I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might’ve been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.
At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.
A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.
With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that’s all this platform has to offer. If you’re into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.
For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don’t see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn’t really progressed in a year.
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I now turn to Lemmy daily. It is anything but failed.
I don’t think it is failed. It has reached self-sustaining levels for many topics. It will need further growth to make smaller, niche topics self-sustaining. Whether this growth will take place is an open question. I know my instance is growing in terms of activity, but I’m not sure how others are faring.
But as long as it isn’t shrinking, I think it’s well-positioned to absorb more growth as users discover it or become disillusioned with Reddit or other sites in the future.
Who cares? Lemmy is literally beta software and it isn’t corporate growth driven social media. Also it doesn’t have to replace anything. I use a lot of apps. I use both Lemmy and Reddit and always have. I have Instagram too, I also use both Twitter and Mastodon. I have Signal, Snapchat, Linkedin and Nextdoor.I like Lemmy, it is different than Reddit and that is fine. I like it better and have my own server.
You might be right, Lemmy is not for the masses… I would consider myself a tech nerd, privacy enthusiast and shitposter; so migrating from Reddit was the best thing to ever happen to me. This place feels like a real home where I can share my interests with people who are incredibly helpful, kind and passionate about what they do. This place is a heaven for people trying to escape corporate and mass media. And I agree with you, Lemmy is a failed Reddit alternative, because it’s not a Reddit alternative, I don’t see it like that anymore. People here are genuine, I love that <3
If you don’t like Lemmy, you already know where to go. Enjoy Spez, the ads, the selling of your data to train AI, etc…
Lemmy is missing:
- Bots
- Karma farmers
- Ads
- Insane mods
- Fucking Spez
You know you’re right, we’re nothing like reddit!!
Actually I have heard of some insane mods
There are some power tripping mods, thankfully there are only a few
I mean Lemmy shares a lot of the same issues as Reddit even if it’s decentralized. I think Lemmy as a technology is better than Reddit because it’s more privacy focused, but most people don’t care about any of this. People put up with Reddit’s shortcomings because it has a massive community that is always active and fills every niche. Reddit’s daily active userbase is over 73 million. That’s hard to replicate in general, but I don’t see Lemmy getting anywhere near that mainstream. I see it as a more stable and active version of Voat, but still a niche platform nonetheless.
It is probably best to think nothing on Lemmy is private. Any instance with at least one user subscribed to a community will receive updates (messages and votes) on the community. Instance admin can go into the database to see any private message between any user on that instance.
Lol dude got the exact things wrong about Lemmy - clear they haven’t spent much time here. Fediverse is NOT privacy focused, in fact it’s the opposite. You blast your content out to everyone. The only privacy is your username, and that aint much. It’s user owned, that’s the saving grace, that corporate doesn’t own it. We sacrifice fake corporate privacy for open standards.
Everything being mainstream is the reason the internet is becoming so shitty.
Being mainstream is exactly what I liked about reddit. It was the reincarnation of usenet. It has attracted all kinds of people doing all kinds of thing. Are you interested in swastika knitting? Piano jumping? Bathsponge sculpting? You can sure as hell find at least 2 other guys already doing it there.
Your best course for getting new content is to contribute.
Don’t underestimate the power of shitposting.
That said, the Fediverse products are still behind in features, polish and ease-of-use. The mainstream prizes these surface-level things more than any others. It will take years of development still to fully catch up in that regard. So, it’s the long-haul.
Mbin is getting there from UX perpesctive imho
I disagree.
- Mbin’s terminology (inherited from Kbin) is annoying. Thread vs post vs magazine, boost vs upvote etc are unconventional and annoying.
- No default sort option. Every time I want to see new posts, I have to manually select “new”
- User instance and community instance are hidden
- Difficult to manage/view subscribed magazines
- Image upload dialogue is confusing
Lemmy has alternative UI such as Voyager and Photon, they are way ahead of Mbin in terms of look and feel.
What do you like about Mbin’s UX?
But why do you care about engagement with your online posts? Is your opinion that important? Or is it just your need for external validation from the faceless masses?
Either way, some introspection may be good here.
Or, ya know, just go back to reddit, whatever dude.
I mean… People come to social media to, you know… Socialize. I don’t post shit and just want upvotes. I wanna talk to people about whatever the post is about.
