I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it’s “dogshit” and “not going anywhere” get systematically upvoted.
Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like “yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org” 🤦♂️
It’s frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that “Lemmy is not ready yet” and that there’s “no viable alternative to Reddit”.
This and the overwhelming number of comments being “against the mod protests” just prompts me to question whether there isn’t some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.
As a tech savy person, I can confidently say lemmy is not a viable reddit alternative at this stage for an arbitrary reddit user. The UI and clients are just terrible and full of small bugs, annoyances and inconsistencies. Sure, it will eventually get there, but negative opinions about lemmy are not completely unmerrited. Just as I’m typing this, I get screen tears and flickering elements. It’s just very, very bleeding edge and I can absolutely see how someone trying it for 5 minutes would be turned off. If you want to capture the masses, the user experience has to impeccable.
PS: my first try at submitting this response timed out. This is my second try.
It doesn’t have to be impeccable. It doesn’t need corporations to buy ads. It just has to keep getting better and not die. Look at Linux. It never did overtake MacOS & Windows on desktops. But it keeps getting better and it didn’t die and it took over server rooms. Look at Mastodon. It’s nowhere near as popular as Twitter and maybe never will be, but it’s 5 years old and is steadily growing. I like hanging out there. Oak trees start as acorns.
That’s the thing though, criticism of lemmy does not necessarily mean hate. We can acknowledge and be honest about the problems without shitting on the platform. My experience over the last week with kbin would have been way beyond the technical know-how of say, my sister. It’s ready for the average user. It will be, devs are kicking ass, but we’re not there yet and that’s okay. I would rather people know what they’re in for here than to show up expecting a polished, bug-free interface.
Is this the year of the Lemmy desktop?
Thing is; I don’t want the “arbitrary reddit user”. I want the low-effort user to get irritated and leave.
Here’s an example: how can I subscribe to the topics I want to follow? I don’t want to see the 198 or whatever it is posts. Nor programmer humour. Lemmy has a great community of fans and users but if I can’t see only what I want I’m not going to use it.
“Oh no … my very new free software that’s not selling my data and run by VC overlords has some bugs”
I know I’m being an asshole there, but this is about more than usability, it’s about values and speaking with your feet. Not that your comments about usability and bugs don’t matter … they do! My issue is that it is way too normal to put convenience and usability front, center and above everything else.
So many conversations with intelligent people about things like this end with “but is it as convenient!?” If that’s all we care about, then we don’t really deserve anything better. In the mean time, we can try to adjust what we and others care about.
I could really care less if it’s a part of something “good”. I just want somewhere to kick back and relax, maybe learn something or gain a new perspective. For that purpose convenience is king. In any case the better the product the more others will use federated alternatives and better/more diverse the content would be. And yeah, I already threw money at the devs to show my appreciation for what’s been built so far.
I mean, I’m willing to subscribe to a Reddit service, too, if their in-house app wasn’t hot shit.
you only need to move the more techie knowledgeable user base here. The ones that mod and post content.
The average user provides nothing to the site but dead traffic. They’ll come when the content is here.
The content creators want their content to be seen by as many people as possible. It’s not “dead” traffic, they are valuable consumers even if all they do is lurk. A content creator is obviously more valuable than a lurker, but we should not ignore the other side. It’s a chicken-egg problem.