this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 1 year ago
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Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:

  1. I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)

  2. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

  3. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

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[–] gxgx55@lemmy.world 107 points 1 year ago (13 children)

My problem with Lemmy is the lack of activity in niche communities. You're right that there needs to be a critical mass and arguably Lemmy has it, but only for the most mainstream, generic type of content. It doesn't have the mass to sustain any sort of niche, outside of maybe tech related topics because of the way the userbase is slanted.

I find myself going back there often because of that, but I hope that the userbase for generic content enough to sustain and grow, from where more active niche communities can spring up.

[–] kungfuratte@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think things could get a lot more interesting if other software that is more like classic bulletin boards and forums would implement ActivityPub. I mean, such online forums are still able to thrive in their respective niches. If such forums would become compatible with Lemmy, Kbin or Friendica, it could bring a whole new dynamic to this part of the Fediverse. At the same time, it would help these niche forums get more attention (even though I'm not sure if all or even most of them are interested in that).

[–] whois@lemmy.today 9 points 1 year ago

When I first looked into Lemmy, which was probably well over a year ago at this point, I saw that they had an alternative front end called LemmyBB which resembles the older style phpBB boards of the late 90s and early 00s. It looks like the demo instance is offline now, and it wasn't federating to begin with, but it certainly looks like an interesting use of the tech.

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[–] MdRuckus@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I follow damn near every community on lemmy that I followed on reddit. I follow 97 communities on lemmy with all communities active and none with 0 posts. I left reddit immediately and haven't looked back. All the news, whether political or tech related, I get from lemmy. I think people just haven't found the right communities. You have to put in some time to find them since you may have 5 or 6 with the same name. But, once you do, you should be good to go.

[–] o_oli@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Comparing the two communities, reddit nearly always has way more quality content and news for me though for the time being. Often even with big news it's just not here on Lemmy at all. Many posts also have 0 comments and you just wouldn't see that on Reddit. Once Sync can create posts I will probably start x-posting more from reddit to lemmy for communities I am most interested in.

For now I think I will start browsing Lemmy and then visit Reddit for anything I missed. Keeping my posting and commenting over here mostly because I'd like to see this place grow.

[–] ja2@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

for me, reddit nearly always has way more quality content and news for me though for the time being

It's not just you.

As constructively as I can put this, reddit has been building community and goodwill for many years. Lemmy has only recently become an option and it's done wonderfully in the short time it's had.

The challenge is the catch 22. People go where there is more content, they produce content there, and then there is more content there. There no vacuum, reddit didn't disappear. It became toxic and people apparently care less about avoiding toxicity than filling up on dank memes.

All I can say to that is we all need to be the change we want to see in the world. Adopt a Lemmy First mentality, and go to reddit only to pick up legacy slack. Continue the conversation from there over here. Link it up.

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[–] lily33@lemm.ee 55 points 1 year ago (7 children)

To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I'm willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.

Yes, I don't need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.

[–] whatisallthis@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.

There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.

If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I've found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

That's been my experience as well. I usually do top 6 or top 12.

[–] gullible@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.

I've noticed that "Hot" turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.

Whenever I've posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).

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[–] flipthetube@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities and conversations entirely.

And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.

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[–] teuniac_@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

And it doesn't seem entirely impossible that our Elon Musk fanboy Steve will screw up again.

I won't be surprised to read in the future:

  • Reddit Introduces Its Own Version of X's (Formerly Known as Twitter's) Blue Checkmark
  • Backlash After Reddit Strikes Exclusive Deal to Provide Trainingsdata to OpenAI
  • Reddit Introduces Paid Membership Options for Communities
  • Something Money Grabbing Reddit Related
[–] Tygr@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

That will be when they remove old.reddit

[–] Robaque@feddit.it 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've been wondering if the API change was actually a move to prevent anyone but themselves from using Reddit's data to train AI.

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[–] legion@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy has enough user activity to fulfill my time-wasting needs.

There doesn't need to be one website that EVERYONE is at. The Web didn't used to be so damn consolidated.

I don't give one shit about "Lemmy vs. Reddit". I care about Lemmy having active communities to engage in, regardless of what is happening on some other website.

Yes this is my thinking as well. Before reddit I was more than happy participating in forums on subjects I enjoyed. I had want I wanted. I almost have that here as well. That's success in my eyes.

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[–] Erismi14@midwest.social 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit has always had changes that made people want to leave. Removing CSS was the first that comes to mind. Now that lemmy exists it could be seen as a new platform to jump to every time reddit does something dumb or anti user. I have high hopes for lemmy

[–] fresh@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For me, getting rid of the old reddit design as default was pretty egregious. Usability tanked if I wasn't logged in.

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[–] Navarian@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly, I don't know if it's the fewer users, the lack of trolls, the newer apps I've been forced to use or the topics that I've been getting into since joining Lemmy. But I have been considerably more active here both commenting and posting, than I ever was on Reddit.

It may have started as a way to do my part for the growth of Lemmy, but it's not been about that for me for some time now.

[–] Cralder@feddit.nu 16 points 1 year ago

For me it's the smaller number of users. It is very likely that your comment will just end up at the bottom and nobody will see it if you comment on a reddit post with thousands of comments. If you comment on a Lemmy post with 25 comments or less it is way more likely to actually be seen by people.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Others have touched on it, but for me it's like the difference between speaking up in a conversation between people I don't know at a house party, and speaking up in a giant auditorium when the person on stage is asking for inputs. The smaller scale makes it a bit more comfortable and I feel more like what I have to say isn't already being said by a hundred other people.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Totally agree although sometimes Reddit was a lot more like speaking up in a bar full of angry drunks right after a group of neonazis burst in and started slap fighting everyone.

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[–] Sygheil@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Reddit has now checkmark/verified or whatsoever they call like any other centralized social media. Extreme cringe

[–] bappity@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

twitter has transformed my view of people with verification checks to "most likely to be an idiot"

[–] rhaegar_shaka@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It could also be that they are forced to be an idiot, like for content creators (MKBHD, Tekking101)

[–] bappity@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

i did say "most likely" :P

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[–] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 29 points 1 year ago
  1. No surveillance capitalism. unlike reddit, lemmy isn't trying to monetize/track you.

  2. Freedom/openness. Already, someone can use a third party app to use lemmy. Moving forward, I think, people will come up with new ways to utilize lemmy/activity pub.

[–] hamid@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To me there is no vs. My web browser has tabs and I can have multiple ones open at a time. It is cool to have more things, I don't need to commit to anything like an app or website.

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago (16 children)

One problem I see:

You can google site:reddit.com whatever But if you google site:lemmy.world whatever then you're losing a significant amount of results. To get good results, you need to know which Lemmy instances is likely to have your answer, and with communities duplicated over different servers, that can be tough.

In the end I find I prefer this federation model, although I'm not sure although I'm a bit concerned about funding it if it scales up to the size of Reddit (same with Mastodon vs twitter).

[–] zephyreks@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google should be finding searches with "lemmy" keyword, but it isn't at the moment.

Lemmy needs some SEO people.

[–] new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think lack of SEO is the issue. There's just not enough content and brand/domain authority to get results from here high in SERPS.

There might be something fediverse related that would affect performance in search, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about this setup to speak to it.

I think it's just lack of content, general awareness/interest, and longevity that's keeping Lemmy low in search

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

There were no phone apps

Jerboa be like: image

(I realize I'm posting this with a very real risk of somebody replying "yes," but Jerboa was, in fact, usable on June 12.)

[–] CorrodedCranium@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  1. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

I definitely think having mobile apps is an essential step. I was looking at alternative platforms such as Raddle.me but using a mobile browser was an extra hurdle (similar to using the official Reddit app) that kept me from regularly checking in.

  1. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

I could see this causing issues later. We've already seen issues a rise with some instances using the .ml domain and not being updated immediately.

Defederation is another beast all together. Most of an instance might be fine but a few problematic communities could create problems leading to arguments and, as much as I hate the term, drama.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The future of Lemmy has nothing to do with R whatsoever.

[–] Tygr@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If that’s true, thrn Reddit’s explosion in popularity had nothing to do with Digg.

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[–] rab@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree. R messing up is how we get more users

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[–] Historical_General@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A good many of us are here because of R's apps no longer working, including myself. It's been a month and now I don't even remember using R on my phone tbh. I did mostly use desktop, but I've also acclimatised very quickly.

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[–] HR_Pufnstuf@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You don't wish to see it kill off R?

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[–] Yerbouti@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

The main difference for me is that I feel like I'm part of a global project, not just a product in some big tech's ecosystem.

[–] PeleSpirit@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think one of the issues at Reddit was that if you said thanks to someone or thought they had a good idea, it was bad reddiquette. Here that culture isn't as prevalent and I it adds to the pleasantness. Maybe encourage meaningful thank yous or I agrees while adding on why you're saying thank you or I agree instead of "K" or "same." But don't shit on people that do that in the future.

edit: really bad grammar fix, still not sure. lol.

[–] guts@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

The important catalyst is good third party clients working with Lemmy as Voyager and Sync and people learning about the fediverse.

[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Fantastically written. I agree.

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