I’m very new to Lemmy, I’m trying to see how it all works and what happens here. But honestly I feel like it might be a little too decentralized? Like, I know it’s the point but I feel like this doesn’t make for the best experience. Communities can be on any particular instance, and you can have repeats of communities for the same things. This feels overcomplicated, but I understand why it’s that way.
Also, how many people are actually doing a full switch from Reddit? I personally don’t intend on leaving Reddit, I’m just leaving temporarily, but not for any specific amount of time. I think that’s what most people will do, or I guess I hope so, because Lemmy still has a long way to go before it gets good enough to make a competition, especially considering the drawbacks I said before, and I don’t want us to lose all those communities that went black indefinetly, even if I supported the decision.
The point of the blackout was to protest, expecting an end to it all, although many are already wishing for an end for Reddit altogether from what I can see.
Idk, I still hope Reddit doesn’t die tbh, I hope they listen to reason and backtrack a bit, or we find a way to bypass the restrictions somehow, I think I saw a revanced patch to many Sync work iirc, so maybe there’s hope still.
Reddit has its fair share of “repeat” subreddits. This isn’t unique to a decentralised platform.
Personally, I think Spez is counting on users to think the way you do — make a big fuss, protest by leaving for 48 hours, and coming right back even if nothing has changed. Reddit has no reason to backtrack if they can just wait for the storm to blow over and everyone returns to business as usual after two or three days lol.
It isn’t unique to it, but it makes it waaay worse. And in Reddit it was mostly a problem of originally different subreddits eventually losing it’s original meaning and getting diluted into just “funny stuff” or “interesting stuff”
And yes, I know they’re counting on us thinking that way, and I do feel conflicted about that. But, for better or worse, Reddit is an important part of many people’s lives, and an invaluable resource of information. Losing that would be a big loss for many people, and it will take a long while for Lemmy to catch up, if it ever does.
If this protest goes for long enough though, maybe they’ll concede. That’s the plan anyway. The options aren’t only “return in two days” and “never return”, there has to be a middle ground that will make them listen to us.
One thing to note is that while it is true that you can create duplicate communities in different instances, eventually one is going to be more successful than the others, and will end up being the one community everybody goes to.
I mean yeah, they just really have to make a seamless way to see other instance’s communities. From what I understand they have to be searched manually, at least for the first time, or use a separate site to search for them. And in Reddit a huge way to find new subs was with crossposts (which idk if they exist here) and recommendations you got on your feed (which many people hated, even if I think they were useful, if not we’ll implemented) so it’s not as simple
Keep in mind that it’s a new, evolving platform. It’s always possible to make improvements, especially when the user base is small
A separate site for community searching, if anyone’s curious is https://browse.feddit.de/
If you have your own instance, that is true. Otherwise, on a good instance, I’d assume the host has already taken care of linking all the communities. Especiall, because otherwise the posts won’t be aggregated.
That only works if they’re actually discoverable when you search for them, so you can pick the correct one. On reddit if you search for a specific thing, you get a list of all possible subreddits in one go. On lemmy… it really depends on the instance you’re on, and if anyone else on your instance has discovered the other communities yet. You never know if the search results are complete. Even https://browse.feddit.de is not always showing all the communities I noticed.
And even now I have to keep rechecking communities/interests I have already subscribed too because new duplicates get made all the time with new instances showing up.
Respectfully, I think it’s somewhat naive to think that we the users can make Reddit listen to us. They are a company operating in a capitalist system and as the CEO said, they are going to prioritize profits until they are profitable, and once they are profitable, they are going to keep prioritizing profits. I’d be pretty surprised if users were able to make enough of a dent in profits in 17 days that they forced Reddit’s hand.
Reddit should do whatever they want to do.
Naive is thinking that Reddit will implode after 48 hours or that they will actually change something after 48 hours.
You are already saying it, they are gonna implement ways to monetize their users and platform and keep doing it in the name of infinite growth/profits.
That is the thing, why should I be a part of it or give Reddit my time and attention to achieve that?
They crossed the boundary that I had set for myself and me enforcing it is to leave the platform.
I joined the blackout for 48 hours and my idea was to see after what is gonna happen, but i’ll just login after the blackout and edit my comments and delete my account after.
I am not even coping, but I haven’t had the urge to open Reddit at all.
RIF was Reddit for me and for all I car they can put their API where the sun doesn’t shine.
In any meaningful way, I am done with reddit. I have been a daily user for 12+ years. It’s very clear that reddit is headed toward a future of catering to the lowest common denominator. They’ve lost their way and the site is continuing to head down a bad path with the IPO. Their leadership is already showing they can’t handle a negotiation between 3rd parties, I’m sure the creep crawl toward monetization will continue down focusing this lowest common denominator and remove all differentiation from their service.
Reddit has three uses - cultivated communities, niche information and scrolling.
I was very happy to find real connection and community here on lemmy over the last couple weeks. I read a thread earlier that was discussing reddit really has become a pretty unfriendly, transactional place over the years and I realized that resonated with me.
I’ll still have to surface interact with reddit via google searches for niche and specific information.
As for scrolling, it feels like Reddit is really only focusing on this as their future which feels really shortsighted. There are a dozen services and websites to scroll on from social media to news sites to honestly replacements like lemmy.
Overall, reddit is just one service and I am sort of grateful for this new opportunity to find a place online to connect and make a community. I don’t want lemmy to be “new reddit,” I want it to become its own thing. I’ll miss what reddit was but it hasn’t been truly good in a long time.
I’m in the same boat. Looking forward to making better connections here.
I read a thread earlier that was discussing reddit really has become a pretty unfriendly… [place]
Agreed. When I first started using reddit back in '15, it was still a bit friendly but over time it seemed that people were more interested in “debating” (read: arguing) over the littlest things, as well as just plain bullying other users. Even outside of debate spaces, if I came into a discussion with something that wasn’t either an agreement or a refutation to the person you were replying to, I was repeatedly bullied into submission or yelled at for not “contributing.”
I think a lot of redditors lost the idea of a “discussion” and confused it with a “debate.”
For me it’s also been 12 years and I feel the same way. I’m not exactly sad to see it go, in fact, I’m sort of happy they gave most of their users the momentum to move to something new. Using Lemmy wouldn’t be fun if was just empty, but I’m really happy how it’s all working out right now.
I’m not personally going back to reddit. I’ve had problems with them for a while now so I’m glad they finally forced me off their platform.
I understand what you mean though. Lemmy definitely has a way to go to be more user friendly but I think we’ll get there at this rate.
What worries me is how much of it is the initial hiccups of its early stages, and how much if it is a fundamental flaw with this paradigm
In my eyes - and I’m a 9+ year user - Reddit has shown that they do not care about their users or their users’ experiences on their platform and only want to exploit us for data and ads, and breaking my 3rd party app is the last straw. Assuming Alien Blue stops working for the last time on July 1st - and I’m pretty sure it will - I’ll be leaving permanently. I’ll be editing all my comments with a final message and deleting my account.
It is sad to lose communities, though it was already happening slowly with bots showing up more and more. I think our experiences online are more meaningful than we might think, and I’ve been feeling a bit of grief at what’s been a good part of my life for so long ending.
But, endings can lead to new beginnings and that’s what federation offers us, on Lemmy or Kbin. I think enough people will stick around here, and software will get updated, and kinks will get worked out, and if there’s ever another mass exodus once Reddit does something to drive off more casual users, we’ll have made a great place for them to land.
It is sad to lose communities, though it was already happening slowly with bots showing up more and more.
But how can we ensure bots don’t become a problem here? If anything, restricting the API should help with that issue, although afaik many of those still fall on the free tier.
Anyway, here’s hoping you’re right and it does get better
At least on Beehaw, the application process for an account seems a reasonable gate. Admittedly, I don’t know what sort of comment posting API Lemmy has, so maybe it is technically possible someone could ChatGPT an application and comments? But, what incentives are there? On Reddit, vote manipulation, getting people to click on scam links, getting karma to sell the bot account, etc. Lemmy is small enough that I’m not sure there’s any incentive right now.
(I don’t think Reddit will get better which is why I’m here and not there.)
Yeah aside from automod and the “generally helpful” bots like Decronym, the bottom line of botting on reddit was for generating clicks and ads. This site seems a bit too small for anybody to reasonably gain any momentum from it, and I think the users of this site come across as a bit too tech-savvy to fall for obvious bait.
When it becomes bigger then it might be a problem on the instances that don’t have applications, but I think Beehaw is safe due to the application.
(Agreed. 7 year user here and reddit never got better. It only got worse as time went on.)
I would say we’re still in the early adopter phase of Lemmy.
A core feature is that you can visit communities from other instances and sorta cross pollinate between servers, and in the long run I reckon it’ll be a major advantage, cause it’ll give more granular control over what kinda community you want to be dialed into.
But as of right now, the feature is much more of a hurdle, as it spreads thin the already super low user count.
Assuming the exodus away from Reddit causes people to permanently move towards a decentralized alternative, this should work itself out given time.
A thing I learned from having a Mastodon account for a while, even before the Twitter meltdown, was I can enjoy using it without needing to have everyone there. Lemmy feels like the same way. Yeah maybe I don’t see all the good posts, but I don’t care. Just Beehaw feels like Reddit maybe 10-15 years ago which I thought was fun too.
I was not a mod or 3rd party developer, nor am I blind. And I wasn’t reliant on access to porn over reddit’s API. Those are the users most affected by the changes reddit is forcing.
That said, I am absolutely not going back, and fully support the idea of all the subs staying dark and permanently migrating wherever they please. Although I do wish they move somewhere on the fediverse.
and you can have repeats of communities for the same things.
So can Reddit? You could have /r/tech and also /r/technology. How were users supposed to decide? One eventually wins and becomes the big sub.
Same will happen (and already is happening) here.
Undecided if I’ll go back to Reddit, but there’s nothing saying that I can’t do both. Lemmy and Kbin both have a long ways to go, but I’m excited to see what happens. If I happen to find a few cool communities and/or make a few friends along the way then great. Always was a Twitter hater but actually having a bit of fun over on Mastodon right now (many Twitter users migrated there after Musk)
I wonder, how good is Mastodon and Kbin? I know nothing about Kbin, and with Mastodon I worry that, being so similar to Twitter, it may end up with the same shortcomings
Kbin I’m struggling to understand how is any different than the other Lemmy instances besides a prettier interface. I do like the interface but Kbin.social seems to be the main instance and it’s having some growing pains right now (server-wise) so it isn’t integrating with the rest of the fediverse very well atm.
Mastodon feels like a Twitter clone, but without all the right wing nut jobs. There is a fair share of left wing nut jobs but I’m finding it easier to ignore them. Since I never used Twitter much at all I’m finding it easier to navigate/learn Mastodon but really I just search some hashtags of what I want to see, subscribe and interact from there.
As far as Lemmy in general goes I’m starting to understand the bigger picture. Mastodon is an instance on the fediverse and I can see and interact with content on Lemmy from there if I want to. I keep seeing the analogy that it’s like email servers so I’m treating it like I did the early days of email, try everything until I settle into a home and an interface I like.
People are great at getting used to things, just give it a few days and you’ll have figured out the fediverse.
I don’t think reddit will backtrack at all.
they’ve basically already said they won’t. With communities only shutting down for a day or two, it really doesn’t create any incentive at all for Reddit to fix their ways. They’ll just wait it out, things will go back to how they were before, and nobody has achieved anything at all. Either we actually make it hurt by staying away, or we won’t and then they know it’s OK to do this kind of thing, and they’ll keep doing it because at worst people will just stay away for a day or two. Not a big deal.
And not even that. There are still an incredible amount of people active on there afaik. So I’ve given up at trying to convince people to stay. Let the people who want to leave leave. Our communities might just be better off for it. I’m definitely sticking around. Fuck Reddit.People misunderstand one thing; The 48 hours is a start.
There are subs who immediately blacked out for indefinitely (r/videos and r/music are the biggest ones as I remember).
From the subs I did read before it all started they stated that they would start for 48 hours, evaluate their stance after and behave accordingly.
I would be suprised to see every sub just go public again after 48 hours and go on as nothing happened.
There will be subs that will do that though and I wish those good luck for the future, but I am sure a portion will protest further in 1 way or the other.
I really do hope that’s the case. I’m a bit skeptical but I really do wish.
Yep.
Hopefully a large amount of moderators and contributors keep staying away from Reddit, that’ll drastically lower the quality of the site and thus their money making ability.
I’m definitely staying away.
I don’t think Reddit will die and agree that the majority will return. I will browse my favored communities in both and favor participating here. That said, the Lemmy universe has been in rapid expansion for 2 weeks. It’s premature to judge it for the fragmentation of communities at this stage. I strongly suspect the ergonomics of finding and subscribing to a community you want will improv over the next six months.
To everyone that keeps perpetuating “there’s too many repeat communities on Lemmy” - please give examples.
The only example I’ve been able to find is c/Technology on Beehaw and c/Technology on lemmy.ml
The latter is failing to federate today (or has been down entirely), which is proving why this “problem” is actually a good thing. We can continue to talk on Beehaw’s c/Technology while lemmy.ml sorts itself out.
Do you have any other examples? I haven’t seen any. I’m starting to wonder if this concern is being repeated by people who don’t actually use Lemmy.
Well, not really, I am very new to this. But that’s another issue, I see no good way to find communities. You can go to that site and search for them, or hope they come up on your instance’s search, but I see no way to find new communities you don’t already know of. That also makes it so you don’t know if the one you found is necessarily the one, although that could be fixed when more people come here and things develop more
Now that I completely agree with! People are begging for this kind of feature, and I see some talks to make PRs for it (I think one even has a bounty?)
Hopefully we’ll see more about this soon.
But another thing to note, lemmy.ml is where most of the established communities are, but it’s way overloaded with the exodus and is failing to federate right now. So it might look a bit thin for you on Beehaw, but there is actually plenty of content on lemmy.ml if you go there yourself. Sadly you can’t make an account, but you can go there to see what you’re missing. And once they sort out their server issues in the coming days, all that missing content will be available to you on Beehaw, and you’ll be able to post/comment/like/etc when they do.
By the way, until there is a better, more official way to find communities, I recommend looking in these places:
https://browse.feddit.de/ - pretty nice, has a search bar
https://lemmy.directory/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 - An instance that federates with “every” server and lists them here.
Until more clean ways of discovering communities makes their way into Lemmy, these should do a good job of getting you started!
I am also very new here, and maybe this feature already exists, but I think it might be cool for community operators to sort their communities into a limited range of “tags” (or “topics,” or any other similar word), then the user can filter their searches by any number of tags.
Thanks!
Right now I have an account in beehaw, lemm.ee and vlemmy.net. I know it’s overkill, but it was mostly because I still don’t understand how things like NSFW and no downvotes work when you’re in communities from other instances. I’ll probably end up with just one when I figure it out tho
Just go to all to see posts from all instances, there you can find new communities easily
There are at least 6 different communities for selfhosting.
Hopefully this can be solved with (relatively) simple UI work.
Out of anything, it’s honestly the collapse of moderation that would do Reddit in at this point. The third party apps they’re killing are essential to the moderation of most large subreddits, and without them enough spam may flow into these communities to kill them. We’ll see, but ultimately it’s always good to have a backup. Nothing lasts forever, so it’s good to be prepared for something being gone.
I think I’m done with Reddit. I just deleted all my posts/comments on Reddit, so I think I can quit Reddit for good if I feel like it. The thing about Reddit is that it grew too big, and I think all platforms become this way once they’re past a certain size. For all we know, Lemmy might end up becoming huge, and turn into another Reddit. However, 1. There’s still a long way for that, 2. Instances are extremely independent, and anybody can stand an instance. If one of the instances turn like Reddit, people can move to other instance and block the problem instance.
Look at the major instances (Lemmy.ml, beehaw, Lemmy.world). One is communist/anarchist, one is authoritarian, and one doesn’t seem to be political. They all coexist.
I got banned from one of the main subreddits i used on reddit for reporting somebody for calling me a slur. Apparently that’s “report abuse.” Figured that was a good enough reason to delete my account. On the way out I saw this place. It’s a bit slow but I kind of like it that way. Gives me a reason to do other things instead of doomscrolling r/popular.
