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Found this article floating around on android authority, and IDK how to feel about it?

Looking for a Reddit alternative? Lemmy tell you, they currently kinda suck

https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/

I tried out a growing Reddit alternative, Lemmy, for a week, and its clear that federated apps aren't ready to replace Reddit yet.

Looking for a Reddit alternative? Lemmy tell you, they currently kinda suck

TLDR: the article says , lemmy is confusing , too broken and kinda unusable coz servers run on whims.

While I have been active here since a month now , I have had nothing but only a positive experience on lemmy , what about you guys ?

44 comments

CheshireSnake

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While I do agree lemmy adds a layer or two of complexity compared to the simple "plug-and-play" reddit model, the article comes across as blaming all of the author's lemmy-related issues on the software rather than admitting he just doesn't understand how to use it.

Unlike Reddit’s approach of categorization using subreddits, Lemmy instances are mostly entire servers that act as catch-all versions of subreddits.

This is one example. Subreddits =/= instances. A more apt comparison would be communities, and then he can point out how communities are hosted by different instances. I mean, how did he miss that?

Another one is when he said there was no visual representation of "All" and "Local". Just one look at an instance's page shows you those options quite clearly.

Try as I might, I missed the curation and consolidation of Reddit, where content is batched up into similar topics.

Wait... What? That's kind of exactly what's happening in lemmy communities.

I may be biased, but despite lemmy's many shortcomings/growing pains I feel the author should have acquired at least a basic understanding of how all this works before writing an article that points out "problems" when there is none.

Edit: I'm on mobile so it's hard to quote every single line. But there were more than a few mistakes there.

jungekatz

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Thats exactly what I thought , there are a bun of me issues with the author and seems like he has not even tried to get to understand lemmy,

AbsolutelyNotABot

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I mean... What? That's kind of exactly what's happening in lemmy communities

Indeed I can understand this one. I'm really liking Lemmy but discoverability is pretty bad, add the fact the ranking is shit and pretty useless in suggesting interesting content and you will understand his point.

Reddit has both much more content and not only a better ranking system but also a functioning personalized algorithm, if you want to use it.

To this day, all of the non mainstream Lemmy communities I'm following it's because I've used to follow the subreddit and it migrated here.

WarmSoda

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Well Reddit also has the advantage of a lot of years fine-tuning itself.

CheshireSnake

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Oh definitely. There are many things that lemmy needs to work on. It's nowhere near as stable as reddit as it stands.

But the author was pointing out how reddit is better since it sorts topics by subreddits, implying that lemmy doesn't do that (which is absolutely false).

As far as discovery and amount of content, I fully agree. Reddit just has much more users than lemmy. There's no argument. Discoverability is also another aspect I'd love to be improved on in lemmy. If you're in a small/new instance, you probably won't see a ton of communities compared to a bigger one.

I'm pretty optimistic, though. I think we're just getting started.

AbsolutelyNotABot

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I think we're just getting started.

Yeah of course, we need to remember Lemmy is not even out of beta yet. But people don't really care, they try it once and if the user experience isn't at the level of competitors they simply won't use it unless there's a philosophical rationale (for example decentralization, but many don't care at all). That's why I'm so happy many developers with great UX experience like Sync are approaching the platform

TWeaK

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Lemmy tell you, the article was from 16 June which was before many of the recent updates and the flurry of app development.

overzeetop

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Oh no, a new discussion board is neither as robust nor as polished as one with over a decade of use and revision.

Most of the complaints are just whining that Lemmy isn't a perfect drop-in replacement for his love of endless, constant time wasting on Reddit. OTOH, the issue of multiple, nominally identical communities on Lemmy is a true weakness of the platform (imho, of course).

biddy

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The multiple communities doesn't bother me, I just join both and usually don't notice the difference. It's a better problem than all the communities being on lemmy.world which defeats the point of federation.

overzeetop

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My issue is that it's an inefficient use of human resources because it clutters the interface. If you're looking for the answer to a question, you have to post in multiple places and/or search/review multiple communities to see if the question has already been answered. For low-traffic communities the replies get split, suppressing topic participation. For high traffic communities, stories/links that get posted to the "same" community on multiple instances clog up personal home pages and - in the case of large participation - clog up the top feed.

Again, imho, there should be a way for communities to aggregate or sync across instances and be shown as a single feed, like a symlink to multiple folders that is treated as a single location for end users. I realize this causes moderation concerns. I still think its better for the participants.

biddy

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One person posting the same thing to multiple communities is bad etiquette, whether the stated purpose of those communities is the same or not. Anyone who does this should be shamed, blocked and banned. Find the biggest and most relevant community and post it there, don't spam.

I focus on comments rather than posts, but if you care about finding new links then I agree that duplicate communities is a problem. But it's not the biggest problem on the platform, and obviously while instances are independent there's no way to force a solution. Communities have merged, but it's usually small communities on small instances dying as their users move to a large community on a large instances. This is a disaster for decentralization, everything needs to be as spread out as possible across instances.

betterdeadthanreddit

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Gaming journalists can't game, tech journalists can't tech. Nothing but a skill issue like usual.

QuazarOmega

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Yup, if they could tech, they'd be working in the field instead

zecg

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it’ll suffer the same fate as Mastodon

You mean, be successful. Good that this fucker who "tried and promptly quit" Mastodon finds himself called to judge it.

jungekatz

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Exactly ! I left all mainstream sm platforms for fedi platforms and I dont regret it !

PeleSpirit

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Permanently Deleted

Justly0250

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I was introduced to reddit via the Relay for Reddit app by an MKBHD video. For me relay was reddit. Couple of years later I found Reddit has a website and an official app. I took a look. ALL MY FAITH WAS LOST IN UI DESIGN & MY EYES WERE BURNING.

Diplomjodler

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WATCHA LOOKIN AT, MATE?!?

Dankry

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I'm suspicious of any tech writer that can't get a feel for a platform in seven days, big ole scary/confusing federated servers or not, lemmy just isn't nearly as confusing as some people want to make it out to be. Particularly if you've ever actually used reddit before. Frankly, after reading this article I'm not convinced he understands either platform in any meaningful way.

ekZepp

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The comment section of the article pretty much disagree completely. You can add your opinion there too. 👌

jungekatz

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Ah ! I have content blockers enabled those disable comments too 😅

bappity

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initially getting into Lemmy was hard because there were like 2 mobile apps in existence that were horrendously broken.

since the spike in users there's been so many more apps and the existing ones have had many community contributions and work great!

ExLisper

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Who cares? If I wanted more redid I would stay there.

Anafroj

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Sadly, denigrating other people work is a good way to look smart without having to create anything ourselves. That's why I always measure a new software through the question "what new thing it allows me to do or what does it make simpler?" rather than "what are other people thinking about it?". In the case of the fediverse, the value proposition is quite clear : it allows to have a social life online without being at the mercy of BigTech, through interoperable softwares. And in the case of Lemmy, it allows to do that to replace Reddit. So yeah, some people don't like it, whatever. :)

maegul

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Since the twitter migration, mainstream media has had a pretty bad bias against the fediverse. I wouldn't listen to anything from the media about any fediverse platform because they're either driving at a preconceived critique (usually it's too hard or unstable), or, don't understand it ... and I'm the sort of person that is very willing to critique the shit of the fediverse.

As to why there's such a bias ... probably a confluence of a few factors:

Mainstream media doesn't support actual journalism. So any article is probably written by someone on a tight deadline without enough time to actually understand the fediverse or even the will to do so.
Mainstream media has had a cozy relationship with big-social, especially twitter (and facebook?), and generally feel like mass engagement based platforms are necessary for their business ... and so the fediverse is, on some level, basically a threat to their livelihood.
Going further ... any form of media that is essentially non-profit and self-organised or hosted is probably a threat to mass media's perceived livelihood, so even on an ideological basis, the core of the fediverse is something between dangerous, value-less or dumb. Therefore, any friction or tradeoff is almost immediately fatal to them.

ilickfrogs

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The many instances and multiples of the same communities across all instances would absolutely be confusing to your average joe. But, once you start using Lemmy you realize understanding all that doesn't matter and it just works. As for the stability thing.... A fediverse of new communities based on open source software has growing pains? Gasp.... The article reads like that person is truly unaware of how software works in the beginning.

elbarto777

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Feel rage. It's FUD.

Diplomjodler

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I always thought Android Authority was a somewhat decent site. Are they owned by Conde Nast by any chance?

elbarto777

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No idea. It just that the article looks so targeted..

jungekatz

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Yeah looks like they got paid to write that ! Although this is an opinion piece !

XEAL

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Article summary:

Reddit, a popular online platform for discussions and news, has recently faced issues with increased API pricing and moderator-led shutdowns. As a result, users have been exploring alternatives such as Lemmy. Lemmy is a federated social platform that allows independent servers to communicate with each other. However, the user experience on Lemmy can be confusing, as it lacks the categorization and consolidation of Reddit. Additionally, the decentralized nature of Lemmy makes it difficult to discover niche interests and results in frequent server issues. The federated platforms also struggle with real-time message synchronization. Overall, Lemmy is still in its early stages and lacks the polish, diversity of content, and ease of access needed to compete with Reddit. Unless significant efforts are made to simplify the platform for average users, it is unlikely to gain widespread traction.

Beep boop, I'm a human and I summarized the article using a custom implementation of the gpt-3.5-turbo LLM model

DmMacniel

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Author even tried mastodon and promptly quit.

Why doesn't they elaborate on that either or do they just want to underline their point that the Fediverse is too broken and user unfriendly without giving any reasons?

Then they say that instances are confusing, which is an essential part of the Fediverse. Do they find it confusing that you have to pick a website (one of which being reddit.com) to visit aswell?

Bad article all around.

deFrisselle

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Lemmy seems fine to me SDF.org really knows where its towel is at

waterbogan

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My experience has been great, even with the lemmy.world outages. A couple of my favourite niche communities are now coming to life and I now post more here now than I do on reddit. Of course there are still glitches and bugs and it is more confusing than reddit for new users, but all that will resolve itself over time. Reddit has had well over a decade to fine tune itself whereas the fediverse is only a couple of years old and has only really in the last couple of months seen a massive influx of new users that have tested its infrastructure to its limits and sometimes beyond

monobot

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There are teachers that are trying to find what you know, and those that are trying to prove that you don't know.

Second kind is not my favourite.

While technically true, article is missing the point and is not showing good sides.

But it might be good, if someone comes here expecting complicated technical experience, it might keep them around. At least they are acknowledging lemmy exist.

DavidGarcia

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I've joined 3 weeks ago and aside from a couple of images not being visible once in a while and my instance being down one day, I haven't had issues at all. But I could easily create an account on another instance as backup and browse there.

Signup was a bit confusing at first because the apps are not 100% there yet, but in general the apps do everything you want them to 99% of the time. Only "powerusers" will be unsatisfied.

There is easily enough content to browse all day already and I'd say a lot of content isn't even techie related or politically charged.

I'm just missing a few art subreddits, but that's it, compared to Reddit it was a pretty easy transistion. I don't miss it at all.