i mean so far, I'm enjoying it. sure, the community isn't as large, but that's mostly a good thing. on reddit, if i made a post, it would be like a 25% chance to get hundreds of comments, and a 75% chance to get none. here, I've gotten a few, high quality responses on every question post I've made. i do miss the "auto hide read posts" feature, but maybe that'll get added some day

The reality is that there was/is no reddit alternative and right now we're all in this transitory phase where we're all looking for a new home. We'll all just have to wait for the dust to settle. Lemmy isn't perfect but is improving and additionally other alternatives like kbin and tildes are in the works.

To your larger point, much of what you're feeling is the abrupt break in habits. I've been using the gap to develop more positives ones, and it's been great.

I remember HATING Reddit after the great Digg migration. The information was presented in a different way and the discussions seemed to be the focus rather than the linked content. It took a while to get used to it and I'm feeling a bit of the same here. There are a ton of similarities that are already here, so it's not as jarring and things are improving every day.

I feel like I'm interacting more here than I did on Reddit for a long time. By the time anything showed up on my feed over there, it was 1 day old, had 5000 comments, and had devolved into memes.

Honestly man, as much as I 100% agree on the UI difficulties, it's like a breath of fresh air. There's good music posted, people posted books and I looked and really wanted to read them. It's more human. There's this tiny little handful of content here, but it's not all same-y and in-joke-y and weird.

I'm not trying to hate on reddit, I still go to reddit for news because of more or less what you're talking about (the weird sorting in the newsfeed here and the lack of certain content). But what I like about here is that there are nerdy people, there's real content, there's not this weird hivemind and endless dopamine content. The great stuff about reddit was always the in-depth storytelling and unique content, to me, not just the gratification aspect of everything working right and new content popping up. I'm happy with Lemmy despite the hiccups because it seems like it's getting back to that.

What I'd recommend in your case is sorting the posts by "hot" instead of "active" which is the default setting. Posts get up the active sorting whenever somebody comments on them or upvotes (I think?), even if they are very old, whereas hot should only show you new and currently popular posts. You'll still see the post that you've already seen and a setting for that is clearly missing, but it should still be an improvement.

One of your issues is probably sorting by Active instead of sorting by Hot. A major difference in the experience on Lemmy is the "Active" sort method being the default.

The community and the app is still relatively new. To be honest, I prefer smaller communities where I can leave for a few hours without half the posts sliding to page 5 and beyond. Instead of uncritically consuming digital content, try to contribute to smaller communities, post a couple of cool links, or even (Gasp! Horror!) do something else for a while.

I would say to breathe deep and take your time. Lemmy is not a clone of Reddit, and it shouldn’t be viewed as, say you would compare functionality between 2 third-party Reddit apps.

Think of it as coming in to a new MMO after having played the old one for many years. Some things will be familiar, and some things will be different. Some mechanics may feel like a “step backwards” while others are cool additions.

Lemmy isn’t new, but it’s getting fresh eyes on its user experience and that is a good thing. And unlike Reddit, each community/server/whathaveyou can be far more responsive to their users feedback. That said, not every response will be a “yes” but you don’t have requests filtering through various levels of technological red tape, which I understand has been a challenge for the Reddit moderators, who still do not have the necessary tools to effectively moderate their subreddits.

When I first joined Beehaw, and saw, originally, a “lack” of diverse subreddits (including my mainstays) I was a bit disappointed, but then I thought to myself: “damn the torpedoes, I’m just gonna wing it” and subscribed to a bunch of communities that looked promising.

I’ve been on Lemmy since the disastrous AMA and have not looked back. I’ve even engaged more in these last 5 days on Lemmy/Beehaw than in the last year on Reddit. And while I still miss my 250+ subreddits (including r/superbowl and the subreddits I collected as part of a Reddit gestalt (r/inthesoulstone, the subreddit for Purple button pushers, r/buddhistasfuck (created as a lark, someone posted it wouldn’t last a day and I stayed to prove them wrong, and while it was a quiet subreddit, every once in a while someone would post something they thought was “extremely” buddhist)) the Lemmy communities have provided more meaningful interactions. Plus, Lemmy will create its own gestalts, and I’ll have new ways to experience the never-ending stream of random data tidbits I have grown to crave.

It's tricky at times, but I'm really liking it after a few days. It's a bit chaotic but in a fun way I think.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out https://browse.feddit.de for a way to search for more communities

Hope you start to enjoy it more :-)

You make it sound like not doomscrolly is a bad thing

The default sorting is by "active" which to me doesn't show a lot of new content (from the last hours). Switching to hot improves the experience a lot.

Feels like an older reddit, which I enjoy(ed). I also appreciate the genuine interactions and that upvotes are a 1:1 with users. No smoke and mirrors.

I keep seeing the same posts more than once

In my experience, it sorts by "active" which keeps showing the same 5 posts. Try sorting by "hot" instead.

I'm actually enjoying the lack of doomscroll.

Since Lemmy isn't built to trap you for hours on end to get that sweet ad revenue, you can just run out of new stuff to see and then stop lemmying. Bust open the eReader or get to that backlog of bookmarked articles.

It's not going to replace Reddit overnight. Those communities have to be built here. If people stick around, it will happen.

In my opinion, were in the 'keep swimming' fishing boat scene from Nemo.

Reddit wants to stay the 'homepage of the internet' but also force everyone to go through their tools for ad bucks.

If we succeed, we can bust our communities out of the centralized net and reform on the other side.

We fail by not working together here today in this moment, we have to use this event to convince the average person to switch now, we might not get another opportunity like this.

You aren't doing anything wrong! This site/app (lemmy) and the concept (fediverse) are still super early days so there are going to be many problems. The site has some layout issues and there isn't nearly as much content as Reddit but that's just because it is new.

The most important bit, to me at least, is that the fundamental idea of the fediverse is good. We have had to many instances where social sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter can just decide what people can and can't say, they can remove our content and they can monetize it all without doing any real work of their own as far as creating content. The idea of the fediverse ensures that no one server, person or company has all the content and thus the control.

I really hope people stick with something fediverse whether it be lemmy, kbin or any of the other projects out there. Post content there, cross post it from Reddit if you really have to post to Reddit too for whatever reason. Please don't give these companies all the control anymore.

If I'm spending less time staring at my phone and more time picking up a book or something, all the better for me. I've found myself engaging more and doomscrolling less though, so the time feels more well spent even though I'm spending less time then I would have on reddit.

I don't know if this answers your question about same posts, but here is info about the sorting algorithm:

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

I also see same posts (I am looking at you two toilets in a bathroom) a lot but I think it is just lemmys way to show posts that ppl engage in and I guess two toilets in a bathroom is a very hot/trending topic right now because it doesn't seem to die down 😂

So I usually sort on all and new to find post that is lonely and maybe help them out a bit by commenting :D

I don't think this is a big different from reddit tho, on reddit do I see almost the same post all the time or even repost, here I just see the same post more 😂 just go and look at r/steamdeck, same question over and over again, but I will read them all! haha

I don't know what kinds of subs you joined but big ones like meme is posting a lot. But I saw this on reddit too, even reddit thought my feed was a bit lacking so I had maybe 50% posts from subs I hadn't subscribed to, to scroll through 😂

But also remember we aren't as many here(yet). we just hit over 100k users yesterday.

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

And I think it is good to have multiple sources of entertainment. Even tho it is nice to have everything at one place :D

Sorry if this sounds like preaching and that I wrote a book. But here you have it haha

Edit: fixed a few grammar mistakes (that I saw right away)

The problem with Fedi apps is that they're built as replacements or clones of other apps like Reddit (Lemmy), Instagram (Pixelfed) or Twitter (Mastodon).

People come to expect the same experience that they had there and they're disappointed by the small community and confused because it's built on a fundamentally different philosophy and concept.

And of coruse, bugs are to be expected. It's not a multi million dollars company that's building these apps but a community of volunteers.

I find it exciting. Very reminiscent of the Digg exodus. Sure, it can be a little frustrating at times. But reddit was going downhill for me long before the API stupidity. Lemmy feels like returning home in a way.

Have you tried Mlem? I’m using it on iOS and it’s been pretty stable and close to what I was used to using Apollo prior to this whole fiasco!

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example. Lemmy should prevent this, community names should be unique, it should have an index of all the Lemmy Fediverse where instances can lookup if a community exists instead of waiting for a user to import that community to his instance. Something similar to what BTC does with the decentralized ledger.

There are definitely a few bugs or perhaps performance issues that are annoying, but the experience seems already 1000 times better than just 2 days ago. I have also checked on lemmy every few months for about 2 years now, it's day and night. It already feels kinda like 2012 reddit to me, and that's a good thing in my view.

I'm still feeling my way around and have subbed to a community or two here and there, but (using Jerboa on Android) so far it's actually not that different from using rif (for me, anyway.)

The only real issue that I've encountered so far is I kept getting timeout errors whenever I tried to comment (though the comments seem to have posted anyway) or when I clicked into a comment thread, but those seem to have subsided for the most part...

I had the same problem of seeing posts more than once or consistently when viewing the site.

I had to dig under the Menu, click onto my profile name, select Settings, and make some changes.

Under that page I changed “Type” to “Subscribed” (Default was Local) and “Sort Type” to “Top Day” rather than “Hot”. Then make sure to click “Save”

This seems to have improved things for me a bit.

I know the feeling, but the way I'm dealing with it is twofold.

1. Create content. If the commuity you like has few posts, then start something. If the community doesn't exist, create it. I'm doing my part by creating maliciouscompliance (quick shoutout: /c/[email protected] , https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance , ![email protected] ).

2. Recognise that I used to spend too much time on Reddit and I should spend less time on social media in general. "Not as doomscrolly" is a feature for me, although I recognise this isn't for everyone.

Does anyone know why so many subs I've subscribed to say pending? Does a mod need to approve it?

It's far from perfect, but I'm taking a stand.

Half the reason I used Reddit was to cure boredom. I've decided to find other things to do. The other main reason I loved to check in was to make sure I don't miss big news. So far, Lemmy seems to scratch that itch. It'll take a long time for niche communities to establish, but I'll just deal with that for now. Maybe I'll just go back to some old forums for that purpose.

There's rough edges to be sure but the community seems pretty good and the devs seem like they're working hard.

Right now I'm seeing less time spent endlessly scrolling as more of a feature than a bug lmao, need to break that habit anyway

The mobile browser version is pretty much unusable for me. I select view All, then organize by either Hot or Active, and what I get is an endless stream of posts, but newly made and from two years ago (so, neither Hot not Active). And the page becomes unresponsive because of the endless stream.

The app works better but kept timing out when trying to upvoted stuff. Just updated to see if that fixes it.

So far, I gotta say squabbles is working better for me as a reddit alternative.

I think it's just going to take some getting used to. I've been riding the struggle bus for the last couple of days but it's getting better. I'm just excited to be somewhere new for a change. The echo chambers were getting pretty bad.

Mlem (iOS app) isn't great but I'm sure it will get better. The official reddit app is atrocious.

I was on reddit for over 12 years. I mostly lurked because my comments were never seen by the time I saw a thread. That's not super important tot me but I'd like to have more of a voice. Sure, things are easy now, but back in the day it was a pain in the ass in some regards. I'm still shocked the search sucks so bad over there. Give it some time to grow and see what happens.

I got the beta Mlem for iPhone. I’m liking it better than the mobile web. For two days it seems to be growing ok. I don’t miss the ads every other post for sure! (Didn’t have on Apollo either)

I know what you mean. The biggest issue I'm having is finding and subscribing to communities that are not a part of the instance I joined with.

I kept seeing links that listed communities I was interested in subscribing to, but then it would ask me to log in, I'd put in my credentials, only for the log in to not work. I finally realized I had to make a new account with that instance, and then i could log in and join it. I don't want to have to juggle between 3 or 4 accounts to enjoy content, plus much if it is duplicated as some instance are linked, but others are not.

Also I use Jerboa to browse lemmy, don't have a PC, and would rather use an app than my web browser(Brave).

It's very new. Very valid concerns, but most of them are growing pains. If people just stick with this for a while it will improve by leaps and bounds.

Personally I've focused more on the community aspect than the software for now, since the latter is actively being worked on by a lot of people, so that's just a waiting game. The community has been fantastic, though. Already a nice feel in a lot of discussions.

I'm warming up to it. Actually, I was never not warm to it, but the learning curve is real. I am on the website right now because the iOS app MLem, which is in beta, doesn't (as far as I can tell) have a way to search for other communities. But I want to shout that creator out, because I think it's difficult, thankless work, and I really appreciate their effort. The fact there is an app for iOS at all is a wonderful start. Who knows how solid it will be a year from now?

Any new platform will have far less content to begin with. And far less tools. I hope that people do create apps like Infinity, Relay and Apollo for Lemmy soon (or that Jerboa grows to that quality level).

The content will come, as Reddit becomes a shell of it's former self to satisfy the VCs.

What is your experience with lemmy?

Personally I am glad that decentralization is slowly picking up again with things like Lemmy and Mastodon. To me using it does not feel all that different from Reddit actually (UI-wise).

I grew up in the days of the old internet where newgroups and mailing lists were the way to interact with other "netizens" (a term I have not heard being used in years btw). Very little moderation and yet people behaved themselves, though of course the number of non-tech people on the net were far lesser as well so that certainly had something to do with it. Lemmy has that advantage too currently of smaller, ideologically-inclined, and willing-to-jump-a-few-hoops people.

TL;DR: I've no issues with using Lemmy and I like it so far, including smaller size of the community.

I just love it, but you have to make sure to subscribe to a lot of communities from lots of different instances.

Im also on Android which I think has a better mobile client.

Beehaw is very chatty, join their popular communities. :)

@jaykay I'd actually like to see bots rip top posts from reddit to post to Lemmy, and the subreddits who would like to I would love to see them create their sister Lemmy instances and create an auto crosspost process. This way, they are keeping their subscribers happy and can make the transition whenever they feel like it if it really comes time to completely abandon ship... Which for me it is time!

Give it some time, you'll start to see more and a bigger variety of posts. Additionally, change your sort of posts once in awhile, and enable the "all" selection and you'll see a bigger variety of posts

Yeah, that's been my experiance too. The platform only has about 12,000 active users on it. Mastadon, in comparison, has 1.2 million active daily users. it's alot more than previously, but still nothing in the grand scheme of things. More people are coming in though and it is still growing but at this rate, what I believe to be 3,000 new active users in a day, it'll take a bit.

In the mean time, thank you for taking the initiative and posting. To others be the change you want to see, try posting a bit.

I am also new here and I am a long time lurker, 2008, from the place that shall not be named.

My initial feel is that Lemmy is very much like pre Digg days and a kin to the traditional style forum boards where discussions aren't old news when the post is only 12 hrs old.

This is a breath of fresh air even with the growing pains I expect may come with the sudden influx of refugees.

I’ve had old posts pop up a few times, but not often.

I mostly lurked on Reddit, because it felt pretty useless to comment in larger subreddits. So far, it’s a lot more pleasant to comment here and see how communities might grow.

Getting out of the habit of doom scrolling has been the most positive change for me. I pop in a few times a day and check active and then new, then find other things to do. It’s better for my mental health and I’m more productive.

Lemmy is still very early in it's development and there's only two full time working on it afaik.

Agreed. I like the progress they’ve made so far, but it’s clear in alpha stage. And I find the mobile website to be pretty good for what it is. A few minor updates will make a big difference.

+1, as many have said, participation is key. Make communities, posts, and comments.

I mean having 1 less thing to doomscroll on is good innit

I definitely am having a tough time making the transition. It still feels a bit chaotic to me.

Other people have said the important parts. I'm not sure if you were on reddit for long. But if you think back to the early days of reddit it was not as stable as you might think now. The site was constantly down and there were many bugs. The user interface was still in development. Lemmy could be a diamond in the rough. Give it some sharpening and it will be a good place. I guess it's up to the users.

I agree, I think it has a lot of potential, but the difficulty in discovering other communities is a barrier that most won't want to cross. Having to manually search a specific string in order to subscribe is just too cumbersome. I hope that improves. I think if discoverability was better, everyone would be here and interacting. But it's too different that I could see most giving it a quick try and then giving up. Im an addict though so I'm muddling through it. I think people here don't really realize what the average user is like, and how most don't even know that third party apps exist.

I’m on an iPad and using the web experience and am really liking it. I was able to find enough similar communities that I’m getting a similar feed to Reddit and it’s growing like crazy. I’m not seeing posts and content pop in very fast. On the home page I sort by new and subscribed

Oh my, that has just been there the whole time and I repeatedly glossed over it!

Its hard for readers early on. You need lots of people to fill the feed. Get busy or wait for people to get things addressed and pipelines running.

Its mainly UX, it will come in time.

important to note, none of this made itself (even reddit); it took people using and contributing.

I used web version of lemmy.world on desktop (1080p monitor) yesterday, coming from old.reddit + RES, I really hate:

1. The web trend to leave white space on both side of websites, it's space inefficient and causes thread with longer title to take two lines to display.

2. Everything has a thumbnail slot even if it's just text thread, makes each thread took more height to display, also space inefficient.

3. You need to be authorized to even subscribe/join to a community (that is not on lemmy.world).

4. Image expand button is hard to spot for me, and I am pretty sure some threads with image didn't have expand button.

people need to remember that apps like apollo were around for years. iterating and improving to produce an incredible product.

it wasn’t always like that. you’re at the cutting edge. like reddit was 10 years ago.

This stuff takes time

Fediverse is kinda just a fragmented mess. Communities of all sides, some moderated strictly, some not. Content not being properly labeled (looking at you NSFW communities), shitposts leaking into everything.

Then it's just a duality, communities are either open to everyone, and therefore spam, or they're super closed down, create an echo chamber and shut everyone off.

This whole situation isn't enjoyable and I'm not really sure for the future of it.

Download Mlem via TestFlight - it really helps!

Something that improved my experience was changing the sorting from most active to hot. I see much more variety now.

Be the change you want to see. Start posting in the communities you enjoy for others to check out. If you're here just to scroll and not contribute, Lemmy won't improve quickly. If you wait until it gets to be another Reddit, you're not helping out the community.

my biggest adjustment outside of the very sus censoring on some subs, is that my front page on lemmy is almost entirely about reddit :/

I know it will eventually die down but rn its kinda like ... why bother browsing

I'm confused to be honest, but I admit I just started. But like, where do I look at pictures of houseplants and post mine? Do I find a server devoted to houseplants? Or maybe I should just finally figure out Instagram for that.

By the way, check your language settings in the profile. I had some issues with the posts that I could not get, because “English” option was somehow unchecked in the languages list…

I just sort by hot, check twice a day, make a thread if I want an inbox and it's fine

it's not as big right now, but if you're using Active sorting that could make it even worse, try using Hot, New, Top Day, or my personal favorite, New Comments, which is similar to new but anything that still has an active discussion will come up again

I think the sorting algorithm on kbin is better, but it's much slower.

On Reddit I sometimes see the same posts for days. In that respect I don't think there's anything different. It's about how you sort / filter and how much content is posted.

I feel the exact same tbh, and on the middle of my vacation :')

I‘m experiencing the same, but I see it only as growing pains of a community that is still tiny. If corporate social media continues like it does (downhill), I expect all that to improve.

I like it. So far my only issue is the convoluted manual search for communities, but that'll be a non issue as we spread out and get everything linked up. The other stuff is just bugs, like phone pics getting turned sideways when posting.

Overall I like it. I prefer a more intimate community and quality discussion as opposed to one line reactions comments and petty confrontation.

I have a similar experience, but its like a user base of 200k vs idk how many million on reddit. There wont be an infinite amount of posts until lemmy grows more.

I think only 1 percent of all users on lemmy and reddit post. So its 2k active posters vs 60k active reddit posters (assuming reddit has 6m).

The sorting has been bad i also see dead posts but overall im enjoying lemmy more than i had reddit in the later years (joined 2010).

Agreed. Its all a bit too confusing. I'm sort of understanding it all now after a few hours. I think great apps for android and iOS will definitely help a lot, but also I just really miss apollo :(

Newbie question, can we just use the standard Mastodon application for IOS?

The long and short of it is that it is rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation that can get better over time. It definitely needs some UI improvements and better onboarding

I had trouble with Mastodon, primarily because I had a very curated list of people I followed and most of them didn't move to Mastodon. Those that did are clearly using some type of program to just copy posts over from other platforms.

But for Lemmy, it feels different. I've been able to find most of the same communities I was a part of over there. The fact that they are smaller and less busy means I can spend less time scrolling, but still feel like I got my "fix" in for the day.

I mean, you're being realistic, and nobody can fault you for that. The jank is going to be too much for some people, they'll come here maybe but won't stick around. Other people will come and think that the positive aspects are more important than the negative ones and they'll migrate.

I'm a FOSS nerd and advertising makes me physically sick, so I'm more than willing to put up with the frustrating things about Lemmy.

My one advice is, if you want to see more content then post it.

I've been happy overall with it. I was lost at first but I set my feed to All severs and New posts. I have found some cool communities this way. I plan to stick around and I hope others do as well!

One complaint I have is that I can't post a comment without having to click "Post". In many applications, Reddit being one of them, you are able to use the hot key Ctrl+Enter and it will post/send whatever you wrote.

I mean the user base is less than 1% of reddits. So of course you're going to have less posts. You're relying on people for browsing, you either can chose to be content with how much people are posting, or get to posting yourself.

i setup my own instance ('bin, not Lemmy), and have subscribed it to so much content my doomscrolling is sitting at a comfortable, pre-reddit-death level. i am still scanning the 'verse for new instances to subscribe to.

they just added a feature in mbin that automatically groups crossposts, which is very nice.

i guess i prolly shouldnt have answered cuz im not using lemmy, technically...but

i would recommend:

• checking another instance, maybe you'll get better content ( mine is public!, https://moist.catsweat.com )
• subscribe your instance to more external content