As Reddit’s enshittification reaches new heights their attempts to suppress attention for alternatives, like federated Lemmy, has the opposite effect as this Hacker News discussion shows.
Reading criticisms of Lemmy from Reddit and other platforms like HackerNews reminds me of reading criticisms of Reddit from Digg back in 2007-2010, except they’re more based on architecture instead of “it looks ugly”.
Now there are things that will turn away users. There’s obviously a strong leftist culture here, there are less users so less content, and obviously federation is a stumbling block for many people.
But I really think that’s ok similar to what people are saying in that Hacker News thread. I wouldn’t want all of Reddit to come over, and I think it’s better for the culture and growth here to get a self selected trickle/stream of users instead of a deluge.
I don’t think Lemmy will necessarily have the same issues as Mastodon because Twitter/Mastodon requires you to know people or know accounts to follow to be useful. Lemmy just requires communities you’re interested in and a critical mass of users to drive posting and engagement. We’re already seeing greater activity as more users arrive
UX is whatever. Would like to see more decentralization of large hosts to avoid it inevitably being 1 or 2 big lemmy hosts with everything.
Also cross federation logins. I was so confused why my logins weren’t working on other servers.
That second comment by goplayoutside says it well: “Maybe the modest technical hurdles are a feature, not a bug.”
I think it is a feature, and the same is true for Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole, imho.
I also see it as a feature. If instances have a natural active user cap, then server-based communities can’t get so big as to outpace moderation. And admins have the ability to moderate local users’ behaviour on off-site sublemmies by enforcing their own codes of conduct.
The internet used to be small, but expansive. It became big, but concentrated.
I liked the former. I know many people like the latter. Those people are welcome to their corporate slums.
Problem: organizations pushing a political or commercial agenda will train their agents to overcome modest technical hurdles. Spammers, in particular, will go to extreme lengths to overcome technical hurdles, including hiring people to solve CAPTCHAs.
Agreed, I remember being shocked about a decade ago learning that there were services run in developing countries where you pay about $1 for 1000 CATPCHA solves for your spam bot to pass along and a person solving it.
What will the next social media trend be? Seems like the centralized options are done for (FB, TW, Reddit), but they’re not being replaced by any single solutions. Tiktok took mainly genZ. Professionals have been wanting a twitter replacement to move to since musk and have yet to figure it out (bluesky, tribel, post social, takes, mastodon, etc has no apparent frontrunner). Political apps segmented some off like parler and the right stuff. Decentralized and foss apps have all kinds of solutions but won’t likely ever attract a huge crowd. So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?
So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?
God, I hope so.
The strong leftist culture is a plus. I know I’m not going to get flooded with nazi shit like so many of the prior iterations of the reddit exodus (e.g. voat).
There’s obviously a strong leftist culture here
That depends on what instance you create an user on. For example, Lemmygrad.ml and Lemmy.ml are not the same thing, despite both belonging to Lemmy. The issues I see are having a tankie culture, and not having more points of view.
There are less users so less content
That’s something we can help with, although it’s not so easy. I mean, the users that are already here, we can create more content and interact more with each other, so eventually more users will come. It can be boring and tiring, but it’s not impossible.
Federation is a stumbling block for many people
That’s something absolutely new for the vast majority of people. I felt myself confused the first time I joined the fediverse too. But after some time, I felt myself less confused. Some clarifications, tutorials and support can do the real trick.
I have to hope that main instances will stop federating Lemmygrad at some point. There’s no place, IMO, for genocide denial/affirmation and authoritarian extremism on platforms like these. Or any platforms.
Edit: Seems this is unfortunately unlikely as the lemmy.ml instance appears to be moderated by a genocide denier and authoritarian.
Beehaw is already blocking federation with Lemmygrad. Feddit, Lemmy.one, and Sopuli too. At this point the only major Lemmy server listed on join-lemmy.org seems to be Lemmy.ml.
I don’t think lemmy.one is deferated from Beehaw; I’m subscribed to one community there.
1st edit: I forgot this community isn’t on Beehaw.
3rd edit: Apparently, I’m Jared, 19, and I cannot read. Sorry about that!
I’m new here so I don’t know much about lemmy.one, but as far as I understand it’s lemmygrad, that people have a problem with (being tankie and all that). Maybe you got confused with the names?
No, I just got confused with the wording OTL
I think the person above meant both beehaw and lemmy.one have defederated from lemmygrad.
Edit: Seems this is unfortunately unlikely as the lemmy.ml instance appears to be moderated by a genocide denier and authoritarian.
Who has reportedly been banning people for calling out said genocide denial and authoritarianism.
And they removed my comments among others, for calling the Chinese state a colonial and imperialist state.
It’s not like there’s not a strong leftist culture on reddit either so I don’t really see that as a problem unique to Lemmy. If Lemmy can provide a centralized-like decentralized platform, I think it can succeed.
There isn’t at all. Reddit is liberal at the very best and even then it’s mostly Obama liberal, which is center right outside the most conservative parts of the world.
The leftist communities are much smaller, easily ignored, and often ridiculed in the mainstream subreddits. The gaming spaces complain about “wokeness” and criticisms of female representations among others. Thinly veiled racism and explicit transphobia abounds.
In contrast, Lemmy is full of anarchists, communists, socialists, and other anti capitalist. It has been and remains a dominantly leftist community.
The most disturbing thing I’ve seen is the evidence that Lemmy.ml is controlled by a genocide-supporting red fascist/third positionists. If that’s true, its a massive issue and makes the platform hard to trust.
Very open to learning that this isn’t true, if it isn’t.
What’s the source on that? That’s a pretty big accusation but I’d certainly want to know if it’s true.
It stems from the fact that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml cofederate, that the project leads are communists, and the claim that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml off of the same IP address.
The first two points are not in contention, but I haven’t, personally, been able to verify the third.
Now, lemmygrad is absolutely a trollish, auth-left hellscape. And I say that with… well, not respect, but not specific derision, either. That genuinely seems to be the aesthetic they’re going for. They’re not here to make friends with anyone but themselves, and they’ll play apologetics for China, North Korea, and Stalin’s takeover of the Soviet Republic all day long.
But even if the project leads are genuinely involved in that, it doesn’t really change the fact that the project is not inextricably tied to them. It’s an open source project. It can be forked, and forked again. No one actually needs lemmygrad or lemmy.ml. Or lemmy, for that matter. Everyone can hop over to kbin or Friendica and still access all of the same communities.
Shit, they’re accessible from Mastodon and Calckey.
And besides, it’s not like people avoid using software when it’s made by white supremacist capitalist techbros. In those cases, we all basically just go “yeah, but I’m not a white supremacist capitalist techbro” and carry on with our day. And those products generally can’t be wrenched from their control or oversight.
Most people chose Elon over learning that multiple websites exist…
And even if it were true, there are other instances. The only reason I’m on lemmy.ml myself is because the one that was recommended to me first was offline when I tried it, I could move somewhere else if this turns out to be true.
What concerns me just now is whether join-lemmy the website is controlled by them or not. So far I don’t know if it is- But if the entry points are guarded by genocide-supporting (not denying) left-fascists, then that does pose a significant issues.
BTW, these ifs I’m using aren’t rhetoric devices. I’m not stating this as fact. There seems to be indicators of concern- Is what I’m saying.
Having been a lemmy resident for a while (this being my second account and someone who doesnt visit lemmygrad at all) is that in my experience the Devs conduct themselves professionally, impartially and generally have the patience of saints.
If you decide to stay here for a while you might form the same impression.
The evidence I’ve seen is compiled mainly in these posts:
https://raddle.me/f/lobby/88428/so-the-dengist-who-made-lemmy-has-announced-raddle-isn-t-an https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/history https://raddle.me/wiki/QnA_with_Emma
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zm3wbj/radical-leftists-built-their-own-reddit-after-it-banned-them
Removed by mod
Very open to learning that this isn’t true, if it isn’t.
That’s not how this works. If you’re going to make serous accusations like that, the onus is on you to provide evidence to support them.
FWIW, I have no particular loyalty to lemmy.ml, I just joined the first instance I saw.
Maybe you’re confusing with lemmygrad?
I’d like to read more on this, if true
The evidence I’ve seen is compiled mainly in these posts:
https://raddle.me/f/lobby/88428/so-the-dengist-who-made-lemmy-has-announced-raddle-isn-t-an https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/history https://raddle.me/wiki/QnA_with_Emma
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zm3wbj/radical-leftists-built-their-own-reddit-after-it-banned-them
Fuck, i even didn’t notice that the lemmy.ml instance admin, also the Dev of lemmy and the android app has Mao as a profile cover, with Che as avatar…
You are a wrecker who is trying to destroy lemmy. You will not succeed. Go back to 4chan where someone might believe your weird conspiracy theories.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
I was made aware of lemmy because of this. Joined.
@responseAIbot @humanetech I now have my next project: Lemmy. Going to start on it this afternoon.
I’m here because they banned it. Figure if they are threatened by lemmy it must be good.
Hilarious that a #HackerNews top voted comment on a post wrt #Reddit censoring mentions of #Lemmy effectively argues that the latter is “too geeky and hard to use” and that the former two won’t be displaced because they’re well known and easy to approach.
These people have ZERO self awareness. Never mind understanding about the legacy of their forums.
@osma @humanetech the same will happen with kbin, even tho its interface is hyper similar to reddit. pretty sure that’s gonna be another case of “too geeky, unusable, unstable, useless, sh!tty reddit ripoff and bad”.
the “useless”, as one guy said (not on here) when i mentioned lemmy: “Another sh*tty reddit ripoff? Useless” is very funny
I saw a similar thread on Reddit itself. They had several sources that claimed mastodon had “failed to convert Twitter users”, and therefore the fediverse was a waste of time and would never catch on. I just chuckled because the longer they stay away, the better the fediverse will be (for me).
For everyone.
Reddit just got worse the more people used it.
I remember reddit was sorta seen that way back in the day. The concept of of subreddits that had different sorting features and the like was a lot different than forums way back when
@DodoTheDev Absurdly hilarious. Thank you, saving this for later use
I think to an extent that depends on how much effort/funds the devs are willing to put in to keep sites online. Say 100k people want to come and have a look on the 12th. ~1/10 of those would create accounts, if the server falls over at 11am and stays down then only 10k people will see the site, maybe 1k sign up.
If the server is up all day then I think you’d see much larger adoption.
Lemmy structure very anarchist and I like it
@Anarcho_Mandalorian @humanetech wonder if I can comment from Mastodon
@benny @Anarcho_Mandalorian @humanetech
You sure can! I am doing that now on my own Lemmy post 😃
I tried that, but I couldn’t get it to work. Oh well, two accounts won’t kill me.
@smallcircles @Anarcho_Mandalorian @humanetech was trying out how to do it. Coming from hubzilla originally I was used to comment on the foreign instance directly, here on Mastodon I need to deal with copying links etc…
👋 hello!
the whole of the fediverse is like that
Yeah, even some documentation sections look like manifestos but you can’t disagree to be honest.
Reddit and the top media brought it on themselves.
That’s a lovely news. Let them bleed.
I’m really hoping this is too advanced for 90% of Reddit users. Reddit is such a shithole compared to 10 years ago.
A few hundred people will migrate but the majority will put up with shit, because they’re used to swimming in it.
It will be a small percentage of Reddit. But even small percentage is way, way more than a few hundred. And the most active users (mods, post makers, etc.) are the most likely to move. The casuals who just scroll are the most likely to stay. It’s the former that make most of the content.
but the majority will put up with shit
The majority of people in Reddit don’t provide any value to conversation
ofor information. We shouldn’t really be sad that passive consumers don’t follow the migration to Lemmy or more accurately to Fediverse.I used reddit to get information and read news from active users and to engage in conversations within these topics.
People who won’t follow us from Reddit, wouldn’t have anything good to offer to this platform anyway so I don’t think we should care to be honest.
Nothing of value was lost.
The question is if we’d even want the majority to migrate.
I personally migrated because I wanted to avoid the majority
I don’t. I want people who will take the extra time to add to the discussion. Most people aren’t going to want to acclimate to the fediverse which I think will filter out a lot of nonsense.