It’s no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it’s still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could substantially increase the amount of people who discover the fediverse. What’s more, I don’t think this is would be a hard sell considering many mods are already pissed off with Reddit due to their API changes. I believe that this is the time to act, so this is a call to arms, to help grow the fediverse into the future of social media!
We aren’t going to get mods to promote us. That is just silly.
We should buy advertising though, definitely.
When the API thing happened, several of the subreddits I frequented had threads about finding an alternative to move to. Lemmy was mentioned, but but discounted early on.
One problem was that people found out the main dev was a tankie and didn’t want to be associated with the project because of that.
They ended up going to discords, or self hosted forums, or just staying on reddit.
If we’re talking about the same discussion, I think I remember a thread on either the modcoord or redditalternatives sub.
From what I remember, the disagreement was that the only communities that were shown in the splash page were extremely edgy commie stuff. Blatant propaganda communities. There was a pro-Russian invasion community in the top 5 communities and lots of “Death to America” type stuff. ’
Compounding things, the initial response to these complains was a dismissive “Redditors aren’t smart enough to work out how instances work!” which really didn’t make people want to persevere.
I’ll admit, I was in two minds because of this. But gave it a go out of curiosity for the tech.
I saw several threads and may be mixing them up, but at one point someone dug up a link to an interview with desselines where he claimed that the uyghur genecide and the tiananmen square massacre were both hoaxes. There was also some worry in one of the discussions about security and the inability to delete comments. Also something about private messages being stored in plaintext on the server.
“Hello we are from the Church of the Fediverse, have you a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour Lemmy? No not the tankies one”
Haha, that is a pretty hilarious visual. Do we get funny hats?
Best I can do is magic underwear.
What can I do then?
I’m just happy that there is a non-mainstream alternative where I don’t get to interact with your typical Redditor.
Do we even want Lemmy to become mainstream? Because Reddit progressively went further and further down the toilet as it became more popular.
Reddit’s decline is greatly exaggerated.
On one hand I can’t say that we shouldn’t try. On the other hand, If we let nature take its course it gives us time to scale. Until they pull a full-on dig 2.0 which might be very close, It would be kind of nice just to have a gentle increasing onslaught coming into our breach.
They did that Friday with the site redesign, well damn close to it. Not a complete sell out like Digg was.
Wait, what did they redesign this time?
Those poor bastards. I’m kinda shocked the investors and employees haven’t had a mutiny yet.
Have a look at this post, we had a similar discussion there: https://lemmy.world/post/3074361
Long story short, the platform still needs a bit of work before being able to really move communities. Some examples exist (lemdro.id, piracy, startrek) but those are tech savvy audiences, there would be a lot more friction with more generalist communities
Server issues and quits need to be addressed, and mobile apps Ned to be polished. If the UX isn’t at least on par with Reddit, then it will only hurt to advertise now to the general public.
Mirror for that lemmy.world post since they’re currently down…
The fact that large instances hit more downtime than something like reddit will always be a detriment.
lemmy.world really needs to close signups and the creation of new communities, until they can improve their uptime
or they should at least be removed from https://join-lemmy.org/instances maybe it could track the uptime and use that to build the list?
but Reddit actually does go down pretty often too
They said themselves the issue isn’t signups or server capacity, it’s that they’ve been under multiple rounds of DDoS attacks.
Why are they being DDoS’d though? I thought it was because they’re the biggest instance and thus shutting down still helps
Well, by that logic, if they shut down, the the next largest will be targeted, and then the next largest, etc. That’s not a winning game for anyone involved…
Right but we’ll be more decentralized so any such attack won’t affect the threadiverse as much. Right now every time .world goes down the entire fediverse feels half dead because it’s so large.
But if this happens 7 times and there’s now 7 major instances, each will only take up like 10% of the total and attacking it won’t affect much.
In that sense, getting more decentralized is basically a natural evolution of the big instances being attacked. I’m just trying to speed it up.
Yeah but why give new users a bad experience, you’re just gonna drive them away from Lemmy and they never come back
Also we’re overly centralized on them, we need to decentralize better, both users and communities
I mean, that could happen to any other Lemmy instance too, unfortunately. And even if you do decentralize, a server going down still deprives the rest of us of that content, so it’s never not going to cause some issues. So I wouldn’t hold this against Lemmy.world.
I don’t hold it against them, it’s just unfortunate that they’ve been having so much downtime recently, certainly more than most other good instances
Thanks!
One thing that annoys me coming from Reddit is, that there isn’t just one group of each theme. You have for example gaming groups on several instances and you can either chose to subscribe to a number of those or chose the one you like.
But in the end, one will be the go-to group, and wouldn’t that centralize the most popular groups?
(Honest question, I’m new to Lemmy and the thoughts behind it)
instances are like countries with their own constitution (rules) and police (mods). This means that two communities in different instances may seem the same, but they are not, because they have to follow the rules and culture of their instance.
Just like a Technology club in Japan will not be the same as the Technology club in the US because they will be culturally different. I think it will take some time for the Fediverse to think this way.
For me, this is better. Instead of having one giant technology community where your comments and posts are drowned out, we can have different technology communities with their own culture and norms, just like we visit different countries. Your comment and posts will be not drowned out.
It is a different paradigm to the centralised one of Reddit.
Yep, if you’re not from the US, instances are vastly superior.
Imagine all the times people from around the world asked for plumbing help on Reddit and got hit with “that ain’t up to code, buddy, get to ass down to Howm Deeepo” 😂
Americans do tend to assume the internet revolves around them, as they’re a bit insular and don’t see that it really, really, really doesn’t
A lot of that is social media/algorithmic too. It wasn’t until I start migrating to Lemmy (specifically lemm.ee) that I started seeing a lot of varied content.
Seriously? Aren’t the anti-USA comments getting a bit tired by now?
This is not an anti-American comment, but a fact. The USA is a superpower and a big country. As a superpower, americans don’t need to be informed about what happens in the world because it doesn’t affect them. Their country is the source of world power. And Americans tend to travel within their country because it’s big and full of tourist attractions.
Compare that with Canada, which has 40 million people. We need to be aware of every single decision the US makes so that the country can adapt. There is a famous quote from Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Hmm, you know how the Tarrifs are limiting trade? I don’t want to get political, but when trade slows, that is when it becomes obvious that USA is NOT immune to whatever happens to the rest of the world.
Every pyramid has a foundation.
Yes, the USA is a big country and a superpower.
But things that happen in the world do have major impact on the country and all of its citizens. The need to be up to date and aware of world events is critical. Everyone should be educated. It is the only way to make informed decisions.
You may not have meant it as an anti-American trope but it came off that way. Even the comment you attribute to Trudeau is a thinly veiled insult to our country. That is not lost on me or others here in the fediverse or other American citizens. The anti-USA bashing has become hackneyed and decidedly juvenile.
I expect better from you.
They are tiring honestly, I agree
These two comments prove my last sentence
You don’t notice the “anti”-everything comments, only the ones you perceive as “America-hate”
And by the way, nobody hates you, you’re just really bad at dealing with sarcasm
No, they don’t. I was addressing specifically the anti-American sentiment that seems to be the “hip thing to do”. Nothing more, nothing less.
Just because I did not mention any other energy wasting hate speech does not mean I am not aware.
I still expect better from you.
Yeah, people say we should use small instances to keep things spread out but two of the ones I tried have major posting issues that stop comments working, We really need to stress test and big squish before we really push it to everyone, some of the issues I’ve seen have been fixed and on general it’s very stable so I don’t think it’s got far to go
Which were those, out of curiosity?
Discuss.online and slrpnk both good communities but issues with syncing
Have had absolutely zero issues on slrpnk even after the big Reddit migrations.
Thanks!
I fully agree with you. And I want to emphasize that the main issue is that if you start advertising Lemmy like OP suggest before it’s “fully ready” to give the best experience to this people, they will decide now that lemmy is not for them and after that it’s very difficult to make they try again and change their mind.
Exactly the mistake threads just made, trying to capitalize on twitter’s rate limiting fiasco. The “general public” is extremely fickle, and Reddit will give us more opportunities.
I don’t know, I feel like the issue (at least part of it) with Threads wasn’t that it needed more time in the oven, but that it was birthed pre-shitified. Remember the steps: good to the users, then good to the advertisers, then good to themselves. Threads basically tried to skip step 1. It felt every bit as manipulative as the Facebook feed, because it effectively was.
It didn’t come through feeling like a breath of fresh air from Twitter in any way except (to your point) the lack of rate limiting. But even without that, the mindset and motivation behind Threads makes it dead on arrival. It has nothing to offer except being “not Twitter”, and the cold, corporate hand is very evident. Turning off the rate limiting, Twitter got those users back.
The lesson there is you have to have something the entrenched platform doesn’t if you want to keep the users. Lemmy is already ahead in that department simply by having 3rd party apps.
I do agree, however I would argue that an increased user base would help accelerate progress on improving lemmy
To be honest, people who are tech savvy and bug tolerant enough to be on Lemmy are probably already here. There were quite a few discussions about it (and still now on Reddit)
I predict it will be the mobile apps that get us over that hump
Definitely. Sync and Boost will bring the largest users influx
45k users in a week with sync.
That’s impressive
Infinity too.
Indeed
Which is unfortunate imo. More mobile users means less effort and lower quality content
It also needs about 1000% less hostility when it comes to anything beyond superficial discussion. Basically every news thread just gets brigaded by idiots trolling with pictures of pig shit. I get it, internet is not serious business, but in terms of actual discourse at the moment, this place is worse than Facebook.
Come visit [email protected] if you want quality discussion!
Wow, my experience is very opposite this. It sounds like you’re describing reddit to me honestly. I’ve seen way less hostility here compared with Reddit
I don’t see that either. People have disagreed with me politely and intelligently here which is just good conversation.
It depends on what content you consume I guess. On Reddit, news subs generally enforce decorum pretty strongly which really eliminates outright trolling. On lemmy there is the opposite of this in many places - lemmygrad and hexbear openly state that it is their goal to shit up threads to deny “shit libs” a platform, and the mods on several major instances seem to openly allow it.
So if you never consume that kind of content on either platform, you’d never notice the relative toxicity of lemmy.
the mods on several major instances seem to openly allow it.
Mods AND Lemmy developers.
Wait, do you any links to them admitting that? I believe you, but it’s a good idea to have that saved.
I say this as someone who hates tankies just as much as the next dude, but that community isn’t really productive nor helpful. If you seriously have an issue with lemmygrad there are many instances that have defederated from them (i think sh.itjust.works is?). A community like that does nothing but to bring drama within the lemmyverse. Yes, their views are at times abhorrent but you are just provoking a community that already has major issue with large portions of the lemmyverse. We really should leave that toxic drama stirring behind.
You just asked for evidence.
Didn’t you just say “it’s a good idea to have this stuff saved”
That’s why instances need to defederate and block lemmygrad and hexbear, to discourage that behavior.
This is neither here nor there, but the only thing I hate with a burning passion more than right wingers is the tankie filth that pervades those instances.
Yeah, I’ve run into this here. I posted a question to one of the posts asking why it was such a big deal, and all the sudden I’m a corporate defender. I don’t think this is a reddit, lemmy, or anything issue, it’s just internet and echo chambers. If you don’t reply with a “OMG YES SO TRUE OMG” then you are a dissident.
I think stuff like this needs to happen organically, otherwise you’ll have people who hate it, complain about it, and give it a bad rep, hindering its growth
No matter what you do people will hate it, complain about it, and give it a bad rep.
I think right now, any publicity good, bad, or upside down will help.
Agree with Blaze, they probably remember too when Reddit was in its infancy, it was unappealing to your average netizen, the same as Lemmy is now
Remember that 90% of Reddit is now ex-Tumblr and Facebook people; they would come to lemmy, see it’s a bit clunky, and go tell a hundred others on Reddit how bad an experience it was for them
Next thing lemmy has a reputation like Tesla that isn’t going to shake off any time soon
From what I’ve seen on reddit, this is sort of already happening. Lemmy’s name isn’t mud yet, but it’s being spoken of like most of the alternatives over there: not good enough or flawed in some way. Lack of content and users is the main one that gets said about all of them, but beyond that, the negative things I see said about Lemmy most often are: “scatter-brained”, “unintuitive”, “tanky”, “messy”, “not respecting user privacy”, “admins defederating and shadow banning”, “having to apply to instances”, “federated content not appearing the same on each instance”, “lack of mod tools”, “need a third party site to help find communities”, etc.
And it should be said that many of the most common negative things I’ve seen said about Lemmy on Reddit are being addressed, but some are not. Privacy (public voting) and issues with admins erecting invisible walls in the federation through various means are not being seriously addressed as far as I’ve seen.
I think the main issue that will ultimately hurt Lemmy versus any other platform that comes along is that Lemmy’s selling point of defederation is only a selling point to some people. Most people on Reddit don’t care about centralization, they just want a platform like reddit. They’ll come here and put up with it if they have too, but they will scamper off for a centralized site the moment one starts gaining traction unless Lemmy finds some way to provide something equally as unified, simple, and easy to use.
Maybe a frontend or app that just shows you everything and allows you to interact easily without worrying about logins or urls for instances, and pushes the federation aspect “behind the scenes”.
Maybe a frontend or app that just shows you everything and allows you to interact easily without worrying about logins or urls for instances, and pushes the federation aspect “behind the scenes”.
Let’s say I’m browsing Lemmy.world through this frontend and I stumbled upon [email protected]. Would the following be clear?
I think the main issue that will ultimately hurt Lemmy versus any other platform that comes along is that Lemmy’s selling point of defederation is only a selling point to some people.
I agree, and that’s why I think in a few weeks/months people here will realize we can only have so many active communities at the same time.
We’ll probably gather around a few core communities, and that would be it.
Lemmy is the Linux of the link aggregators, and as we all know, Linux desktop year is next year
I think some really general-purpose communities like films or books are good to be one per large instance, as they’ll be busy enough to have plenty of content without them getting so big you have that Reddit thing where it feels pointless trying to contribute unless you’re early.
Smaller, more niche communities definitely are harmed by being spread out as they get too quiet to survive.
It’s unfortunate people want centralization and seem openly hostile when discussions are had about ways to encourage decentralization. When reddit goes down, you can’t use reddit. When a lemmy instance goes down, you can simply go on other lemmy instances. That’s a major issue with lemmy.world right now and it being seen as the “default” instance
in fairness, most of the whining about defederated instances is coming from the same people who turned reddit into a cesspit.
reddit was a cesspit 10 years ago, only the trash stayed after 2012
I don’t even want more redditors to show up here anymore.
We’ve already got enough people doing and saying the same dumb shit they did there.
If we aren’t careful, the top comment chain on every post will be puns we’ve all seen too many times
Exactly…
reddit was once semi useful … Before it devolved
Agreed. The platforms are both very similar structurally but the zeitgeist is different.
Fostering our own organic direction of thought is a lot better than trying to bring yet another shitposter.
I might have a controversial question: but why? Do we really want this mass exodus to the Lemmy community? I think we have a nice little thing here. People will keep coming anyway, slowly, if they really are interested in what this is about
You mean you don’t want communities infested with bots promoting thinly veiled advertisements and reposting crusty old content to farm upvotes to make their accounts look more legitimate?
Exactly, I enjoy the high quality discussion currently found on Lemmy and I feel the masses would only bring the average IQ down.
I agree with this. The fedi communities as they exist appear to be happy with the niche. We don’t need to be the replacement of a corporate owned social network. Nor should we be.
Places like mastodon or lemmy should grow organically over time if we all want a healthier online culture.
It’s a nice little thing, but there so much to miss compared to Reddit. Sure, we have memes, technology and news. But there is very little other discussion going on, even for big things like food, sports, finance and relationships (picked some on the top of my mind). Huge communities on Reddit. Barely anything here.
Overall Lemmy is very much a disappointment when it comes to “niche” communities, if you can even call those large subjects that. But it’s even worse for smaller subjects.
There is a super active niche subreddit that I miss terribly. There is a Lemmy alternative with 3 subscribers only and a post every 5 days or so. I would love to see it active but me posting there feels the same as just screaming into the void. I know that to grow it I need to be active on it but if I’m the only one there then what is the point? I also don’t want to go to the subreddit and say “hey, check out Lemmy” cause it feels I’ll be sending them to a graveyard for that particular topic.
Which one is it if I may ask?
I don’t want them here. I continue to promote Lemmy on a one-to-one basis. No mass-market appeal, no calls for the masses. Don’t poison the well.
I would argue we should wait until the software we’re on does not feel like an alpha release. This is not some window of opportunity that will close soon, we have no strong incentive to rush this process.
IMO the biggest thing Lemmy needs is a better onboarding experience and an official page that recommends mobile apps/alternate front-ends. One of the Lemmy devs said they wanted to overhaul https://join-lemmy.org/ and it’s on their list, which is a good first step. Until then I think it’s best to wait before trying to capture the average audience and have them leave in confusion.
Yes I never thought plastering it with screenshots of your rust codebase made a good first impression. I get it, open source is awesome, but come on guys. That shouldn’t be the first description of your product that people see.
deleted by creator
True, they’ve only just begun
Not this again…
Lemmy isn’t everyones’ cup of tea. Reddit, despite the API shenanigans, still does what people want.
People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven’t already. They’d sooner go to Discord. Less cognitive load, and their subs already have servers set up. Lemmy has a 5 communities different servers for each sub and most will be inactive, so it’s already a losing battle.
Make Lemmy it’s own thing, rather than aspiring to be the 2nd head of the Hydra. Organic growth is good, sustainable. Boom and bust wholesale migrations look like failed hostile takeovers.
I think the problem was Lemmy didn’t have the apps in place ready to take advantage of reddits API deadline. Loads of people come to Lemmy but it wasn’t up to scratch yet. So they went back to what they already knew.
Now big apps like sync are on board. If they give lemmy another go I reckon they will stay this time.
They open Sync, they they see they can’t post, they leave again.
I know post is coming in the next hours, but it’s the same for multireddits, instance blocking, account migration, etc.
Assuming the prerequisite of joining Lemmy doesn’t skew this, people who post would be a small minitority. Might be similar for the other features you mentioned.
This was basically me. Looked around for an app I liked, couldn’t find one for Lemmy but there was an okay-ish open source one for reddit. Used that for awhile but kept an eye on Lemmy.
My only issue now is that i want to ignore an couple instances (lemmynsfw, and the like) but I can’t… Can I? There isn’t enough content in “subscribed new” and find I’m going to “all new” but there’s too much NSFW… Maybe I’m on here too much.
I had a similar experience.
I’m using “Connect.” For every post I see, there’s both a “block this community” and “block this instance” option. After I started making use of these, my feed (while still limited) became much more palatable. Presumably other apps have similar functionality, but I cannot comment definitively.
I use Voyager and have had the same experience as you. I blocked some communities from lemmynsfw and now even my feed from all of the fediverse is pretty good.
People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven’t already.
I think you’re underestimating Reddit’s ability to continue degrading the Reddit experience with their ham-fisted attempts to maximize revenue.
I don’t disagree with that. Reddit will keep burning bridges with it’s oldest users. old.reddit will be the next on the chopping block and that will be the death knell for desktop Reddit for a sizable number of people.
But I think you’re underestimating the average modern Redditor’s reluctance to jump ship. 3rd party apps were not even something they knew existed. Most never used reddit before the redesign. They already used the app. You cant miss what you never had.
I agree on all points. But I‘d say both things can be true at the same time.
Maximize attention brought to lemmy as an alternative so that the last salvageable soul on reddit gets the message while not shooting for copying reddit (like actual copying of posts for example and recreating every sub etc).
While I am very much in agreement with your arguments, I feel like your rhetoric is a little black and white albeit entertaining. Yes, there will be people going to discord because mental load, yes there will be people unwilling but some might still not have gotten the message.
So I say keep telling them but don’t try to „sell it“ if that makes sense.
Edit: fixed half finished sentence
Maximize attention brought to lemmy as an alternative so that the last salvageable soul on reddit gets the message
Have a look at this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/1507unf/post_why_dont_reopen_here_completely/
People were being told to move to Lemmy, but they fiercely refused, sometimes being utterly agressive.
And this is a Unixporn community, which is supposed to be aware of FOSS.
Reddit users don’t want to be solved.
I have made similar experience with the community I moderate (linux specific).
There is an easy explanation for this:
A lot of people in IT are autistic (as am I) and we don’t react well to change (often). That plus reddit can be a cesspool at times explains why they react this way. But although I hate change, I got the message because people didn’t give up on me. I was subjected to arguments without being lectured all the time so I could explore in my own pace. So I won‘t give up on others. Easy as that. :)
You make a good point, that could be part of the issue.
Happy to have you here in any case!
That’s very nice of you to say. Thank you. I‘m very glad to have found this place. And I like it a lot more than reddit for multiple reasons. :) have a good one.
I have looked at old.reddit.com recently and I loved it. Though I had never used it in past.
Now I can understand why people like it so much.
Old.lemmy.world is similar. There are other Lemmy reskins that get at that Internet of 10 years ago look.
There are some compromises with old.Lemmy that I expect to get ironed out over time but for typical use, it is nice and minimalist.
I think you’re grossly overestimating the ability of FOSS to reach “regular” people. 99.9% of Redditors haven’t even heard of Lemmy. There are assuredly very many people using Reddit who would be very happy to switch to something better.
You’re not wrong with any of your points, I’m just saying there’s no reason to discourage a “get the word out” campaign. People can make their own choices, but only after they know what the options are.
Have a look at this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/1507unf/post_why_dont_reopen_here_completely/
People were being told to move to Lemmy, but they fiercely refused, sometimes being utterly agressive.
And this is a Unixporn community, which is supposed to be aware of FOSS.
As someone who recently was wondering what my alternatives to Reddit were, then stumbling here recently, I think what we need is a good personality to do a 3 minute YouTube tutorial that gets out on Reddit.
I still don’t fully understand the difference between the two, but what I do know is encouraging. But it took effort to discover that difference. Reddit is apathetic. A three minute video may be short enough to get people to understand.
Just needs to show what it looks like (similar to Reddit with sync and I’m sure others), then a brief description of how it differs under the hood, and then how to set up an account and subscribe to a community.
I think a more appropriate approach is just to mention lemmy to your circles of friends and try to get any redditors you personally know to give lemmy a try, at least get the app installed so they can browse both reddit and lemmy. Lemmy won’t be able to handle millions upon millions of new people, especially ones with no guidance, but communities aren’t built overnight and we should do our best to get those who could use lemmy to use lemmy, one at a time. We shouldn’t be trying to overthrow reddit, just give a viable alternative to those willing to try one. It’s the more organic approach.
Grass roots wins Vs marketing.
Make that healthy root system grow!
I did this with /r/Cardano mods back before Reddit was blocking all mention of the fediverse even in PM’s. I managed to get one of them to help mod my Cardano communities. I’d wager that it’s exceedingly hard to get in touch with mods over there now that Huffman is blocking fediverse recruitment.
They are actually blocking links to fediverse based websites, especially lemmy. Some of the larger lemmy instances are having their links deleted and people posting them warned/banned
To your point, I know when I was last on reddit, 1 month ago, lemmy links did not work
Really?
Yep. Especially the NSFW instances.
