Do you think lemmy would be as popular as reddit?

Smokeydope , 9 months ago

Probably not, the vast VAST majority of average internet users are basically brain dead and want maximum convinence at any cost, including privacy and being treated right by the service as a user. They quite simply don’t care what happens as long as they can still get their garbage content drip fed to them without any work, learning, or inconvinece on their part. Lemmy is great, but its nuanced and we all kboe how well the general population handles nuance. Decentralization and the fediverse can be hard topics for some people to mentally digest.

DudeDudenson , 9 months ago

I don’t know my experience using Lemmy with boost has been pretty seamless so far (apart of a small snafu of trying to log in to the wrong server)

Plus you just know once it finally goes IPO reddit will go down the drain significantly faster than it has as of late

quinnly , 9 months ago

Comments like this are exactly why people aren’t gonna wanna join Lemmy.

For reference: I’m one of the brain dead convenience seeking idiots you’re describing. Lemmy isn’t that hard to understand. What sucks about Lemmy is pretentious users like you treating it like something it isn’t when in reality it’s just another in a long list of average to middling message boards.

Smokeydope , 9 months ago

Anyone who doesn’t join a service because they don’t like someones opinion they saw should stay out of internet fourms to begin with. You think im being a pretentious prick for thinking most reddit/internet users don’t have the technical knowledge to understand the backbone of lemmy’s decentralization/federation and that they want mindless convinence at all cost? Good, its the truth regardless how much you don’t like it or me for saying it. Eat shit and go find another ‘average to middling message board’

quinnly , 9 months ago

I don’t have the technical knowledge to understand lemmy’s decentralized federated nonsense and I’ve been using it just fine. You think you need to understand how something works to use it? Or do you think idiots like me are too scared to use something we don’t understand? Because I’m saying you’re wrong on both counts. And if you don’t like average idiots like me taking over your beloved platform then maybe you should just suck it up because I’m not going anywhere, and if this site continues to grow then pretty soon the average user will be a lot more like me than like you.

Smokeydope , 9 months ago

Its been growing in average users ever since reddit started with the spez nonesense and im fine with average non-technical people using the service. I never once said they couldn’t. It takes all kinds of people to make a community after all. I just personally don’t like being called pretentious for stating an obvious fact about the nature of average people and think you’re being an argumentative asshat that took personal offense to a general fact of life. Regardless of how much new people come in, it will always be a drop in the bucket compared to the ones who will stay behind no matter what. Just like youtube, it doesn’t matter what they do to the users because they provide a convinent service with 100% uptime and that is most popular in userbase.

quinnly , 9 months ago

the vast VAST majority of average internet users are basically brain dead and want maximum convinence at any cost, including privacy and being treated right by the service as a user. They quite simply don’t care what happens as long as they can still get their garbage content drip fed to them without any work, learning, or inconvinece on their part.

If you don’t want to be called pretentious then maybe you shouldn’t spout pretentious nonsense like this

(I highlighted the pretentious parts)

Smokeydope , 9 months ago

This is fair, I could have and should have used kinder and less insulting ways of phrasing it even if the overall message is about the same. I apologize for the pretentious dickishness on my part.

quinnly , 9 months ago

And I apologize for being an asshole in response. I would say that I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet but I’ve been trying to hold myself more accountable so instead I’ll blame my overall addiction to caffeine

CanadaPlus , 9 months ago

The bigger it gets, the easier it will be to get bigger. It’s more a question of if Reddit falls. If it does, Lemmy is the main alternative.

Wahots , 9 months ago

I don’t think any site should ever reach that point again. The internet should not be four big sites and maybe three social networks. It should be a diverse blend of sites, so if the lemmy creators ever get bored, or mark Zuckerberg gets hit by a car, or Google runs out of money, the entire internet doesn’t go tits up for the next six years.

max , 9 months ago

I once heard the quote “The internet nowadays is 5 websites filled with screenshots from the other 4.” Which is sadly, very accurate.

Auzy , 9 months ago

The discussions on Reddit also were so cliche, and low-effort comments were rising to the top (chain threads). It has gotten worse since.

I’m also hoping discussions are more honest here, where facts and science is used, whereas on Reddit, my biggest issue was it got to the point, that evidence wasn’t important in a discussion (but I’ve already noticed the same in some Lemmy communities. Literally had a discussion with someone recently whose argument revolved around insulting everyone they disagreed with, and they had all the insulting buzzwords to support their argument)

Thats actually the beauty of the ability to defederate from crappy communities here on Lemmy too, we can avoid toxic servers, and we can produce high quality discussion.

I think ultimately though, we don’t have to be as popular. Quality, not quantity is important.

That being said though, anyone who moved to Reddit from Digg, knows how quickly things can change. I suspect popularity here is ultimately growing though. But not hopefully at the expense of quality. If Truth Social gets shut down, unfortunately, I suspect that will lead to growth of lemmy, but things will turn to crap :(

lazylion_ca , 9 months ago

If someone does fire up an alt-right friendly instance, it can exist in a vacuum. It doesnt have to be federated.

Actually, there was one a month ago that got defederated because its users were assholes.

Auzy , 9 months ago

Yeah I’m on Beehaw, so a lot have been blocked. My concern would be if they choose to just use the normal servers. Last thing we need is a bunch of people running around turning Lemmy into an echo chamber. But, I have no issue if they want their own server

XEAL , 9 months ago

Nope. It’s like Whatsapp/Telegram. If it does the same basic stuff, many people won’t switch for the sake of it.

Also, Reddit got much traction in part because there was little to none censorship at the beginning.

Most of those banned subs on Reddit would be banned here immediately too or if the hosting instance allowed them, others would defederate it.

PhlubbaDubba , 9 months ago

I think it doesn’t have the same problem a challenger to other social media sites would have.

A Facebook killer has to contend with everyone’s friends already being on Facebook, same for Twitter, Instagram, and so on. This problem is probably why threads links to your Instagram account, to try and convince users that their friends are all technically already on the site!

With reddit though? Nobody’s on Reddit because of who they know, in fact people discovering each other’s handles will sometimes lead to frantic account deletions and reinstallations.

For this reason, I think Lemmy will do much better than other killer sites, however, it’s probably still not going to surpass Reddit by a longshot, mainly because while nobody cares about their friends already being on Reddit, they will care about not wanting to go through the bother of creating a whole new account and navigating how the fediverse system works for a maybe better version of what they’re already getting.

Reddit’s overall quality would have to drop into the damned abyss to cause enough of a mass exodus for a competitor to take it out for good.

Tippon , 9 months ago

It’s not going to be as popular while it’s hard to browse and post in different communities.

If I’m browsing through the app, Voyager in my case, I can read and reply to anything that’s been federated to my instance. If I send myself a link to read later though, I might only be able to read it. Sent links open in the browser instead of the app, and that doesn’t let me comment on different instances.

On top of that, accessibility settings don’t carry over. Different instances in the browser are treated like different websites. I have trouble reading dark mode sites, so I set my home instance to light mode. Browsing to a different instance might switch it back to dark, and not let me change it without creating an account and logging in. That really puts me off wanting to stick around.

trailing9 , 9 months ago

Why do you browse to other instances? Apart from channels on defederated instances you can subscribe to all channels on your main instance.

Does Lemmy need artificial ‘all’ channels that include all channels of an instance? Then there would be no need to directly visit other instances.

Tippon , 9 months ago

If there’s a post with information I want to save, I email it to myself, same for FOSS posts where I want to try the software on the PC.

It might just be that I get a notification while I’m on the PC and want to answer. This post is on lemmy.ml, so if I opened it on the computer while I’m logged in to dbzer0, I wouldn’t be able to type this reply.

MBM , 9 months ago

There is also just a dbzer0 link to this post (lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5239822) that you should be able to send to yourself. I can’t imagine Voyager wouldn’t let you access that.

Tippon , 9 months ago

Sorry, yes, Voyager lets me read and reply to everything. It’s when I try to open a link on my PC that I get the problem. I opened this thread from my replies, and get the dbzer0 link that you posted rather than the original lemmy.ml link, and I can reply on the PC. I’ve got programming.dev/c/learn_programming open in another tab though, a link that I emailed myself to read on the PC, and it asks me to log in, even though I’m currently logged in to dbzer0.

CommunityLinkFixer Bot , 9 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !learn_programming

Nemo , 9 months ago

This post is on lemmy.ml, so if I opened it on the computer while I’m logged in to dbzer0, I wouldn’t be able to type this reply.

That’s very incorrect. I’m on midwest.social and I can reply.

Tippon , 9 months ago

That’s odd, I can reply now. The link from my replies is lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5239822 though, rather than the original lemmy.ml link.

I’ve got programming.dev/c/learn_programming open in another tab, a link that I emailed myself to read on the computer, and that’s asking me to log in.

CommunityLinkFixer Bot , 9 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !learn_programming

Nemo , 9 months ago

Not odd at all. You’re logged in on dbzer, you’re not on programming.dev, because they’re different servers. Your server fetches posts from other servers before you can comment on them.

trailing9 , 9 months ago

As the others wrote, you should be able to reply.

Additionally, I would like to remind you of the star. You can mark posts and comments and find them in your profile.

Tippon , 9 months ago

Thanks, I always forget about the star. I’m so used to just sending myself links that I forget that there are other ways sometimes :)

Pratai , 9 months ago

Let’s hope not.

pixelscript , 9 months ago

As long as algoritmically driven centralized content pipelines remain popular, the Fediverse in general will not capture the mainstream.

Say what you will about Lemmy and Mastadon et al being “straightforward and easy to use”. I’m sure it is for you. But there’s a reason most mainstream platforms treat their users like absolute cretins: the majority of mainstream users are, and they both enjoy and expect being coddled and catered to by the platform.

The very notion of Lemmy being sharded into “instances” and what that means is so antithetical to the common preconceived notion of what a social media platform is to most people. “Oh, it’s not just all here in one place?” And yeah, federation greases the wheels a lot so no one even has to think about instances… until a community you like is suddenly rendered inaccessible via defederation.

Also, content discovery on the Fediverse is admittedly kind of ass. Only those who both know what they want going in and where to look for what they want really get anything out of it. Most centralized social media platforms are relentless content recommendation engines because people don’t actuslly know what they want until they’ve had it brought to them. An algorithm that at least attempts to adapt to what you want to see more of is a key part of that. Lemmy does not have this (nor should it).

All that said, the fact that Fediverse platforms like Lemmy filter “common people” in these ways is, from what I can tell from here and elsewhere, a feature, not a bug. By being here at all, you prove a kind of baseline competency and a willingness to put in effort to learn the system that sets you at the forefront of most social media users. Most of us like it that way and are happy to keep growth of the community stunted in exchange for it.

Of course, all of the major platforms were in those shoes at one point. Will the Fediverse be the ship everyone leaps to next when the current platforms become so enshittified that even the main stream hates it? Maybe. But wherever the main stream goes, enshittification inevitably follows. The mainstream success of the Fediverse will synonomously be the death of the Fediverse as we know it. I for one would like some more time to hang out here before then.

communist , 9 months ago

I completely reject the notion that the mainstream success of the fediverse will be the death of the fediverse, what are your reasons for believing that?

Enshittification happens to monetized platforms because they tried to capture as many users as possible and then profit off of them, lemmy instances show no profit motive, and are volunteer run. There isn’t a route to enshittification with federation, because even if YOUR instance enshittifies, there’s still many others that will not, and due to federation, you won’t miss out on any content (as long as your instance doesn’t defed), so it won’t matter.

I also believe the issues you call out, aside from algorithmically driven content, will be solved eventually, as mod tools improve, there will be less of a need for defederation.

Even algorithmically driven content is partially solved by “hot” and “best” being improved, it’s just not personalized.

With the rate of lemmy development being as rapid as it is, these things will eventually be solved, but that takes a lot of time. Lemmy is still barely even beta.

pixelscript , 9 months ago

Your points about the Fediverse being immune to enshittification feel like echoes of what we’d say about the world wide web twenty five or so years ago. The web itself is somewhat of a federated platform. Websites are analogous to instances. And while it would be dubious to claim that the entire web as an infrastructure has enshittified (though Google sure seems to be trying…), I think it’s not controversial at all to claim that the biggest players alive on the web have.

Yeah, you can always make your own scrappy little website. But you’ll be an island few to no users will want to visit and support if you’re competing with the other players. That, or you catch on and grow to the point where you yourself become the villain.

I see two roads for the Fediverse. Either it never grows past some filter and remains scrappy, or several large instances for the biggest platforms will dominate, sap up the market share of attention, and then use their weight to pressure how the protocol is maintained in the future, embrace-extend-extinguish style.

Also, “no profit motive”? Where critical masses of people gather, entrepeneurs surely follow. Someone will figure out a way to monetize hosting a Fediverse instance. Hell, Threads tried, sort of. That alone won’t immediately enshittify the whole Fediverse. But given enough time and growth, well, see above.

communist , 9 months ago

Yeah, you can always make your own scrappy little website. But you’ll be an island few to no users will want to visit and support if you’re competing with the other players. That, or you catch on and grow to the point where you yourself become the villain.

that’s exactly what federation prevents… you can be a scrappy little website and federate, and then you don’t need a massive infrastructure that would cause enshittification later. If you enshittify, people will just leave to other parts of the fediverse, the model causes enshittification to just be the failure of your website.

This is different from the world wide web in that the content is not partitioned. I can get the same lemmy experience if I go elsewhere, and not lose out on content. If there’s a major new privacy concern on my instance, i’m going to say fuck them and leave, and I’ll lose nothing.

Also, “no profit motive”? Where critical masses of people gather, entrepeneurs surely follow. Someone will figure out a way to monetize hosting a Fediverse instance. Hell, Threads tried, sort of. That alone won’t immediately enshittify the whole Fediverse. But given enough time and growth, well, see above.

Except they’ll inevitably fail aside from the people who legitimately don’t care, and quite frankly, if they don’t care, who does? Just go to another instance if that happens, you’ll lose nothing, and it won’t even be a problem.

Federation makes the part of enshittification where you box in your users not work. The reason facebook could enshittify is because if you left facebook, you’d lose ALL of facebook. They trapped people. You can’t trap people like that on the fediverse. The first step fails inevitably, you’ll just make everyone on your instance hate you and they’ll leave for literally any other instance and it will die.

The fediverse doesn’t work well with profit motive because of that, the only real way to profit without causing anybody who knows anything about what you’re doing maliciously to leave is… what exactly?

When leaving has no cost, there’s no way to force people to stay if you do something shitty.

Even if you keep some users, meh, they won’t keep me, and i’ll lose nothing by switching.

captain_aggravated , 9 months ago

In a way I’m hoping not; I’m hoping kbin and other similar fediverse link aggregators also get a healthy portion of the pie.

vodkasolution , 9 months ago

No way it’ll become as popular as reddit but that isn’t a bad thing per se

mojo , 9 months ago

Biggest issue is that a lot of features are missing, it desperately needs better moderation tools, and onboarding needs to be so easy that you’re technically challenged grandma can figure it out.

If it solves those, then I do think it’s possible. But if it actually did, companies would come in and try to become popular instances and probably try to cannibalize it.

It should be clear already that the majority do not care about morals, but just want entertaining content regardless of how badly they’re being treated. Even if fedi became dominate, it can be replaced by centralized media just as quickly since they can simply innovate much faster and with way more funding. Lemmy is like two guys doing it full time, so compare that to Reddit’s employment userbase when you compare quality.

Razputinsgirth , 9 months ago

I don't think so. The apps aren't as intuitive as the old non official reddit apps. I know me personally I don't know how to use kbin that well and I overall don't love it here. I made the switch when RIF died and I haven't actually filled the void yet.

beSyl , 9 months ago

I think the apps are fine. Check out boost for lemmy… All the apps really need right now is an On Boarding screen. Something like: “Choose instance X or Y or Z and let’s go”.

Razputinsgirth , 9 months ago

That would definitely help someone like me who I guess is just an old person now

Blaze , 9 months ago

pangora.social/join

Blaze , 9 months ago

pangora.social/join

Snoopy , 9 months ago

No, we shoudn’t. Framasoft, the french libre software NGO published an interesting article about mastodon and twitter (in french). To sum up, the article tells us we shouldn’t follow twitter footstep (it was before Elon Musk became the CEO) but embrace the fediverse.

So, imho, after reading their post, it is clear that we are just copy-pasting some proprietary software and it’s a mistake because we may integrated some problematic design that were intended for analysis and ads purpose. And those proprietary software were a golden cage.

The fediverse is not lemmy, it’s not mastodon. And the timeline is limited by its UI design to lemmyverse or mastodonverse. It shouldn’t. We should open them more while having good moderating tool.

But firstly, Lemmy should improve their moderating tool. As a moderator in jlai.lu, and because our admin explained us various issues : the current state of Lemmy is worrying.

So until those matter aren’t solved, i don’t want to see any community’s grow bigger nor openness to the fediverse because we aren’t ready and can’t protect other communities in the fediverse.

beSyl , 9 months ago

Ya… I don’t know why lemmy devs are not focusing on moderator tools. What are they working on nowadays?

The first few weeks after the reddit exodus, releases were coming in fast with tons of changes, UI, performance improvements, etc…

Nowadays, I don’t notice much.

Blaze , 9 months ago

0.19 is coming out in a few weeks, they posted about it on !lemmy

Pons_Aelius , 9 months ago

That assumes everyone wants the fediverse to be as popular as reddit.

Personally, I don't.

Reddit often felt like walking through waist-high shit to find the odd thread that was worth the effort.

Lemmylaugh , 9 months ago

Reddit became terrible once it became a political tool by corporations and international organizations to brainwash the masses.

Pons_Aelius , 9 months ago

And that was complete 8 years ago in the lead up to the 2016 US election, and it was well underway before that.

kratoz29 , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I don’t know if I did reddit wrong all the time (I’ve been there since 2013) or what the hell, but I do want Lemmy to be a replacement of Reddit to me.

I barely ever browsed r/all, I think I have done that more times now since the APIcalypse just to check out “what reddit is, and how it is going”

Reddit was my main source of resources for several topics such as Kodi, SBCgaming, Handhelds in general, Emulation of all kinds, Shield TV/Android TV and more generally gaming and tech news (I think Lemmy does fine in those both last fields), I just placed all my smaller subreddits/topics in the multisubreddits and used my mobile app to browse them all, later I knew about the best sorting in the frontpage and that was okay too, but never stopped using multireddits, that made my navigation more similar to forums, something that I used to frequent.

Usually my main source of finding cool stuff in the wild was if some redditor shared the subreddit in a kinda related thread, and if that caught my attention.

I legit didn’t think about Reddit as a glorified Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/TikTok resource as it appears to be in r/all.

I was living in my tiny bubble I guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, one must have a requirement to achieve this is having a bigger number of active users.

I commented a lot there, and that hasn’t changed here, but definitely I’m upvoting more here than I did on reddit lol.