Let's be real, most of the growth of Reddit over the last 5 or so years haven't been the type of folks generating good content and discussion anyway. Even if Lemmy gets like 1% of the userbase this place is going to thrive.
A large majority of the content posted there seems to be from bot accounts. No matter what you think Reddit's active userbase is, it is heavily inflated.
Yup. I remember seeing a post of the top karma accounts on reddit and it was removed by the admins before I could finish blocking them all.
Meanwhile back in 2016 when I still bothered to participate in political subs it became painfully clear that the russian troll farms were real and that they were enflaming both sides of issues in order to manufacture outrage.
Than we saw the consolidation of power mods and retaliatory moderation/administration.
I hope every bitcoin and nft bro is left holding reddits handbags come IPO.
Regardless I'll never go back. If lemmy dies I'll get a fucking life or something lol
100%, 12 year daily reddit user - feels like I’m out of a bad relationship. I moved all my third party apps off three weeks ago and have replaced all my time with Lemmy and the Fediverse.
I didn’t realize how poorly the experience had degraded - scrolling content mindlessly, most interactions were dull and sometimes weirdly antagonistic.
Conversely, my experience on Lemmy has been interesting content with more depth, connecting with people in a warm and welcoming way. I don’t expect this to become reddit - I wouldn’t really want it to.
I am excited for a future here as the third party apps are removed last this week and we can start a new adventure together.
Even if this does become reddit, here at lemmy.world, just move to a different Instance, block lemmy.world, and boom. Problem solved.
Would not take long to do. I expect many people will do just this. We're probably going to be one of the most commonly defederated-with Instances, just due to being the largest and thus, spammiest.
Spam control really depends on the ability of the admins and moderation, as well as the quality of the mod tools. Lemmy is nowhere near the size of reddit yet for that to be a problem.
Yeah, but a lot of people really don't want quantity when it comes to content, that's the point. Some people really just want to get away from most of it.
Some people are a little elitist with it. It's got to be the good stuff, and they draw lines between good and the 99% of everything else. Kinda like how most of the restaurants in the US are shitty fast food.
I'm not arguing for it or saying it is right for them to do so. I'm saying it's inevitable. We are going to be defederated-with more than any group that isn't political extremists. If that does not appeal to you, another Instance would be wise.
Did your post show up in a lighter gray because I'd viewed your profile when that other user was asking you about your profile info and you said who knows what to believe? This weird mystery is plaguing me
As long as there are some users who value privacy-focussed, open and decentralized software, I will keep here around having healthier discussions than I never had in Reddit.
Was using RiF and reddit for 12 years. Been on lemmy for a few weeks and I don't miss reddit. Certainly not going to try to use the official reddit app. So probably not using reddit even if I wanted to in the future.
I will be. Haven't deleted my Reddit account yet. Still want to pull out some saved posts. But I've unsubscribed from everything so my home page is literally empty. It has no more value to me beyond that.
I'll be here, this place definitely has a lot more potential than Reddit does. Even though people may complain about federation this method is more stable in the long run, since individual sites can come and go and may fall victim to the same plague that Reddit is facing.
Hmmm the main question is whether it can get it's content to show up in search results - this being the main selling point of Reddit and other platforms.
Right now, if you help someone fix an issue it's pretty much walled in and unavailable.
im seeing content from both my instance and beehaw's in google's results. stands to reason every instance is in there. I expect that the software likely needs optimizations before everything is properly indexed. before reddit google simply indexed thousands of phpbb and invision boards.
Yes, getting lemmy's link high enough on google that it can even be compared to reddit's is a critical but immensely difficult battle to fight since the latter has 18 years of inertia, I guess it all comes down to a matter of pumping the OC and high quality content consistently for a very long time
i’m fairly certain that it really just depends on the google web crawlers to find and index pages. but if the posts are public that’s just a matter of time.
even with reddit, a post has a new URL so takes some time to be indexed by google or other search engines.
so maybe it’s just a matter of delivering relevant content over time so that lemmy results get preferred over others
It's annoying - I saw someone using ' (intext:"modlog" & "instances" & "docs" & "code" & "join lemmy" | intext:"powered by kbin")' which works if you put it after your search term in Google, or Whoogle.
For another engine, just appending 'lemmy' helps...
This isn't true. SEO has been optimized to find good content that engaged users. Long gone are the days of cramming together keyword lists and throwing a few meta tags to rank high. Write high quality (preferably long form) content and it will pay dividends.
Source: I've worked in digital marketing too long.
Lemmy will last because it was already around. I don't think it will die in a few weeks. Today is my first day using it and I love it. I'm sure anyone who tries it will like it, too.
Lemmy existed before this current reddit fiasco, so it will exist after
there are a critical mass of users now, and imo the userbase will continue to grow, with more and more unique content added
Android / iOS apps are out, and in development. Mod tools are coming (iirc). As fediverse becomes less technical / easier to use, it's only going to attract more people
I think it's likely that we're only seeing the first wave as well. The ones most affected by third party app shutdowns are the ones that are posting all of the content and doing the moderation. Once the apps go away, it's likely the most valuable of reddit's users do as well. I have been on reddit since like 07 I think, and once I can't use Apollo any longer my use of reddit is effectively gone. I'll still occasionally browse on desktop, but even then the only way I can tolerate the desktop version is with a bunch of add ons and old.reddit which I assume is next on the block.
We've already seen this on twitter. Now it's just an echo chamber for nazis, increasingly fewer celebs, and marketers (which, tbh it kinda always has been, it's just worse now.) Moving over to mastodon wasn't fun for a week or two, but now there is a critical mass and basically everything I got from twitter I can get from masto now. Twitter still has tons of users and dwarfs masto, but that's a lot of chaff for not a lot of wheat.
In terms of apps, some are out, but there is still nothing that comes close to Apollo especially on iOS. With the dev of Sync and I think RIF announcing Lemmy clients, that's about going to be a done deal. Quite a lot of my regular follows from twitter didn't move over until Ivory and a couple of other good clients came out, so as soon as there is a comparable set of Lemmy clients, I'd say it's pretty much done.
All that said, Reddit's already a shell of what it was even a few months ago. It's maybe not as easy to tell, but as someone who's been there forever, you can tell this is different. And I know personally, even though I used reddit like junkies used meth, I'm now checking rss again, discord for various communities, Lemmy, kbin, and even a few specific forums and so forth.
Spez running an absolute master class in how to ruin a business.
undefined> Spez running an absolute master class in how to ruin a business.
It kinda feels like watching a slow-motion car crash. Fascinating, horrific, hard to look away. It really is quite incredible how he manages to bumble his way from fuckup to fuckup... yet still has his job.
Like you say, 1st July will be interesting to see just how much of an impact closing the apps has on their userbase. I've dipped my toe back in and it feels like the discourse has gone downhill bigtime, which doesn't surprise me... users set the tone of a site, so if a large exodus of people who have some sort of belief in doing the right thing happens, the 'power users' left are not going to be the nicest of people. Some will just be too busy / numb to give a shit, but many of the ones left will be bootlickers by nature.
I think the app part is the biggest factor. I'm using Jerboa, and while it's still good and useful, it definitely has some bugs (crashing when uploading photos has been annoying). I'm still sticking with it, but I can see a more average internet user getting frustrated with that or with the somewhat weird sign-up process and learning how federation-y stuff works.
It'd be sick to have a standard "this is how you sign up" tutorial built into each app!
undefined> I can see a more average internet user getting frustrated with that or with the somewhat weird sign-up process and learning how federation-y stuff works.
Yep this is it. Just got to be patient and keep doing what we're doing, being helpful / polite when communicating, adding content where we cant. Rome wasn't built in a day!
Personal opinion: activity will spike around now, then plateau not much lower than its peak. It'll probably never be as popular as Reddit. I imagine most people will run into some minor inconvenience, then never try to use it again, and the rest of us will be here for years.
Why are people downvoting comments that are a direct (and polite) reply to a question?? It's not a disagree button... They are even specifically hot takes FFS
I know there's a lot to Skyrim but I never got along with it. I've started it multiple times, but each time, I got over an hour in and it was still very transparently tutorializing stuff, in a way that had the appearance of having stolen the idea for having hidden-in-gameplay tutorials from Fallout: New Vegas but really half-assing the execution to the point where it was somehow more immersion-breaking than even just having a tutorial like Fallout 3.
I think it's here to stay, and it makes me hopeful that we can get a somewhat mainstream version of the Internet as originally envisioned. The corpo hellscape we have right now is garbage.
I don't think it'll die... but it is a community that needs to be built basically from the ground up, while both the Lemmy/fediverse backend technology and infrastructure are actively being developed. Reddit refugees who want a drop-in alternative to doomscroll will probably be the first to leave.
The success or failure will be determined by the number of people willing to make an effort to post. Whether Lemmy (or the fediverse in general) will exceed the numbers of other services... I doubt it, but we wouldn't be here if we only cared about numbers.
I'm ride or die once my 3PA stops working, so I hope it sticks around.
Gotta say, it would be more attractive if every other post wasn't a meta post about the platform and/or reddit. I hope we get some bots capable of ripping reddit posts and slapping them into Lemmy communities. As much as I'd like to pretend I'm a man of culture, sometimes I want shitposts and Tiktok reposts of someone's dog being stupid...
That's funny, because I am quite interested in the meta reddit posts. It's interesting to see how things are unfolding. Though I do think it will of course settle down with time
I’m having fun here and it’s scratching my online discussion itch. I’ve barely been back to Reddit and when Apollo dies I think I will not go back at all. 16 years on Reddit and almost 300K karma.
I think the entry barrier is still higher than reddit. So I doubt we'll see reddit users migrate by the millions because not everyone believes in free and open platforms like most of us do. But I'm excited to see what happens on Saturday when 3rd party apps shut down.
undefined> because not everyone believes in free and open platforms like most of us do
It's more the "masses" don't care, they want instant and easy gratification. Doesn't matter in the least platform the content is on as long as it satisfies their needs/wants at that moment.
I think reddit was a slow change. Like the old boiling a frog saying. I didn't realize how bad it got until I got here and remembered what reddit was 10+ years ago when i started. Talking to humans that aren't a giant echo chamber. Not questioning the motives of every post or feeling manipulated. Not just a thousand tiktoc reposts or tweets. The comments that show different sides of a discussion instead of knowing exactly what the top comment is on most threads before opening the comment section.
Reddit slowly became predictable and routine. I didn't hate it while I was there, some things I did, but mostly I fell into the echo chamber without realizing it.
The Reddit hive mind has been a joke for ages, but I agree. Eventually it just got stale and upsetting.
Lemmy.world might be where I land, not sure yet. You need a certain number of users to make it work and this site has gotten popular enough that maybe it can work. But I don't think I will be sticking with Reddit much more
That's basically where I'm at. Lemmy is very interesting, and I enjoy that it's not being held hostage by the whims of corporate dipshits who only care about profit, but I'll go wherever the interesting content is. I just hope that place isn't back to reddit or twitter.
While everyone wants to constantly cry about it not being Reddit - the fact that people are flocking here hand over fist over the more direct 1 for 1 Reddit clones shows that people do understand that we need to go back to a more decentralized web. Even if this doesn't hit critical Reddit size mass, there's enough of us to keep each other company ❤️
I think and hope the fediverse will thrive in the years to come. It's the only way for us users to keep control over the platforms we use and feed.
It's time for the healthier internet we deserve. Networks like Facebook and Twitter have pushed toxic content to their users solely on the purpose of creating engagement. The World would be a very different place if that content had been moderated correctly instead of being pushed toward suggestible population.
Definitely will stay around, yet, realistically speaking, I don't have much expectations about this endeavor even scratching reddit's monopoly in the next 1 ~ 3 years (I hope I'm mistaken), who knows what will happen in 10 or 20
Yep, got to think long-term, the hardest part is building a big enough community to make spending time here worthwhile, which is just about there imo. But growing to Reddit size is going to require a lot more features and polish, which I'm sure they're working on, but it's all going to take time.
I think people will vent and quite a decent percentage will return to reddit eventually. Like it happened with twitter since Elon did his thing.
But lemmy will stay. It has been here before all the people migrated from reddit and the fediverse in general will keep having a right to exist. And it will.
AFAIK, Mastodon actually did gain a sizeable amount of users that actually stayed, even though the number of users has dropped since the peak.
I personally think something like Lemmy works better than Mastodon, since content is more important here than the users, which I think makes it more easy to have a self-sustaining community.
I'm here to stay, and Reddit was my only social media before. But was on that site so many years and it did get shitter over time. Lemmy isn't overrun yet, it's nice.
It won't die in "a few weeks", simply because the likelihood of everybody abandoning ship in such a short timeframe is pretty much zero.
It will almost certainly become irrelevant after some years (we just don't know how many) because almost nothing remains relevant on the Net for more than a decade or two, though even "irrelevant" things still attract a few people so they rarelly "die".
Edit: Also and as a side note, I've actually been questioning just how many people needs to be around here for it to be a good place to be in. I don't think the "millions" of people of Reddit actually added to it and suspect that a few tens of thousand of users are enough for the place to feel interesting to be in and participate in, except perhaps in very obscure and niche subjects were you do need millions of people around for there to be a handful that are interested in such subjects.
While I plan on using this platform for the forseeable future - I don't have too high hopes.
I think it will probably go the way Mastodon is going. A few weeks of being "hot", then dropping off until it's pretty much business as usual, as it was before being the hot new thing. Don't get me wrong, I want Lemmy to succeed and replace reddit, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
I'm in a similar boat. I'd argue Lemmy has had more success than the other platforms from the other times this has happened, but whether or not that equates to its longevity remains to be seen.
In truth, I'd rather have something different to Lemmy, as there's various annoyances I've had and worries I have with this platform. At the same time, it's my current best hope for a Reddit replacement, and it's not so egregious as to be unusable.
I don't think Lemmy will ever get the mainstream attention that reddit has to get big celebrity AMAs, but that may be a good thing, if it stays a genuine place like it is currently, people will come.
I'm leaning on content I've seen thus far but-
If this becomes the place where content holds people, they will stay. To replace -the other site- Lemmy needs to be the place the general internet comes to for information and community questions. In this early stage people need to cement "this is where to come for answers" with regards to....everything. eli5, me-irl and even ask-reddit needs to come here. We joke about how Listicles hijack Reddit content but that's a sign of healthy creation at work. It gets the average non-reddit user conscious of the product and to come there when they have a question.
What needs to happen (if lemmy wants to replace Reddit) is lemmy needs that. It needs to enter the public conscience as an information nexus. To what degree is up for debate of each Instances admin. Beehaw straight said "nope"
FWIW, some celebrities have took part in the fediverse, specifically Mastodon, to varying successes. Some have stayed and integrated with their communities while others have been chased out. Generally I think if you respect the culture of the fediverse you won't have that much of a problem, celebrity or otherwise.
I have high hopes for Lemmy sticking around. The explosion in users around all the Reddit drama will likely have some of them stick around, which will be a net positive. It may not be good for “doom scrolling” any time soon, but it’s really nice to see some lively conversations in communities that are just starting to really blossom.
It will last. I plan to stay here. I hope everyone else does too. Even if Reddit totally went completely back to how it was, I deleted my account because I don't like their attitude. I also find the conversation better here. And it's all open source, which is always my preference.
Same with Twitter, I still use it to follow F1 drivers but that's it. 99% of my socials is done on Mastodon now as there are more people there who share my interests and it's open source.
It depends on the growth curve. Right now it's exponential, which means it will keep growing. When you see it stay linear for a while, it'll probably start to flatten. At that point, it's either big enough to stick or it's not.
It all depends on us. I hope for more servers that FEDERATE - I'm trying hard to cut /r/ out of my life... if we do that, lemmy and the fediverse can live on...
Will you?
Seeing a post like this with over 100 comments makes me think that it's going to last, but scrolling down and seeing 25+ posts in a row with zero comments concerns me.
It could be a federation/Jerboa/other issue though, I'm still not 100% on everything works and connects, plus I imagine the sudden rapid growth is hurting it for now but that should settle eventually
Alot of bots posting, or certain communities bulking out their posts at once. Scroll by new and you will see 5 or so posts to a sub in a row by the same person.
Go to a post, click the community or user, then find the menu that says block. Not sure what your using. On jerboa it's top right i (information icon) but it's prob just a hamburger or something on web.
I hope they're going to find a way to make the whole federation thing less messy, otherwise I don't think Lemmy is going to be as big as Reddit ever was.
Also they have to solve the front page, where new topics are loading in from the TOP pushing everything down. Really annoying.
This seems to be fixed in the new 0.18 release. Haven't had this problem on other instances.
I hope lemmy won't become a reddit clone. Reddit was nice as long as it lasted, but it was a corporation. Lemmy feels more like the way internet should be.
If lemmy can get the search algorithm to work well, it'll be good for a decent while I think... I hope for the sake of the internet
everything needs to have some form of competition, and if Lemmy truly becomes the new reddit, hopefully we all learn what they did wrong and can make it better so that we as a collective have the best website/forum/memebase that's humanly possible
Lemmy has been around for quite a while, well before any of the recent issues. The userbase will probably die back once people get bored and go back to Reddit but some of us will still be here
I think its community has grown permanently. It just depends how much of who's here is part of that growth. When the dust settles, I bet people will go back to reddit or somewhere else. But when that time comes, who will be part of the remnants? 50% of us? More? Less? I have no idea.
I think an important step in pumping that percentage up is to stop asking about this. Every day seemingly dozens of people ask this same question about Lemmy's future. This might be pessimistic, but at this point I'm beginning to think many people are either expecting or hoping for Lemmy to fail.
I’ll be here. I like that it takes a little more effort, it’s a little cumbersome or gatekeepy, but it also seems to keep the vibe more like the early internet and less like whatever it has currently turned into.
It reminds me of crypto spaces but without the incentive and monetization of action that seems to lead to a scammy and disingenuous feel to the content.
It all depends on if Reddit continues to make decisions with disastrous optics. If this is the one and only user bump Lemmy will get off the back of Reddit, I can see it dying down in the future, but if there's more I think it'll take flight and eventually start snowballing on its own merits. I'm not sure if it'll ever be mainstream, but it'll persist - as it was before all this.
Lemmy is really the only solution because it is becoming as indepth as reddit is/was. What sucks is it will still be like a splinternet situation, having to spread all of our solutions across the internet.
That's whats holding me back on fully moving to Lemmy. Aside from the smaller number of users and, consequently, content, the need to use more than one account and website can be really annoying.
You don't need more than one account. To follow other lemmy instances from your lemmy.world account, copy the full link from the other instances sub, and paste it in the search page on lemmy.world foudn by click the magnifying glass in the top right. It should pop up in the search result where you can subscribe.
part of the reason I spend most of my time on kbin. It works with all of those. Things will chang over time though and i think i just saw yesterday that theres some issue with lemmy.ml now. In any case, i agree, not being able to reach content isn't a good experience.
We went from everyone hosting their personal websites to thousands of blogs to a handful social media websites. The history has favoured homogenisation. Fediverse (not Lemmy) might be that one thing where everyone shares their thoughts; siloed social media websites like Reddit will probably become irrelevant in the future like the “internet” forums from the ‘00s are today.
The Fediverse will live on as long as two people want to share content. Users ebb like waves on the shore, and the sea level is rising.
I didn't have Twitter, but moved back into the Fediverse once that imploded. I had another account years ago but it was too quiet. Mastodon's growth has been crazy to watch. I suspect Lemmy will be an echo of that, maybe this time or at some point in the future. It's no matter, though. The Fediverse is slow social media, which is a good thing.
I'd favour Lemmy for mass adoption in the long run, mostly because Twitter was never actually that big, and people can just microblog on Facebook or Tiktok. Reddit has far more users that might want to look at alternatives and their realistic options today are this or Tildes, who doesn't seem to actually want most people to join.
If we stay engaged and committed to lemmy, then it will survive. There's already a lot of growing activity here, let's hope it's the flywheel the platform needs.
I sure as hell hope so. After everything that's happened over at Reddit I don't feel like going back. I'm not one to come back to an abusive relationship ya know? So like yeah I hope Lemmy lasts it seems to hold up well against the Sands of time at the very least, if it lasts as long as Reddit and things go south instead of having to jump ship, you can just migrate servers. Plus, at least at this point in time, there have been no red flags, all we need is for the userbase to participate.
If that happens I'm going to see it as an opportunity to go no-social media for a year. I've done this with other things, for example not buying clothes for a year, and my habits have changed permanently with each exercise. I'm convinced that if you can do it for a year, it starts to become part of the fabric of who you are, and if that's preferable you're unlikely to backslide.
Lemmy isn't going to "die" anytime soon, it has already been around for about 4 years now, it's not going anywhere..
Maybe activity will significantly slow down, maybe it will go back to being a super small community, but I don't see it completely getting killed anytime soon.
Well, as long as I am around it is not going to die as a I am not leaving Fediverse. And I am specific about it being the fediverse as even if Kbin and/or Lemmy die, there will be others that will take over, I am 100% sure. Whether it will actually surpass Reddit, I have no clue. But I am not sure whether I even care.
And not because I hate Reddit or anything like that. I am just really into what fediverse stands for and even a week ago with half of the users it scratched my itch as Reddit had done previously.
Like honestly, I don't even feel that strongly about Reddit and spez but Lemmy provide all I need so far, from meta stuff, through inteligent conversations to memes.
I remain sceptical about the fediverse for a number of reasons. Some may turn out to not be a big deal, I don't know yet.
I worry about discoverability and search engine indexing, the main usefulness of Reddit for me was the ability to find answers to questions already asked by others.
I worry about the potential for federated servers to turn into small insulated islands, due drama between admins.
I worry that I'll need to keep track of a multitude of accounts and websites on a fractured internet, what with lemmy and kbin and whatever other services show up.
Centralization has its issues, but it also comes with a great many benefits, and I'll wait and see if the fediverse can make up the difference.
I like it. It's not reddit and I like that about it most. I think it will stay and grow. I think we know what we don't want now and Lemmy could just be it.
I only ever used rif, and I loved that app. Never really "loved" an app before, so ya I think that says a lot. Really great no non sense and intuitive.
I belive that enough critical mass has been reached for Lemmy to stick around. I sure as hell am not going back to reddit. But, to see Lemmy grow, I feel it would be better for users to be spread out across multiple instance.
Will definitely loose some users because of small things that come with using something like this. At the end of the day, people are attached and will go back to reddit. That doesn't mean though, that there won't still be a bunch of people using lemmy.
Maybe, but I think that the branding of the "fediverse" + difficulty of use will make it unlikely to surpass reddit or any other alternatives. It will almost certainly still be around for years to come, but I doubt it'll be much more than niche, despite me hoping for the contrary.
I will say I hate the difficult to use part. it's no harder than email it's the same @ symbol and everything. i don't see people having an issue signing up for yahoo or Gmail. I agree it's a branding issue but the question is who is branding it that way. seems more like fud to me. is it aa feature rich? no that is valid and will improve in time. once jerboa fixed /c urls I don't even search for them I just find them organically now.
Im new here on Lemmy. So far it seems a little confusing coming from Reddit. But I really hope it lasts. From what I can tell there is a good community here.
I don't think Lemmy would die even if Spez gets fired and they write a public apology for the users inconvenience and step back with the API changes....
Honestly even if they fired Huffman, reversed all his bad decisions, and even went open source again it would still never be the same. They would never be able to fix the damage that they've done.
That's what happens when you stab your users in the back like this.
Yeah, it's not as though the third party app devs would suddenly all be like "oh thank god we can keep working with this company". The bridges are burned.
Also the person developing Reddit's mod Toolbox is quitting [source]. That'll be a huge blow to the ability for Reddit mods to moderate subreddits. Yep they really couldn't fix this even if they wanted to (they don't, they think we're too stupid and that we'll still keep using Reddit even after every sub is full of spam and "upvote if you agree" posts).
On the other side of the fediverse that's more like Twitter, Elon Musk pissed a bunch of people off and we've seen a few waves of new users. How it has worked is there's an inrush of people, some people go "Wait a minute, this isn't my old platform! I don't like it!" and go back, some people stick around.
Once people start to realize how friggin' cool the fediverse as a whole is, I think a bunch of people stay. Especially realizing that it takes all power away from corporate overlords and gives a lot of power to people who run their own instances.
We'll have to wait and see but I think this last issue with Reddit has given Lemmy enough of a boost that it will get the required amount of momentum.
It won't be long before a lot of the classic subs are reproduced over here and new users will be able to turn up and slot straight in and carry on doing what they were doing over there all pretty seamlessly.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the most active posters made the jump as they are likely providing a much higher percentage of the content than the average user. It's those people that will really make a difference.
I also think having Fediverse alternatives to so much corporate social media and how well it cooperates with each other is also key. I am busy moving myself over to these services and I am liking what I see. It will always occupy a layer under the corporate one but that might be a good thing - like them act as the bullet magnet and let us just get in with things.
My previous experience doing something similar was with Voat, Lemmy userbase is more mature(less bigotry and bullying), and the fact is not centralized on one guy that has other stuff to do, leads me to believe there is better chance this time.
I think it will keep growing for the next couple of months following the third party app shutdowns, and it will probably see another boost when Reddit goes public. But I don't know what will happen after that. I mean there's plenty of valid reasons to prefer decentralized social media over regular social media, but in terms of user experience, your average Joe is always going to prefer Reddit over Lemmy because it's just more addictive.
Mastodon is there. And there are enough people to interact with. Not as big as Twitter by any means, but for now it's big enough to use if you find a good Community.
Lemmy would be similar, for now won't even come close to reddit size. But if good communities move here those would stick around.
I just edit bombed my reddit account. No going back... Unless reddit undos my edits... Which apparently they're undeleting comments, so it's a possibility. I'll just do it again.
I don't know about you but I'm here to stay. Also, you need to define "die", since lemmy existed long before reddit drama and will be here after their downfall even if users leave it'll continue to exist.
I would like to think this is my new home, but I still have a lot of learning to do about the fediverse. I won't be going back to Reddit and using their garbage app and site, but I also still need to learn how to maneuver this new land before it can be a true alternative for me
I'm here for the long haul. Reddit was simultaneously the best and worst of the internet, Fediverse seems to be prioritising the best.
Now that the apps are starting to hit the public, there's no going back.
Mass migrations are always uphill battles. I've seen too many similar cases that appeared to start strong but lacked the momentum to put down their roots. We'll have a much better chance if just a handful of the top r/ can convince their u/ to move here.
My pessimist is coming out here, i think that most reddit users will just use Reddit as always as they like the site too much or aren't aware of alternatives. Also, such a high MAU hitting the fediverse could take a decent portion down
I think it will slowly grow overtime unless something drastic happens. Enough people migrated to jumpstart it and create something lasting. There will also probably be a bump in users on July 1st after hardcore 3rd party app users will be left bleeding.
I don't even think that Reddit reversing the changes would hurt Lemmy at this point.
While I hope it doesn't get too big too fast (which likely means getting overrun with bots and astroturfers), I think it has established itself rather nicely as a good Reddit alternative with a (so far) great community, this being the most important part IMO.
I'm not tech savvy enough to predict the longevity of the fediverse, but I'm certain that Reddit is headed for a collision course that is either days or approximately a year away (based on what, if any, concessions Reddit makes to existing mods/3rd party apps).
If it's a quick death, I think the centralized reddit copies have the edge since they're more familiar/easier for the avg user. If it's a slower death by declining quality, then Lemmy can sort out the kinks and get a solid 3rd party app developer to bridge the knowledge curve.
I've just arrived on the fediverse 2 days ago and the number of new groups and contents is increasing with a wild speed. The update of the apps is also crazy fast.
I think for Lemmy to really pop off, some proper iOS apps is needed. There's a few in testflight (using memmy atm) but that's far too complicated for a regular person to do.
I'm also finding a lot of things a bit unintuitive, especially after being used to how reddit works.
Might just be the app I'm using, but finding new communities and content is a bit cumbersome.
Same benefits we got with RIF/Apollo over Reddit. I'm not gonna mention any specific ones but the idea is that the devs of Lemmy can focus on working out site bugs etc. while app devs can focus on adding features not currently available on the web.
But Lemmy is open source, so any improvements could just be made to Lemmy's frontend/PWA, maintaining a bunch of native apps made more sense when they were hacking around closed source limits.
I almost hope it "fails" to replace reddit, since reddit was/is crap. I'd perfer if lemmy remained relatively small, without the toxic userbase and spammy content of reddit.
Definitely will die. I just don't see how instances will be supported financially. The fediverse is nice but at the end of the day, the instances are running somewhere and there are bills to pay.
Lemmy is turning into a left-wing echo chamber. The mods have declared that right-leaning opinions are not welcome and are defederating from any right-leaning instances. If you declare that half the population is not welcome, you're really limiting your reach. It's also going to be a pain to have two logins, one for lemmy.world and one for the free speech instances.
Let's be real, most of the growth of Reddit over the last 5 or so years haven't been the type of folks generating good content and discussion anyway. Even if Lemmy gets like 1% of the userbase this place is going to thrive.
Oh absolutely.
A large majority of the content posted there seems to be from bot accounts. No matter what you think Reddit's active userbase is, it is heavily inflated.
Yup. I remember seeing a post of the top karma accounts on reddit and it was removed by the admins before I could finish blocking them all.
Meanwhile back in 2016 when I still bothered to participate in political subs it became painfully clear that the russian troll farms were real and that they were enflaming both sides of issues in order to manufacture outrage.
Than we saw the consolidation of power mods and retaliatory moderation/administration.
I hope every bitcoin and nft bro is left holding reddits handbags come IPO.
Regardless I'll never go back. If lemmy dies I'll get a fucking life or something lol
It was here before the Reddit implosion, will be after. Question is, will you be?
Glad to hear it. I deleted 2 accounts with over 100k karama, and moved fully to Lemmy. I'm here to stay as well. Reddit is dead to me.
100%, 12 year daily reddit user - feels like I’m out of a bad relationship. I moved all my third party apps off three weeks ago and have replaced all my time with Lemmy and the Fediverse.
I didn’t realize how poorly the experience had degraded - scrolling content mindlessly, most interactions were dull and sometimes weirdly antagonistic.
Conversely, my experience on Lemmy has been interesting content with more depth, connecting with people in a warm and welcoming way. I don’t expect this to become reddit - I wouldn’t really want it to.
I am excited for a future here as the third party apps are removed last this week and we can start a new adventure together.
Even if this does become reddit, here at lemmy.world, just move to a different Instance, block lemmy.world, and boom. Problem solved.
Would not take long to do. I expect many people will do just this. We're probably going to be one of the most commonly defederated-with Instances, just due to being the largest and thus, spammiest.
But also the one with the most content as well.
Spam control really depends on the ability of the admins and moderation, as well as the quality of the mod tools. Lemmy is nowhere near the size of reddit yet for that to be a problem.
Yeah, but a lot of people really don't want quantity when it comes to content, that's the point. Some people really just want to get away from most of it.
Some people are a little elitist with it. It's got to be the good stuff, and they draw lines between good and the 99% of everything else. Kinda like how most of the restaurants in the US are shitty fast food.
I'm not arguing for it or saying it is right for them to do so. I'm saying it's inevitable. We are going to be defederated-with more than any group that isn't political extremists. If that does not appeal to you, another Instance would be wise.
Did your post show up in a lighter gray because I'd viewed your profile when that other user was asking you about your profile info and you said who knows what to believe? This weird mystery is plaguing me
No, new comments always show up in light grey.
Yep, I’ll be deleting mine today or tomorrow. Going to scrub my comments history with this first: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
As long as there are some users who value privacy-focussed, open and decentralized software, I will keep here around having healthier discussions than I never had in Reddit.
Was using RiF and reddit for 12 years. Been on lemmy for a few weeks and I don't miss reddit. Certainly not going to try to use the official reddit app. So probably not using reddit even if I wanted to in the future.
I will be. Haven't deleted my Reddit account yet. Still want to pull out some saved posts. But I've unsubscribed from everything so my home page is literally empty. It has no more value to me beyond that.
I'll be here, this place definitely has a lot more potential than Reddit does. Even though people may complain about federation this method is more stable in the long run, since individual sites can come and go and may fall victim to the same plague that Reddit is facing.
With content like "do you think Lemmy will die soon?" where would we be without OP?!
This place has existed for a lot longer than the last month.
Lemmy was here before Reddit and it’ll be around for a long time.
Presumably you mean Lemmy was here before the recent reddit implosion
Correct. Good catch.
Hmmm the main question is whether it can get it's content to show up in search results - this being the main selling point of Reddit and other platforms.
Right now, if you help someone fix an issue it's pretty much walled in and unavailable.
Yeah, I was talking to my wife about this.
Today I can search "whatever reddit", but with Lemmy-like I have no idea how, since it's not centralized.
im seeing content from both my instance and beehaw's in google's results. stands to reason every instance is in there. I expect that the software likely needs optimizations before everything is properly indexed. before reddit google simply indexed thousands of phpbb and invision boards.
Yes, getting lemmy's link high enough on google that it can even be compared to reddit's is a critical but immensely difficult battle to fight since the latter has 18 years of inertia, I guess it all comes down to a matter of pumping the OC and high quality content consistently for a very long time
agreed, is there any way to fix this?
i’m fairly certain that it really just depends on the google web crawlers to find and index pages. but if the posts are public that’s just a matter of time.
even with reddit, a post has a new URL so takes some time to be indexed by google or other search engines.
so maybe it’s just a matter of delivering relevant content over time so that lemmy results get preferred over others
It's annoying - I saw someone using ' (intext:"modlog" & "instances" & "docs" & "code" & "join lemmy" | intext:"powered by kbin")' which works if you put it after your search term in Google, or Whoogle.
For another engine, just appending 'lemmy' helps...
SEOs, search engine optimizations. (Only devs not me 😩 could do that)
This isn't true. SEO has been optimized to find good content that engaged users. Long gone are the days of cramming together keyword lists and throwing a few meta tags to rank high. Write high quality (preferably long form) content and it will pay dividends.
Source: I've worked in digital marketing too long.
Lemmy will last because it was already around. I don't think it will die in a few weeks. Today is my first day using it and I love it. I'm sure anyone who tries it will like it, too.
Been here a week or so - definitely different but I'm enjoying it. Less mindless scrolling, just good chats.
Two things to bear in mind...
Lemmy existed before this current reddit fiasco, so it will exist after
there are a critical mass of users now, and imo the userbase will continue to grow, with more and more unique content added
Android / iOS apps are out, and in development. Mod tools are coming (iirc). As fediverse becomes less technical / easier to use, it's only going to attract more people
I think it's likely that we're only seeing the first wave as well. The ones most affected by third party app shutdowns are the ones that are posting all of the content and doing the moderation. Once the apps go away, it's likely the most valuable of reddit's users do as well. I have been on reddit since like 07 I think, and once I can't use Apollo any longer my use of reddit is effectively gone. I'll still occasionally browse on desktop, but even then the only way I can tolerate the desktop version is with a bunch of add ons and old.reddit which I assume is next on the block.
We've already seen this on twitter. Now it's just an echo chamber for nazis, increasingly fewer celebs, and marketers (which, tbh it kinda always has been, it's just worse now.) Moving over to mastodon wasn't fun for a week or two, but now there is a critical mass and basically everything I got from twitter I can get from masto now. Twitter still has tons of users and dwarfs masto, but that's a lot of chaff for not a lot of wheat.
In terms of apps, some are out, but there is still nothing that comes close to Apollo especially on iOS. With the dev of Sync and I think RIF announcing Lemmy clients, that's about going to be a done deal. Quite a lot of my regular follows from twitter didn't move over until Ivory and a couple of other good clients came out, so as soon as there is a comparable set of Lemmy clients, I'd say it's pretty much done.
All that said, Reddit's already a shell of what it was even a few months ago. It's maybe not as easy to tell, but as someone who's been there forever, you can tell this is different. And I know personally, even though I used reddit like junkies used meth, I'm now checking rss again, discord for various communities, Lemmy, kbin, and even a few specific forums and so forth.
Spez running an absolute master class in how to ruin a business.
spez literally took notes from elon and twitter, so reddit's implosion shouldn't be surprising
undefined> Spez running an absolute master class in how to ruin a business.
It kinda feels like watching a slow-motion car crash. Fascinating, horrific, hard to look away. It really is quite incredible how he manages to bumble his way from fuckup to fuckup... yet still has his job.
Like you say, 1st July will be interesting to see just how much of an impact closing the apps has on their userbase. I've dipped my toe back in and it feels like the discourse has gone downhill bigtime, which doesn't surprise me... users set the tone of a site, so if a large exodus of people who have some sort of belief in doing the right thing happens, the 'power users' left are not going to be the nicest of people. Some will just be too busy / numb to give a shit, but many of the ones left will be bootlickers by nature.
I think the app part is the biggest factor. I'm using Jerboa, and while it's still good and useful, it definitely has some bugs (crashing when uploading photos has been annoying). I'm still sticking with it, but I can see a more average internet user getting frustrated with that or with the somewhat weird sign-up process and learning how federation-y stuff works.
It'd be sick to have a standard "this is how you sign up" tutorial built into each app!
undefined> I can see a more average internet user getting frustrated with that or with the somewhat weird sign-up process and learning how federation-y stuff works.
Yep this is it. Just got to be patient and keep doing what we're doing, being helpful / polite when communicating, adding content where we cant. Rome wasn't built in a day!
Personal opinion: activity will spike around now, then plateau not much lower than its peak. It'll probably never be as popular as Reddit. I imagine most people will run into some minor inconvenience, then never try to use it again, and the rest of us will be here for years.
I guess a big spike is still ahead, which will be around Saturday, once the 3rd party reddit apps shut down for good.
Mate, it wasn't just created. This site has been around for a while
Aslong as I can shit post and talk about video game development I don't care where I am
Give me a good Bethesda hot take, please.
Fallout 4 was the final dagger in the heart of Bethesda's RPG credibility.
I agree, but I am hopeful that Starfield will help them rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Certainly looks like a banger of a game, but we will see.
I am hopeful, but not confident.
Same. Most of Microsoft's studios aside from Playground and The Coalition are not getting my blind support these days.
I'd like that to be the case. I don't believe it will be, but I'm more than willing to be proven wrong.
Bethesda makes good games, their bugginess are often overexaggerated, and calling Skyrim "deep as a puddle" is an inaccurate take.
Why are people downvoting comments that are a direct (and polite) reply to a question?? It's not a disagree button... They are even specifically hot takes FFS
I know there's a lot to Skyrim but I never got along with it. I've started it multiple times, but each time, I got over an hour in and it was still very transparently tutorializing stuff, in a way that had the appearance of having stolen the idea for having hidden-in-gameplay tutorials from Fallout: New Vegas but really half-assing the execution to the point where it was somehow more immersion-breaking than even just having a tutorial like Fallout 3.
I'll watch hours of lore videos about it, though.
I think it's here to stay, and it makes me hopeful that we can get a somewhat mainstream version of the Internet as originally envisioned. The corpo hellscape we have right now is garbage.
I don't think it'll die... but it is a community that needs to be built basically from the ground up, while both the Lemmy/fediverse backend technology and infrastructure are actively being developed. Reddit refugees who want a drop-in alternative to doomscroll will probably be the first to leave.
The success or failure will be determined by the number of people willing to make an effort to post. Whether Lemmy (or the fediverse in general) will exceed the numbers of other services... I doubt it, but we wouldn't be here if we only cared about numbers.
I'm ride or die once my 3PA stops working, so I hope it sticks around.
Gotta say, it would be more attractive if every other post wasn't a meta post about the platform and/or reddit. I hope we get some bots capable of ripping reddit posts and slapping them into Lemmy communities. As much as I'd like to pretend I'm a man of culture, sometimes I want shitposts and Tiktok reposts of someone's dog being stupid...
I think it is just momentary, as it is the topic of the moment. Give it some time and we will forget about reddit. ☺️😅
That's funny, because I am quite interested in the meta reddit posts. It's interesting to see how things are unfolding. Though I do think it will of course settle down with time
I’m having fun here and it’s scratching my online discussion itch. I’ve barely been back to Reddit and when Apollo dies I think I will not go back at all. 16 years on Reddit and almost 300K karma.
Either way I'm done with reddit.
I think the entry barrier is still higher than reddit. So I doubt we'll see reddit users migrate by the millions because not everyone believes in free and open platforms like most of us do. But I'm excited to see what happens on Saturday when 3rd party apps shut down.
undefined> because not everyone believes in free and open platforms like most of us do
It's more the "masses" don't care, they want instant and easy gratification. Doesn't matter in the least platform the content is on as long as it satisfies their needs/wants at that moment.
Define "a few weeks"
The blackout started 12-06 which is 2 + weeks ago.
Lemmy and Kbin are still here and I see no sign of it slowing down. I see much more posts with more engagement which is a good thing.
I think reddit was a slow change. Like the old boiling a frog saying. I didn't realize how bad it got until I got here and remembered what reddit was 10+ years ago when i started. Talking to humans that aren't a giant echo chamber. Not questioning the motives of every post or feeling manipulated. Not just a thousand tiktoc reposts or tweets. The comments that show different sides of a discussion instead of knowing exactly what the top comment is on most threads before opening the comment section.
Reddit slowly became predictable and routine. I didn't hate it while I was there, some things I did, but mostly I fell into the echo chamber without realizing it.
The Reddit hive mind has been a joke for ages, but I agree. Eventually it just got stale and upsetting.
Lemmy.world might be where I land, not sure yet. You need a certain number of users to make it work and this site has gotten popular enough that maybe it can work. But I don't think I will be sticking with Reddit much more
That's basically where I'm at. Lemmy is very interesting, and I enjoy that it's not being held hostage by the whims of corporate dipshits who only care about profit, but I'll go wherever the interesting content is. I just hope that place isn't back to reddit or twitter.
When Reddit forces "new Reddit" is when the real migration will occur. Reddit is dying more and more every day.
But they promised us that old reddit isn't going anywhere. Surely, we can trust that something won't happen if they say it won't happen, right?
You can trust that it won't happen in the next fifteen minutes, probably. I wouldn't believe much further out than that.
I think the 3PA devs got about four months, right?
Reddit in January: we will not charge for the API. Not in the next few years, at least.
Reddit in April: charges are coming, but they'll be totally reasonable and based in reality
Reddit in May: if you want to use the API, you should pay us 29x what we make from customers that don't use it
While everyone wants to constantly cry about it not being Reddit - the fact that people are flocking here hand over fist over the more direct 1 for 1 Reddit clones shows that people do understand that we need to go back to a more decentralized web. Even if this doesn't hit critical Reddit size mass, there's enough of us to keep each other company ❤️
Are there any 1 for 1 reddit clones live at the moment? I've heard of some in development, but I haven't seen any that you can actually use already.
There's a few. I don't know too much about them because it seems silly to bail on one centralized authority for another lol.
I think and hope the fediverse will thrive in the years to come. It's the only way for us users to keep control over the platforms we use and feed.
It's time for the healthier internet we deserve. Networks like Facebook and Twitter have pushed toxic content to their users solely on the purpose of creating engagement. The World would be a very different place if that content had been moderated correctly instead of being pushed toward suggestible population.
I won't go back.
Definitely will stay around, yet, realistically speaking, I don't have much expectations about this endeavor even scratching reddit's monopoly in the next 1 ~ 3 years (I hope I'm mistaken), who knows what will happen in 10 or 20
Yep, got to think long-term, the hardest part is building a big enough community to make spending time here worthwhile, which is just about there imo. But growing to Reddit size is going to require a lot more features and polish, which I'm sure they're working on, but it's all going to take time.
I think people will vent and quite a decent percentage will return to reddit eventually. Like it happened with twitter since Elon did his thing. But lemmy will stay. It has been here before all the people migrated from reddit and the fediverse in general will keep having a right to exist. And it will.
AFAIK, Mastodon actually did gain a sizeable amount of users that actually stayed, even though the number of users has dropped since the peak.
I personally think something like Lemmy works better than Mastodon, since content is more important here than the users, which I think makes it more easy to have a self-sustaining community.
I'm here to stay, and Reddit was my only social media before. But was on that site so many years and it did get shitter over time. Lemmy isn't overrun yet, it's nice.
The protest brought me here but I'm staying because I like it more.
It won't die in "a few weeks", simply because the likelihood of everybody abandoning ship in such a short timeframe is pretty much zero.
It will almost certainly become irrelevant after some years (we just don't know how many) because almost nothing remains relevant on the Net for more than a decade or two, though even "irrelevant" things still attract a few people so they rarelly "die".
Edit: Also and as a side note, I've actually been questioning just how many people needs to be around here for it to be a good place to be in. I don't think the "millions" of people of Reddit actually added to it and suspect that a few tens of thousand of users are enough for the place to feel interesting to be in and participate in, except perhaps in very obscure and niche subjects were you do need millions of people around for there to be a handful that are interested in such subjects.
While I plan on using this platform for the forseeable future - I don't have too high hopes.
I think it will probably go the way Mastodon is going. A few weeks of being "hot", then dropping off until it's pretty much business as usual, as it was before being the hot new thing. Don't get me wrong, I want Lemmy to succeed and replace reddit, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
I'm in a similar boat. I'd argue Lemmy has had more success than the other platforms from the other times this has happened, but whether or not that equates to its longevity remains to be seen.
In truth, I'd rather have something different to Lemmy, as there's various annoyances I've had and worries I have with this platform. At the same time, it's my current best hope for a Reddit replacement, and it's not so egregious as to be unusable.
I don't think Lemmy will ever get the mainstream attention that reddit has to get big celebrity AMAs, but that may be a good thing, if it stays a genuine place like it is currently, people will come.
I'm leaning on content I've seen thus far but- If this becomes the place where content holds people, they will stay. To replace -the other site- Lemmy needs to be the place the general internet comes to for information and community questions. In this early stage people need to cement "this is where to come for answers" with regards to....everything. eli5, me-irl and even ask-reddit needs to come here. We joke about how Listicles hijack Reddit content but that's a sign of healthy creation at work. It gets the average non-reddit user conscious of the product and to come there when they have a question.
What needs to happen (if lemmy wants to replace Reddit) is lemmy needs that. It needs to enter the public conscience as an information nexus. To what degree is up for debate of each Instances admin. Beehaw straight said "nope"
I don't think reddit is that important to warrant replacement. Should be building something new and better on top of its ruins.
But I agree, good original content by passionate people is what makes people stay.
Reddit already killed the big AMAs anyway, but I get what you're saying.
FWIW, some celebrities have took part in the fediverse, specifically Mastodon, to varying successes. Some have stayed and integrated with their communities while others have been chased out. Generally I think if you respect the culture of the fediverse you won't have that much of a problem, celebrity or otherwise.
I have high hopes for Lemmy sticking around. The explosion in users around all the Reddit drama will likely have some of them stick around, which will be a net positive. It may not be good for “doom scrolling” any time soon, but it’s really nice to see some lively conversations in communities that are just starting to really blossom.
Reddit is dead to me now. Terrible media players. Bulky unoptomized Javascript in browser. Slow load times. Just trash content now.
These were a great reason for third party apps like Apollo. It's also why I'll be seriously curtailing my use of reddit at the end of the month.
It will last. I plan to stay here. I hope everyone else does too. Even if Reddit totally went completely back to how it was, I deleted my account because I don't like their attitude. I also find the conversation better here. And it's all open source, which is always my preference.
Same with Twitter, I still use it to follow F1 drivers but that's it. 99% of my socials is done on Mastodon now as there are more people there who share my interests and it's open source.
Trippy
It depends on the growth curve. Right now it's exponential, which means it will keep growing. When you see it stay linear for a while, it'll probably start to flatten. At that point, it's either big enough to stick or it's not.
It all depends on us. I hope for more servers that FEDERATE - I'm trying hard to cut /r/ out of my life... if we do that, lemmy and the fediverse can live on... Will you?
pAULIE42o
It's been going for 4 years now. I think the worst case scenario is it falls back to the numbers it had before this reddit incident.
Seeing a post like this with over 100 comments makes me think that it's going to last, but scrolling down and seeing 25+ posts in a row with zero comments concerns me. It could be a federation/Jerboa/other issue though, I'm still not 100% on everything works and connects, plus I imagine the sudden rapid growth is hurting it for now but that should settle eventually
Alot of bots posting, or certain communities bulking out their posts at once. Scroll by new and you will see 5 or so posts to a sub in a row by the same person.
Things are definitely fresher when you block the lemmit bot.
How to do that?
Go to a post, click the community or user, then find the menu that says block. Not sure what your using. On jerboa it's top right i (information icon) but it's prob just a hamburger or something on web.
I hope they're going to find a way to make the whole federation thing less messy, otherwise I don't think Lemmy is going to be as big as Reddit ever was.
Also they have to solve the front page, where new topics are loading in from the TOP pushing everything down. Really annoying.
This seems to be fixed in the new 0.18 release. Haven't had this problem on other instances.
I hope lemmy won't become a reddit clone. Reddit was nice as long as it lasted, but it was a corporation. Lemmy feels more like the way internet should be.
This is already fixed. Not sure if it's out yet but in the mean time the apps fix this.
Not fixed on Lemmy.world as of yet.
If lemmy can get the search algorithm to work well, it'll be good for a decent while I think... I hope for the sake of the internet everything needs to have some form of competition, and if Lemmy truly becomes the new reddit, hopefully we all learn what they did wrong and can make it better so that we as a collective have the best website/forum/memebase that's humanly possible
Lemmy has been around for quite a while, well before any of the recent issues. The userbase will probably die back once people get bored and go back to Reddit but some of us will still be here
Exactly this, just like mastodont and Twitter
I think its community has grown permanently. It just depends how much of who's here is part of that growth. When the dust settles, I bet people will go back to reddit or somewhere else. But when that time comes, who will be part of the remnants? 50% of us? More? Less? I have no idea.
I think an important step in pumping that percentage up is to stop asking about this. Every day seemingly dozens of people ask this same question about Lemmy's future. This might be pessimistic, but at this point I'm beginning to think many people are either expecting or hoping for Lemmy to fail.
I’ll be here. I like that it takes a little more effort, it’s a little cumbersome or gatekeepy, but it also seems to keep the vibe more like the early internet and less like whatever it has currently turned into.
It reminds me of crypto spaces but without the incentive and monetization of action that seems to lead to a scammy and disingenuous feel to the content.
It all depends on if Reddit continues to make decisions with disastrous optics. If this is the one and only user bump Lemmy will get off the back of Reddit, I can see it dying down in the future, but if there's more I think it'll take flight and eventually start snowballing on its own merits. I'm not sure if it'll ever be mainstream, but it'll persist - as it was before all this.
I'm staying
I was pretty happy I was able to find my first answer on Google by using lemmy.world in the search today
Like others have said, who knows if it'll last, but at least I'll be giving it my best try (even commenting, when I'm usually just a lurker)
Hello fellow former lurker. Thank you for your activity!
Lemmy is really the only solution because it is becoming as indepth as reddit is/was. What sucks is it will still be like a splinternet situation, having to spread all of our solutions across the internet.
That's whats holding me back on fully moving to Lemmy. Aside from the smaller number of users and, consequently, content, the need to use more than one account and website can be really annoying.
The whole concept of federation is that you only need to use one account and one website to access all the others.
Maybe the thing we need to work on is educating people about how the fediverse works
You don't need more than one account. To follow other lemmy instances from your lemmy.world account, copy the full link from the other instances sub, and paste it in the search page on lemmy.world foudn by click the magnifying glass in the top right. It should pop up in the search result where you can subscribe.
I was talking about defederation :/ Especially from beehaw, I really like it there but can't interact with lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works from there 😰
But you can interact with beehaw from lemmy.world. I just tested it
I believe you only see other lemmyworld.world users in the comments.
part of the reason I spend most of my time on kbin. It works with all of those. Things will chang over time though and i think i just saw yesterday that theres some issue with lemmy.ml now. In any case, i agree, not being able to reach content isn't a good experience.
Hopefully that is just a growing pain, and won't be the case in the future.
We went from everyone hosting their personal websites to thousands of blogs to a handful social media websites. The history has favoured homogenisation. Fediverse (not Lemmy) might be that one thing where everyone shares their thoughts; siloed social media websites like Reddit will probably become irrelevant in the future like the “internet” forums from the ‘00s are today.
The Fediverse will live on as long as two people want to share content. Users ebb like waves on the shore, and the sea level is rising.
I didn't have Twitter, but moved back into the Fediverse once that imploded. I had another account years ago but it was too quiet. Mastodon's growth has been crazy to watch. I suspect Lemmy will be an echo of that, maybe this time or at some point in the future. It's no matter, though. The Fediverse is slow social media, which is a good thing.
YES. I wondered what I liked so much about Lemmy, and it's definitely that.
I'd favour Lemmy for mass adoption in the long run, mostly because Twitter was never actually that big, and people can just microblog on Facebook or Tiktok. Reddit has far more users that might want to look at alternatives and their realistic options today are this or Tildes, who doesn't seem to actually want most people to join.
If we stay engaged and committed to lemmy, then it will survive. There's already a lot of growing activity here, let's hope it's the flywheel the platform needs.
I think it will grow some more when apps stop working on July 1, especially lemmy.world.
After that, we’ll see how erratic and Musk-esque the reddit leadership becomes.
I sure as hell hope so. After everything that's happened over at Reddit I don't feel like going back. I'm not one to come back to an abusive relationship ya know? So like yeah I hope Lemmy lasts it seems to hold up well against the Sands of time at the very least, if it lasts as long as Reddit and things go south instead of having to jump ship, you can just migrate servers. Plus, at least at this point in time, there have been no red flags, all we need is for the userbase to participate.
Edit: Typo
If that happens I'm going to see it as an opportunity to go no-social media for a year. I've done this with other things, for example not buying clothes for a year, and my habits have changed permanently with each exercise. I'm convinced that if you can do it for a year, it starts to become part of the fabric of who you are, and if that's preferable you're unlikely to backslide.
Lemmy isn't going to "die" anytime soon, it has already been around for about 4 years now, it's not going anywhere..
Maybe activity will significantly slow down, maybe it will go back to being a super small community, but I don't see it completely getting killed anytime soon.
Voat, a previous Reddit competitor, managed to survive for years, even though it attracted a much more niche audience than Lemmy.
Voat started to attract a very....different crowd let's say. It wasn't pleasant to browse at least for me.
Well, as long as I am around it is not going to die as a I am not leaving Fediverse. And I am specific about it being the fediverse as even if Kbin and/or Lemmy die, there will be others that will take over, I am 100% sure. Whether it will actually surpass Reddit, I have no clue. But I am not sure whether I even care.
And not because I hate Reddit or anything like that. I am just really into what fediverse stands for and even a week ago with half of the users it scratched my itch as Reddit had done previously.
Like honestly, I don't even feel that strongly about Reddit and spez but Lemmy provide all I need so far, from meta stuff, through inteligent conversations to memes.
I remain sceptical about the fediverse for a number of reasons. Some may turn out to not be a big deal, I don't know yet.
I worry about discoverability and search engine indexing, the main usefulness of Reddit for me was the ability to find answers to questions already asked by others.
I worry about the potential for federated servers to turn into small insulated islands, due drama between admins.
I worry that I'll need to keep track of a multitude of accounts and websites on a fractured internet, what with lemmy and kbin and whatever other services show up.
Centralization has its issues, but it also comes with a great many benefits, and I'll wait and see if the fediverse can make up the difference.
Yes.
c/InclusiveOr
I like it. It's not reddit and I like that about it most. I think it will stay and grow. I think we know what we don't want now and Lemmy could just be it.
I just need the RIF client made into a LIF client to solidify the permanence of Lemmy.
I just replaced where the icon was on my phone
I just did that with BaconReader. Felt weird.
Right in the feels.
I only ever used rif, and I loved that app. Never really "loved" an app before, so ya I think that says a lot. Really great no non sense and intuitive.
This would be amazing. I miss RiF so much.
This site gives me reddit in 2011 vibes. Loving it
Planning on deleting my reddit account as soon as I get my GDPR data collection request. I'll be there, and I hope others will too !
I’ll certainly be staying. I like it here so far!
I belive that enough critical mass has been reached for Lemmy to stick around. I sure as hell am not going back to reddit. But, to see Lemmy grow, I feel it would be better for users to be spread out across multiple instance.
Will definitely loose some users because of small things that come with using something like this. At the end of the day, people are attached and will go back to reddit. That doesn't mean though, that there won't still be a bunch of people using lemmy.
Maybe, but I think that the branding of the "fediverse" + difficulty of use will make it unlikely to surpass reddit or any other alternatives. It will almost certainly still be around for years to come, but I doubt it'll be much more than niche, despite me hoping for the contrary.
I will say I hate the difficult to use part. it's no harder than email it's the same @ symbol and everything. i don't see people having an issue signing up for yahoo or Gmail. I agree it's a branding issue but the question is who is branding it that way. seems more like fud to me. is it aa feature rich? no that is valid and will improve in time. once jerboa fixed /c urls I don't even search for them I just find them organically now.
Same question was asked about the open internet by Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe users.
You can’t put “open” back in the bottle once you let it out. Use of the ActivityPub standard will only increase.
Oh boy i can't wait for whatever abomination of nightmares corporations come up with to monetize it all.
Im new here on Lemmy. So far it seems a little confusing coming from Reddit. But I really hope it lasts. From what I can tell there is a good community here.
It won't die if we stick around and grow these communities that we've just joined
I don't think Lemmy would die even if Spez gets fired and they write a public apology for the users inconvenience and step back with the API changes....
I for sure am here to stay!
Honestly even if they fired Huffman, reversed all his bad decisions, and even went open source again it would still never be the same. They would never be able to fix the damage that they've done.
That's what happens when you stab your users in the back like this.
Yeah, it's not as though the third party app devs would suddenly all be like "oh thank god we can keep working with this company". The bridges are burned.
Also the person developing Reddit's mod Toolbox is quitting [source]. That'll be a huge blow to the ability for Reddit mods to moderate subreddits. Yep they really couldn't fix this even if they wanted to (they don't, they think we're too stupid and that we'll still keep using Reddit even after every sub is full of spam and "upvote if you agree" posts).
Lemmy might pass for various reason, but the protocol wont. It's here to stay until a better protocol comes along
I think it will last. Soon there will be more apps and some patches for bugs, that will make it an even nicer place to keep sharing thoughts and info.
I hope it lasts, maybe not with a huge number of users but I can live with that.
I intend to be here for the long run, and I don’t think I’m alone in that mentality.
It existed for years before reddit had its issue.
On the other side of the fediverse that's more like Twitter, Elon Musk pissed a bunch of people off and we've seen a few waves of new users. How it has worked is there's an inrush of people, some people go "Wait a minute, this isn't my old platform! I don't like it!" and go back, some people stick around.
Once people start to realize how friggin' cool the fediverse as a whole is, I think a bunch of people stay. Especially realizing that it takes all power away from corporate overlords and gives a lot of power to people who run their own instances.
Itll last I just joined today and got 3 people to join. Gonna start ripping posts from reddit and slapping them to lemmy
Honestly this is just how you bootstrap a community - keep the content flowing and invite people over!
i will be staying
We'll have to wait and see but I think this last issue with Reddit has given Lemmy enough of a boost that it will get the required amount of momentum.
It won't be long before a lot of the classic subs are reproduced over here and new users will be able to turn up and slot straight in and carry on doing what they were doing over there all pretty seamlessly.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the most active posters made the jump as they are likely providing a much higher percentage of the content than the average user. It's those people that will really make a difference.
I also think having Fediverse alternatives to so much corporate social media and how well it cooperates with each other is also key. I am busy moving myself over to these services and I am liking what I see. It will always occupy a layer under the corporate one but that might be a good thing - like them act as the bullet magnet and let us just get in with things.
My previous experience doing something similar was with Voat, Lemmy userbase is more mature(less bigotry and bullying), and the fact is not centralized on one guy that has other stuff to do, leads me to believe there is better chance this time.
Yeah, it might fall off, but as long as there are some people keeping the servers on, it's not going to die.
And as long as Reddit keeps fucking itself and people keep talking about the Fediverse, I think it'll keep growing.
It's really up to us to keep it going. I think it will make it.
I think it will keep growing for the next couple of months following the third party app shutdowns, and it will probably see another boost when Reddit goes public. But I don't know what will happen after that. I mean there's plenty of valid reasons to prefer decentralized social media over regular social media, but in terms of user experience, your average Joe is always going to prefer Reddit over Lemmy because it's just more addictive.
Mastodon is there. And there are enough people to interact with. Not as big as Twitter by any means, but for now it's big enough to use if you find a good Community.
Lemmy would be similar, for now won't even come close to reddit size. But if good communities move here those would stick around.
Lemmy will definetly last! I hope so at least. it might never go mainstream, but that a good thing.
I just edit bombed my reddit account. No going back... Unless reddit undos my edits... Which apparently they're undeleting comments, so it's a possibility. I'll just do it again.
I don't know about you but I'm here to stay. Also, you need to define "die", since lemmy existed long before reddit drama and will be here after their downfall even if users leave it'll continue to exist.
As long as Instances don't defederate other instances over petty issues , this should go strong.
The damage is already done on plebbit, and I don't think they'll return to "its former glory" anytime soon.
I would like to think this is my new home, but I still have a lot of learning to do about the fediverse. I won't be going back to Reddit and using their garbage app and site, but I also still need to learn how to maneuver this new land before it can be a true alternative for me
I'm here for the long haul. Reddit was simultaneously the best and worst of the internet, Fediverse seems to be prioritising the best. Now that the apps are starting to hit the public, there's no going back.
Mass migrations are always uphill battles. I've seen too many similar cases that appeared to start strong but lacked the momentum to put down their roots. We'll have a much better chance if just a handful of the top r/ can convince their u/ to move here.
My pessimist is coming out here, i think that most reddit users will just use Reddit as always as they like the site too much or aren't aware of alternatives. Also, such a high MAU hitting the fediverse could take a decent portion down
I think it will slowly grow overtime unless something drastic happens. Enough people migrated to jumpstart it and create something lasting. There will also probably be a bump in users on July 1st after hardcore 3rd party app users will be left bleeding.
I don't even think that Reddit reversing the changes would hurt Lemmy at this point.
I think it will last, but little Reddit will as well, though possibly in a lesser state as some subs move here or elsewhere
This is the way. There will always be others, but this will remain, in some form or another.
While I hope it doesn't get too big too fast (which likely means getting overrun with bots and astroturfers), I think it has established itself rather nicely as a good Reddit alternative with a (so far) great community, this being the most important part IMO.
It will last in some fashion as long as its core community stays. Lemmy lives and dies by the interactions it facilitates.
Too early to say. We'd only really know for sure after the recent growth wave finishes up.
Define die. It's been slowly growing for the last 3 years. If it goes back to that it's still good.
I hope everything works out and we can break away from reddit!
I'm not tech savvy enough to predict the longevity of the fediverse, but I'm certain that Reddit is headed for a collision course that is either days or approximately a year away (based on what, if any, concessions Reddit makes to existing mods/3rd party apps).
If it's a quick death, I think the centralized reddit copies have the edge since they're more familiar/easier for the avg user. If it's a slower death by declining quality, then Lemmy can sort out the kinks and get a solid 3rd party app developer to bridge the knowledge curve.
I've just arrived on the fediverse 2 days ago and the number of new groups and contents is increasing with a wild speed. The update of the apps is also crazy fast.
I think for Lemmy to really pop off, some proper iOS apps is needed. There's a few in testflight (using memmy atm) but that's far too complicated for a regular person to do. I'm also finding a lot of things a bit unintuitive, especially after being used to how reddit works. Might just be the app I'm using, but finding new communities and content is a bit cumbersome.
What benefits do you want/envision from a native app over a PWA?
Same benefits we got with RIF/Apollo over Reddit. I'm not gonna mention any specific ones but the idea is that the devs of Lemmy can focus on working out site bugs etc. while app devs can focus on adding features not currently available on the web.
But Lemmy is open source, so any improvements could just be made to Lemmy's frontend/PWA, maintaining a bunch of native apps made more sense when they were hacking around closed source limits.
I almost hope it "fails" to replace reddit, since reddit was/is crap. I'd perfer if lemmy remained relatively small, without the toxic userbase and spammy content of reddit.
I'm worried that you'll see users keep advocating for defederating instead of just blocking communities themselves.
You get people who think free speech is fascism, and then people who think free speech means you should use to espouse racist and hateful bullshit.
I don't have high hopes for this lasting long, though I do wish it will.
I've tried to participate in a few communities only to eventually realize I'm posting in a dead/defederated copy.
I'm trying hard to make this work, but it feels like there's really not much here outside of the standard "DAE fuck spez???" stuff.
Fragmentation will kill it for sure
Definitely will die. I just don't see how instances will be supported financially. The fediverse is nice but at the end of the day, the instances are running somewhere and there are bills to pay.
It's not that expensive. The backend is very, very efficient.
Lemmy is turning into a left-wing echo chamber. The mods have declared that right-leaning opinions are not welcome and are defederating from any right-leaning instances. If you declare that half the population is not welcome, you're really limiting your reach. It's also going to be a pain to have two logins, one for lemmy.world and one for the free speech instances.
How dare we keep the shit out, amirite?
maybe when conservatives stop their whole experimentation with fascism people will let them participate again
Yup. Fascists don't deserve nice things.
Maybe the problem is that your definition of fascism is "anyone who disagrees with me"?
Nope, i use the actual definition
Thank you for outing yourself as trash, though!
Freedom of speech for you, freedom of association for us. It's all freedom.