Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to become a member of the community, theres a reasonable amount of subs (or whatever the other word for em is) that fit my interests, enough linux content and shitposting for my liking, and the overall random posts made by people equally fed up with Leddit. (also i admit i used reddit a little cus there was this post on the fedora sub showing how to fix a sound issue i been having after a recent update)
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Pretty great tbh. The tricky thing with being an early adopter is you kind of have to be the change you want to see, but I’m old enough to feel no shame about just barging into places and starting new threads as needed.
So far started two accounts on two different instances (I like to keep different subjects somewhat separate) and had really cool interactions on both.
Obviously there are a few UX issues, trying to sub to remote communities is kind of a nightmare, but hopefully I’ve subbed to enough that other people on my instance will find it a bit easier to find them through search.
great, i’ve really liked lemmy so far. its really the first alt big tech platform like this that i’ve gotten into, was never big on mastodon or any of the others out there.
lemmy is honestly a breath of fresh air. really great platform so far, i think it has very strong potential.
i still use reddit for some things, but overall i’m starting to use lemmy a lot more. great work from the devs, can’t wait to see the future!
It really feels like how Reddit started, before all the rage-bait and eye-catching bullshit. I miss the floofs, the memes, the fun reasons I joined. Now 90% is politics that keep popping up even though I don’t subscribe to any political subs and keep blocking
Mastodon is so much like a Twitter/Facebook replacement that I’m not even interested in it. Reddit/Lemmy’s focus is not on broadcasting yourself but rather link aggregating and conversations about those links in the comments. It’s always been so much better of a forum type of experience than Twitter/Mastodon/Facebook.
I heard someone else put the issue with mastadon/twitter into words in a way that explained why I never jived with it. With mastadon/twitter you follow people and personalities while reddit and message boards were more about following a subject or interest. The twitter algorithm and sharing I guess spreads a lot of stuff around and it’s cool that twitter has so many famous and inside industry people running stuff, but that community based on specific personalities makes it harder to follow.
Exactly. The Twitter and Facebook style systems are about broadcasting your personal content. Whereas Reddit and other forums is more about discussion. It’s less ego-centric.
I always tried to get into Twitter whenever I heard people say they love it so much but I could never find the same enjoyment from it. the same is happening with me and Mastodon, but lemmy doesn’t really have that issue for me because I loved browsing reddit and they’re similar to each other
Exactly. I think people who love twitter for conversations have never really been on Reddit before, probably.
Oh man it has been unironically great! First day I joined there was basically nothing but a meme sublemmy and a couple of tech subs too, but nowadays there are communities popping up left right and center, and I’m seeing so many familiar subs recreated on here, too
Overall my past two weeks of using Lemmy have been phenomenal, and I’m happy to say that Lemmy has become my mindless scrolling app of choice now
While not every community is on Lemmy yet that I visit on Reddit, by people migrating from Reddit to here, hopefully that issue will be solved soon. The community here seems way more welcoming than the Reddit community is too
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LMAOOOO
Much nicer than StackExchange too:
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lol, first time I’ve been rickrolled in a long time.
dude helll yes i also just remembered theres that stupid barried of entry on many subs which ask u to meet really weird requirements to participate… the other day i prompted gpt to say smt funny and wholesome (it was praise towards the aur(arch user repository)) and tried to post it on some linux/arch sub but the first 3 that came to mind wouldnt allow it, one didnt accept memes, the other had a bot which took it down automatically and the third asked me to comment and participate in the sub before posting… like come on man.
The barrier for entry for some subreddits is too high but to be fair, ChatGPT “funny responses” are low-quality content and should be removed.
I’m excited for the possibilities, but daunted by the realities.
It’s going to be tough to get enough foot traffic to start populating smaller subs. It seems like the Reddit API drama is the big break needed to hit a critical mass of users, but how many will take the time to figure out something like Lemmy? And are the Lemmy instances ready? It’s strange to root for Reddit to go through with the API changes after using Reddit for so long. But if there was ever a time to pay a bit extra for additional hosting resources, June 11th (or now!) should be it. If a large influx of new users crash Lemmy instances, and no one can sign up, a golden opportunity will be lost.
Signing up was not a flawless process. You are asked to make a choice about servers with little guidance on what it all means.
Requiring a 10 character password with additional character conditions is going to turn a lot of possible new users OFF. It should be 6 characters, with no conditions. Yes, it’s not secure, but we need sign ups above everything else. Users can choose to get as complex as they want, but simplicity should also be an option. If people later grow to value their Lemmy accounts, they can secure them at a later time. But extremely easy sign up should be the default for now.
Asking people to write an extensive answer as to “why you want to join this particular server” should also be suspended temporarily. Again, it’s about ease of signing up. We should try to get as many signups in as quickly as possible, and weed out the problem people later. After the possible Reddit migration boom ends, you can go back to application essays as a requirement for entry.
The web interface is buggy. The site will often “reset” as you are reading a thread, and the whole thread will act if “refreshed”. If this causes users to lose a long post they are typing, they might quit Lemmy then and there.
The community structure needs to be more unified across instances. It’s confusing that there are local groups as well as “multiverse” groups across federations, often with the exact same name. It’s a bummer that the communities can be splintered, and will have people not realize what’s really available.
I think we’re might see some weaknesses of a distributed system like Lemmy in the next few weeks. It’s hard to organize and get everyone rowing in the same direction with no “CEO” or clear leader. It does feel like little fiefdoms doing their own things, and that makes it even harder to hit critical mass.
In terms of content and userbase, so far so good. It obviously leans heavily towards the technically competent. Lemmy sort of screens for the technology inclined since it’s only well known to those who are up to date with the latest in tech. So of course it’s easy to feel like everyone is like minded and cool for now. But we need to attract casuals if we want vibrant, non-tech groups to exist and flourish too.
I’ve only been exploring for 2 days though, so I can be very wrong.
I really like it. The platform itself is great. The main thing that needs improvement is the onboarding experience. It seems really confusing at first, but I think that’s mainly because it’s not explained well.
For example, the first step of the onboarding process is choosing which server to join, which I think is kind of a misleading decision. It seems like you’re choosing what community you’re going to interact with, but that’s not really the case. You’re mainly just choosing who’s going to foot the bill for your network traffic. The decision seems important but it’s really not IMO, at least not for someone who’s just trying to jump in and see what Lemmy is all about.
Also, community discoverability is a problem, but I think that could easily be solved with better UX on the community page. (For example I think there should be a message that says “Looking for more communities? Try doing {insert instructions here} to find them.”
I love it so far,only needs more people
So, first day of Lemmy and so far I’m enjoying it. I’m looking through communities and seeing what I’d like to follow or not.
Criticism (hopefully constructive) that I do have:
- I miss the random niche subreddit side of things, but I’m not sure if that’s as a result of lack people on the platform, or the UI not promoting that style of thing much.
- I am missing a good iPadOS client. I’m currently using the Web UI, which works well enough, but it’d be great to have a more native app.
- It seems strange that I can’t have a One True Fediverse Identity where my mastodon identity is the same as my lemmy identity and vice versa. I note that Takahē has started refocusing into more of an identity broker for ActivityPub and less of an online experience, so maybe it will be the one true unifying identity.
On the plus side:
- There are a lot of fun general communities on here.
- People are really nice, in general, and this doesn’t seem to be changing, compared to the histories I’ve been browsing
- I really like markdown as a way to post, and it seems to work ok from my iPad
All in all, it’s been a positive 24hrs, I might give an update after a week or two.
I like it ~ I joined mastodon but I think it was way too slow to load images - probably joined some dodgy overloaded server (though I like the Reddit format and community better rather than Twitter)
It’s giving me Reddit 15 years ago vibes - smaller tech-savvy and agile community - my Reddit use was on and off through the years; but I like the idea that each community in the Extended Lemmiverse can all have their own vibes and cultures and implementations of the platform and we can all chat and follow topics together 🕊️
I’ve only been here a short while; but maybe one thing I’d love is not to see reposts in the /all section ; I know the communities are small and growing and can cross post for more stuff , but I’m sure there could be a way for the system to know that the title and url are the same - so only show one , or auto-merge the comments and prioritise posting your comment to your local community instance’s post Edit - I might try install an instance on my website and try to make a merge function ~
yea i think one huge advantage is that theres no specific tos for lemmy as a whole and each instance can just do whatever they want which helps loads when it comes to censorship and moderation, and theres no 1 entity that can just skeet yo off the entire platform if u break some rule (great example is how reddit seems to be silencing ppl promoting lemmy and discussions ab it)
I might try install an instance on my website and try to make a merge function
Awesome! I’m trying to get my feet wet with contributing as well. I don’t know Rust or Psql very well (although I am an experienced MySQL/MariaDB admin) so it’s gonna take a while for me to catch up enough to be useful. I’m trying though :P
The hardest part is learning /something / and then it’s just transferring over right ?
Heheheh - I dunno how crazy it’ll be , but no harm in dabbling ~ also it’s cool to have a closed community page just for testing , also wanna test maybe only allowing one lemmy domain to post but allow others to comment , etc
Regarding your last paragraph, I agree. I’m subscribed to gaming in lemmy.ml and beehaw so see the same content twice regularly. Duplicate communities raise other concerns for me though:
Which one is the defacto community to join? Using the Gaming community as an example, maybe one leans more to images and the other has more meaty discussion threads just by way of who has joined those communities - nothing to do with the rules. But if you subscribe to both, the majority of the content may be duplicate posts instead? It’s not clear from the community title alone.
Is the potential squandered as communities are potentially splintered? Maybe people just stick to one community without joining the other. It’ll take time for a certain community to establish itself as the main community with the highest quality posts, but due to the volume of users on the main instances maybe there won’t be a main community? Or maybe people won’t even be aware of multiple communities for the same topic as the names are different, e.g. football Vs soccer.
All this fragmentation will reduce the adoption for sure. No one wants to write to a sub filled with 5 people while another is filled with 5k people. We should adopt one new fresh instance and make it our main, and point people coming from reddit to this new instance.
So far I am really enjoying it, mostly because whenever you post something you don’t get 130493025084385 people telling you that your are a horrible person and completely wrong and offering you unsolicited advice and ignoring your question in the first place.
It is NICE here. For now at least.
It’s fine, but it’s a pain having to create multiple accounts when some instances aren’t linked to the one you picked to create an username. For the rest I think the other comments have already pointed out what would need to improve in the future if we expect to leave Reddit; curiously, most of the problems we have here are the same or similar to the ones while trying to use Mastodon.
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It’s been a little tough? Trying to join communities hosted on other instances than the one I’ve joined is a little cumbersome so been having some trouble with that It almost encourages people to join the large instances for the sake of that convenience, undermining (to a certain degree) the whole point of this being federated
I had a bit of a rocky start, but I picked up the concepts fairly quickly.
The Good:
- The discussion threads here remind me of what Reddit’s discussions were like about five years ago.
- Comments feel more meaningful and thought-provoking as opposed to a race to “craft the wittiest meme.”
- The community here seems to be relatively friendly and welcoming.
The Less Good:
- I find the mobile experience quite clunky at the moment. For the site, there seem to be some random overflow issues, and the interface and UI elements feel a bit too small for a mobile experience. The lack of polished, dedicated apps is somewhat of a bummer, but I’m hopeful the community will fill these gaps over time with dedicated applications.
- The onboarding process is somewhat lackluster. It seems more geared towards an audience that is already familiar with federated services. I feel most new users will default to lemmy.ml out of an unwarranted sense of FOMO for not being a direct member of the largest instance, simply due to a lack of understanding of how federated apps work.
- Redundant communities across multiple instances could become problematic over time. Personally, I would like to see something like user (or even mod) specified mono-communities, grouping multiple communities across multiple instances into a single thread. For example, if a user went to
m/movies, whoever runs that mono could add movie-specific feeds from places like lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc. - We need to have a serious discussion about generating funds for instances. Dedicated servers with high traffic can get incredibly expensive. I fear that many smaller instances will eventually go dark due to escalating operational costs. Ko-Fi donations will only go so far. We, as a community, need to start thinking of more sustainable alternatives that align with the community’s core values.
- The documentation for the JS SDK could use some TLC. Thankfully, it’s fully typed with Typescript ❤️, so it’s not too cumbersome to work out what everything does, but more code examples and descriptions for all the various methods would be a welcome change.
All in all, I’m happy with my decision to check this place out and am hopeful more people will come aboard in time. It’s already become a part of my daily routine.
About the costs - someone else said this is a feature, not a bug. :)
The idea is that the costs will keep most instances small, which is great. We dont want big instances. Thats the point of being distributed. Its just a mindset that people need to learn. Pick smaller instances you trust for better performance. You can still subscribe to anything you want from other instances.
Ultimately I agree with you. It’s mostly going to come down to getting more people acquainted to this mindset.
It’s taken me a week to figure all that out, but I think if someone explained it correctly in an infographic, that would make it much easier for people to understand.
Or a short like 5 minute video explaining the whole process that’s easily digestible, post that shit to reddit and see how it goes.
Yeah, that would definitely help. It needs to be visual/infographic style. Or that guy who writes with a marker on the whiteboard and draws the infographic as the narration happens.
MinutePhysics? I think they’re a whole animation company that does work like that on comission, might be getting them confused with another group though.
I think this idea is great but the discovery of instances for a new user is “what is the Lemmy site showing me” which is almost all larger instances.
I’m kind of confused by this, to be honest, because wouldn’t there being a cost of entry specifically limit the amount of people who are able to create an instance, combined with the fact that the small few who can run an instance, and see it grow, would then decrease more and more over time?
Then wouldn’t people find the main instances with the largest numbers and, with smaller communities unable to afford the minimal traffic, see the instances start to combine into the larger community where it’d be mutually affordable?
I mean, early on you might get people wanting to make an instance and learning they can’t commit to it any longer and breaking apart, but I’d imagine any barrier that doesn’t have to do with a barrier for discovery/reducing the barrier for cross-navigation (e.g. fediverse) would eventually lead to filtering a select few. I’m not 100% or anything, but ya know, seems like it’d go that way.
How much does it cost to run large instances? Do you have an estimate of how much it costs to run lemmy.ml?
Currently its running on a vps with 8 vcpu for 30 euros per month.
Only been 2 days. I’m feeling things out. Happy I found an Android app to use.
Already posted a cat photo. Not sure if it is correctly viewable.
Tell us the link to the cat photo post please
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This is probably my biggest complaint so far. The other ui quirks or differences are easy enough to get over and a part of using a new site, but the dance around accidentally “visiting” another instance when you just want to take part in the conversation is annoying.
If you’re using Jerboa on Android by any chance, you may just need to enable it to defaultly handle the links. The way you do this is in your android settings:
Settings > Apps > Default Apps > Opening Links > Jerboa > Tick all the boxesdeleted by creator
I believe the main developer has agreed that they need to work on this, so hopefully it will happen soon!
I’m of two minds on this - I like discovering other instances, cause they have a different “front page”. OTOH, I feel like there def should be a browser plugin or client that can send you to your instance for any of the interaction stuff. Of course there’s not really a way to do it just in the website code that I can think of.
Nice cat!
Show us the toe beans
