I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might’ve been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.
At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.
A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.
With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that’s all this platform has to offer. If you’re into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.
For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don’t see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn’t really progressed in a year.
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You might be right, Lemmy is not for the masses… I would consider myself a tech nerd, privacy enthusiast and shitposter; so migrating from Reddit was the best thing to ever happen to me. This place feels like a real home where I can share my interests with people who are incredibly helpful, kind and passionate about what they do. This place is a heaven for people trying to escape corporate and mass media. And I agree with you, Lemmy is a failed Reddit alternative, because it’s not a Reddit alternative, I don’t see it like that anymore. People here are genuine, I love that <3
Not a tech nerd or privacy enthusiast -just an old mom who occasionally shitcomments. I like it here.
Exactly. On Reddit you get roasted for asking a simple question like wtf. Lemmy is the way.
Oh so you’re saying all Reddit users literally eat babies?
/s. The vitriol on that site was just exhausting.
Are you suggesting that they are individuals? I mean, have you ever seen every Reddit user in the same room? Exactly! they are all the same 3 people replying to themselves (or so they seem to me).
You are entitled to delete your Lemmy app of choice and return to the corporate-approved Reddit™ content-consumption experience.
Don’t underestimate the power of shitposting.
That said, the Fediverse products are still behind in features, polish and ease-of-use. The mainstream prizes these surface-level things more than any others. It will take years of development still to fully catch up in that regard. So, it’s the long-haul.
Mbin is getting there from UX perpesctive imho
I disagree.
- Mbin’s terminology (inherited from Kbin) is annoying. Thread vs post vs magazine, boost vs upvote etc are unconventional and annoying.
- No default sort option. Every time I want to see new posts, I have to manually select “new”
- User instance and community instance are hidden
- Difficult to manage/view subscribed magazines
- Image upload dialogue is confusing
Lemmy has alternative UI such as Voyager and Photon, they are way ahead of Mbin in terms of look and feel.
What do you like about Mbin’s UX?
Meh, it works for me. I like it here more than reddit. Sorry that you haven’t found your groove. It toom me a while of finding the right things to subscribe and right folks to follow before my feed felt fun and interesting. I use Lemmy as a jumping off point for rabbit holes that are interesting to me
Well well well.
This is a weird way to see it.
You have definitely less people here than on reddit. And the kind of people that even consider leaving reddit because of the reason we left and then chosen lemmy are usually mostly tech nerds. Other people don’t care and stay at reddit or twitter or go to the Facebook clone threads.
Your goal here should be information, fun and entertainment.
I personally also read reddit aside to lemmy, but I first go to lemmy and then to reddit. Yes reddit is bigger and has a more active community but it is mostly toxic and ads infested. Without revanced I couldn’t stand it.
The area where Reddit shines is the big communities for non political topics. Here there isn’t an active community, let alone a large one, for any topic that isn’t politics, tech, or memes. There’s nothing here that appeals to average people like sports, gaming, science, cooking, gardening, etc. I thought this would change, at least a little, over the course of a year, but that didn’t really happen. As toxic and ad infested as Reddit is, I don’t see Lemmy becoming a mainstream alternative to it.
Sports - https://piefed.social/topic/sports-fitness
Gaming - https://piefed.social/topic/gaming
Science - https://piefed.social/topic/science
Cooking - https://piefed.social/topic/food
Gardening - https://lemmy.world/c/gardeningIt is understandable that you didn’t find those communities, discoverability is a real issue with Lemmy. I have tried to solve this by curating communities into groups of Topics - https://piefed.social/topics
Change is not easy, it takes time and people willing to help foster that new change.
I am one of those people that is really into politics, but I try to interact with other communities once in a while!
It is an election year, so politics is always in an all time high on any forums and social media.
I suggest, if you are willing, to step up your game and be really active in the communites you would like to see flourish.
It may be lonely, but it tends to be when starting new things!
We are all trying the best we can, when we can, I give props to the lemmyverse and fediverse for all they do!
Thanks for posting, even if you used a burner account!
That’s kind of the point that I was making. This platform has little to offer outside a outside of politics, tech, and shitposting. Most of the active users are here for these specific topics, which is fine, but this places Lemmy as a niche platform not one that appeals the masses. A few dedicated people can’t foster a genuine community out of sheer enthusiasm. If that was the case then Lemmy would’ve regressed after the influx of last summer. You could be right, maybe people like you will lead this platform to grow into something more in a few years. I just don’t personally see that happening.
Thanks for clarifying and going further into explaining your views to us!
Some people can be seen as being a dreamer[1], I see myself as such a person, I try to stay hopeful, I see it as a much more positive way of living in the world; as well as much healthier for our mental health
Lemmy as a niche platform not one that appeals the masses
Yes, Lemmy is currently a niche platform, but that is how many start off, it takes time and much effort to grow a community.
It is similar to grassroots movements, where people that are leaders or learn to become one are willing to speak with anyone for a cause they feel strongly about, and they start to grow slowly.
I see lemmy in that phase or light, where most activity will be from people that are willing to throw themselves out there and share their favorite hobbies and put in the energy to interact with strangers (whether it may be apositive or negative interaction is another thing).
It takes time for people to come out of their shells and to start being active on forums as well, hopefully in Lemmy we give people that opportunity to grow as people and to take chances to meet and discuss any topic with strangers.
A few dedicated people can’t foster a genuine community out of sheer enthusiasm.
Well, it takes a few to start something new, in my eyes all important causes and projects start with a few people just having fun or putting the time to create something new.
To accomplish anything in life, it will take time and a lot of energy and people willing to do that.
I just don’t personally see that happening.
It is okay to see the world in that way, but just putting a bit of effort into sharing or creating a community that you like, will help improve the community.
Activity would increase, if you create a community or decide to share more of your hobbies and opinions within those communities.
If the communities would be liked by Lemmurs or not, it is another matter, but in the end of the day we all have our own way of seeing the world and we can have discussions with people that are willing to share their views as well.
The only way we can continue to grow as people, is by forcing ourselves to push against our own bias and to keep talking with people that do not think or agree with what we have to say.
[1] Supertramp - Dreamer [03:31] https://youtu.be/B885n08hOmw
Much text to read, here is a Lemmur for a fun pic:
I’m actually glad I’m not that active on the platform (or any platform for that matter, federated or not), so I can give myself time to breathe in outside air and touch some grass.
And once I am active, it’s usually for a couple hours at most, then it’s back to being in my coma for a few days.
I have a couple of thoughts.
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I dont need or want Lemmy to appeal to the mainstream. Frankly, I already get all the mainstream ‘culture’ I can stand, and frequntly more.
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I think it’s a mistake to consider Lemmy a one-to-one repacement for Reddit. I hope the fediverse can leverage the whole, y’know, federation thing. I think topic-driven instances that function similarly to the old phpBB boards is a good paradigm. It’s not about a monster site that has a board for everything. It’s more answering the question, ‘What if I could post on gamefaqs from my metal archives account?’
I guess I just think we could do better than trying to out-reddit reddit, when it comes to having a vision for the platform.
Signed, a linux using socialist.
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Lemmy is missing:
- Bots
- Karma farmers
- Ads
- Insane mods
- Fucking Spez
You know you’re right, we’re nothing like reddit!!
Actually I have heard of some insane mods
There’s an ecosystem of entire instances with crazy rules.
The fact that Lemmy just doesn’t become unusable with all this brokerage tells a lot about the benefits of a distributed system.
Fucking gallowboob, is he still a thing?
There are some power tripping mods, thankfully there are only a few
I mean Lemmy shares a lot of the same issues as Reddit even if it’s decentralized. I think Lemmy as a technology is better than Reddit because it’s more privacy focused, but most people don’t care about any of this. People put up with Reddit’s shortcomings because it has a massive community that is always active and fills every niche. Reddit’s daily active userbase is over 73 million. That’s hard to replicate in general, but I don’t see Lemmy getting anywhere near that mainstream. I see it as a more stable and active version of Voat, but still a niche platform nonetheless.
Reddit didn’t get to 73 million overnight. It took them decades. Lemmy only gets 1 year?
Also, 73 million seems exaggerated, or that’s counting the bots
Niche <> bad.
It’s not bad, but niche is just that. For a platform to become a genuine alternative to Reddit, it needs to appeal to the mainstream.
You do realize that’s why Reddit went down the shitter right? Appealing to the mainstream is literally what got us to the point that everything is filled with ads and misinformation.
It is probably best to think nothing on Lemmy is private. Any instance with at least one user subscribed to a community will receive updates (messages and votes) on the community. Instance admin can go into the database to see any private message between any user on that instance.
Lol dude got the exact things wrong about Lemmy - clear they haven’t spent much time here. Fediverse is NOT privacy focused, in fact it’s the opposite. You blast your content out to everyone. The only privacy is your username, and that aint much. It’s user owned, that’s the saving grace, that corporate doesn’t own it. We sacrifice fake corporate privacy for open standards.
I do kind of miss the private clubs. I had worked my way up through 100K, 150K, 200K and 300K karma clubs before I bailed and came here.
Centennial Club was just the best. It was like Century Club, but way nicer!
I’d not yet call it failed, but it’s not yet succeeded either. To my mind, one impediment is something that lemmy.world shares with today’s reddit: If you look at the front page it’s 99% memes and images. That’s the first impression people get, and it probably drives away a lot of people who might want anything else. We need those people to make more text-based communities come alive, if it’s to evolve into anything like the old reddit.
I mean obviously there are lots of people who do mostly want to see memes and that’s fine, but I think it’s getting to the point where it might be useful to have an option that filters out all posts that are just a title and an image.
Could i ask how can you be one of the reddit exodus users if your account is 2 days old?
If you wanna leave lemmy do it on your main account to proof you are one of the over a year old accounts.
That we can salute and press F to the fallen user.
I’m pressing X to Doubt this post
Studies find that the vast majority of users on a platform are passive participants, the vast majority only look, a smaller group looks and comments and finally an even smaller group looks, comment and post. The key to growing any community is to find or be an active poster. It’s also an investment, if you post and get only 1 to 2 reactions, that’s okay, it takes time. It also means that more people see it and didn’t react.
In your example the NBA sub, I am on it and comment from time to time, but don’t have the sources or time to post, but if someone took, at least, the links from reddit and posted them here, it’s a start. I know NBA reddit has a lot of good discussions which you can’t replicate here without more people, but the posting of articles and links is a start.
ROFL….
But why do you care about engagement with your online posts? Is your opinion that important? Or is it just your need for external validation from the faceless masses?
Either way, some introspection may be good here.
Or, ya know, just go back to reddit, whatever dude.
The whole point of social media is to interact with others… I don’t understand what you’re point is here. You just seem mad because I said something you don’t like.
Well, you’re here, yelling into what you seem to consider an ‘empty void’.
Why?
Also, your *
But why do you care about engagement with your online posts? Is your opinion that important? Or is it just your need for external validation from the faceless masses?
I do not speak for OP, but, I mean… yeah? Now, I’m not particularly an egotist. I do not think I’m all that important. It’s more that while I come here primarily to get news, I prefer lemmy over other less interactive platforms because I can see how other people react and put my two cents in. And yes when I get interaction, I get a little dopamine hit. And really, what’s the point in social media without that element?
I mean… People come to social media to, you know… Socialize. I don’t post shit and just want upvotes. I wanna talk to people about whatever the post is about.
OP’s wording is very… Seeking when they talk about posting ‘get[ting] you thousands of interactions’.
You think they’re replying to those ‘thousands’ of people? No. They’re getting thousands of up votes, and that’s what they’re missing on lemmy.
If you don’t like Lemmy, you already know where to go. Enjoy Spez, the ads, the selling of your data to train AI, etc…
