I honestly can't say about the influx. Since I'm part of it.
But man....
This does feel like home.
I was already loving Mastodon.
Honestly, the real question is:
What took us soo long....
I was lurking on Lemmy for a long time now read only mode, not signed up, but never had the urge to actually making an account.
I try not to have so many feeds where I'm active at once, to try and better manage the time I spend on this feeds.
Twitter and Reddit were the ones I engaged the most
Twitter became Mastodon and Reddit became Lemmy on that matter, so that I can focus on being active and helpful whenever possible.
So, what took me so long...?
Definitely something I will be asking myself for a while, since so far the experience here have something that reddit just don't. The quality over quantity aspect.
Finally...
Thanks for having me here, I hope I can contribute the best I can to maintain Lemmy awesome as it is. I don't post or reply like a madman, but I like to participate on constructive discussion every now and then.
"Inertia is a property of matter" -Bill Nye the Science guy
What I mean by that is that it takes a force to move a large mass. People behave in much the same way. It takes a push to get people to move in large numbers from one place to another. I personally have been philosophically very pro-fediverse ever since I heard about it, but I was waiting for it to reach a critical mass before really switching over.
That, and for Lemmy specifically, its history of being a tankie forum. Without the Reddit refugee migration, if you joined Lemmy as a single user, you would be alone among communists and eventually get bullied into leaving. Already in 2020-2021, Fediverse users knew about Lemmy, but they avoided promoting it because of its userbase. This Reddit situation provided the push to get many normal users over to Lemmy at once to drown out the communist users.
That's a good point. Personally I like when there's a diversity of political opinions that are able to have reasonable discourse. My favourite political subreddit for a while has been /r/stupidpol. It has lots of Marxists, but lots of internal variety in terms of viewpoints, and respectful debate has always been allowed there while also maintaining a lighter atmosphere.
Hey man, I've felt mostly the same than you migrating to lemmy. A while ago I tried mastodon but it really didn't click with me, how do you do to find people to follow and so? I was only getting recommended the same like 10 guys. I like gaming and programming if it helps.
And if your instance doesn't know a certain instance exists, you just have to paste the url into your search bar to get it working: https://beehaw.org/c/gaming
It makes me hopeful for the future. Enthusiasts priming the pump for people embracing a more sustainable and less exploitative business model to organize the Internet. Instead of putting all the information on a big centralized locked down platform we share the load and costs between instances.
I love what is happening now, it is pretty much the biggest display of resistance against big tech I've ever seen in my life by a long shot. I've seen most of the internet gradually decay to a shadow of its former self so this is a return to form and a switch to a better model in the long run.
People are finally adopting the Fediverse and if the adoption rates keep up we might start going mainstream with all the advantages and disadvantages, but it will be alright since Lemmy is both federated and FLOSS. Lemmy is a Rust-based, AGPLv3 platform and that means it will be protected against corruption in the foreseable future, I hope.
That tracker only covers the ones that go private though! There's a bunch that are going restricted so they can automate posts that will still show in r/all and other feeds. That way reddit's algorithm doesn't just pull up other subs and effectively hide that a protest is occurring.
Except that you could totally tell since many of the same subs kept populating over and over. Lemmy is more active and diverse at the moment, which is super weird in its own right, but I love it!
I just joined Lemmy because someone on reddit mentioned in it a comment on a thread regarding the blackout. It's kind of cool getting into a community while it's still relatively small. I'm excited to see how things grow.
I hopped over here permanently tonight. Uninstalled boost on my phone, and I made Lemmy.ml my homepage. Reddit is just too depressing right now to keep it as my default.
When on a Lemmy site on mobile, in Firefox you can go to the three-dots menu and select "install". You get a shortcut on your phone that will take you to an app like version of Lemmy.
I think it's supposed to feel that way, since it's not on the official LemmyNet github org, and located on one of the developers' accounts instead afaik
AFAIK you are correct. I don't think lemmy has an official app and the only 3rd party app that exists of any substance is jerboa so I suppose right now it is kind of the official Android app while mlem is the iOS counterpart. But only because there's nothing else atm
I’m a reddit refugee, Apollo was my most loved and most used app for years. I was really disappointed about this situation, but after checking out Lemmy, I’m starting to feel really excited about this. I like what I see so far and I think there is a lot of potential, and it is kind of fun to be here now while communities are still smaller. Onwards an upwards!
I’m also checking out the beta for the iOS app Mlem, more work to be done but also good potential here. I’ve also been doing iOS dev work for about a decade so maybe I’ll see if I can help contribute to that project in some way.
I'm starting to be grateful to Reddit for giving me the nudge that I needed to explore the fediverse. I did have a look at Mastodon a while back (and I may have even joined an instance there, I'm not sure!) but was overwhelmed by not understanding it. I think being part of an exodus where there is lots of advice and support being given specifically for us is really helpful in making me feel like this is somewhere I'll stay.
So far the concept is VERY promising but it still does all feel a bit wonky. Signing up was a headache and took me hours, sign in still sometimes work sometimes not.. A huge of development will be required to get lemmy where it needs to be to really compete with Reddit, but so far, I'm very hopeful and happy!
At least for me downloading their app jeroba makes the experience much nicer. Haven't had the issues I had on the website though it's a bit taxed because of the influx of users. Expected.
It is also very hard to subscribe to other server's community (or subreddit equivalent).
E.g.: i had account from beehaw, if i want to subscribe a channel from lemmy.world i need to see the list of community from lemmy.world comminity list, but I cannot subscribe from there because i dont have lemmy.worlda account. So i need to back to beehaw and search it again in community search bar.
In jerboa android, I didnt even see a way to search new community
Would be nice if there is a way to subscribe other server easily
Yeah, just found that out the hard way myself. I got to lemmy.world and suddenly was no longer logged in etc... That is something that def needs improvement.
Agreed. There's a similar issue on Mastodon that's been confusing people for years and still hasn't been addressed, let's hope Lemmy prioritizes it a bit more!
Right? I can't wait to see how it improves as time on. I didn't have any real problems with joining on my end, though. When you signed up, was it the approval process on your instance, or just confusing? If it was the approval process, that's probably specific to lemmy.ca.
I first tried signing up on lemmy.ml, that was impossible. Various hours of trying just got me the "click the signup button and it starts rotating and... nothing"
Then I went to lemmy.ca, there signup worked, but sign in at times gives the same "button rotating" thing and then nothing. Try again, and it works.
Its a minor issue, but a very visible one that I would say should be fixed ASAP because its the first thing new people see and you don't want the first experience to be tiresome.
The infinitely rotating button happens if their email settings are invalid- just discovered that on my instance. I have mine set to open but require email validation and everything seems to happen instantly, but if they require admin verification it may be bugging out and not telling you.
That's fine that they have an approval process, but then the user interaction should be different. IT should immediately say that my request is under review and they'll get back to me asap or something, instead of a "this process is frozen" indication
Think of it like moving to a new house rather than picking up your house and moving it to a new neighborhood. The excitement comes from the differences even if you miss the other place.
I felt the same at first too. The longer sign-up issue makes joining a pain, but I think it's worth it.
Part of what I'm coming to love about the lemmy side of things is how free of filler and bots it is. By making a tiny barrier to entry, that's going to prevent that kind of thing to a degree.
Realistically, there is no reddit to go back to. After the company goes public, Reddit as we knew it, will cease to exist.
The shareholders will want to be make maximum profit. This means that ads are going to be everywhere. They are going to outsource hosting services to horrible companies, in order to cut down hosting costs like video hosting and image hosting. Features that existed in 3rd party apps are going to be paid features in the official app/webapp, etc.
Reddit is gone. It's lost. It will not be there as you knew it to go back to. It's now a case of where to next and for the time being, lemmy and feddiverse looks the best.
I think the concept of "enshittification" will become more apparent to more users. Younger people, who are more technically literate, and have seen social media rise and fall I think will be more willing to adopt platforms like Lemmy. Reddit was a "place for weirdos" for a long time until the general public noticed it and began to post comments and posts to YouTube/Instagram/Twitter. Lemmy just needs time.
One thing I always like to say to people, is "The internet was cooler when your parents didn't understand how it worked." I think the concept of Lemmy appeals to and will start to appeal to a lot of people soon.
All that may be true but that doesn't mean there's enough people who are motivated enough to put effort into a reddit alternative -- all the reddit design updates suck for the informed user but the whole point of the updates is to keep the much, much larger casual audience hooked, and it's yet to be seen if a reddit alternative is viable today without the casual audience. Hopefully there's some good signs over the next few days when the blackout gets rolling
if we pull a critical mass of those that create and consume quality content, organic effects begin to compete with entrenchment. if not, I am ok-ish with that too. if I have to exepriece the world burning down around me, I would prefer to do so in better company than reddit.
It's very unlikely that Lemmy will ever be as big as Reddit, but this influx might have it reach a tipping point where it can start to grow users organically.
Indeed, for this kind of service users attract users. I've been checking in on Lemmy periodically for years and the content just wasn't there (for me). But now, with plenty more users, I'm seeing a lot more value in spending more time here.
Yep same here, I'm hoping this is the watershed moment for Lemmy and I can start spending more on here and eventually stop using reddit (or be forced to when they take away my third party app). I don't generally create much content, but like participating in the community via comments, so it's hard to be a force for change when nothing is getting posted and no one is commenting.
I wonder how hard it would be to convert some of the existing apps to use Lemmy. I guess the federated aspect makes it more complex and will require more development than just switching the API, but the UI could stay similar.
An idea so old is new again. The Internet and it's early services (Usenet, email, IRC, etc.) we're all designed from the start to be decentralized. After 20+ years of people consolidating into centrally-controlled mega platforms, I'm happy to see things coming full circle.
Agreed, platforms should compete by providing better UX and features, not by abusing network effects and walling off themselves to hold communities and accounts hostage. In a way the fediverse provides a common carrier that is neutral to the users and platforms connected to it, which enables competition in the same way that guaranteeing equal access to physical internet infrastructure to new ISPs is essential to preventing ISP monopolies.
As cool as this decentralized approach to social platforms is, I have a hard time really seeing it going mainstream. There's too many barriers to entry (both physical and conceptual) for the average user
I think all new technology is like that. Ultimately I think what is needed is a single mobile app that aggregates fediverse services and makes it stupid simple on the UX/UI. Advanced users can still migrate to other servers and have more control/freedom, and less savvy people don't even knoww hat is happening.
the reddit blackout is for like two days
i expect that 90% of them will stick to the two days and business as usual afterwards.
their bottom line is to continue running mods of their communities, even if they acknowledge that was is going on with reddit is bad.
they shouldnt have announced a scheduled, limited blackout.
i expect some fringe communities to come here and stay but it will always be business as usual on reddit
therefore Lemmy needs to have a reason for people to stick around, communities offering something that isnt otherwise available, even just a refreshing change of community culture
Honestly it'll probably be closer to 99.999% of users will stick around Reddit. The largest Lemmy instance is smaller than the smallest subreddit I follow and I suspect that's probably the case for most people.
Here's what will happen... Reddit blackout starts, people come to Lemmy, 8 out of 10 are confused by the way things work and bail instantly. 2 out of 10 might stick around, try to sign up, but everyone hammers the top 3-4 instances and they have a bad first impression. A few days later everyone is back at Reddit and Lemmy is right back where it was a month ago.
I think that there will be people who remain on Lemmy permanently. This group will remain small, and insignificant. But hopefully there will be enough people to prop the instances up with content. At which point Lemmy will begin to grow slowly; this slow growth imo is the most important.
But yeah alot of people will go back to Reddit and forget all about Lemmy. And that's ok.
You're exaggerating, I can definitely see how Twitter users changed the general atmosphere of the Fediverse, at least on the instances that I have used in the past. As for Reddit, I think it will be something similar to that, not everyone is going to migrate but Lemmy is going to be significantly bigger, better and THE place to go if you want to ditch Reddit. Also, it's not like having a big portion here of social media audience is going to do a lot of good. I have serious doubts about people being able to give value to the community if they can't even figure out how to register on an instance other than the main one
Yeah Reddit's core users are pretty technical. At least the ones who joined before the big popularity boom in the last 5 years. The old school redditors will probably end up on lemmy.
You're talking about ~70% of reddit and you're probably right.
Let's see. If lemmy gets an app with a better UI, it's going to be that way for sure.
An embeddes image and video viewer is missing, for example
As a reddit refugee the image and video viewer has been the only speedbump for me. That is other than not being hooked up to a firehose of content, but i feel that will come in time.
Regardig videos it doesn't really matter cause 90% of the time you have to open the video source with the browser or another app anyway.
But re. images, since lemmy can view them in the post, why it doesnt just allow to put them full screen?
I should look at the code
of course. but Lemmy really does have potential - it's a more accessible platform than Mastodon and reddit users are more aligned with the strategy of decentralizing via the fediverse. this fits.
I personally don't understand wanting to go back... reddit is so unpleasant as it is. All that made it tolerable was 3rd party. I'd rather go back to imgur than reddit.
There’s a git repo for something called remmel(?) which I think is an iPhone client. But without someone publishing it to the App Store, no one will use it.
I think the Redditors joining Lemmy will certainly change the culture, both for the better and for the worse. Comments got pretty toxic on Reddit while I feel like the toxic comments on Lemmy were rare.
BUT, that could be a sample size thing. I'm curious to see if the ratio of toxic comments per active user would have been the same.
More people = more problems I am certain but this is a social network and without people it will fail. We must all make an effort to be the change that we want to see in the world.
I don't foresee a problem in the immediate future aside from higher server load, but in terms of culture, only people who believe in a new social network will be willing to join.
In 5 years however when this is a great place to be, a large number of people will join who don't respect the legacy. The departure from Digg to Reddit felt like this too, I hope that the federation aspect will ensure this is longer lived.
remember... federation is your friend. federation gives you the freedeom to change house (instance) and/or look for better communities on any other federated instance from your own instance.
well, yeah, I wouldn't disagree but it's not like they aren't trying. I think with Mastodon the followers are a lot more important than the toots though. I would agree that posting history here is probably a bigger deal.
I haven't looked at the back end to understand what might be involved, but just configuring the instance has given me an appreciation for the complexities and challenges involved in getting a federated app running at scale.
Yeah, the curse of success. Everyone seems to be hoping for the swift death of Reddit but I dunno. It getting shittier but still existing might be the best outcome.
It's not going anywhere. I'm sure like 90% of people there don't care at all what is happening. Probably more than 90, considering that about 5% used third party apps.
A little bit worried. I am a recent migrator myself so this may a bit hypocritical, but I feel a lot of people will want to "redditize" here, just like how people tried with mastodon a couple months ago or (in a larger level), how people want Linux to become "another Windows".
These are not replicas, Lemmy doesn't work like Reddit, neither does it try to be, and that is by design, not a flaw. Things work differently, over and under the rug, and I think users should be entitled to doing some small effort to readjusting and have an open mind.
I'm all for UI/UX improvements, like most community projects, the front design part is more of an afterthought, and in that matter Lemmy has a lot to improve, but always keeping in mind what it is aiming to be.
For example, I am thinking in working on some simple browser extension to rearrange the UI in a way similar to Reddit's (nothing fancy, the upvote/downvote and collapse buttons locations, simple things). Maybe even some redirecting magic so if you open a link to another instance's community, it instead opens it in your current one, so you can still interact without having to go to your instance and search this one.
If anything, as a FOSS and federated content advocate, I wish this project nothing but the best so that one day we can escape the clutches of greedy companies.
Well it's a link aggregator and forum, just like reddit, but I feel like lemmy needs time for its own culture to coalesce - rather than expecting reddit culture to be imported or just exist here.
Yeah, I think good / bad would be a generalisation. If lemmy grows then there will be good bits and bad bits. The difference of course is that anyone can spin up their own instance, so there's much more likelihood that some instances will be predominantly well run and enjoyable to be a part of.
The good thing is that if an instance gets too toxic the users that don't like that can just jump to another one. The ideal would be to move your already existing account to the new instance but I don't how difficult or how much that would take to implement
Honestly its for the best, redditors would be rude af and incel-like as well. It was annoying to dealing with those people every time there was a talk of relationships and gender rather than thinking also approaching about those topics with empathy, respect, kindness and critically as well. I'd like to think of this as a new start where all of us can learn from the mistakes that were made in Reddit and make this a better place for everyone.
I was thinking that too. Reddit is full of gasligjting and thinly veiled racism/sexism and bigotry... hundreds of comments piling on someone based on a one sided story or a video often ending in doxxing and harrassment.
why not contribute directly to the project, given it's open source nature rather than a browser extension? I'm also thinking about contributing some stuff, I think a lot of the federated part right now is really confusing and obtuse to new users especially.
I'm realllllly just hoping we don't choke the "main" instances completely to death before the lemmy backend can have some developer hours dumped into it to support better per-instance horizontal scaling.
Yeah. It's gonna be a rough first couple months. App development needs to catch up. Server support needs to catch up. Many subs need to figure out how to move over their communities. I'm tempted to start making communities and just copy-pasting the side bars and pinned threads, but Im not a mod for anything, so it feels like it'd be plagiarism.
No trumpers ever made their way to lemmy that I know of, besides a small instance that closed a couple months back. That might be when GenZedong was quarantined and the tankies migrated to lemmygrad, not entirely sure.
I wouldn't expect such a sharp dropp-off at the end of it again though, even if it was temporary black-out or something, I'd expect there to be more of a trail
I've known about Lemmy and Tild.es for some time, but both just seemed so immature. I figured I'd give Lemmy a solid chance to show support for the blackout and because I'm likely to quit Reddit entirely if they don't reverse course (I may quit regardless), and I'm happy to say that this doesn't feel like a downgrade much.
There are plenty of communities for what I'm looking for, so I'm not giving up a lot switching to Lemmy. I'm going to give it a solid chance over the next week or two and do my best to contribute, and if I'm liking it still after that point, I may be able to contribute dev resources (maybe I'll help out with a mobile app or something).
Whilst I’m somewhat sad to be here (Reddit has eaten up a significant portion of my time over the past 10+ years), I’m happy to be learning new things and exploring a new way of doing things.
I agree with the scalability issues. Instance owners are going to run up against whatever they can afford to pay. If a given instance grows to a point where the hardware required to run it would be too expensive, then the admin has a choice: Donations, payment, and/or sponsorship.
All have their pros and cons.
Assuming "Lemmy" becomes popular (there's a ton of barriers preventing this so far). there's inevitably going to be consolidation between whoever can afford to support the largest instances.
Also, I think the most confusing part about the whole "fediverse" is that each instance is the entire "platform" of whatever it's trying to be.
This IMO creates massive fragmentation and a ton of confusion. Which one is the "authoritative" instance? Oh there's none? Oh...well...Hmm.
I'm sort of starting to think of it like this:
Reddit (or whatever fediverse whatever) is like a single shopping mall and the stores are subreddits. Each store needs a unique name.
Lemmy is like a bunch of shopping malls with each shopping mall having its own set of stores.
Stores within a single shopping mall must have a unique name, but can use the same name as a store in another mall. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find two Foot Lockers in the same mall, but you're likely to find them in pretty much every mall you visit in the USA at least.
That user does have a point. The higher a barrier to entry the less people you are going to get.
Though there is something to be said for the selection of people that get filtered out. While I appreciate large communities because of the variety of view points available, the quality increasing due to a barrier of entry has advantages too.
As a side note, thanks for writing up guides for people!
The higher a barrier to entry the less people you are going to get.
And that's ok. MOST redditors are lurkers who don't interact with the platform and/or bot accounts. Nothing good will come to this platform if these accounts move over.
Give the platform 2 minutes to figure out how it works and all is ok. This on its own is a great screening process.
Not that the platform is hard. It's just different.
I am not in favour of having more bots in exchange of an easier sign up. It's never nice to see nsfl pictures suddenly being posted in a comment section, stuff that you can't unsee.
Je trouve ça incroyable, je me suis inscrit ya à peine une semaine et les postes avaient genre 50-100 upvote max et la ça touche les 800. Puis c'est sympa de voir d'avantage de contenu.
Hey everyone, let's not be quick to downvote just because it's not in English today. As proud Lemmy users, let's seize this opportunity to showcase our incredible diversity. Let's demonstrate to the world just how unique and amazing we can be. Together.
Je comprend clairement ce que tu veux dire, même si je suis perso un peu perdu parce que en catégorie "Hot" ou "Active" j'ai toujours les mêmes premiers post qui reste pendant 2 jours entier et que c'est un peu frustrant quand je l'ai déjà bien vu
I find the hot/active categories pretty confusing too. It would be nice to be able to show subbed communities either across the top of the page or on a sidebar like old Reddit.
I just hope that it will be more distributed than Matrix and not everyone registers on lemmy.ml (matrix.org in case of matrix) so the decentralization works for real here instead of 90% (exaggerating, don't know the numbers) of the user base sitting on one instance :)
with how much .ml is struggling to handle the load I would've expected even more to pick different instances, though the situation seems better than how mastodon.social was during the twitter migration
the upcoming centralization issue sounds like it'll be the communities themselves all being hosted on .ml, not accounts. can't want to see how that one is gonna play out
Yeah this is my concern with lemmy overall. Like if a server shutsdown, as far as my understanding goes, the communities and accounts go with it. Like yeah decentralized is great for democracy purposes but the hard line separation makes it a hard ask on time investment. And I'm sure it's more likely to happen to larger instances than smaller since cost will be the hugest factor. I'm sure remaking your account isn't a big deal but we've seen with Reddit a sub/community can be irreplaceable at times.
The first time a handful of large subs are lost on Lemmy I'm sure it'll have great affect on how the community views Lemmy.
This is probably a big ask from users but I wonder if something can be implemented into the protocol to create a bandwidth pool of sorts to host the various instances. Something similar to how Siacoin operated. If I recall correctly, users could install software on their computers that encrypted a chosen percentage of their drive, then used their internet connection to tie it into a decentralized file hosting network. (and rewarding the user with their currency - though that's not my focus here)
Files uploaded to the hosting platform would have redundancies created and uploaded to multiple of these hosting nodes to ensure reliable availability.
It'd be interesting to have a similar concept for the fediverse so we don't have issues like a loss of users and content if an instance goes down.
Given the timeouts and load issues I've had on lemmy.ml today... Mildly concerned.
I'm part of the problem though, and really hopeful it goes well! Seems like the solution to the Giant Network problem we see at Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc
I'm not new to Lemmy, I've hung around here on and off a couple times since the start of the year. My biggest complaint about it for a long time was that many of the subs I was interested in were just dead or didnt exist on lemmy. With the new influx of users, I imagine that's going to change, even if it does take a couple more years.
You know, it just occured to me yesterday that there might be a federated version of reddit. Looked it up and I was pleasantly surprised to see it's actually picking up a lot of users. Now if we could see a mobile app as polished as rif is fun, I'll be extremely happy. Move over reddit, let's go lemmy!
Just wondering though, how scalable is lemmy? What kind of hardware/connection would you need to host your own instance?
There's a few posts around about server setups that people are running. The major constraint seems to be storage. Lemmurs uploading gigs of data can get tricky to manage pretty quickly.
It'd be slow, though, like a lot of the darknet protocols, and would mean that whether or not your post is visible depends on which users you're connected to. I think the usability problems would likely rule it out.
P2P works great for filesharing because you're reading small numbers of large things, so if each thing takes a minute or two to start, that's fine. It would suck for reading the memes community on a social network cos you need to read many small things, and if they don't load quickly the experience is ruined.
You're on Lemmy.ml which has been repeatedly overwhelmed by the "hug of death" from Reddit. I'm on Lemmy.World which is also overwhelmed sometimes, but the host just doubled the server power. I think Lemmy.ml is at the maximum power and is looking to migrate to a more powerful server.
I'm personally signed up here and on a couple others as alts, it's nice because I've seen each (lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, and beehaw.org) go down with the hug of death.
I think probably a pluggable storage backend is the best move. For example, any cloud hosted instance could use a native document storage format such as dynamodb, which is often quite cheap or free for small use-cases.
Not necessarily a pain, you just have to model the data very differently in something like DynamoDB. Those views are secondary indexes.
Search, though, you're right. You'd be running ElasticSearch along side it and the cost and complexity starts to go up. Or just abandon having a functional search entirely, like Reddit did...
Ja, but you need an index for each thread, some kind of time partitioned thread index for each community, same for all.
Then you need to query all comments or posts by user, so that's another index, then you need some way of querying for hot, or controversial or what have you.
It's doable, but fiddly. Tempted to have a go though!
I just mentioned Dynamo as an idea without thinking about it too much.
Dynamo works well for one and two dimensional data structures but for more complex things you probably want a regular database. I expect it could be done efficiently but not at a good cost and without tons of technical difficulty.
Man, I been waiting for this for years. I thought with the way Mastodon grew it'd eventually grow into a wider growth among the fediverse but it seems to happen in fits and starts. Glad to see people are federating too and not all dumping into just the mainline instance.
Next I'd like to see major names move off YouTube and Twitch onto decentralized platforms but that's gonna take much more to get there, unfortunately.
You're right, storage requirements would be massive as well! On the one hand, a big corporation like Google would have the advantage of big datacentres, but community hosting seems to be able to seed a huge amount of data too. This one will be interesting to watch.
Yup, I also got suspended for a week for "harassing" someone for asking them for proof because they were being a bigot. She realized she couldn't defend it and reported one of my comments, so another bigoted sub mod banned me and deleted all my comments. All of her nasty comments stayed up, though. Isn't Reddit great?
Don't blame the tool for the behavior of its user. You should try Stackoverflow. That place is toxically moderated...no, moderated isn't the right word. Gatekept. Ask one poorly worded question because you're trying to work something out and not sure how to phrase the question? Fucking amateur, you're banned! I moved to reddit to get away from the SO culture and I'm hopeful lemmy can fill that niche.
...and I too love challenging bigots. "Why" is a question they don't like hearing.
Hi everyone, I'm new to Lemmy! I had difficulties signing up yesterday but finally got it working tonight. I want to support 3rd party reddit app developers and reddit mods. I won't be revisiting reddit during the blackout. So far I'm really liking Lemmy so it's a strong possibility that Lemmy may replace Reddit for me :)
I honestly can't say about the influx. Since I'm part of it.
But man....
This does feel like home.
I was already loving Mastodon.
Honestly, the real question is:
What took us soo long....
I was lurking on Lemmy for a long time now read only mode, not signed up, but never had the urge to actually making an account.
I try not to have so many feeds where I'm active at once, to try and better manage the time I spend on this feeds.
Twitter and Reddit were the ones I engaged the most
Twitter became Mastodon and Reddit became Lemmy on that matter, so that I can focus on being active and helpful whenever possible.
So, what took me so long...?
Definitely something I will be asking myself for a while, since so far the experience here have something that reddit just don't. The quality over quantity aspect.
Finally...
Thanks for having me here, I hope I can contribute the best I can to maintain Lemmy awesome as it is. I don't post or reply like a madman, but I like to participate on constructive discussion every now and then.
"Inertia is a property of matter" -Bill Nye the Science guy
What I mean by that is that it takes a force to move a large mass. People behave in much the same way. It takes a push to get people to move in large numbers from one place to another. I personally have been philosophically very pro-fediverse ever since I heard about it, but I was waiting for it to reach a critical mass before really switching over.
That, and for Lemmy specifically, its history of being a tankie forum. Without the Reddit refugee migration, if you joined Lemmy as a single user, you would be alone among communists and eventually get bullied into leaving. Already in 2020-2021, Fediverse users knew about Lemmy, but they avoided promoting it because of its userbase. This Reddit situation provided the push to get many normal users over to Lemmy at once to drown out the communist users.
That's a good point. Personally I like when there's a diversity of political opinions that are able to have reasonable discourse. My favourite political subreddit for a while has been /r/stupidpol. It has lots of Marxists, but lots of internal variety in terms of viewpoints, and respectful debate has always been allowed there while also maintaining a lighter atmosphere.
Hey man, I've felt mostly the same than you migrating to lemmy. A while ago I tried mastodon but it really didn't click with me, how do you do to find people to follow and so? I was only getting recommended the same like 10 guys. I like gaming and programming if it helps.
For Mastodon?
I use it the same as my Twitter, mainly googling mastodon lists of know profiles there, the I copy/paste in the search and follow them.
On Lemmy it's easier, just do a search for the communities you'd like to join, for example:
Gaming at beehaw.org is amazing. Subscribe to that if you didn't already.
Sometimes understanding how to cross instances can still be a bit cumbersome though.
There is pretty cool support for relative links though! As long as your instance knows of a community, they'll work.
And if your instance doesn't know a certain instance exists, you just have to paste the url into your search bar to get it working: https://beehaw.org/c/gaming
For me definitely laziness.
It makes me hopeful for the future. Enthusiasts priming the pump for people embracing a more sustainable and less exploitative business model to organize the Internet. Instead of putting all the information on a big centralized locked down platform we share the load and costs between instances.
I love what is happening now, it is pretty much the biggest display of resistance against big tech I've ever seen in my life by a long shot. I've seen most of the internet gradually decay to a shadow of its former self so this is a return to form and a switch to a better model in the long run.
People are finally adopting the Fediverse and if the adoption rates keep up we might start going mainstream with all the advantages and disadvantages, but it will be alright since Lemmy is both federated and FLOSS. Lemmy is a Rust-based, AGPLv3 platform and that means it will be protected against corruption in the foreseable future, I hope.
EDIT: Over 30% of Reddit already went dark!
It’s close to 50 % now. You can watch the realtime stream here - https://reddark.untone.uk/
Is it of all Reddit or just of the subs listed as participating?
Subs listed I believe
That's what I thought too
That tracker only covers the ones that go private though! There's a bunch that are going restricted so they can automate posts that will still show in r/all and other feeds. That way reddit's algorithm doesn't just pull up other subs and effectively hide that a protest is occurring.
Except that you could totally tell since many of the same subs kept populating over and over. Lemmy is more active and diverse at the moment, which is super weird in its own right, but I love it!
Anyone know how many subs are on Reddit in total? I’m wondering what total percent of the site is going dark.
the reddark stream seems to show most of the important ones going dark
I went from Digg to Reddit and now I'm looking for a new home. I'm really liking what I'm seeing here!
Came here looking for a new home too!
Agreed, it feels really similar to Reddit but in better :)
As one of the new users, I'm broadly in favour
I also approve of me joining Lemmy.
The approval rating has never been higher!
Yep same :)
As someone who is also new, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!
I just joined Lemmy because someone on reddit mentioned in it a comment on a thread regarding the blackout. It's kind of cool getting into a community while it's still relatively small. I'm excited to see how things grow.
I hopped over here permanently tonight. Uninstalled boost on my phone, and I made Lemmy.ml my homepage. Reddit is just too depressing right now to keep it as my default.
When on a Lemmy site on mobile, in Firefox you can go to the three-dots menu and select "install". You get a shortcut on your phone that will take you to an app like version of Lemmy.
Im using the Jerboa, official Lemmy mobile app on Android
Is Jeroba official? I thought it was third-party
I think it's supposed to feel that way, since it's not on the official LemmyNet github org, and located on one of the developers' accounts instead afaik
https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa
AFAIK you are correct. I don't think lemmy has an official app and the only 3rd party app that exists of any substance is jerboa so I suppose right now it is kind of the official Android app while mlem is the iOS counterpart. But only because there's nothing else atm
It really seems like the front page is just a list of politicians, companies, and people doing terrible things.
I’m a reddit refugee, Apollo was my most loved and most used app for years. I was really disappointed about this situation, but after checking out Lemmy, I’m starting to feel really excited about this. I like what I see so far and I think there is a lot of potential, and it is kind of fun to be here now while communities are still smaller. Onwards an upwards! I’m also checking out the beta for the iOS app Mlem, more work to be done but also good potential here. I’ve also been doing iOS dev work for about a decade so maybe I’ll see if I can help contribute to that project in some way.
I'm starting to be grateful to Reddit for giving me the nudge that I needed to explore the fediverse. I did have a look at Mastodon a while back (and I may have even joined an instance there, I'm not sure!) but was overwhelmed by not understanding it. I think being part of an exodus where there is lots of advice and support being given specifically for us is really helpful in making me feel like this is somewhere I'll stay.
Welcome! Not an iOS user, but kinda frustrated with reddit either way.
same this is me too
how can i install the mlem app? i didn't find it in the app store :/
edit: found it --> testdrive with invite link
Install Test Flight, then mlem
Hope people have patience and stick with it. I have no interest in going back to reddit.
12 years Reddit refugee here:
So far the concept is VERY promising but it still does all feel a bit wonky. Signing up was a headache and took me hours, sign in still sometimes work sometimes not.. A huge of development will be required to get lemmy where it needs to be to really compete with Reddit, but so far, I'm very hopeful and happy!
It's a bit wonky but so was reddit. I expect it to improve quickly with it's sudden interest.
At least for me downloading their app jeroba makes the experience much nicer. Haven't had the issues I had on the website though it's a bit taxed because of the influx of users. Expected.
Is Jerboa android only? Didn’t see in the app store
Yes, there's an apple one but not sure if it's official. Mlem or something.
Yeah, android only. For iOS, there's Mlem.
Afaik Mlem is iphone's lemmy client
I'll give that a try, I need an app
It is also very hard to subscribe to other server's community (or subreddit equivalent).
E.g.: i had account from beehaw, if i want to subscribe a channel from lemmy.world i need to see the list of community from lemmy.world comminity list, but I cannot subscribe from there because i dont have lemmy.worlda account. So i need to back to beehaw and search it again in community search bar.
In jerboa android, I didnt even see a way to search new community
Would be nice if there is a way to subscribe other server easily
I went through https://browse.feddit.de and subscribed to a bunch of communities that matched what I had on Reddit.
Yeah, just found that out the hard way myself. I got to lemmy.world and suddenly was no longer logged in etc... That is something that def needs improvement.
Agreed. There's a similar issue on Mastodon that's been confusing people for years and still hasn't been addressed, let's hope Lemmy prioritizes it a bit more!
In Jerboa, there is an icon on the bottom that takes you to the search function. I've been able to "join" communities from other instances using it
From the community page https://beehaw.org/communities you can click all, and search for communities everywhere. Except for instances beehaw blocks.
Right? I can't wait to see how it improves as time on. I didn't have any real problems with joining on my end, though. When you signed up, was it the approval process on your instance, or just confusing? If it was the approval process, that's probably specific to lemmy.ca.
I first tried signing up on lemmy.ml, that was impossible. Various hours of trying just got me the "click the signup button and it starts rotating and... nothing"
Then I went to lemmy.ca, there signup worked, but sign in at times gives the same "button rotating" thing and then nothing. Try again, and it works.
Its a minor issue, but a very visible one that I would say should be fixed ASAP because its the first thing new people see and you don't want the first experience to be tiresome.
The infinitely rotating button happens if their email settings are invalid- just discovered that on my instance. I have mine set to open but require email validation and everything seems to happen instantly, but if they require admin verification it may be bugging out and not telling you.
It's because there is some approval process involved I think to avoid bot/troll accounts. I join lemmy.ca cause I live in Canada. :D
That's fine that they have an approval process, but then the user interaction should be different. IT should immediately say that my request is under review and they'll get back to me asap or something, instead of a "this process is frozen" indication
I just moved to a different instance and logged in there, browsing ml subs.
May I ask why signing up took hours? I didn't even need to confirm anything via email, so I took me like 10 seconds.
I used sh.itjust.works though, I think it's meant to, well, just work. Maybe the process on other instances is more complicated?
Because I tried signing up on lemmy.ml which kept freezing, so I kept trying for hours until I had to move to lemmy.ca
Ah yeah, lemmy.ml is already overloaded, they've requested no new sign-ups for now since they can't handle the load. I recommend sh.itjust.works
Think of it like moving to a new house rather than picking up your house and moving it to a new neighborhood. The excitement comes from the differences even if you miss the other place.
I felt the same at first too. The longer sign-up issue makes joining a pain, but I think it's worth it.
Part of what I'm coming to love about the lemmy side of things is how free of filler and bots it is. By making a tiny barrier to entry, that's going to prevent that kind of thing to a degree.
Tried Lemmy a couple months ago and tbh it felt dead, love this new influx just hope new communities keep popping up
I'm not one of the new users but I'm happy because the Lemmyverse feels much more alive now compared to a year ago. ☺️
I'm a new user but I'd love to see this place explode in popularity!
I am also part of the influx, but I'm worried that this is going to be a short lived thing and people are going to go back to reddit.
Realistically, there is no reddit to go back to. After the company goes public, Reddit as we knew it, will cease to exist.
The shareholders will want to be make maximum profit. This means that ads are going to be everywhere. They are going to outsource hosting services to horrible companies, in order to cut down hosting costs like video hosting and image hosting. Features that existed in 3rd party apps are going to be paid features in the official app/webapp, etc.
Reddit is gone. It's lost. It will not be there as you knew it to go back to. It's now a case of where to next and for the time being, lemmy and feddiverse looks the best.
I think the concept of "enshittification" will become more apparent to more users. Younger people, who are more technically literate, and have seen social media rise and fall I think will be more willing to adopt platforms like Lemmy. Reddit was a "place for weirdos" for a long time until the general public noticed it and began to post comments and posts to YouTube/Instagram/Twitter. Lemmy just needs time.
One thing I always like to say to people, is "The internet was cooler when your parents didn't understand how it worked." I think the concept of Lemmy appeals to and will start to appeal to a lot of people soon.
sidenote, i really love that "enshittification" has more or less become the proper term for this
Yeah Cory Doctorow really nailed it with that article.
I look forward to the announcement by Merriam-Webster.
Same. That one article changed the lexicon for a lot of people.
AKA The profit motive
Jokes on you because middle-aged people are the children of the people who built the internet.
Source: I am middle-aged and also 25 years younger than Tim Berners-Lee
All that may be true but that doesn't mean there's enough people who are motivated enough to put effort into a reddit alternative -- all the reddit design updates suck for the informed user but the whole point of the updates is to keep the much, much larger casual audience hooked, and it's yet to be seen if a reddit alternative is viable today without the casual audience. Hopefully there's some good signs over the next few days when the blackout gets rolling
if we pull a critical mass of those that create and consume quality content, organic effects begin to compete with entrenchment. if not, I am ok-ish with that too. if I have to exepriece the world burning down around me, I would prefer to do so in better company than reddit.
It's very unlikely that Lemmy will ever be as big as Reddit, but this influx might have it reach a tipping point where it can start to grow users organically.
Indeed, for this kind of service users attract users. I've been checking in on Lemmy periodically for years and the content just wasn't there (for me). But now, with plenty more users, I'm seeing a lot more value in spending more time here.
Yep same here, I'm hoping this is the watershed moment for Lemmy and I can start spending more on here and eventually stop using reddit (or be forced to when they take away my third party app). I don't generally create much content, but like participating in the community via comments, so it's hard to be a force for change when nothing is getting posted and no one is commenting.
Unlikely. Why do you say that? Wasn't reddit once small?
I like it, but I am part of the massive influx of users so I am admittedly biased.
Me too... But it's great TBH!
I think honestly Lemmy just needs more mobile clients. Jerboa is ok, but third party clients are needed here like they are/were with reddit
It'd be nice if Sync, RiF and others supported Lemmy.
I'd pay good money for "Relay for Lemmy", assuming that the momentum sticks.
Relay for Reddit turns into Leray for Lemmy....
Lmao, I'm just being nuts.
RiF is Fun->Lemmy is Funseems like an easy transitionGive it a few months. More apps will show up.
I wonder how hard it would be to convert some of the existing apps to use Lemmy. I guess the federated aspect makes it more complex and will require more development than just switching the API, but the UI could stay similar.
what I wouldn't do for Apollo for lemmy
I know exactly how much I’d pay, and it’s a large amount, for a subscription even. You don’t know how good you have it till it’s gone.
I would love for the federated model to become a gold standard for how successful platforms ought to be run.
An idea so old is new again. The Internet and it's early services (Usenet, email, IRC, etc.) we're all designed from the start to be decentralized. After 20+ years of people consolidating into centrally-controlled mega platforms, I'm happy to see things coming full circle.
Agreed, platforms should compete by providing better UX and features, not by abusing network effects and walling off themselves to hold communities and accounts hostage. In a way the fediverse provides a common carrier that is neutral to the users and platforms connected to it, which enables competition in the same way that guaranteeing equal access to physical internet infrastructure to new ISPs is essential to preventing ISP monopolies.
I've been hoping for a shift to decentralized social platforms for ages, so I really hope that's the direction things are heading.
As cool as this decentralized approach to social platforms is, I have a hard time really seeing it going mainstream. There's too many barriers to entry (both physical and conceptual) for the average user
I think all new technology is like that. Ultimately I think what is needed is a single mobile app that aggregates fediverse services and makes it stupid simple on the UX/UI. Advanced users can still migrate to other servers and have more control/freedom, and less savvy people don't even knoww hat is happening.
the reddit blackout is for like two days i expect that 90% of them will stick to the two days and business as usual afterwards. their bottom line is to continue running mods of their communities, even if they acknowledge that was is going on with reddit is bad. they shouldnt have announced a scheduled, limited blackout.
i expect some fringe communities to come here and stay but it will always be business as usual on reddit
therefore Lemmy needs to have a reason for people to stick around, communities offering something that isnt otherwise available, even just a refreshing change of community culture
Honestly it'll probably be closer to 99.999% of users will stick around Reddit. The largest Lemmy instance is smaller than the smallest subreddit I follow and I suspect that's probably the case for most people.
Here's what will happen... Reddit blackout starts, people come to Lemmy, 8 out of 10 are confused by the way things work and bail instantly. 2 out of 10 might stick around, try to sign up, but everyone hammers the top 3-4 instances and they have a bad first impression. A few days later everyone is back at Reddit and Lemmy is right back where it was a month ago.
I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt I will be.
I think that there will be people who remain on Lemmy permanently. This group will remain small, and insignificant. But hopefully there will be enough people to prop the instances up with content. At which point Lemmy will begin to grow slowly; this slow growth imo is the most important. But yeah alot of people will go back to Reddit and forget all about Lemmy. And that's ok.
I see you've been talking to my ex
this is the most redditish comment I've seen so far.
remains to be seen if that's a good thing or not, but I did chuckle over the familiar joke
I was about to say the exact same thing! I checked and sure enough that commenter joined in the last few hours.
I've purged my account.. and passed the Rubicon. I'm on Lemmy now or just reading news sites.
You're exaggerating, I can definitely see how Twitter users changed the general atmosphere of the Fediverse, at least on the instances that I have used in the past. As for Reddit, I think it will be something similar to that, not everyone is going to migrate but Lemmy is going to be significantly bigger, better and THE place to go if you want to ditch Reddit. Also, it's not like having a big portion here of social media audience is going to do a lot of good. I have serious doubts about people being able to give value to the community if they can't even figure out how to register on an instance other than the main one
Yeah Reddit's core users are pretty technical. At least the ones who joined before the big popularity boom in the last 5 years. The old school redditors will probably end up on lemmy.
lemmy feels more like reddit once did than reddit does now.
Was originally introduced to reddit by a calculus professor who set up a sub for the class to collaborate - it was a different time.
Definitely.
You're talking about ~70% of reddit and you're probably right. Let's see. If lemmy gets an app with a better UI, it's going to be that way for sure. An embeddes image and video viewer is missing, for example
As a reddit refugee the image and video viewer has been the only speedbump for me. That is other than not being hooked up to a firehose of content, but i feel that will come in time.
It has been fixed in the last build
Regardig videos it doesn't really matter cause 90% of the time you have to open the video source with the browser or another app anyway. But re. images, since lemmy can view them in the post, why it doesnt just allow to put them full screen? I should look at the code
yep. it's about quality, not quantity - we'll reach critical mass easily enough, and that's all that matters for the short term.
You still need a minimum of people for things to work. And a lot of subreddit equivalent are still completely empty.
of course. but Lemmy really does have potential - it's a more accessible platform than Mastodon and reddit users are more aligned with the strategy of decentralizing via the fediverse. this fits.
we gotta start somewhere.
https://youtu.be/Zn06juaCNSA
I personally don't understand wanting to go back... reddit is so unpleasant as it is. All that made it tolerable was 3rd party. I'd rather go back to imgur than reddit.
As (another) reddit refugee, in order to compete with reddit, Lemmy needs to invest in its mobile apps, and make other servers easier to access.
Well unlike reddit the official app is great for lemmy.
There’s an official app?
I only know of Jerboa (for Android), but I don't think that's an "official" app
There’s a git repo for something called remmel(?) which I think is an iPhone client. But without someone publishing it to the App Store, no one will use it.
There is an app in the pilot thing called mlem. It's the ios client for lemmy
undefined> remmel
That hasn't been touched in 4 months
It kinda is. It's made by one of the devs
One of the devs of the protocol? (forgot what its name was)
I use jeroba but it's android. There's also lemmur but it won't load for me on that and jeroba is the"official"one.
I tried lemmur on fdroid but I think it's dead. Hasn't received updates in months and will not load anything.
[closest thing to] the official app
You mean the Android app? Unfortunately I can’t even login with Mlem on iOS.
mlem is under heavy development. Chances are the issue you encountered has been fixed in an update
I'm finding the mobile experience in the browser pretty reasonable.
Agreed. Website needs some improvement as well
I think the Redditors joining Lemmy will certainly change the culture, both for the better and for the worse. Comments got pretty toxic on Reddit while I feel like the toxic comments on Lemmy were rare.
BUT, that could be a sample size thing. I'm curious to see if the ratio of toxic comments per active user would have been the same.
More people = more problems I am certain but this is a social network and without people it will fail. We must all make an effort to be the change that we want to see in the world.
I don't foresee a problem in the immediate future aside from higher server load, but in terms of culture, only people who believe in a new social network will be willing to join.
In 5 years however when this is a great place to be, a large number of people will join who don't respect the legacy. The departure from Digg to Reddit felt like this too, I hope that the federation aspect will ensure this is longer lived.
remember... federation is your friend. federation gives you the freedeom to change house (instance) and/or look for better communities on any other federated instance from your own instance.
Are you actually able to migrate accounts between instances?
currently, no - but it is on the roadmap. moving house atm means creating a new account on another instance.
not yet on Lemmy, although you can on Mastodon, so it's doable.
Unfortunately Mastodon does not migrate your toots so... it's pretty useless.
The most important thing, your history, is not being moved. It's nice that subscribers get migrated but that's like 20% of the job.
well, yeah, I wouldn't disagree but it's not like they aren't trying. I think with Mastodon the followers are a lot more important than the toots though. I would agree that posting history here is probably a bigger deal.
I haven't looked at the back end to understand what might be involved, but just configuring the instance has given me an appreciation for the complexities and challenges involved in getting a federated app running at scale.
I am excited by the prospect of new communities and not excited fo reddit groupthink
Yeah, the curse of success. Everyone seems to be hoping for the swift death of Reddit but I dunno. It getting shittier but still existing might be the best outcome.
It's not going anywhere. I'm sure like 90% of people there don't care at all what is happening. Probably more than 90, considering that about 5% used third party apps.
If I can't use a 3rd party app, I'm done. Their own UX is terrible.
As a new person… no commit. Other than I feel obligated to not lurk after reading the plea to not lurk from other posr.
welcome! seriously... welcome!
A little bit worried. I am a recent migrator myself so this may a bit hypocritical, but I feel a lot of people will want to "redditize" here, just like how people tried with mastodon a couple months ago or (in a larger level), how people want Linux to become "another Windows".
These are not replicas, Lemmy doesn't work like Reddit, neither does it try to be, and that is by design, not a flaw. Things work differently, over and under the rug, and I think users should be entitled to doing some small effort to readjusting and have an open mind.
I'm all for UI/UX improvements, like most community projects, the front design part is more of an afterthought, and in that matter Lemmy has a lot to improve, but always keeping in mind what it is aiming to be.
For example, I am thinking in working on some simple browser extension to rearrange the UI in a way similar to Reddit's (nothing fancy, the upvote/downvote and collapse buttons locations, simple things). Maybe even some redirecting magic so if you open a link to another instance's community, it instead opens it in your current one, so you can still interact without having to go to your instance and search this one.
If anything, as a FOSS and federated content advocate, I wish this project nothing but the best so that one day we can escape the clutches of greedy companies.
Does it not? I'm not feeling much difference from an end user POV
Well it's a link aggregator and forum, just like reddit, but I feel like lemmy needs time for its own culture to coalesce - rather than expecting reddit culture to be imported or just exist here.
I hope it does coalesce into something good. I was so tired of the toxicity on Reddit from both regular users and the power-tripping mods. Yuck.
Yeah, I think good / bad would be a generalisation. If lemmy grows then there will be good bits and bad bits. The difference of course is that anyone can spin up their own instance, so there's much more likelihood that some instances will be predominantly well run and enjoyable to be a part of.
The good thing is that if an instance gets too toxic the users that don't like that can just jump to another one. The ideal would be to move your already existing account to the new instance but I don't how difficult or how much that would take to implement
Honestly its for the best, redditors would be rude af and incel-like as well. It was annoying to dealing with those people every time there was a talk of relationships and gender rather than thinking also approaching about those topics with empathy, respect, kindness and critically as well. I'd like to think of this as a new start where all of us can learn from the mistakes that were made in Reddit and make this a better place for everyone.
I was thinking that too. Reddit is full of gasligjting and thinly veiled racism/sexism and bigotry... hundreds of comments piling on someone based on a one sided story or a video often ending in doxxing and harrassment.
why not contribute directly to the project, given it's open source nature rather than a browser extension? I'm also thinking about contributing some stuff, I think a lot of the federated part right now is really confusing and obtuse to new users especially.
As a new user, yes I'm a little confused on the federated part. I'm sure others are too
I have no idea what it means in context or in the broader scheme.
ie. you don't have to sign up to multiple instances, and finding and joining other instances from the one you joined
I am one of those influx.
I'm realllllly just hoping we don't choke the "main" instances completely to death before the lemmy backend can have some developer hours dumped into it to support better per-instance horizontal scaling.
Yeah. It's gonna be a rough first couple months. App development needs to catch up. Server support needs to catch up. Many subs need to figure out how to move over their communities. I'm tempted to start making communities and just copy-pasting the side bars and pinned threads, but Im not a mod for anything, so it feels like it'd be plagiarism.
It desperately needs lower friction remote community subscribing and a user migration workflow between instances.
Yeah, currently I too frequently end up viewing communities from outside the context of my login, it's a pain that I hope gets remediated soon
What's with that blip of increased activity at around July 2022?
I forgot what happened exactly on July 2022 (US politics). Could they be Trumpers looking for a new home? Yes, it was repulsive to type that.
No trumpers ever made their way to lemmy that I know of, besides a small instance that closed a couple months back. That might be when GenZedong was quarantined and the tankies migrated to lemmygrad, not entirely sure.
I would guess some instance got federated and defederated again. But don't take my word for it - just a guess.
Best guess… Maybe the last time Reddit pissed off their users?
I wouldn't expect such a sharp dropp-off at the end of it again though, even if it was temporary black-out or something, I'd expect there to be more of a trail
When were you when when Reddit die
I was sat at home play Minecraft when Chris ring
'API is did'
'no'
And you?
As part of that massive influx, I'm excited!
I've known about Lemmy and Tild.es for some time, but both just seemed so immature. I figured I'd give Lemmy a solid chance to show support for the blackout and because I'm likely to quit Reddit entirely if they don't reverse course (I may quit regardless), and I'm happy to say that this doesn't feel like a downgrade much.
There are plenty of communities for what I'm looking for, so I'm not giving up a lot switching to Lemmy. I'm going to give it a solid chance over the next week or two and do my best to contribute, and if I'm liking it still after that point, I may be able to contribute dev resources (maybe I'll help out with a mobile app or something).
Anyway, I'm excited to be part of this community!
Whilst I’m somewhat sad to be here (Reddit has eaten up a significant portion of my time over the past 10+ years), I’m happy to be learning new things and exploring a new way of doing things.
I honestly thought this would reduce my screen time as Reddit is on the top of the list. But here I am at Lemmy lol.
I hope that lemmy makes it but I don't think that it will be easy because:
I agree with the scalability issues. Instance owners are going to run up against whatever they can afford to pay. If a given instance grows to a point where the hardware required to run it would be too expensive, then the admin has a choice: Donations, payment, and/or sponsorship.
All have their pros and cons.
Assuming "Lemmy" becomes popular (there's a ton of barriers preventing this so far). there's inevitably going to be consolidation between whoever can afford to support the largest instances.
Also, I think the most confusing part about the whole "fediverse" is that each instance is the entire "platform" of whatever it's trying to be.
This IMO creates massive fragmentation and a ton of confusion. Which one is the "authoritative" instance? Oh there's none? Oh...well...Hmm.
I'm sort of starting to think of it like this:
Reddit (or whatever fediverse whatever) is like a single shopping mall and the stores are subreddits. Each store needs a unique name.
Lemmy is like a bunch of shopping malls with each shopping mall having its own set of stores.
Stores within a single shopping mall must have a unique name, but can use the same name as a store in another mall. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find two Foot Lockers in the same mall, but you're likely to find them in pretty much every mall you visit in the USA at least.
That's a good analogy.
Pretty charts are from here https://the-federation.info/platform/73
God, site is so SLOW. They need to bring new servers, maybe charge extra for each api call? IDK
That guy Christian probably developed some of the code. I heard from spez that's his code is super inefficient.
This spez guy sounds trustworthy. He should do an AMA to answer questions about the code.
Perhaps we should put him in charge
What caused that spike around October 2022?
Maybe people who moved from twitter to mastadon and learned more about federation
Man, this reddit BS is getting to me. First thing I thought of when I read your comment was, "what happened in reddit last October?" 😐
I'm happy for users to join the federated alternative!
Every time I hear ding, I start laughing. 😁
Guys, what are you on about.
It's very clear that Lemmy is dead on arrival.
Redditors told me so.
Don't you see it?
/s
That person is saying it like it's a bad thing that signing up isn't brain-dead.
That user does have a point. The higher a barrier to entry the less people you are going to get.
Though there is something to be said for the selection of people that get filtered out. While I appreciate large communities because of the variety of view points available, the quality increasing due to a barrier of entry has advantages too.
As a side note, thanks for writing up guides for people!
And that's ok. MOST redditors are lurkers who don't interact with the platform and/or bot accounts. Nothing good will come to this platform if these accounts move over.
Give the platform 2 minutes to figure out how it works and all is ok. This on its own is a great screening process.
Not that the platform is hard. It's just different.
I'm also in favour of a higher human-to-bot ratio, which a small hurdle should help with.
I am not in favour of having more bots in exchange of an easier sign up. It's never nice to see nsfl pictures suddenly being posted in a comment section, stuff that you can't unsee.
I'm happy about it, of course I might be a bit biased as I only came over yesterday.
This place is super nice and chill
I'm really digging Beehaw their lqbtq+ space is super welcoming
As a newbie, I hope the software can catch up to the needs quickly.
Je trouve ça incroyable, je me suis inscrit ya à peine une semaine et les postes avaient genre 50-100 upvote max et la ça touche les 800. Puis c'est sympa de voir d'avantage de contenu.
Hey everyone, let's not be quick to downvote just because it's not in English today. As proud Lemmy users, let's seize this opportunity to showcase our incredible diversity. Let's demonstrate to the world just how unique and amazing we can be. Together.
Je comprend clairement ce que tu veux dire, même si je suis perso un peu perdu parce que en catégorie "Hot" ou "Active" j'ai toujours les mêmes premiers post qui reste pendant 2 jours entier et que c'est un peu frustrant quand je l'ai déjà bien vu
I find the hot/active categories pretty confusing too. It would be nice to be able to show subbed communities either across the top of the page or on a sidebar like old Reddit.
Joey has a translate option. Would be nice for jeroba to have that too.
I just hope that it will be more distributed than Matrix and not everyone registers on lemmy.ml (matrix.org in case of matrix) so the decentralization works for real here instead of 90% (exaggerating, don't know the numbers) of the user base sitting on one instance :)
with how much .ml is struggling to handle the load I would've expected even more to pick different instances, though the situation seems better than how mastodon.social was during the twitter migration
the upcoming centralization issue sounds like it'll be the communities themselves all being hosted on .ml, not accounts. can't want to see how that one is gonna play out
they need the communities to be able to sync their posts/mod-team with other communities. That way communities aren't dependent on one site.
Yeah this is my concern with lemmy overall. Like if a server shutsdown, as far as my understanding goes, the communities and accounts go with it. Like yeah decentralized is great for democracy purposes but the hard line separation makes it a hard ask on time investment. And I'm sure it's more likely to happen to larger instances than smaller since cost will be the hugest factor. I'm sure remaking your account isn't a big deal but we've seen with Reddit a sub/community can be irreplaceable at times.
The first time a handful of large subs are lost on Lemmy I'm sure it'll have great affect on how the community views Lemmy.
Yeah definitely. There needs to be migration options between instances if federation is going to work.
This is probably a big ask from users but I wonder if something can be implemented into the protocol to create a bandwidth pool of sorts to host the various instances. Something similar to how Siacoin operated. If I recall correctly, users could install software on their computers that encrypted a chosen percentage of their drive, then used their internet connection to tie it into a decentralized file hosting network. (and rewarding the user with their currency - though that's not my focus here)
Files uploaded to the hosting platform would have redundancies created and uploaded to multiple of these hosting nodes to ensure reliable availability.
It'd be interesting to have a similar concept for the fediverse so we don't have issues like a loss of users and content if an instance goes down.
I just signed up for my local one, I see that is lemmy.ml.
That'll do for now. I will look around for alternatives once I got used to the whole federated thing more.
I’m super excited for the potential this has. Happy to be here and hoping to help build a great online community with you all!
Given the timeouts and load issues I've had on lemmy.ml today... Mildly concerned.
I'm part of the problem though, and really hopeful it goes well! Seems like the solution to the Giant Network problem we see at Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works can help support the load.
Lemmy go brrrrr
A nice website for looking for servers, platforms, and user numbers over time is: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
Also handy for getting a picture of how many lemmy servers there are and how big they are.
I joined midwest.social and that site says it's hosted in Germany. I find that funny that the USA Midwest is hosted overseas.
It was noted here that a German server was chosen due to their better data privacy laws :)
That's a smart move!
It's cool The reason why I even joined lemmy is that the administration here allow magnet links
What's a magnet link?
A magnet links is used to send data to a torrent client
I'm not new to Lemmy, I've hung around here on and off a couple times since the start of the year. My biggest complaint about it for a long time was that many of the subs I was interested in were just dead or didnt exist on lemmy. With the new influx of users, I imagine that's going to change, even if it does take a couple more years.
The future of Lemmy is looking very promising :)
what communities do you suggest and where do you want new people?
You know, it just occured to me yesterday that there might be a federated version of reddit. Looked it up and I was pleasantly surprised to see it's actually picking up a lot of users. Now if we could see a mobile app as polished as rif is fun, I'll be extremely happy. Move over reddit, let's go lemmy!
Just wondering though, how scalable is lemmy? What kind of hardware/connection would you need to host your own instance?
There's a few posts around about server setups that people are running. The major constraint seems to be storage. Lemmurs uploading gigs of data can get tricky to manage pretty quickly.
Maybe there would be a way kinda like p2p where the user is "hosting" what they share/post? Or have to over a certain amount etc.
It'd be slow, though, like a lot of the darknet protocols, and would mean that whether or not your post is visible depends on which users you're connected to. I think the usability problems would likely rule it out.
P2P works great for filesharing because you're reading small numbers of large things, so if each thing takes a minute or two to start, that's fine. It would suck for reading the memes community on a social network cos you need to read many small things, and if they don't load quickly the experience is ruined.
Could use IPFS for file hosting
I think Peertube does that!
You're on Lemmy.ml which has been repeatedly overwhelmed by the "hug of death" from Reddit. I'm on Lemmy.World which is also overwhelmed sometimes, but the host just doubled the server power. I think Lemmy.ml is at the maximum power and is looking to migrate to a more powerful server.
I'm personally signed up here and on a couple others as alts, it's nice because I've seen each (lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, and beehaw.org) go down with the hug of death.
Mlem is getting the ball rolling on an app on iOS currently in beta.
Just downloaded it today... a bit barebones at the moment, but it's a start!
Ya love to see it.
Just out of curiosity, where can I find those stats?
Here you go
Thank you!
I think we really need to address the scaling issue, one option could be to use clichhouse instead of postgres
This gives me MongoDB flashbacks. Postgres, if properly set up, should easily handle thousands of users.
Thats certainly not the right kida of storage system for a site like this.
I think probably a pluggable storage backend is the best move. For example, any cloud hosted instance could use a native document storage format such as dynamodb, which is often quite cheap or free for small use-cases.
Bit of a pain to store in Dynamo, though. You'd need to write a bunch of different views, I think.
One comment thread makes sense as a partition, but listing threads is going to be awkward, and search is basically a no-no.
Not necessarily a pain, you just have to model the data very differently in something like DynamoDB. Those views are secondary indexes.
Search, though, you're right. You'd be running ElasticSearch along side it and the cost and complexity starts to go up. Or just abandon having a functional search entirely, like Reddit did...
Ja, but you need an index for each thread, some kind of time partitioned thread index for each community, same for all.
Then you need to query all comments or posts by user, so that's another index, then you need some way of querying for hot, or controversial or what have you.
It's doable, but fiddly. Tempted to have a go though!
I just mentioned Dynamo as an idea without thinking about it too much.
Dynamo works well for one and two dimensional data structures but for more complex things you probably want a regular database. I expect it could be done efficiently but not at a good cost and without tons of technical difficulty.
Just letting you know I can see your message. This federation seems pretty cool.
I don't know of any single full documentation, but one immensely useful link someone posted is to https://browse.feddit.de/
There you can much more easily search for communities than the native search seems to allow.
EDIT - just found documentation: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/02-media.html
I've not looked through it yet, so can't comment on how good it is, but might be useful.
it's cool
Man, I been waiting for this for years. I thought with the way Mastodon grew it'd eventually grow into a wider growth among the fediverse but it seems to happen in fits and starts. Glad to see people are federating too and not all dumping into just the mainline instance.
Next I'd like to see major names move off YouTube and Twitch onto decentralized platforms but that's gonna take much more to get there, unfortunately.
Imagine a site that replaces YouTube that has both the like/dislike and ratings but also feels like the golden era of YouTube. One can only dream
YouTube is a tough one, because it actually pays content providers. Of course, I'm all for places like Peertube gaining popularity.
I think Nebula is already a step in the right direction even though it's not decentralized
Yes, it's probably one of the hardest to replace, but I was thinking that it could be hard because of hosting the content
You're right, storage requirements would be massive as well! On the one hand, a big corporation like Google would have the advantage of big datacentres, but community hosting seems to be able to seed a huge amount of data too. This one will be interesting to watch.
Joined Lemmy because of permanent suspension from the Snoosite for harassment, which I clearly didn't commit at that time.
Yup, I also got suspended for a week for "harassing" someone for asking them for proof because they were being a bigot. She realized she couldn't defend it and reported one of my comments, so another bigoted sub mod banned me and deleted all my comments. All of her nasty comments stayed up, though. Isn't Reddit great?
Don't blame the tool for the behavior of its user. You should try Stackoverflow. That place is toxically moderated...no, moderated isn't the right word. Gatekept. Ask one poorly worded question because you're trying to work something out and not sure how to phrase the question? Fucking amateur, you're banned! I moved to reddit to get away from the SO culture and I'm hopeful lemmy can fill that niche.
...and I too love challenging bigots. "Why" is a question they don't like hearing.
Hell yeah brother
Honestly this platform is welcoming & people are dignified through conversations. Also informative.
This is only the beginning and I’m glad to be a part of this journey this early one. Things should only get better from here (hopefully)
Hi everyone, I'm new to Lemmy! I had difficulties signing up yesterday but finally got it working tonight. I want to support 3rd party reddit app developers and reddit mods. I won't be revisiting reddit during the blackout. So far I'm really liking Lemmy so it's a strong possibility that Lemmy may replace Reddit for me :)
Exciting times ahead :)
Happy to be here. :)
I'm happy to have influxed all over. Its been both welcoming and chill.
Edit spelling
This is great to see!
As a new user, I’m happy the site let me in. I like it here.
Where did you find this data? I'd like to be able to check it periodically
great
Feelz good man
HOCKY STICK!