthwhile. Mastodon, I think, will have a harder time as it's attempting to ape twitter, which is by its nature a bit broader.

Mastodon has a bigger hill to climb because twitter depends on known personalities. Joe nobody has never been focus of twitter. On reddit, nobody cares who the OP is. It's all about the content shared on the platform which by it's very nature is going to be from outside sources. Reddit eventually got its own original content, but at it's core it's a link aggregator with a nice commenting system.

I think we need to see how the content and platform grow organically over time. Reddit is an incredible resource and forum for very niche communities that don't really have a better place to chat outside of Facebook or things like that - where they can remain anonymous.

The whole concept of different worlds connected to communities might scare some people off - but I think naturally new apps will pop up that streamline this whole thing.

When you can convince your friends to use Signal, you can convince them to use Mastodon and Lemmy... So, I vote 'No' ☹️

Becoming mainstream started the slow strangulation of Reddit for me. The conversations became more polarizing and stiffling. The takes less thoughtful, and the unoriginal comments more prevalent. So I hope Lemmy doesn't become mainstream.

I do think Lemmy can grow, but if the recent events were not able to slow down the Reddit juggernaut; I do not see another platform coming to rival Reddit.

I think if we all just leave Reddit behind and commit to Lemmy, things will fall into place. I haven’t logged into reddit since the 30th, and things here have been just fine. I’m regularly getting responses to my comments and there’s good discussion everywhere I look on Lemmy. As far as I can see, it’s only a matter of time before it’s “mainstream”.

It doesn't need to completely replace the current platforms. The beauty of the decentralized internet is that platforms suddenly disappearing/dying wouldn't mean we lose years or decades of information that was contained in that site/forum/corporate entity.

Decentralization would also encourage a lot of people to go back to blogging, which would mean information would come from all over the web again.

It has potential, bu I hope it will not become like those mainstream soc-med..
Fediverse is like a village where each denizen trying to self-sufficent and helping each others while mainstream soc-med is like train station or mall where users just come and go while giving money to its owner for their services..
We may need one or two mainstream soc-med to be alive to keep up with news or to socialize with normies, but we also need a place to retreat like current fediverse.
edit:typo

I think it will but not for a while. We need more quality contents and not just beans.

First post on Lemmy. I hope that Lemmy and Mastodon can replace Reddit and Twitter. It feels hard to imagine right now, because finding communities and signing up is really confusing. I already gave up on Mastodon because it was too much of a hassle.

After using it for a few days and having an account for a few hours (this is my first comment), I don't think it will ever directly compete. But I think it does have chance to represent a "significant minority" of internet traffic if it doesn't peter out early on, and it may already be passed the threshold for that happening.

You'd never say email can "compete" with twitter, but it's still a significant way people interact with the internet. If lemmy does for independent communities and niche forums what email does for messaging, I'd consider it a huge success!

I don't think it's really helpful to think about lemmy and mastodon as "replacements".

They're alternatives, with their own quirks and cultures.

They're undoubtedly a significant step on the way to whatever social media will evolve into. Whether they become "mainstream" or more active than their predecessors is kind of irrelevant IMO.

I don't want it to. I want lemmy to stay niche but active

God I hope so, I'm so tired of every aspect of our lives being monetized or having an ad shoved into our faces.

As someone who is currently tutoring computer science courses for college, I think you greatly over estimate the average computer users ability to navigate a place like Reddit, let alone Lemmy. Most people I tutor for intro classes struggle to understand a file browser. Even for me Lemmy was slightly intimidating with how it jumps to the whole open source/ chose an instance thing before I could make an account.

Lemmy will need a basic app before it really jumps to the main stream.

There's already a lot of traffic on Lemmy. I'm constantly surprised to see posts with 400+ responses. I think it's already hit critical mass (Enough activity to keep people here).

They could if starting out it was easier. Once you hit people with "sign up for any instance ..." you will loose the majority of non-technical people.

It would need massive UI improvement.

While I sincerely hope so, possibly unpopular opinion... Lemmy will have to offer a lot more than "Not Reddit". It'll have to build up as a primary destination for a lot of "content of substance" and culture around creating and nurturing it (just cross posting from Reddit will not cut it). It may have to offer communities and opportunities Reddit bans or suppresses, although there should be some red lines there. And, like all Federated technologies, it will have to actively work to reduce friction for potential users.

I don't understand why everyone is talking about this going mainstream or winning against Reddit. If that happens then in come the corporate interests to ruin it. We don't need to take on the unlimited growth unsustainable business model we can just be happy with what we have

Perhaps a better question...do we want it to?

Lemmy? Maybe. Mastodon? Not a chance.

Lemmy functions perfectly as a Reddit replacement and only adds a mild amount of complexity on top of using Reddit. Mastodon is only similar to Twitter’s use case if you’ve had a few beers and are squinting.

No. As long as people keep using it I think it can grow enough that people can use Lemmy as their primary app. But it'll never become mainstream enough.

We underestimate how technically ignorant the majority of people are, as soon as it hits the point of no official app and which instance to join people give up.

The only way I can see it working is it they prioritised their own official instance, made it default on an 'official' app so it's just as easy as Reddit or Twitter, but in small text allow people to change instance.

Imo reddit and twitter had both become too big and bloated, leading to a lit of the toxicity/recycled content. I think there's plenty of room for more platforms to arise and become successful, while the old ones stay "mainstream"

Basically reddit and Twitter will become the new Facebook over the next 5-10 years.

Lemmy, yes. Mastodon, no. I could make no sense of mastodon and found nothing of interest.

I doubt it would ever get to a full replacement, but that's fine. It doesn't have to become the new Facebook to still be competent and successful in it own right.

By their nature, both Lemmy and Mastodon will be unlikely to have the same kind of reach, simply because they have the added complication of Federation and all of that on top of everything, which complicates things a bunch.

You also have some decent competitors starting up, which would also split things. Lemmy is competing with Reddit, and the similar services, like Kbin/Threads/Tildes.

Sure, the competition is a bit less direct for sites that Lemmy Federates with, but it's still going to split the user base in some way.

Lemmy also has a few technical hiccoughs and other issues that get in the way of it really becoming popular as it is now. Lemmy.world, pretty much the biggest instance around, suffers from several issues where the code-base simply wasn't designed for the sheer volume of users and activity that they're seeing.

Lemmy's devs would have to go and fix those problems before it could sustainably become a mainstream app.