this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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102 users here now

Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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How do you feel about the massive influx of users?

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[–] other_world@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I went from Digg to Reddit and now I'm looking for a new home. I'm really liking what I'm seeing here!

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[–] Sponholz@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I honestly can't say about the influx. Since I'm part of it.

But man....

This does feel like home.

I was already loving Mastodon.

Honestly, the real question is:

What took us soo long....

I was lurking on Lemmy for a long time now read only mode, not signed up, but never had the urge to actually making an account.

I try not to have so many feeds where I'm active at once, to try and better manage the time I spend on this feeds.

Twitter and Reddit were the ones I engaged the most

Twitter became Mastodon and Reddit became Lemmy on that matter, so that I can focus on being active and helpful whenever possible.

So, what took me so long...?

Definitely something I will be asking myself for a while, since so far the experience here have something that reddit just don't. The quality over quantity aspect.

Finally...

Thanks for having me here, I hope I can contribute the best I can to maintain Lemmy awesome as it is. I don't post or reply like a madman, but I like to participate on constructive discussion every now and then.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

what took us so long

"Inertia is a property of matter" -Bill Nye the Science guy

What I mean by that is that it takes a force to move a large mass. People behave in much the same way. It takes a push to get people to move in large numbers from one place to another. I personally have been philosophically very pro-fediverse ever since I heard about it, but I was waiting for it to reach a critical mass before really switching over.

[–] Andreas@feddit.dk 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That, and for Lemmy specifically, its history of being a tankie forum. Without the Reddit refugee migration, if you joined Lemmy as a single user, you would be alone among communists and eventually get bullied into leaving. Already in 2020-2021, Fediverse users knew about Lemmy, but they avoided promoting it because of its userbase. This Reddit situation provided the push to get many normal users over to Lemmy at once to drown out the communist users.

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[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As one of the new users, I'm broadly in favour

[–] KilgoreTrout@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also approve of me joining Lemmy.

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[–] SpookyMarie@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just joined Lemmy because someone on reddit mentioned in it a comment on a thread regarding the blackout. It's kind of cool getting into a community while it's still relatively small. I'm excited to see how things grow.

[–] jazir5@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I hopped over here permanently tonight. Uninstalled boost on my phone, and I made Lemmy.ml my homepage. Reddit is just too depressing right now to keep it as my default.

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[–] mkultramkii@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I’m a reddit refugee, Apollo was my most loved and most used app for years. I was really disappointed about this situation, but after checking out Lemmy, I’m starting to feel really excited about this. I like what I see so far and I think there is a lot of potential, and it is kind of fun to be here now while communities are still smaller. Onwards an upwards! I’m also checking out the beta for the iOS app Mlem, more work to be done but also good potential here. I’ve also been doing iOS dev work for about a decade so maybe I’ll see if I can help contribute to that project in some way.

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[–] Stoneblackdog@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I am also part of the influx, but I'm worried that this is going to be a short lived thing and people are going to go back to reddit.

[–] bhj@lemmy.one 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's very unlikely that Lemmy will ever be as big as Reddit, but this influx might have it reach a tipping point where it can start to grow users organically.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Indeed, for this kind of service users attract users. I've been checking in on Lemmy periodically for years and the content just wasn't there (for me). But now, with plenty more users, I'm seeing a lot more value in spending more time here.

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago (17 children)

12 years Reddit refugee here:

So far the concept is VERY promising but it still does all feel a bit wonky. Signing up was a headache and took me hours, sign in still sometimes work sometimes not.. A huge of development will be required to get lemmy where it needs to be to really compete with Reddit, but so far, I'm very hopeful and happy!

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[–] Skooshjones@vlemmy.net 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would love for the federated model to become a gold standard for how successful platforms ought to be run.

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[–] AceLucario@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What's with that blip of increased activity at around July 2022?

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[–] lntl@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I am excited by the prospect of new communities and not excited fo reddit groupthink

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[–] croobat@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

A little bit worried. I am a recent migrator myself so this may a bit hypocritical, but I feel a lot of people will want to "redditize" here, just like how people tried with mastodon a couple months ago or (in a larger level), how people want Linux to become "another Windows".

These are not replicas, Lemmy doesn't work like Reddit, neither does it try to be, and that is by design, not a flaw. Things work differently, over and under the rug, and I think users should be entitled to doing some small effort to readjusting and have an open mind.

I'm all for UI/UX improvements, like most community projects, the front design part is more of an afterthought, and in that matter Lemmy has a lot to improve, but always keeping in mind what it is aiming to be.

For example, I am thinking in working on some simple browser extension to rearrange the UI in a way similar to Reddit's (nothing fancy, the upvote/downvote and collapse buttons locations, simple things). Maybe even some redirecting magic so if you open a link to another instance's community, it instead opens it in your current one, so you can still interact without having to go to your instance and search this one.

If anything, as a FOSS and federated content advocate, I wish this project nothing but the best so that one day we can escape the clutches of greedy companies.

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Lemmy doesn’t work like Reddit

Does it not? I'm not feeling much difference from an end user POV

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[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I like it, but I am part of the massive influx of users so I am admittedly biased.

[–] Ataraxia@lemmy.fmhy.ml 16 points 1 year ago

Hope people have patience and stick with it. I have no interest in going back to reddit.

[–] mostlyharmless@infosec.pub 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tried Lemmy a couple months ago and tbh it felt dead, love this new influx just hope new communities keep popping up

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[–] empireOfLove@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I am one of those influx.

I'm realllllly just hoping we don't choke the "main" instances completely to death before the lemmy backend can have some developer hours dumped into it to support better per-instance horizontal scaling.

[–] arcrust@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah. It's gonna be a rough first couple months. App development needs to catch up. Server support needs to catch up. Many subs need to figure out how to move over their communities. I'm tempted to start making communities and just copy-pasting the side bars and pinned threads, but Im not a mod for anything, so it feels like it'd be plagiarism.

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[–] Gormadt@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

I'm happy about it, of course I might be a bit biased as I only came over yesterday.

This place is super nice and chill

I'm really digging Beehaw their lqbtq+ space is super welcoming

[–] noisy@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whilst I’m somewhat sad to be here (Reddit has eaten up a significant portion of my time over the past 10+ years), I’m happy to be learning new things and exploring a new way of doing things.

[–] kunday@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

I honestly thought this would reduce my screen time as Reddit is on the top of the list. But here I am at Lemmy lol.

[–] Jupa@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (26 children)

the reddit blackout is for like two days i expect that 90% of them will stick to the two days and business as usual afterwards. their bottom line is to continue running mods of their communities, even if they acknowledge that was is going on with reddit is bad. they shouldnt have announced a scheduled, limited blackout.

i expect some fringe communities to come here and stay but it will always be business as usual on reddit

therefore Lemmy needs to have a reason for people to stick around, communities offering something that isnt otherwise available, even just a refreshing change of community culture

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[–] dska22@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope that lemmy makes it but I don't think that it will be easy because:

  • registering is far from straight forward. Before figuring out how to do it and which is the name of the app you need, lots of users will give up
  • I don't think that lemmy can scale well
[–] misterchief117@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree with the scalability issues. Instance owners are going to run up against whatever they can afford to pay. If a given instance grows to a point where the hardware required to run it would be too expensive, then the admin has a choice: Donations, payment, and/or sponsorship.

All have their pros and cons.

Assuming "Lemmy" becomes popular (there's a ton of barriers preventing this so far). there's inevitably going to be consolidation between whoever can afford to support the largest instances.

Also, I think the most confusing part about the whole "fediverse" is that each instance is the entire "platform" of whatever it's trying to be.

This IMO creates massive fragmentation and a ton of confusion. Which one is the "authoritative" instance? Oh there's none? Oh...well...Hmm.

I'm sort of starting to think of it like this:

Reddit (or whatever fediverse whatever) is like a single shopping mall and the stores are subreddits. Each store needs a unique name.

Lemmy is like a bunch of shopping malls with each shopping mall having its own set of stores.

Stores within a single shopping mall must have a unique name, but can use the same name as a store in another mall. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find two Foot Lockers in the same mall, but you're likely to find them in pretty much every mall you visit in the USA at least.

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[–] dj3hac@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

I'm a new user but I'd love to see this place explode in popularity!

[–] myfaceistupid@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What caused that spike around October 2022?

[–] animist@lemmy.one 16 points 1 year ago

Maybe people who moved from twitter to mastadon and learned more about federation

[–] CheshireSnake@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Man, this reddit BS is getting to me. First thing I thought of when I read your comment was, "what happened in reddit last October?" 😐

[–] blade_imaginato@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

As (another) reddit refugee, in order to compete with reddit, Lemmy needs to invest in its mobile apps, and make other servers easier to access.

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[–] DestroyMegacorps@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's cool The reason why I even joined lemmy is that the administration here allow magnet links

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[–] meisme@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago
[–] grygon@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Given the timeouts and load issues I've had on lemmy.ml today... Mildly concerned.

I'm part of the problem though, and really hopeful it goes well! Seems like the solution to the Giant Network problem we see at Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc

[–] hib@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

I've been hoping for a shift to decentralized social platforms for ages, so I really hope that's the direction things are heading.

[–] MyopicTopic@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Man, I been waiting for this for years. I thought with the way Mastodon grew it'd eventually grow into a wider growth among the fediverse but it seems to happen in fits and starts. Glad to see people are federating too and not all dumping into just the mainline instance.

Next I'd like to see major names move off YouTube and Twitch onto decentralized platforms but that's gonna take much more to get there, unfortunately.

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[–] uthredii@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Lemmy go brrrrr

As part of that massive influx, I'm excited!

I've known about Lemmy and Tild.es for some time, but both just seemed so immature. I figured I'd give Lemmy a solid chance to show support for the blackout and because I'm likely to quit Reddit entirely if they don't reverse course (I may quit regardless), and I'm happy to say that this doesn't feel like a downgrade much.

There are plenty of communities for what I'm looking for, so I'm not giving up a lot switching to Lemmy. I'm going to give it a solid chance over the next week or two and do my best to contribute, and if I'm liking it still after that point, I may be able to contribute dev resources (maybe I'll help out with a mobile app or something).

Anyway, I'm excited to be part of this community!

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago
[–] mr_pip@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I just hope that it will be more distributed than Matrix and not everyone registers on lemmy.ml (matrix.org in case of matrix) so the decentralization works for real here instead of 90% (exaggerating, don't know the numbers) of the user base sitting on one instance :)

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