I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might’ve been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.
At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.
A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.
With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that’s all this platform has to offer. If you’re into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.
For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don’t see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn’t really progressed in a year.
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I’m actually glad I’m not that active on the platform (or any platform for that matter, federated or not), so I can give myself time to breathe in outside air and touch some grass.
And once I am active, it’s usually for a couple hours at most, then it’s back to being in my coma for a few days.
I have a couple of thoughts.
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I dont need or want Lemmy to appeal to the mainstream. Frankly, I already get all the mainstream ‘culture’ I can stand, and frequntly more.
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I think it’s a mistake to consider Lemmy a one-to-one repacement for Reddit. I hope the fediverse can leverage the whole, y’know, federation thing. I think topic-driven instances that function similarly to the old phpBB boards is a good paradigm. It’s not about a monster site that has a board for everything. It’s more answering the question, ‘What if I could post on gamefaqs from my metal archives account?’
I guess I just think we could do better than trying to out-reddit reddit, when it comes to having a vision for the platform.
Signed, a linux using socialist.
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Could i ask how can you be one of the reddit exodus users if your account is 2 days old?
If you wanna leave lemmy do it on your main account to proof you are one of the over a year old accounts.
That we can salute and press F to the fallen user.
I’m pressing X to Doubt this post
Studies find that the vast majority of users on a platform are passive participants, the vast majority only look, a smaller group looks and comments and finally an even smaller group looks, comment and post. The key to growing any community is to find or be an active poster. It’s also an investment, if you post and get only 1 to 2 reactions, that’s okay, it takes time. It also means that more people see it and didn’t react.
In your example the NBA sub, I am on it and comment from time to time, but don’t have the sources or time to post, but if someone took, at least, the links from reddit and posted them here, it’s a start. I know NBA reddit has a lot of good discussions which you can’t replicate here without more people, but the posting of articles and links is a start.
He has some very valid points. Outside of what he says, it’s a challenge at times to build good conversations. Now we are all good for some laughs, but sometimes if you disagree with whatever meme was posted or whatever was posted, the minions come after you. It’s almost like you get extreme views and not honest conversations. I find this on different Fediverse applications
No it isnt. It’s become exactly as toxic as Reddit! If that isn’t a succes, I don’t know what is!
Lemmy works for me, Reddit doesn’t. I only use reddit now for porn.
Lemmynsfw
Nah. As people like to point out, much more uh, special interest groups in Reddit. I don’t need the community aspects for that kinda stuff.
Unless you’re into that.
Everything being mainstream is the reason the internet is becoming so shitty.
Being mainstream is exactly what I liked about reddit. It was the reincarnation of usenet. It has attracted all kinds of people doing all kinds of thing. Are you interested in swastika knitting? Piano jumping? Bathsponge sculpting? You can sure as hell find at least 2 other guys already doing it there.
Your best course for getting new content is to contribute.
I thought I liked it and that it had enough users, thank you for setting me straight.
And we will still be here when Reddit finally does implode. Either from high interest rates and not being able to raise money or whatever we will still be here.
What’s reddit?
Lemmy wasn’t ready and still mostly not ready for a mass Reddit exodus. The Reddit API fiasco wasn’t anticipated by anybody and the large influx of users exposed a ton of bugs and federation issues.
But it’s not a failure, yet. I’m sure Reddit had growing pains after the Digg exodus too. Some platforms take years to become popular. Reddit was small for quite a while before it became more mainstream.
In a way to me Lemmy feels a bit like Reddit must have been a few years before I joined it 12 years ago.
The problem is the expectation that Lemmy could replace Reddit overnight, and would immediately be a 1:1 replacement.
Although personally I like it more here, and I get more interactions than Reddit. But I am a tech nerd, so.
I was on reddit slightly before subreddits were added as functionality, so 16ish years, and lemmy to me just feels like that 2008ish reddit except most of the userbase is 40 instead of 18
I prefer the older user base. I’m 30 and I don’t feel out of place here
What you should have posted was nothing.
Who cares? Lemmy is literally beta software and it isn’t corporate growth driven social media. Also it doesn’t have to replace anything. I use a lot of apps. I use both Lemmy and Reddit and always have. I have Instagram too, I also use both Twitter and Mastodon. I have Signal, Snapchat, Linkedin and Nextdoor.I like Lemmy, it is different than Reddit and that is fine. I like it better and have my own server.
I completely agree with you there, Lemmy is its own thing. People are nice and respectful, communities are more constructive and less competitive, mods actually like what they’re doing; the “vibe” is completely different here. No karma or awards incentives, pure cooperation and real social interactions.
We’re open source! open hearts and open arms!
Right? Failed by who’s standards? For me, I’m pretty goddang happy here. I get enough content, I don’t feel constantly anxious or angry, the people are generally pretty nice. Is OP deciding it failed? Or are others?
I now turn to Lemmy daily. It is anything but failed.
