Do you think lemmy would be as popular as reddit?

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.

Hanabie , 9 months ago

I don’t think Lemmy will reach or overtake Reddit. That’s a good thing in my opinion, because massive platforms come with massive moderation problems that aren’t so easy to tackle for decentralised networks. We’ve seen that when someone posted kiddie porn and several servers went down to scrub the filth from their systems.

If anything, Lemmy already has a pretty high amount of troll communities, thankfully mostly contained within their own servers, which enables separation through defederation (speaking of defederation, I’d love to have an option to block servers on the user level).

TwoBeeSan , 9 months ago

I’ve had luck blocking communities and instances on lemmy connect. Little more labor intensive, but can get rid of all that goddamm furry porn lol

Hanabie , 9 months ago

Gonna check out Connect, thank you :)

i_am_not_a_robot , 9 months ago

Instance blocking is coming in 0.19 apparently.

PonyOfWar , 9 months ago

If you see 10 posts monthly, you’re probably just subscribed to very inactive communities. Personally I don’t really see the need for Lemmy to become as big as reddit though. When you get hundreds of posts a minute, individual voices get pretty much drowned out. If we can sustain a smaller, but less toxic, community than reddit, I think that’s preferrable. By which I don’t mean that there isn’t room for growth still, there definitely is, especially for some of the smaller, more specialized communities.

cheese_greater , 9 months ago

Honestly, I never fail to be astounded how promptly I have responses. I’d almost describe it as legendary. Very satisfied with what we’re able to accomplish with our much smaller user base

xmunk , 9 months ago

We’re always watching.

imaqtpie , 9 months ago

Our numbers are relatively small, but there are a disproportionate number of internet fanatics. I thought I was terminally online but I have to say I’ve been thoroughly outclassed in that department by some of my fellow Lemmings.

It’s good but it’s also something we need to keep in mind as we grow and try to recruit users that are less digitally minded.

cheese_greater , 9 months ago

God bless em, doe

hellequin67 , 9 months ago

I think it’s simply because there’s less white noise trahing over everything so more proper posts are visible and as there’s less toxicity people are more confident to comment on Lemmy.

Long may it continue.

TwoBeeSan , 9 months ago

It’s inherently niche. If reddit has more controversies can see more waves coming over.

I like the vibe of the smaller forum, but would be lying if I said I use it as much as reddit.

Lemmy still scratches my forum need, but I found myself devoting more time to other things. Probably for the best honestly. 🤷‍♂️

luthis , 9 months ago

I haven’t gone back to Reddit as an active user at all since the event.

Lemmy will get another boost of users as a side effect as Mastodon picks up in popularity with the continued elonning of Twitter.

It’s fairly active here, I constantly see new posts etc. But if you want more activity, post more!

Lemmylaugh , 9 months ago

In the early reddit, there was that gallowboob user/group of employee. I think someone like that would help boost content

maegul , 9 months ago

I think you can take this even further and ask if any social media platforms will be as big as those of this past (and rather long) period. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. It’s been a very notable period of centralisation of the web from about 2010 or so. And it’s worth wondering whether it was an anomaly.

There’s certainly been some fracturing lately and for good reasons (we were never the customer and the internet has always worked this way with people moving freely).

On the other hand, the idea of having a personal home on the internet, a true avatar and the idea that huge serious things can happen online … both have gone mainstream and probably can’t be put back in the bag.

Against these requirements, an open protocol is an obvious solution, as we’d all tend to agree, but not trivial as corporations still want to make money some how and so may not buy in. Plus getting the protocol right at the right time is non trivial (I personally suspect avtivitypub has not done this and as a result we’re in an awkward position at the moment).

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

amio , 9 months ago

No, it likely won't be as popular. Might be pretty quiet in general, unless (until..) Reddit shits the bed again or something else happens to boost adoption.

I think maybe the design isn't working ideally, it's relatively complicated stuff and "federation politics" makes it infinitely worse. I think it's going to be a hard sell for casual users.

Of course, I don't think the place is dying off completely any time soon, either. (And the "bunch of nerds" era which we're at, relatively speaking, was arguably the least sucky Reddit period anyway - you can't have Reddit's user count without a large helping of extra toxicity coming with it)

mfigueiredo , 9 months ago

If the quality it’s better don’t mind about popularity.

Polar , 9 months ago

Sadly the quality isn’t better

JasSmith , 9 months ago

Open license software will never beat paid software in the consumer space. I know that’s a controversial opinion, but it’s been proven a thousand times. There’s no way to beat the user experience of Reddit when they have a hundred experienced UX designers doing nothing but optimising for engagement. We think the overall experience is worse, which is why we’re here, but we are the minority. Lemmy still hasn’t figured out basic problems like what happens to the user experience when an instance defederates from another. The user had no control over that, but suddenly their subscribed communities have disappeared without notice or explanation. Now they have to find another instance to subscribe to, and they lose their entire Lemmy identity.

OskarAxolotl , 9 months ago

Well, the website and mobile app are overwhelmingly hated (just look at the reviews on the PlayStore). I think there are two major things helping Reddit: It’s easy to grasp (Lemmy has instances, dozens of different apps, etc.) and the fact that Reddit already has a community for basically everything.

iamthewalrus , 9 months ago

I generally agree, but one counter example I keep thinking of is Wikipedia. Massively successful site with few rivals despite being a nonprofit. I imagine a social media app could build some degree of success with that model. The main obstacles to my mind are a good UI/UX and a community funding approach sufficient to keep ahead of growth. It’s not yet clear whether Lemmy is “the one” to provide either. As great as the fediverse concept is, it’s harder to use and to consolidate funding for than it perhaps should be.

JasSmith , 9 months ago

Wikipedia is a good example but they actually employ designers and developers. I think the secret sauce is paying people to build great software. So a non-profit with donations could absolutely work.

0485919158191 , 9 months ago

Lemmy has potential, sadly paid software will always be the king in the consumer space. Marketing plays a big roll too. I don’t see lemmy being bigger than Reddit sadly.

Chariotwheel , 9 months ago

Yeah, the general public knows about Reddit, most people have no idea what the fediverse or lemmy are.

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

beSyl , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I don’t want lemmy to be as popular as reddit as the signal to noise ratio was really bad… Way too much noise.

I do want smaller communities that are on reddit to have a lemmy counterpart.

elephantintheroom , 9 months ago

This. The more popular it gets, the more people come, the more trolls and idiots are beneath them, the more toxic everything gets…

Advertisements and fake news will also skyrocket once the user bases are big enough to become adequate breeding grounds for them.

small44 , 9 months ago

With the userbase we have now, there’s not enough active communities. We don’t need to be as big as reddit but we need to attract more user that are not just lurkers

beSyl , 9 months ago

Indeed. But that comes with time if we keep on improving content engaging users and all that. Be a welcoming place.

laxu , 9 months ago

Exactly. The amount of /r/adviceanimals level pure shit content on Reddit is high, paired with the bots that repost things until they start hocking some crypto bullshit links.

But I have kept using Reddit for years because every once in a while, you see someone write thoughtful posts about some niche subject you didn’t even know existed. That’s always interesting.

Lemmy is at a state where it needs more users writing about things that interest them.

Relay Pro just went to subscription, so the last 3rd party Reddit app is gone. I will probably read Lemmy much more on mobile from now on and hope it picks up steam.

emptyother , 9 months ago

If a billionaire (or a very big bunch of millionaires) out of the goodness of their heart (yeah, not gonna happen) threw a massive amount of money into advertising for a open source product they dont own, Lemmy could be as or more popular. Even if it has fewer features. Even if its uglier. Even if its more complicated.

I can’t count the many times I’ve seen the worser product has won out because it had big corpo ad budget. Turned me a bit cynical.

trailing9 , 9 months ago

It’s like MySpace and Facebook. The momentum can switch at any moment. Like others said, it’s better to fix some important issues before Lemmy becomes popular.

It’s very likely that Lemmy will be more popular because Lemmy is more open for innovations. This is not Linux where you have to learn something first. If the frontpage is better, people will switch. Reddit cannot rock the boat whereas on Lemmy, each instance can try a new feature and show its usefulness.