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)
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.
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!
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
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
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
I love it so far,only needs more people
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.
Its social media on our own terms!
The coolest part is, Lemmy is bigger than just Lemmy. Kbin & Mastodon users can also see and respond to posts here!
How exactly does someone on mastodon respond to posts I can’t find any info anywhere on how it’s done
They have to subscribe to the community (it looks like a user to them, so it looks like @lemmy@lemmy.ml). Then they can see the posts from that “user”. From there, you see the posts and can reply to them just like they were any other user.
Great thanks so much
Just as i thought i understand it, you confused me again. How can Mastodon users participate here?
I don’t know in a “what to click sense”, but lemmy and mastodon differ from reddit and Twitter in that they’re open source running on open standards. There’s no proprietary walled garden to protect.
The underlying protocol is called activitypub. Think of lemmy and mastodon as different interfaces for viewing the same data.
I would like to understand how all of the individual Lemmy servers are connected… do you have any good resources for learning about lemmy?
If you just want the bare minimum, the ActivityPub article on wikipedia isn’t bad. For a deeper dive if you want to get technical, w3.org has a much more detailed explanation.
the w3 article is certainly worth the read. thanks.
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…
Is there a way to find when new instances or communities come online?
I can’t answer your question, but I have a question for you.
Are you like, a man who is a cat, or a man who has a bunch of cats?
Yes. 👨🦯🐅🐆🐈🐅🐆🐆🐆🐈🐈🐆🐅🐆🐅🐈🐆🐅
Wild
i doubt ill be fasting from reddit cus theres always instances where i look for smt and the answers are there (like in the search results). but ima be using lemmy from now on for casual scrolling and entertainment instead
Welcome! Same boat here, wiped several decade+ old accounts today. Sad but… the community here seems great. Lacking on the cat gifs and tiktok reposts etc for sure, but that’s not why I loved reddit either.
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.”
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.
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.
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
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
Same experience here, I checked out Mastodon and was impressed with the fediverse and open nature of everything, but the style of social media just didn’t gel with me. Not surprising as I was exactly the same with Twitter.
I was literally saying “someone needs to make Mastodon for Reddit” before I discovered Lemmy!
I feel like a lot of the discussion on here at the moment is obviously focused on Lemmy itself and Reddit, but that’s not surprising given the huge influx of new users.
Looking forward to the various communities and platform itself maturing. The first time I’ve been optimistic about social media in years, haha.
Totally agree with everything. Another major complaint I see people making is that smaller communities will form when we should just have one central one for each topic. I think this will naturally sort itself out. I will likely join a community if the content is good and the people are nice. If there is a community with 2k people and everyone is mean but a small one with 10 people and good content, I’ll join that one.
Like you I am very excited to see where it goes. I don’t think it can become massive. But it would be nice to see communities with 500k people in them. Optimizing server hosting is probably one of the biggest problems right now. I also wonder how the larger instances will make enough money to cover cost of servers.
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
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.
How I’m beginning to make sense of it is by thinking that each instance is a completely separate “reddit”. The admins of each instance are as powerful as spez or any other reddit admin.
The community subdivision is then just that, a subdivision within a custom reddit rather than a “subreddit” under the centralized “main reddit website”.
The federalization aspect of it is then completely alien, but understandable. At least to me!
I was trying to wrap my head around it yesterday, in the sense that there’s a lemmy.ml/c/music AND a beehaw.org/c/music which are completely different communities with (mostly) different users and different posts, but I can sub to both and post on both. Now, on the one hand that may get a little confusing, but in reality it’s no different to there being two different subreddits that both focus on music posting.
It definitely takes a moment to stop the reddit brain from thinking of everything being on one website. If we picked up the hotlink convention it would probably solve all that confusion:
That’d also make the email comparison clearer while providing solid examples of federation.
The real headfuck is that I could reply to your comment from Mastodon if I wanted.
(I’ve experimented with this, and it’s kinda confusing over there, so I didn’t)
Yeah that’s really cool too! I tried to mess around with it but it was super confusing and I gave up. I should try figuring it out again!
I think my attitude is that it’s nice that it can work, but that the style differences between Mastodon and Lemmy don’t necessarily lend themselves to it being terribly worthwhile.
That said, there’s likely a use-case whereby you can essentially use Mastodon like an RSS reader for other Fediverse software, so you can get a heads up on things you might be keeping an eye on.
Hah! I actually typed out that what I did figure out felt like subscribing to a “lemmy rss feed”, but wasn’t sure if that was just me being lost in the interface.
I guess that would be the best way to think of it. Then you can reply to comments as they come in? That part I’m not sure about but I think it works something like that.
oh yea for sure, especially since feduverse twitter alternatives have weird terminology for stuff and generally diff ui
In terms of UI, I noticed yesterday that there’s one you can install for Lemmy that’s based on the classic phpBB forum design, which made me realise that Reddit was never anything more than just a massive forum. And that’s probably why I liked it so much.