this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:

  1. I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)

  2. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

  3. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy has enough user activity to fulfill my time-wasting needs.

There doesn't need to be one website that EVERYONE is at. The Web didn't used to be so damn consolidated.

I don't give one shit about "Lemmy vs. Reddit". I care about Lemmy having active communities to engage in, regardless of what is happening on some other website.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Yes this is my thinking as well. Before reddit I was more than happy participating in forums on subjects I enjoyed. I had want I wanted. I almost have that here as well. That's success in my eyes.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (7 children)

To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I'm willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.

Yes, I don't need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.

There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.

If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I've found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've noticed that "Hot" turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.

Whenever I've posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities, conversations and information entirely. I will not support their platform.

And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.

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

Yeah, you need people to post and comment to develop a community. I've got one community where I post five times a week, but I've only had two posts from other people and only one person commented on a post.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Reddit has now checkmark/verified or whatsoever they call like any other centralized social media. Extreme cringe

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

twitter has transformed my view of people with verification checks to "most likely to be an idiot"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, it went from “person of influence” to “dumbass pays for attention” rather quickly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It could also be that they are forced to be an idiot, like for content creators (MKBHD, Tekking101)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

i did say "most likely" :P

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Paid speech.

Those people should be double and triple posting to different platforms.

There's no reason MKBHD can't post to both Twitter and Mastodon. You get the reach, and you enable an alternative.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Lol I didn't know, I haven't been there in months now. That's awful... But good for us. :)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

The main difference for me is that I feel like I'm part of a global project, not just a product in some big tech's ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. No surveillance capitalism. unlike reddit, lemmy isn't trying to monetize/track you.

  2. Freedom/openness. Already, someone can use a third party app to use lemmy. Moving forward, I think, people will come up with new ways to utilize lemmy/activity pub.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I don't know if it's the fewer users, the lack of trolls, the newer apps I've been forced to use or the topics that I've been getting into since joining Lemmy. But I have been considerably more active here both commenting and posting, than I ever was on Reddit.

It may have started as a way to do my part for the growth of Lemmy, but it's not been about that for me for some time now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

For me it's the smaller number of users. It is very likely that your comment will just end up at the bottom and nobody will see it if you comment on a reddit post with thousands of comments. If you comment on a Lemmy post with 25 comments or less it is way more likely to actually be seen by people.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit has always had changes that made people want to leave. Removing CSS was the first that comes to mind. Now that lemmy exists it could be seen as a new platform to jump to every time reddit does something dumb or anti user. I have high hopes for lemmy

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For me, getting rid of the old reddit design as default was pretty egregious. Usability tanked if I wasn't logged in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

By design sadly, to collect that juicy, juicy user data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

When i.reddit.com was gone, that did it for me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  1. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

I definitely think having mobile apps is an essential step. I was looking at alternative platforms such as Raddle.me but using a mobile browser was an extra hurdle (similar to using the official Reddit app) that kept me from regularly checking in.

  1. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

I could see this causing issues later. We've already seen issues arise with some instances using the .ml domain or not being updated immediately.

Defederation is another beast all together. Most of an instance might be fine but a few problematic communities could create problems leading to arguments and, as much as I hate the term, drama.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down."

This is probably my favorite part of Lemmy. The comment section feels more meaningful, and not a landfill of garbage posts. Additionally, if I make a comment, there is a higher chance that it will be read and responded to, so it feels like I am actually engaging with a community, and not just chucking my thoughts into space and hoping they land on a planet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think the biggest value Reddit had to humanity was its original content. The kind of stuff that has people putting "reddit" in their Google searches for myriad topics.

As such, I'm not hung up on the numbers. If one really looked at it, that content generation is such a small fraction of what activity goes on over there. I'll take quality over quantity here.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There were no phone apps

Jerboa be like: image

(I realize I'm posting this with a very real risk of somebody replying "yes," but Jerboa was, in fact, usable on June 12.)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was fine on June 12. It didn't have the polish that decade-old Reddit apps had, however.

I'm guessing Jerboa development has kicked into overdrive and it will soon catch up.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

One problem I see:

You can google site:reddit.com whatever But if you google site:lemmy.world whatever then you're losing a significant amount of results. To get good results, you need to know which Lemmy instances is likely to have your answer, and with communities duplicated over different servers, that can be tough.

In the end I find I prefer this federation model, although I'm not sure although I'm a bit concerned about funding it if it scales up to the size of Reddit (same with Mastodon vs twitter).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Google should be finding searches with "lemmy" keyword, but it isn't at the moment.

Lemmy needs some SEO people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lemmy contents are replicated by federated servers, so you might find what you want by using site:lemmy.world or other big instances because they might also has replicated contents from other smaller instances.

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

I'm sure the search problem will be solved somehow. Like all the content is on each instance so its just a case of it being accessible and indexed by google I guess?

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

Welcome to the old Internet. Decentralization is good in a way, people will have to try harder instead of having everything spoon fed to them by Google.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'm not personally a fan of that brand of elitist gatekeeping. Having it be harder to keep out the plebs is not a look I think we wanna get behind.

Decentralization is important, but the goal isn't to keep people out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

People having to work harder is good? No I disagree with that entirely.

Part of what makes reddit so amazing is the amount of amazing knowledge and answers you can find from google.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Fantastically written. I agree.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The important catalyst is good third party clients working with Lemmy as Voyager and Sync and people learning about the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Infiltration... As I've moved over from reddit the community feels much more open to discussion rather than comment section filled internal jokes.

We just need Lemmy users who are daywalkers to post links into reddit. Or recreate certain communities here, but bringing over the good and not the toxic. Ama, but maybe amapolitics bringing more hyper local awareness to the masses?

Quality over quantity any day

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

As a fairly early Reddit user I've seen a lot of change as the website got bigger. I would agree that growth is not necessarily good, there is a minimum size of community to keep content fresh and a maximum size before it loses the personal connection. Right now a lot of the larger Lemmy communities are getting active enough, but Lemmy is lacking the users to support the niche communities. Maybe it is best if Reddit keeps those and the two websites end up with a happy balance for all the types of communities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Reddit is of interest from a witnessing history standpoint, for ex-redditors who wound up here. How reddit swirls down the drain will be accentuated by lemmy being a known superior alternative.

Reddit tries to exert control with a stick, while lemmy is the carrot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Was there ever really a gap? I got fed up with reddit and came right here and am very satisfied. I don't seem to be having a problem at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

lemmydotworld is down again, if anyone is missing [email protected] they can go to the other harry potter community on lemm.ee [email protected] that I'm currently trying to build up .

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