Fediverse

So, saying 'nobody uses X' is a bit of a stretch considering that whenever it's said, there's proof to the contrary that people use said thing. People use lemmy at times, but the problem is as it has been pointed out before many times, is that lemmy is still too niche and small when compared to larger platforms.

One of the big reasons I can think of is, is that Lemmy just doesn't have the span of community as someplace like Reddit does. You're not going to find a Darts lemmy instance, you're not going to find a MentalHealth lemmy instance or anything. On Reddit, there's hundreds of micro-communities that cover a range of interests that anybody can join and talk about.

Lemmy only seems to focus on just a handful of things; Politics, Memes, Games, Piracy, Linux, News, Technology and Asking Questions. That's great and all but, just about anyone has these in spades. Not everyone wants to cycle through those things on a daily basis, they'll want something more. But it's going to turn people off from Lemmy immediately when they migrate from Reddit.

Yeah sure, we can tell them to make an instance to cover that niche itch, but once it's built, it can be months to even years before it gets attention. And nobody wants to spend time just running around like an annoying salesman to get people to join said instance just to feel better about converting someone else over from one side to the other.

Another reason is that - moderation can be ass. Yeah, some moderators on Lemmy have the mentality and maturity of an edgy 15-year old who spends too much time online for their own good. And we can all see it in plain sight on the modlog so I don't even need to explain.

217 comments on this in 24 hours says to me that there must at least a few people using lemmy

I’m a 31 yr old dude that just found out about this along with what the fediverse is. When I found out, I was researching this stuff so it took me some time to understand it all and I still don’t think I fully understand it all

I use Lemmy. And you do. And 1000 other people do. So I'd say it's big enough.

Boiling it down to 3 things:

1. Content Scale & Variety - Lemmy has a lot of content but it's very tech/political heavy. It doesn't have much to offer outside of that domain. Meanwhile, there's a whole shitposting subreddit dedicated to an NFL conference -- I don't even closely follow professional American football, but it's glorious.
2. User Experience Friction - You can't just sign up, you need to pick a server. You've already lost a significant amount of people in that step.
3. User Base - There's nice folks on here, but some really sour the experience for the rest of us by being straight up hostile if we don't agree on every little detail.

I think its okay the way it is. Too much attention leads to many reposts, karma farmers, bots, now AI bullshit etc.

It's because everything that becomes popular starts with people in the 14-20 year range.

Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Tiktok...

The Fediverse will eventually grow once something triggers a snowball effect due the nature of connectivity and federation. Until then, the way to make it grow is to have young people make it popular.

Edit: There also needs to be more "fun" here. I think the Fediverse is a more "serious" place which isn't what those other social media sites offered. "Serious 24/7" isn't that enticing for young people.

The other day I was imagining a game or game service that has you make a Fediverse account of some kind. You get people to signup with a username that automatically creates a "@fedi.games" account. That account can have access to Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed etc.

Lemmy as a name is very poor branding. It's almost as bad as Mastodon.

It took me a long time before I signed up. I think I lucked for at least a year. I didn't want to join an instance and then regret it. And all instances have their own small novel of rules, that I need to read through to know if I agree with. And even if you do, you have to send an application and get approved as well.

It almost scared me away - I'd imagine the same goes for a lot of people.

"nobody", nearly 50k people.

Asking people on mastodon if they use lemmy also doesn't make much sense to me. I don't use mastodon because it's not threaded, people on mastodon probably don't use lemmy for a similar reason. I'm not sure how many people use both threaded and unthreaded platforms, but it feels to me like the two layouts attract different people.

I don't use Mastodon or Twitter either. I never understood following specific people and prefer following topics instead.

1. Few people like to be the first(ish) one on the dance floor.

2. It's slightly harder to sign up for than Reddit, so people interested in this kind of thing usually just sign up for Reddit (or stay there).

3. Most people don't care about the advantages Lemmy affords us; they care about what's on TV tonight or which celebrity is dating which celebrity.

I kind of like this level of people as lemmy is less saturated and that's a good thing. Quite often when I was on reddit you'd look at a thread and everything that can be said has been said, so there's nothing new you can add.

I find myself commenting on lemmy a lot more because it's not saturated and that pun hasn't been done, the perspective hasn't been provided, the counterpoint to another comment hasn't been commented etc.

That is what we want people to believe. It's nice and cosy without the 'mainstream' users. ;)

I have to be that guy and point out that the Threadiverse isn't just Lemmy, and microblog-Fedi isn't just Mastodon.

Nobody used reddit for a long time as well

Until people did

Lemmy feels like reddit around 2009

Lemmy and Reddit usage are relatively low compared to their respective social media siblings. I've always believed the reason is in the difference in how they're structured. Most other social media is wired around people as the primary structural unit. "Who's saying what?" Reddit and Lemmy are instead wired around topics. "What are people saying about this?" And I assume the difference in popularity is evidence for how most people themselves are wired.

sue 2: Users could agree on one community. Or (a functionality Lemmy doesn't have), similar communities could be grouped or linked together. Instead of choosing between Linux@lemmy.ml and Linux@lemmy.world, users could follow a combined “Linux” topic.

Doesn't PieFed do exactly that?

A lot of people do use Lemmy. I dont get why so many people think something has to have literally everyone on earth using it or its dead. You see the same thing in games, too. Id rather there not be a singular monolirh even with lemmys fediverse design. The internet was better when it wasnt this way.

Hey, I’m here! wtf just going to ignore me like that??

Where do all those meme posts about "Lemmy is bad name / bad branding" come from? I've seen it recurrently enough every time someone launches a FOSS thing that I would normally suspect it's part of a LLM farm or a scam attempt from some sort of naming / patents agency, but I've seen these reactions from long enough (2015-ish).

If I had to guess: the culture here seems unusual, and unwelcoming — sometimes even hostile — to diverse opinions (i.e. people who aren't similarly unusual).

I haven't met many people IRL who would fit in here. For some visitors, that's okay (I don't fit in here, myself), but I think most people would just move along and forget that Lemmy exists.

Being federated, Lemmy is technically capable of being more diverse. It's a bit ironic that it still ended up being like this.

Also, some images don't load. I just ignore those, but still people might be put off by broken UX

Social networks live and die by network effects. People don't use Instagram because it's the best. They use Instagram because that is where their friends are. Either everybody uses a site, or nobody does.

I mean the sad explanation is that they simply don't care. They'll complain all the livelong day about the problems but they'll never leave. That much was clear after they killed the API and everyone protested for a whopping 2 days.

Hi. I'm Nobody.