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I don't see how Lemmy will fill the gap of Reddit - it's resulting in fragmentation (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Perhaps I've misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I've got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!

I'll try and explain this with an example comparison to Reddit.

As a reddit user I can go to /r/technology and see all posts from any user to the technology subreddit. I can interact with any posts and communicate with anyone on that subreddit.

In Lemmy, I understand that I can browse posts from other instances from Beehaw, for example I could check out /c/[email protected], /c/[email protected], or many of the other technology communities from other instances, but I can't just open up /c/technology in Beehaw and have a single view across the technology community. There could be posts I'm interested in on the technology@slrpnk instance but I wouldn't know about it unless I specifically look at it, which adds up to a horrible experience of trying to see the latest tech news and conversation.

This adds up to a huge fragmentation across what was previously a single community.

Have I got this completely wrong?

Do you think this will change over time where one community on a specific instance will gain the market share and all others will evaporate away? And if it does, doesn't that just place us back in the reddit situation?

EDIT: commented a reply here: https://beehaw.org/comment/288898. Thanks for the discussion helping me understand what this is (and isnt!)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (9 children)

No, this is worse than the old days. Back in the old days, forums were centered around specific groups and interests. All of the Reddit replacements are trying to replicate Reddit but without what makes Reddit actually the great: the mountain of archived content from over the years.

Instead of going back to the old days, what we got is a bunch of general discussion Internet forums.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

All of the Reddit replacements are trying to replicate Reddit but without what makes Reddit actually the great: the mountain of archived content from over the years.

This premise, I feel is the wrong way to look at it. What you think what's makes Reddit great and what made reddit great to me are totally different. What each user wants or expects from a reddit alternative is something that ISN'T Reddit. If I wanted Reddit, I'd go back to Reddit.

From your post, I don't think you were really into internet forums. I was a part of several dozens forums, with tons of overlapping and also different discussions. I was sad when many of them slowly died as Reddit dominated niche communities. The current expression of the community-based fediverse such as Lemmy and Kbin are a return to form that I deeply missed. In the old days you could have an art subforum and the vibe of each art subforum was totally different, but shared the general themes of certain styles of art.

I think the "fragmentation" of the current fediverse is great, its no longer one massive hivemind of a single dominate discussion points. I think in the long term, many of these communities will grow and change to suit their respective audience and some will fall out of favor and that's okay.

I personally do NOT want a single technology community. It becomes boring and samey really fast as the same opinions are reiterated over and over. Focused unique communities will come around that will be my peak of this amazing system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

From your post, I don’t think you were really into internet forums. I was a part of several dozens forums, with tons of overlapping and also different discussions. I was sad when many of them slowly died as Reddit dominated niche communities. The current expression of the community-based fediverse such as Lemmy and Kbin are a return to form that I deeply missed. In the old days you could have an art subforum and the vibe of each art subforum was totally different, but shared the general themes of certain styles of art.

I was very much into Internet forums as a child and posted on quite a few. But I didn't go on any of the general discussion boards, I focused those on specific topics or niches. That is what's missing with the fediverse today. Everyone is trying to provide a Reddit alternative right now but forget what made Internet forums of old great - their singular focus on a particular topic, community, or subject.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All of the forums I've used didn't focus on a single topic or subject. It was usually made up of people sharing a general interest, but there were always boards within each forum for either general discussion or more focused discussion on a particular topic like movies, games, art, philosophy, etc