We need more users, to do that we need more advertising.
I was waiting to leave reddit for like a year before i found out about lemmy.
There’s no way the twitter clone Bluesky should have absorbed the fleeing reddit users instead of this space that functions just like reddit.
I know that Reddit doesn’t outright ban Lemmy talk, but on my reddit profile, I updated it with my Lemmy username link. I got banned from reddit a couple of hours later. No reason given. And I hadn’t made any recent posts. Ban reason was “violating rules.” lol
I had accounts banned for no reason after recommending lemmy to people, or makikg a username with lemmy in it.
Pretty sure they have a filter setup that automatically bans you.
removed by mod
Issues that would be solved by time/gaining more users
- Not nearly enough people to cover all the niche interest communities that Reddit does. At Reddit you find an expert on almost any topic to help you with your problems and you’ll find information on pretty much anything. Lemmy isn’t there yet.
- Not nearly enough history. A lot of content is still good and informative after many years. Lemmy doesn’t have a library of old-but-still-relevant content to search.
Issues independent of user count
- Search sucks. Reddit’s search does too, but reddit is easily searchable via Google. Lemmy isn’t.
- Onboarding is difficult, because you have to choose an instance, which is hugely important, but a newcomer has no idea what makes/is a good community to join
Issues that get worse with more users (aka, the potentially deal-breaking issues)
- Lemmy scales terribly. Every larger instance needs to retain a copy of pretty much all other content out there, and each comment/like/delete/update/… needs to be propagated to every other major instance out there. Adding more instances thus increases complexity and cost instead of decreasing it. Running a major lemmy instance is already prohibitively expensive now, with just about 50k monthly active users. If Lemmy was to scale to Reddit numbers (1.1 billion monthly active users, roughly 22 000x the number of users), everything would just break down.
- Moderation work scales just as terribly. Not only does an admin need to make sure the communities on their instance are moderated, but they also need to moderate all other communities on all other instances.
- Related to the last point, there’s some legal issues as well if an admin doesn’t moderate all other instances. Since content is copied from other instances to your instance, illegal content (e.g. illegal pornography, copyrighted works, …) are also copied to your own server without your active participation. That makes it legally mandatory to moderate all other communities.
- Legal pitfalls in general. If lemmy becomes sizeable enough, all sorts of laws in regards to social media platforms will apply. That’s one thing if the social media platform is run by a huge corporation with a legal department, but it’s an entirely different story for a tiny group of non-profit idealists running the social media platform.
Onboarding is difficult, because you have to choose an instance, which is hugely important, but a newcomer has no idea what makes/is a good community to join
That’s honestly not very helpful.
- It’s not exactly at a place where someone joins lemmy. Most people likely join via downloading an app, and if they are lucky that app links them to join-lemmy.org, and more often than not, it doesn’t link them anywhere and just asks them to either select an instance from a dropdown without further information or it asks them to enter an instance name from memory.
- The advice is very questionable and not really helpful without context.
- Lemmy.world is too big
There are Lemmy-reasons for why that’s a problem, but in any other context, the biggest is the best. And even in regards to lemmy, bigger instances have a higher chance to remain, to be decently moderated and to be decently stable. Before joining Lemmy.world, I was on Feddit.de, and we all know how that ended. And even before they vanished without a warning or an explanation, Feddit.de servers were always outdated, slow and unreliable, and moderation was arbitrary at best and non-existent at worst.
Lemmy.world is stable and works just as expected.
- Lemm.ee is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad, something that is not very welcoming to new users (see this thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/28798607/15305964 )
That’s a somewhat decent reasoning, though not immediately understandable as a new user. And not relevant anymore because Lemm.ee will shutdown within a week or so from now.
- sh.itjust.works names contains “shit”, which can deter users
Thanks, I’m adult enough to know whether I’m offended by the word “shit”.
lemmy.ca is Canadian-centric feddit.org, is German-centric, but technically English speaking too programming.dev is topic-centric blahaj is queer-focused infosec.pub is topic-centric aussie.zone is country-centric midwest.social is region-centric
None of that really matters thanks to federation.
dbzer0 federates hexbear
Like Lemm.ee, apart from the fact that it still exists
beehaw is way outdated
That’s some relevant reasoning.
sopuli.xyz (neutral name
See also:
discuss.tchncs.de has a difficult name
Sopuli.xyz isn’t any easier than discuss.tchnics.de, and jet discuss.tchnics.de was excluded for the name only.
While down in the comments it says
Sopuli doesn’t support gifs
Which is a really hard reason to avoid that instance, much more so than “has a difficult name”. That’s got much more practical implications.
But what’s left regardless is: Even that link that is supposed to make instance selection easier isn’t exactly easy to understand for a newcomer.
ut what’s left regardless is: Even that link that is supposed to make instance selection easier isn’t exactly easy to understand for a newcomer.
Newcomers are supposed to just read
" Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency) https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an appFeel free if you have any questions "
The rest was up for debate, feel free to copy paste your comment in that thread so that other people can see it as well
Niche communities. Large spaces are built of small niche interest groups. The tooling around small spaces needs to be first class if we want the larger space to be healthy
User volume and diversity is probably the main thing right now.
We just need more people posing shit, the fact that one or two users can dominate my feed if they choose to is not ideal. (Though often I appreciate the content anyway)
The diversity aspect is around how we have a lot of people in a small handful of demographics on here. It’s getting better every day, but the thing that made Reddit great before they ruined it was everything you could think of had a community of people posing stuff about it, doesn’t matter how niche.
One leads to the other though, more users naturally will mean increasingly diverse interests in our userbase.
It’s about time Reddit fucked something else up anyway, it’s been a few months
We just need more people posing shit, the fact that one or two users can dominate my feed if they choose to is not ideal.
That’s because so many on Lemmy would rather downvote than post anything.
Not enough people for even slightly niche communities. Wanna talk about smash brothers ? 732 people, only 2 posts in the last month.
This is why people still use reddit on the side.
This is exactly why I don’t use Reddit on the side. When I run out of content on Lemmy, there’s no choice but to do something productive instead. Had to go 100% cold turkey on Reddit to make that work though.
Exactly. I have a 1.5 hour daily time limit on Voyager, my Lemmy client, and I hit it every day, no problem. I do miss some of the niche subs but, every time I go back to ask a quick question, so many people are just so goddamned mean that I’m still very happy I left.
Oh yeah the community is 1000% better and healthier, I don’t miss Reddit at all. Plus I’m a child of the 70s, I grew up with limited content. It’s good for you.
Every time my kids say they’re bored I tell them that being bored is a useful skill.
Summer was not meant for being productive.
slightly niche
Sports is like the most mainstream of interests, and lemmy still doesn’t have a critical mass of sports discussion in general, much less specific sports/leagues, specific teams, specific games/matches, or specific players.
So I keep my reddit sports account.
I also keep an account for my local city subreddit, and one for my career field, because Lemmy doesn’t have those either.
I’m the main poster on [email protected]. Most popular post on the planet.
I guess people on Lemmy just don’t like sports.
Hell even [email protected] (as far as I can tell, the biggest one on the platform) only has like 10k subs, like a dozen posts today, and basically all of the posts were people just advertising music. Zero discussion.
Even for things i would think are big, the communities here are still vanishingly small. I joined reddit in like 2014 and even back then it was more popular than Lemmy is now
I see good discussions on
Not really into music myself, I guess the issue might be that it’s too generic? Even on Reddit I don’t think /r/music was that busy, too many different genres
[email protected] only has 11 posts in the last 24 hrs and [email protected] only has 7…
Not sure why you referenced the LW version when I mentioned the piefed.social ones, but
- 50 comments in this post: https://lemmy.world/post/31721709
- 12 in this one: https://lemmy.world/post/31849186?
- 28 here: https://lemmy.world/post/31826379
- 12 here: https://lemmy.world/post/31718582
Number of posts themselves isn’t really that relevant, comments are usually a more interesting metric.
I’ll subscribe, since it’s about the real kind of football (the one that’s played with your feet, and a ball. Not an egg, and your hands)
I’ve been trying to get into sports. Always enjoyed parricipating sports, never tried watching.
Welcome!
Why not create a community? We even have a community to promote communities https://lemmy.ca/c/communitypromo and we have couple others too.
The lemmy.ml instance not being treated the same as the rest of the Triad in regards to defederation
Some highlights from the link:
"Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
“See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342
.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558
CW: Original transphobic Comment from Nutomic
“NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
“If you don’t support Russia then you just don’t understand geopolitics” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
And a long list of bans/censorship and allowing the proliferation of known propaganda and misinformation outlets clearly demonstrating use of their instance and recognition to force a political narrative
I am currently working on a report on vote manipulation and the early results are showing clear signs of the some most prolific .ml accounts participating in brigading and vote manipulation.
I can’t count the number of times I made a comment way deep in a chain that conflicts with .ml dogma, and after the first downvote, there are suddenly 5 more within minutes
PieFed doesn’t have any of these issues
It does, since it still federates with lemmy.ml…
I think the parent comment is talking about piefed the software, compared to Lemmy the software, not the specific
piefed.socialinstance they’re posting from.That would explain. But that comment is in answer to the top-level comment about the lemmy.ml instance.
The developers of the Lemmy software are the admins of the lemmy.ml instance and are problematic. The complaint is that the software itself can’t be separated from the priorities of the .ml instance.
Piefed doesn’t have the same issue, even if the flagship instance federates with .ml
Some Communities are still controlled by people with absurd egos and overconfidence. Most of them hate people too, which is fun for a community manager.
I think it mirrors real life though, the type of people who want to be leaders tend to be assholes, and the ones who would be good at leading won’t volunteer to do it.
Duplicated fragmentation
Piefed solves that issue: https://piefed.zip/post/100161
All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
Same as with every other social media … the people.
I’m not your friend, buddy!
I’m not your buddy, guy!
Im not your guy, pal!
I’ll be your pal
It’s just as bad of an echo chamber as other sites. I have to actively “stop” browsing lemmy after a bit because I get annoyed at the repetitive nature of everything.
I’ve very much tried in the last few years to limit social media. I think it’s been a benefit for me. I like social media, but having “stops” makes it more enjoyable and prevents the doom feelings.
It’s too difficult to block huge swaths of things you’re not interested in. Like sports, or memes, or music. You block one community and 99 more about the same subject appear in your feed.
Adding some sort of Usenet-style organization or sublemmy tagging might help.
You could just use the Subscribe feed, no?
Yeah, I spent a little time cultivating the communities that I subscribed to when I first got here, and now the Subscribe feed is what I use 95% of the time.
Same here! And on a slow day when I finally managed to get through the whole Subscribed feed, there’s still the All feed to tackle. I really like that system.
Piefed has a built-in keyword filter
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
Voyager just started supporting it today: https://lemmy.world/post/31839818
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Not enough people.
-
People here are way bigger smug assholes than even Reddit.
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Sense of invulnerability and mod neglegence just because Lemmy is defederated. People naively think that makes it invulnerable to similar issues as Reddit (like toxicity/hivemind/bad modding.)
Back in 2023 I joined Lemmy because Reddit got rid of 3rd party apps. At first I was extremely impressed with the content here. While the community was small, meme channels were hilarious and had fantastic content. Same with the nsfw communities. However, now all the communities are filled with AI slop, political ragebait posting, onlyfans subsciption bait posts, and various other trash. So as far as I’m concerned Lemmy seems to be circling the drain. I can’t in good faith tell anyone I know to switch to Lemmy. If a friend were to ask me “hey man, how’s Lemmy?” My honest answer would be that it kinda fucking sucks.
People here are way bigger smug assholes than even Reddit.
Yep, and I am legit shocked about that. I still have a burner reddit account that I go to, and honestly, as much crap as reddit gets, I see way more assholes and ban-happy people here. On reddit someone gets mad at you or your opinion, and they just block you.
Here, a lot of posters who dislike ya will refuse to block you. Instead they’ll follow you and downpost every single post you make. I never had stalkers like that on Reddit.
Like you, I was an early fan. And even tried to talk my gf into getting on Lemmy. The other day, she finally decided to, and I talked her out of it and told her to just stick with Reddit. lol
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lemmy.ml and its admins being the developers at the same time.
Lemmy.ml needs to be defederated from all other instances. It’s literally an extremist instance of hate and bigotry.
Tankies on their way to hate private ownership and dictatorship of the bourgeoisie so much that they begin to love state ownership and dictatorship of the bureacracy
I don’t think that in itself if the problem. anyone can host an instance. The problem is lemmy.ml being the apparent default instance, advertising itself as an instance for privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, and not mentioning seemingly anywhere in the description/rules that only red flavour authoritarian dogma is allowed in political discussion.
“America bad, therefore former ‘communist’ russia and current ‘communist’ china good.”
Edit: it’s not featured as prominently as it used to be on join-lemmy.org so things may be improving. they should still mention in the description that western viewpoints on many issues are not allowed due to “rule 1”
I realized .ml was fucking insane and delusional when they glorified Stalin and refused to recognize the atrocities he committed.
No matter what your political stance is, as soon as you deny negative facts and exclusively push the “positives” it becomes a problem and may radicalize you (if that isn’t already the case).
What happened to nuanced moderate politics? It seems people unconditionally put the “left” or “right” label on themselves. And ironically these blind followers will have the audacity to call anyone close to the political center, or people who are honest with themselves, cowards.
Yeah, well the guy who runs it is a notorious tankie.
You either tow the pro stalinist line or you are punished
I was on .ml first after leaving reddit, because I didn’t know this was the case, until I called out straight up state propaganda and defended capitalism with social and ethical policies once. You can imagine how they responded to that.
They certainly mislead me. My first year or so was on lemmy.ml @[email protected]
After repeated bans i decided to move to a more relaxed instance. i still interact with lemmy.ml because some of the bigger open source communities are there, but .ml admins now cannot block me from accessing the full lemmyverse, only their diminishing corner of it
Huh, just checked out the ranking on join-lemmy.org. The default setting is “random”, which might be why it’s not featured up top.
But what’s weird is that lemmy.world isn’t in the ranking at all.
If you sort by active, the top two are lemmynsfw.com, followed by lemmy.ml.
well tbf they are the two most active servers there though. not sure why .world isnt on there though. maybe removed temporarily so that newbies filter out to smaller instances
IIRC it is intentional that world isn’t there to help spread out users to other instances.
Good, because .world is one of the more toxic ban-happy instances in the fediverse.
Switch to PieFed and this issue goes away.
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
The people on Lemmy are mostly weird obsessive leftists who have little interest in talking about anything else and disagree with each other for having nearly identical views in the grand scheme of things. I still like Lemmy but it can get tiring talking about anything especially if you mention something that people have decided is evil like AI.
Onboarding. I think it’ll be better if people promoted individual instances instead of Lemmy as a whole. As a whole, it seems vague.
Or if instances used the word “Lemmy” in their domain names. I can say “go to Lemmy.world or Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.cafe” but if I tell someone to go “sh.itjust.works” they will get confused and wonder why “that site is not Lemmy?”
I advocate the opposite. Because people then see “lemmy.world” and immediately associate it with the rumours about the devs being tankies even though .world and the lemmy devs are unrelated
Maybe. Some people might not even know what a tankie is until they start using Lemmy.
I didn’t. Tankie was a completely new word to me when I started here.
I had no idea what a tankie was until I started using Lemmy. lol
I don’t think we want that. It sets some weird precedent that instances need to be lemmy-dot-something, which is both untrue and restrictive on server hosts as a barrier for entry if that becomes the universal convention.
https://piefed.social has real good onboarding
Trying to be a Reddit clone.
Reddit was shit to begin with. It was a dumbed down forum site for people who found sites like Plastic or Kuro5hin too intimidating or complicated(!).
Slashdot-style upvoting would instantly solve a lot of “Reddit”-type problems, because instead of just good/bad, or like/dislike, the reason for the vote is noted, such as “insightful”, “funny”, etc., and you can then filter and sort comments much easier. Just filtering out “funny” comments saved soooooooo much time.
Another thing: Why don’t creators of threads have the option to admin their own threads? It’s their thread! It wouldn’t be appropriate for discussion threads (for obvious reasons), but for interpersonal posts and questions, it makes perfect sense for the creator to be able to have control over what appears in the thread to keep it on topic and the trolls at bay. It’s pretty rare to see a post where someone asks a question that doesn’t quickly devolve into an offtopic mess, and the creator is usually attacked for trying to bring it back on topic. This has made Reddit useless for question-answering (and besides, the most upvoted answer is almost always wrong.)
Is the purpose of these forums to enable authentic conversation, or just to farm content regardless of quality (to be sold to AI companies, presumably)?
Another thing: Why don’t creators of threads have the option to admin their own threads? It’s their thread! It wouldn’t be appropriate for discussion threads (for obvious reasons), but for interpersonal posts and questions, it makes perfect sense for the creator to be able to have control over what appears in the thread to keep it on topic and the trolls at bay.
How do you determine if a threads an interpersonal question and post as opposed to a general topic-related post?
Another thing: Why don’t creators of threads have the option to admin their own threads? It’s their thread! It wouldn’t be appropriate for discussion threads (for obvious reasons), but for interpersonal posts and questions, it makes perfect sense for the creator to be able to have control over what appears in the thread to keep it on topic and the trolls at bay. It’s pretty rare to see a post where someone asks a question that doesn’t quickly devolve into an offtopic mess, and the creator is usually attacked for trying to bring it back on topic. This has made Reddit useless for question-answering (and besides, the most upvoted answer is almost always wrong.)
This would probably quickly devolve into OP removing any comments they disagree with
