this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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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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[–] TeaHands 51 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Seriously, I'm not from the USA and I'm not supposed to know the names of American senators, MP's, governors or lawyers, or of who shot who, or who had a panic attack in an airplane, or why people are shouting at each others at a mcdonalds drive-in. Does any american ex-redditor know the name of a single european politician besides Merkel?

The news cycle proposed by reddit is filled with american politics ad nauseam and by ragebait. The european subs of reddit are filled with russian shills. When you add up all of this there is no point into opening reddit for the news.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

At least on my instance everything is running fast, snappy. I like the clean interface. Haven't encountered any major bugs yet.

The only downside for me so far is that there is not a lot to see yet. The only active posts and communities are about lemmy itself. Which is understandable of course but I can't wait to actually get to the phase where I actually get to experience real content lmao

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] Akhuyan 28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m sorry - we had to remove your post because you didn’t choose the correct flair out of a possible 3,000 esoteric choices, you didn’t format your post title according to the instructions located on a stone carving in the British Museum, your image had an even number of pixels, and/or you haven’t provided verification pics, a notarized letter, and three character references to our mod team. Please do not try again and have a good day [this action was performed by a bot]

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Much nicer than StackExchange too:

This response was marked as duplicate

Sorry, you have insufficient reputation to comment, post or breathe on this site. Go stack yourself. - Community bot

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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 week of using Lemmy have been phenomenal, and I'm happy to say that Lemmy has become my mindless scrolling app of choice now

Edit: correct number of weeks

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I love it so far,only needs more people

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Well, I'm here !

I have removed my Reddit account after 10yrs + 100k + karma and more hours invested than I would like to admit.

This time, I'm legit done with the place. I don't like where they are headed and decided to give Lemmy a go.

So far, so good :)

I got my account approved and I'm good to go. This is my first comment of many, many more to come.

Good to be here folks...

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I'm starting to understand how all of the individual Lemmy servers are connected and it's awesome. Understanding how Lemmy is fundamentally different than something like Reddit makes me very appreciative. I think something like Lemmy is the natural future as corporations continue to try to milk the wallets of the average person.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago

Its social media on our own terms!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The coolest part is, Lemmy is bigger than just Lemmy. Kbin & Mastodon users can also see and respond to posts here!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

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."

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hey I'm new here bc fuck spez. There's definitely potential here. Would like it to be easier to find communities (sublemmies?) And the app needs work but I'm ready to go all in. Did I mention fuck spez yet

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Now I've got my head around how the instances work and how everything is connected but not connected at the same time I'm growing to like it. Once more communities pop up I think it's going to be good

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Just signed up a few minutes ago. I honestly really like it so far. I was never into Twitter but I did try out mastodon and just couldn't get used to the look of everything. It was also confusing to sign up. So far Lemmy has been great. I am surprised how many active users there are. I was worried it would be super dead.

edit: spelling

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

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 ~

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

I'm honestly really lost and just stumbling around in the dark. It's been really confusing to learn about federation and what ever makes lemmy so unique.

But I'm really happy to see an open source alternative to reddit which is cool.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (10 children)

I'm enjoying figuring out how the place works. For example, when I first signed up, I couldn't work out how Beehaw.org was part of Lemmy was part of the Fediverse, but I'm now subbed to almost as many communities on other servers as I am on Beehaw.

The learning curve has perhaps been more steep than on Reddit, but no more so than Twitter > Mastodon.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I'm rapidly coming to appreciate it.

Maybe it's the demographic of users (young vs old, tech savvy vs casual, w/e) but threads here have far more activity in ratio to the number of subscribers and members.

Reddit just feels like a popularity context. Tell your 'I also choose this guy's dead wife' joke, get your karma, and for god's sake DON'T USE EMOJIS! Subs rapidly became echo chambers, or lose identity as they get larger.

Lemmy however... while not all threads have activity (it's small after all), the activity is legitimately interactive. People actually discussing ideas. We're talking like thinking adults, and I'm enjoying it.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I’m not ditching Reddit, just here trying out alternatives.

How has your lemmy experience been so far?

Well… I’m scrolling and F5’ing as if I was on Reddit, so honestly doesn’t feel that different, yet.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It was a bit rough getting an account I'm happy with set up, but beyond that I'm really enjoying the experience so far.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

But now you got the best possible name and instance :D

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

I really don’t like the cringe tankie culture here, hope that gets diluted as more people come in

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (11 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Really good, there's so much positive energy and people asking all kinds of questions without being called names, it's very enjoyable overall.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

I think it’s awesome. It’s the first time in a whole I’ve been on “new” social media and it’s bringing back a lot of feelings I thought were dead since the internet became so centralized

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

I have just joined for the same reason and I'm (positively) surprised how familiar it feels to reddit.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Like others have said I'm going to miss the niche subreddits and the thousand different cat subs lol

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (12 children)

it's nice, but we need more content and more 3rd party mobile apps, i mean Jerboa is nice, but many of us are used to their favorite reddit app

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Something that bugs me on the desktop... When I'm scrolling down a long post like this, if someone puts up a new top-level reply the page jumps back to the top to show that reply and I lose where I was reading at. I could turn off page notifications, but then I won't get the live feeds on the front page.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I think it is annoying that most posts, like this one, are about Lemmy itself. I hope this will change soon.

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