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.
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
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not much we can do about that. That’s just the demographic an experimental decentralized platform like Lemmy attracts.
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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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…
The problem with Reddit is the centralized corporate control. The company can, at will, make all the community apps useless, and they did.
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.
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.
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.
Replacing “Lemmy” with “Fedderverse” would behoove you, OP. Sincerely, A Kbin user.
Ernest has fixed a whole lot of the issues today, but I wouldn’t recommend kbin at the exact moment, lol. Not that these issues have made me feel like going anywhere else.
What do you recommend then?
Who runs Lemmy?
Who runs the instance you would recommend?
In Ernest I trust. Kbin is a groovy way to consume the federverse. Just like Lemmy et al.
But a little more the instance that Ernest runs…
