How do you feel about the massive influx of users?
I went from Digg to Reddit and now I’m looking for a new home. I’m really liking what I’m seeing here!
Agreed, it feels really similar to Reddit but in better :)
Came here looking for a new home too!
I honestly can’t say about the influx. Since I’m part of it.
But man…
This does feel like home.
I was already loving Mastodon.
Honestly, the real question is:
What took us soo long…
I was lurking on Lemmy for a long time now read only mode, not signed up, but never had the urge to actually making an account.
I try not to have so many feeds where I’m active at once, to try and better manage the time I spend on this feeds.
Twitter and Reddit were the ones I engaged the most
Twitter became Mastodon and Reddit became Lemmy on that matter, so that I can focus on being active and helpful whenever possible.
So, what took me so long…?
Definitely something I will be asking myself for a while, since so far the experience here have something that reddit just don’t. The quality over quantity aspect.
Finally…
Thanks for having me here, I hope I can contribute the best I can to maintain Lemmy awesome as it is. I don’t post or reply like a madman, but I like to participate on constructive discussion every now and then.
what took us so long
“Inertia is a property of matter” -Bill Nye the Science guy
What I mean by that is that it takes a force to move a large mass. People behave in much the same way. It takes a push to get people to move in large numbers from one place to another. I personally have been philosophically very pro-fediverse ever since I heard about it, but I was waiting for it to reach a critical mass before really switching over.
That, and for Lemmy specifically, its history of being a tankie forum. Without the Reddit refugee migration, if you joined Lemmy as a single user, you would be alone among communists and eventually get bullied into leaving. Already in 2020-2021, Fediverse users knew about Lemmy, but they avoided promoting it because of its userbase. This Reddit situation provided the push to get many normal users over to Lemmy at once to drown out the communist users.
deleted by creator
That’s a good point. Personally I like when there’s a diversity of political opinions that are able to have reasonable discourse. My favourite political subreddit for a while has been /r/stupidpol. It has lots of Marxists, but lots of internal variety in terms of viewpoints, and respectful debate has always been allowed there while also maintaining a lighter atmosphere.
Hey man, I’ve felt mostly the same than you migrating to lemmy. A while ago I tried mastodon but it really didn’t click with me, how do you do to find people to follow and so? I was only getting recommended the same like 10 guys. I like gaming and programming if it helps.
For Mastodon?
I use it the same as my Twitter, mainly googling mastodon lists of know profiles there, the I copy/paste in the search and follow them.
On Lemmy it’s easier, just do a search for the communities you’d like to join, for example:
Gaming at beehaw.org is amazing. Subscribe to that if you didn’t already.
Sometimes understanding how to cross instances can still be a bit cumbersome though.
There is pretty cool support for relative links though! As long as your instance knows of a community, they’ll work.
- [gaming@beehaw.org](/c/gaming@beehaw.org)
- gaming@beehaw.org
And if your instance doesn’t know a certain instance exists, you just have to paste the url into your search bar to get it working: https://beehaw.org/c/gaming
For me definitely laziness.
As one of the new users, I’m broadly in favour
I also approve of me joining Lemmy.
The approval rating has never been higher!
I just joined Lemmy because someone on reddit mentioned in it a comment on a thread regarding the blackout. It’s kind of cool getting into a community while it’s still relatively small. I’m excited to see how things grow.
I hopped over here permanently tonight. Uninstalled boost on my phone, and I made Lemmy.ml my homepage. Reddit is just too depressing right now to keep it as my default.
I’m a reddit refugee, Apollo was my most loved and most used app for years. I was really disappointed about this situation, but after checking out Lemmy, I’m starting to feel really excited about this. I like what I see so far and I think there is a lot of potential, and it is kind of fun to be here now while communities are still smaller. Onwards an upwards! I’m also checking out the beta for the iOS app Mlem, more work to be done but also good potential here. I’ve also been doing iOS dev work for about a decade so maybe I’ll see if I can help contribute to that project in some way.
Welcome! Not an iOS user, but kinda frustrated with reddit either way.
I’m starting to be grateful to Reddit for giving me the nudge that I needed to explore the fediverse. I did have a look at Mastodon a while back (and I may have even joined an instance there, I’m not sure!) but was overwhelmed by not understanding it. I think being part of an exodus where there is lots of advice and support being given specifically for us is really helpful in making me feel like this is somewhere I’ll stay.
how can i install the mlem app? i didn’t find it in the app store :/
I am also part of the influx, but I’m worried that this is going to be a short lived thing and people are going to go back to reddit.
It’s very unlikely that Lemmy will ever be as big as Reddit, but this influx might have it reach a tipping point where it can start to grow users organically.
Indeed, for this kind of service users attract users. I’ve been checking in on Lemmy periodically for years and the content just wasn’t there (for me). But now, with plenty more users, I’m seeing a lot more value in spending more time here.
Unlikely. Why do you say that? Wasn’t reddit once small?
I’m not. My enjoyment of lemmy isn’t reliant on ex redditors. I’m staying.
12 years Reddit refugee here:
So far the concept is VERY promising but it still does all feel a bit wonky. Signing up was a headache and took me hours, sign in still sometimes work sometimes not… A huge of development will be required to get lemmy where it needs to be to really compete with Reddit, but so far, I’m very hopeful and happy!
It is also very hard to subscribe to other server’s community (or subreddit equivalent).
E.g.: i had account from beehaw, if i want to subscribe a channel from lemmy.world i need to see the list of community from lemmy.world comminity list, but I cannot subscribe from there because i dont have lemmy.worlda account. So i need to back to beehaw and search it again in community search bar.
In jerboa android, I didnt even see a way to search new community
Would be nice if there is a way to subscribe other server easily
Yeah, just found that out the hard way myself. I got to lemmy.world and suddenly was no longer logged in etc… That is something that def needs improvement.
In Jerboa, there is an icon on the bottom that takes you to the search function. I’ve been able to “join” communities from other instances using it
Right? I can’t wait to see how it improves as time on. I didn’t have any real problems with joining on my end, though. When you signed up, was it the approval process on your instance, or just confusing? If it was the approval process, that’s probably specific to lemmy.ca.
I first tried signing up on lemmy.ml, that was impossible. Various hours of trying just got me the “click the signup button and it starts rotating and… nothing”
Then I went to lemmy.ca, there signup worked, but sign in at times gives the same “button rotating” thing and then nothing. Try again, and it works.
Its a minor issue, but a very visible one that I would say should be fixed ASAP because its the first thing new people see and you don’t want the first experience to be tiresome.
It’s because there is some approval process involved I think to avoid bot/troll accounts. I join lemmy.ca cause I live in Canada. :D
That’s fine that they have an approval process, but then the user interaction should be different. IT should immediately say that my request is under review and they’ll get back to me asap or something, instead of a “this process is frozen” indication
At least for me downloading their app jeroba makes the experience much nicer. Haven’t had the issues I had on the website though it’s a bit taxed because of the influx of users. Expected.
Is Jerboa android only? Didn’t see in the app store
Yes, there’s an apple one but not sure if it’s official. Mlem or something.
Yeah, android only. For iOS, there’s Mlem.
I’ll give that a try, I need an app
I just moved to a different instance and logged in there, browsing ml subs.
I felt the same at first too. The longer sign-up issue makes joining a pain, but I think it’s worth it.
Part of what I’m coming to love about the lemmy side of things is how free of filler and bots it is. By making a tiny barrier to entry, that’s going to prevent that kind of thing to a degree.
May I ask why signing up took hours? I didn’t even need to confirm anything via email, so I took me like 10 seconds.
I used sh.itjust.works though, I think it’s meant to, well, just work. Maybe the process on other instances is more complicated?
I signed up via beehaw and the sign up page said the request has to be manually approved.
I would love for the federated model to become a gold standard for how successful platforms ought to be run.
I am excited by the prospect of new communities and not excited fo reddit groupthink
Yeah, the curse of success. Everyone seems to be hoping for the swift death of Reddit but I dunno. It getting shittier but still existing might be the best outcome.
It’s not going anywhere. I’m sure like 90% of people there don’t care at all what is happening. Probably more than 90, considering that about 5% used third party apps.
If I can’t use a 3rd party app, I’m done. Their own UX is terrible.
What’s with that blip of increased activity at around July 2022?
Best guess… Maybe the last time Reddit pissed off their users?
I forgot what happened exactly on July 2022 (US politics). Could they be Trumpers looking for a new home? Yes, it was repulsive to type that.
No trumpers ever made their way to lemmy that I know of, besides a small instance that closed a couple months back. That might be when GenZedong was quarantined and the tankies migrated to lemmygrad, not entirely sure.
I like it, but I am part of the massive influx of users so I am admittedly biased.
A little bit worried. I am a recent migrator myself so this may a bit hypocritical, but I feel a lot of people will want to “redditize” here, just like how people tried with mastodon a couple months ago or (in a larger level), how people want Linux to become “another Windows”.
These are not replicas, Lemmy doesn’t work like Reddit, neither does it try to be, and that is by design, not a flaw. Things work differently, over and under the rug, and I think users should be entitled to doing some small effort to readjusting and have an open mind.
I’m all for UI/UX improvements, like most community projects, the front design part is more of an afterthought, and in that matter Lemmy has a lot to improve, but always keeping in mind what it is aiming to be.
For example, I am thinking in working on some simple browser extension to rearrange the UI in a way similar to Reddit’s (nothing fancy, the upvote/downvote and collapse buttons locations, simple things). Maybe even some redirecting magic so if you open a link to another instance’s community, it instead opens it in your current one, so you can still interact without having to go to your instance and search this one.
If anything, as a FOSS and federated content advocate, I wish this project nothing but the best so that one day we can escape the clutches of greedy companies.
Lemmy doesn’t work like Reddit
Does it not? I’m not feeling much difference from an end user POV
Well it’s a link aggregator and forum, just like reddit, but I feel like lemmy needs time for its own culture to coalesce - rather than expecting reddit culture to be imported or just exist here.
I hope it does coalesce into something good. I was so tired of the toxicity on Reddit from both regular users and the power-tripping mods. Yuck.
Yeah, I think good / bad would be a generalisation. If lemmy grows then there will be good bits and bad bits. The difference of course is that anyone can spin up their own instance, so there’s much more likelihood that some instances will be predominantly well run and enjoyable to be a part of.
why not contribute directly to the project, given it’s open source nature rather than a browser extension? I’m also thinking about contributing some stuff, I think a lot of the federated part right now is really confusing and obtuse to new users especially.
I think a lot of the federated part right now is really confusing and obtuse to new users especially.
I have no idea what it means in context or in the broader scheme.
ie. you don’t have to sign up to multiple instances, and finding and joining other instances from the one you joined
Tried Lemmy a couple months ago and tbh it felt dead, love this new influx just hope new communities keep popping up
Same here !
Hope people have patience and stick with it. I have no interest in going back to reddit.
I am one of those influx.
I’m realllllly just hoping we don’t choke the “main” instances completely to death before the lemmy backend can have some developer hours dumped into it to support better per-instance horizontal scaling.
Yeah. It’s gonna be a rough first couple months. App development needs to catch up. Server support needs to catch up. Many subs need to figure out how to move over their communities. I’m tempted to start making communities and just copy-pasting the side bars and pinned threads, but Im not a mod for anything, so it feels like it’d be plagiarism.
It desperately needs lower friction remote community subscribing and a user migration workflow between instances.
Yeah, currently I too frequently end up viewing communities from outside the context of my login, it’s a pain that I hope gets remediated soon
