Does anyone else feel like Lemmy is getting SO MUCH better?!!
Just sayin’
At least in a short time frame (2w? 1m?) I don't think that Lemmy got meaningfully better or worse. However from APIcalypse times to now it got way better.
Reddit event from July 2023, when Steve "Greedy Pigboy" Huffman decided to demand exorbitant amounts of money for API access, effectively killing most third party applications used to access the site from a phone, and neutering the leftover. It had a huge impact on Lemmy, for obvious reasons.
It's why I'm here! Reddit and their IPO can suck it. Started looking for a replacement and found Lemmy. I always think of the Koopa kid, though.
I believe that most people are here due to the APIcalypse, like you.
And... really, before that, this place was a ghost town. Then you had all that huge influx of newbies, so Lemmy became actually usable, albeit messy. Now things settled down and, although plenty users still behave like they were in Reddit, I feel like Lemmy already has its own culture.
I always think of the Koopa kid
I usually think of this:
Fucking Lemmings. I lost a good chunk of my childhood playing it. (I don't regret it.)
RIP Apollo, one of the best pieces of software i’ve ever used that was made by one guy. So many features, dev listened to users, always quick to fix bugs, incredible pricing.
Not quite. When you're given an ultimatum of "Stop using that good, fully functional app and use our one instead; it's not completely functional but it does give us money or fuck off", there isn't much of a choice there. Those who don't wish to knuckle under to scum (see: "tyrants") forge a new path, it's as simple as that.
I feel a bit silly in my reason for swapping when so many have such strong feelings. I’ve just hated spez for over a decade and the chance to jump ship to a foss social network populated with actual humans made me froth with excitement.
Nothing wrong with that. If you hate the face of a company for personal, political, philosophical, or whatever reasons, it's perfectly acceptable to not want to use that companies product(s).
Same. Would have switched many times over if there was a viable option (not Tildes lol) and was/am very happy to see the Lemmy network establish itself.
Yes, it's gotten stable and there's good content. Still a lot of 0-comment threads, but the comment threads I am involved in are much better overall. It's not teen-mob-mentality over here and I've been surprised many times over my 4 months. Thanks to all of you guys and gals that make it happen.
I've noticed when threads do start they are usually engaging conversations instead of the typical one-liner meme bullshit.
Yeah, that got old very quickly, although things like the old Reddit switcharoo* always got an upvote, but the original comment needed creativity and the stock reply needed to link the the previous example. It was cool that it was a different experience each time and that the network grew, occasionally branching, and had maintainers that made sure you could follow without hitting a deleted part dead end.
* after half a year I had to use a search engine to get the name
But here I wrote all of this, instead of just the word "This"
I started lurking here back when Sync shut down for reddit. I noticed that I haven't seen the terms "chaotic good", "feedback loop", or "play stupid games..." used incorrectly/excessively here. Not to mention the one word, all caps, comments that have 1k+ upvotes for some reason.
For me, it’s not great. The web interface and apps I’ve used are kind of bad, there isn’t a lot of content in the topics I’m interested in. I’m mainly here because I refuse to go back to Reddit.
In terms of ui and apps it's perfect because I was using boost for reddit and now using boost for Lemmy and it's nearly identical.
Definitely agree that there's not much content, or at least much variety. Pretty much all I see is news, nauseating amount of memes and communists, frankly not much thought provoking content honestly. I'm really wishing for the hobby subs to grow, after that I'd be way more active.
For me the level of interesting content is just about spot on now, but obviously it depends on your interests.
I do have one suggestion though. Whenever you feel the urge to comment about how "hobby" communities are too dead, be more specific. Which hobbies? Which communities? Every time you mention one, the chances that someone who didn't even know it existed sees that comment and finds the community increase.
Look I'll start. I wish there were more crocheters around to liven up !crochet@lemmy.ca a bit.
Word of mouth is how niche communities grow.
(p.s. also spend some time blocking the news communities if you're not into that stuff, it makes a massive difference)
Okay, I've found the Battletech and Satisfactory communities to be nearly deserted.
!battletech@lemmy.world and !satisfactory@lemmy.world by the looks of it, for anyone passing by who has an interest in either 😉
Use Sync! I used it for years for reddit. They had to shut down with the other third party apps, but they just came back with Lemmy.
I'm kind of the same way, though I've found most of the communities I'm looking for.
My main complaint is just how many leftists there are here, which wouldn't be an issue if the selection of communities was a bit better. I have no issue with leftists in general, I just get a little tired of low effort posts like "because capitalism" or "unions ftw" on any post where it's remotely relevant. I get it, unions can be cool, and capitalism has its warts, but those comments aren't constructive. Fortunately, this is mostly on the more popular news communities, so I just don't sub and it doesn't bother me.
I'd love a handful of well moderated communities similar to the following:
- /r/neutralnews - strict limits on acceptable sources, and all comments must include sources for factual claims
- /r/neutralpolitics - similar to neutral news, but specific to political discussion
Reddit also has a huge leftist slant, but it at least has moderation tools to help make certain types of community moderation feasible.
I just want to point out that I'm far from a conservative and I don't want to go the opposite direction and have mostly conservative viewpoints (that would probably be worse), I just like seeing multiple opinions for a topic, and that seems to happen less here because moderation tools kinda suck, which means poor quality sources that agree with the predominant opinion tend to get more attention than more reputable sources that have a more mixed view of things.
Regardless, I'm not going back, but that doesn't mean lemmy has better content, it just means I refuse to support Reddit anymore.
I’m sure there must be a Trump ass-kissing community here, or a “climate hoax”, or a Jan-6-was-antifa-FBI, or some such communities you could enjoy.
Just because people are tired of a leftist slant doesn't make them automatically right leaning. Right wingers who are right wing because they're annoyed by leftists are weak. Leftists get annoyed by leftists every day, and that's the essence of Lemmy.
I explicitly said I didn't want that, I want communities where facts matter far more than whatever the dominant political opinion is.
For the record, I cannot stand Trump or his ilk. I also cannot stand dogmatic leftists. I want fact based discussions, not left v right BS.
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Web UI works great for me except for the few already reported bugs that are not experience breaking.
It's still kind of a mixed bag. I'm getting tired of talking about Linux all the time.
I find comment threads to be more engaging than reddit but the hivemind mentality has definitely started to take hold here.
In terms of stability, sure, the platform has gone down way less. In terms of content? Feels more or less the same that it did when I joined - all we really talk about is tech news with a leftist slant.
I haven't gone back to reddit to browse since I left when the API changes happened, but it's still a way more conducive source of information on a myriad of topics that you get forwarded to through searches.
seems good. It's having way more posts than I thought it would have by this point. Big kudos to the developers.
And additionally, to the community at large - admins, moderators, people who post/comment - we all have played a major part in expanding Lemmy and the Fediverse in general!
One thing that I’ve noticed as someone trying to wean myself off of Reddit: Lemmy just feels more chill. Like no I don’t have to open it every few minutes and doomscroll, it’s going to be a lot slower coming than the firehouse that is Reddit.
Tbf I don’t think that’s a design as much as it is just smaller, but it still feels nice.
I deleted my 10 year old Reddit account and just left it behind. Lemmy is just Lemmy now. I don’t really tgink of it as a replacement. That’s just me.
We're at where Reddit was in roughly 2008 or so. The problems really started when DIGG died, and the toxic user based changed homes.
The reddit exodus has almost equalized things I think, there's still more stuff posted on reddit but it's low quality garbage (noticeably more than before), most interesting news etc. are here as well.
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Imho the big challenge is just lack of throughput. I follow many communities, and it's still not at the point where my front-page is consistently new content every day.
Feed the beast. Until then, quit whining about how repetitive the content is - there just isn't enough of it yet.
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I do that occasionally but since the stale "Active" is the default it's easy to forget.
Ooh, I just found you can change the default!
edit: isn't this kind of a "you're holding it wrong" problem? I mean, the default behaviour on Lemmy is awful, not just for this but also since iirc it didn't default to showing my subscribed communities at the start either.
Couldn't we just scrape reddit with some bots and VPN and have the content populate Lemmy?
I mean this is exactly how some other platforms started out in the past.
Already some communities have bots doing that. It's shitty. If you want Reddit content just go on reddit.
It's not about that. it's about generating content to generate traffic so the new users will create content on their own.
Basically like jumpstarting a car.
(No content. No users, chicken and egg problem)
Part of it is being able to participate. You can't converse with a comment or ask OP questions on a post that was ripped off of Reddit by a bot. Just adding more garbage for people to scroll through won't help.
I don't think this is true and our conversation is proof too that. This post could have been written by a bot and yet we still don't interact with OP even though he is human. At this point we are not only generating content for others to see and to inject their pov. But also embolding OPs post getting it higher in the ranking as unique and worthy content.
Also most humans who post og content don't respond that often. Ofc their are alot of exceptions online but normal humans aren't able to respond to everyone anyway, unless they forsake their life in order to respond to every comment made.
So I don't believe it's garbage when starting out. Later on yes.
If you want bots check out the Lemmit communities. https://lemmit.online/communities
Or !hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans or !hackernews@derp.foo or !gaming@lemmy.zip
The problem is the bots make more posts than there are people willing to comment on anything. The userbase gets fragmented and they never end up in the same post as someone else, there's 0 actual socializing. People scroll past tons of posts with 0 comments and get frustrated and sometimes they quit. It also discourages real people from making regular posts because they can get drowned out by the bots.
I'd be very curious to see if there's been any successful Lemmy bot poster that just copies content from Reddit or somewhere else, in a way that people actually enjoy and engage with.
I think you need to respect the natural ratio of people posting and people commenting. Bots screw up that ratio big time and dilute the commenters spread thin, stretched across too many posts. Like butter scraped over too much bread.
Scaled: Like hot, but gives a boost to less active communities
Honestly too many things to list. When it's finished the devs will post the changelog. But the scaled sort option is a popular addition, remote follow is cool, giving users the ability to block instances, and a bunch of fixes too.
There's been some posts about a few of the updates, but a complete changelog won't be until the release happens, which should be this year?
If you have a bird problem, they are absolutely the people you want to talk to, for sure.
Lol, considering some devs working together communism.
Don’t get me wrong I agree to an extent but calling all of Lemmy communist is a smooth brain take
Not really.
The high volume of unoriginal Linux content is getting old, and that's coming from somebody who uses Linux.
Behind that, there's very little in the way of niche communities/interests. But I suppose that's just because the total number of users isn't high enough for people with specific interests to reach some critical mass .
So for me, Lemmy hasn't been anything more than a news aggregator interspersed with the occasional funny meme.
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The high volume of unoriginal Linux content is getting old, and that’s coming from somebody who uses Linux.
I can't really complain about the content being a bit stale when it feels like the alternative is nothing. So many communities that had vibrant counterparts on Reddit struggle to get one post per week. If it's ditto-memes on Lemmy, I'll take it.
It's been pretty stable and usable.
But has there been an increase in hiveminded threads and trolling?
At first it felt like dissenting opinions would lead to an informative discussion, but more and more having an unpopular opinion - or just stepping into the wrong thread - means someone resorting to insulting your mom. Ok, thanks Xbox live gamer.
Yeah I've felt that.
If your not joining the side the article or post is aiming to engage in, you get downvoted hard, even if you are correct.
I got nuked twice for correcting a fact which lessened the outrage the article posted was eliciting. Annoying, but could be worse.
Votes are unimportant, and the sooner you stop caring about them the easier it is to interact on the site without feeling attacked.
Is it satisfying to see a big number next to your comment? Sure, but the more you think of it as just talking with people even if you ultimately disagree it's a healthier environment.
Yeah, a not-insubstantial portion of Lemmy users are people who were banned from Reddit and unwilling/unable to adjust behavior to different communities. Good mod/admins should alleviate this over time hopefully.
The only problem this site has is lack of content. And the only thing that would fix it is more people.
But it is steadily improving. A couple of months ago the everything feed would hardly change in 24 hours. Now when you refresh after 4 hours you already see a lot of new content. It's not a sprint, this is a marathon and lemmy has a highly engaged user base.
The mod tools are improving, the content is improving, the user base is active and engaged, the larger instances have become stable and there are a ton of third party apps available now. Things are looking up for lemmy, and the users will come whenever a large site like reddit screws up again.
Using Avelon with a bit of constant filtering effort, my Home feed is quite enjoyable.
Its definitely improved a lot since I joined ~6 months ago, though I've also started to see more of the bullshit that makes all the other social medias icky. But, so far its been easy to ignore/block and its cool to run into familiar users across different communities that comes with smaller platforms.
Some of the bullshit is just kinda human nature. But it's been interesting to compare the difference vs a place like Reddit which encouraged a lot of the toxicity in order to boost artificial "engagement".
I personally enjoy it but I’ve been seeing a lot of posts / comments about people giving up due to lack of niche/interesting communities*. While I understand that I appreciate Lemmy for what it is. I get a lot more interaction here than Reddit.
Time ... it will just take time ... the same thing happened at reddit, the communities didn't just blow up overnight and they didn't have competition either ... Lemmy is evolving in an early stage and it is handicapped by a competitor, so it will probably take longer to grow.
I don't mind it though ... we'll probably talk about it all in four or five years that right now are the good old days of Lemmy.
people giving up due to lack of niche/interesting communities
This is where people need to start making theire own communities. If you dont see it, make it. Its not easy, and you will likely have to be active in its growth, i think its worth it
I was saying the other day there's been a noticeable uptick in activity in some of my favourite arts & crafts type communities over the last couple of weeks. Probably just a temporary blip, and our numbers are still quite precarious, but it's encouraging nevertheless.
As good as I feel Lemmy is, I find a lot of the meme & humor communities alarmingly depressing.
I'm not looking for 24/7 wholesome! But, man.. I just want to see funny memes.
If I could post a comment on here without someone ranting at me about capitalism I would be so happy.
Same here. I wish that we could have more powerful filtering even when browsing all. personally, I don't want anything to do with memes so finding interesting new lemmy nooks is like wading through a haystack.
Things that make you angry stick in your mind more and get more engagement in the comments. But I'll try to throw some good vibes in there.
It's decent after blocking all the fluff/low-quality communities. But it needs a way to follow threads & highlight new comments.