On the future of Lemmy vs reddit
Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:
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I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
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Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
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Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
My problem with Lemmy is the lack of activity in niche communities. You're right that there needs to be a critical mass and arguably Lemmy has it, but only for the most mainstream, generic type of content. It doesn't have the mass to sustain any sort of niche, outside of maybe tech related topics because of the way the userbase is slanted.
I find myself going back there often because of that, but I hope that the userbase for generic content enough to sustain and grow, from where more active niche communities can spring up.
I think things could get a lot more interesting if other software that is more like classic bulletin boards and forums would implement ActivityPub. I mean, such online forums are still able to thrive in their respective niches. If such forums would become compatible with Lemmy, Kbin or Friendica, it could bring a whole new dynamic to this part of the Fediverse. At the same time, it would help these niche forums get more attention (even though I'm not sure if all or even most of them are interested in that).
When I first looked into Lemmy, which was probably well over a year ago at this point, I saw that they had an alternative front end called LemmyBB which resembles the older style phpBB boards of the late 90s and early 00s. It looks like the demo instance is offline now, and it wasn't federating to begin with, but it certainly looks like an interesting use of the tech.
Someone the other day referred to posting in niche communities as shouting into the void currently, which I thought was apt.
I run one of that niche communities and right now things are quiet, but I'll keep at it and grow it over the next few years.
Oh, I see you have zero posts, ever. Well why don't you go and contribute to that niche community you are nagging about. Maybe that's what it needs to grow.
Ad hominem
Wait let me do it right so you know I know it's Latin
ad hominem
Wait, I can't read your comment because I keep seeing ads.
Ads for hominy? Weird.
Lemmy needs both content generators and content consumers. Not everyone needs to do both if that isn't what motivates them to come to the site.
I don't really love comparing to reddit because what reddit became isn't what I hope for lemmy, but to make the point... What percentage of people do you think made content on reddit? I'd guess it was a fraction of a single percent.
I'm trying to, reached 300 subscribers, but three of them posted once, several commented once and that's it.
What community is it, maybe I'll try to plug it whenever it's relevant to my comments.
It's rare that it could come up in conversation outside the topic of photography, but here it is: !streetphotography@lemmy.world
Ah, nice, I'll be a member and will be an OC poster as well though I rarely bring my sony mirrorless. It's it okay to upload mobile photos?
I am of the opinion that cameras don't really matter, beyond a certain technological level. Does it take pictures? Then it's a camera, capable enough to use. There was a quote in Michael Freeman's book on visual photographic literacy that I found quite interesting. He wrote that only ameteur photographers obsess over camera technology and settings.
So you're more than welcome to post on there!
Thank you so much.
I'm sure they'll get right to it after reading your smartass comment.
To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I'm willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.
Yes, I don't need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.
Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.
There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.
If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.
Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I've found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.
That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.
I've noticed that "Hot" turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.
Whenever I've posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).
If you sort by "active" there should be posts with more comments. The "hot" sorting is not really representative for how active users on lemmy are, since it favours younger posts over older posts with lots of comments. You can read the details of the reasoning here .
I swap between active and hot. Seems to work well
Reddit has a lot of international subreddits which don't really exist here on Lemmy (they have like 10 users and they almost never post).
Reddit has huge lively communities. I'm having a ball here on Lemmy, but I too must check Reddit once a day to know if important stuff happened.
Sure, someone could say I should work on jumpstarting these Lemmy communities, but I've only been able to to what I can so far (that is, replying to posts and joining the conversation)
Ninja edit: fixed grammar
I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities, conversations and information entirely. I will not support their platform.
And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.
Yeah, you need people to post and comment to develop a community. I've got one community where I post five times a week, but I've only had two posts from other people and only one person commented on a post.
What about now?
Still visiting several subreddits that don't have corresponding active lemmy communities. Once of them actually has an "official" lemmy community (run by the same mods) but none of the people moved over, so it's empty,
And it doesn't seem entirely impossible that our Elon Musk fanboy Steve will screw up again.
I won't be surprised to read in the future:
That will be when they remove old.reddit
I've been wondering if the API change was actually a move to prevent anyone but themselves from using Reddit's data to train AI.
Likely so, though scraping will still yield the data. Maybe they will make scraping harder too.
Maybe that's why their mobile app and new website sucks lol
Yes, they specifically have said they don't want AI companies to get their user data for free. What's interesting is that we as a culture have internalized and accepted the idea that our user-made content is something only tech companies have the right to profit from and fight over.
That’s what I assumed from the beginning: think of the gold rush for generative ai and they are using Reddit data. Actually, it even seems fair to share in the potential (but what about the users who created it all?).
However if that was their intent, they sure screwed it up
Lemmy has enough user activity to fulfill my time-wasting needs.
There doesn't need to be one website that EVERYONE is at. The Web didn't used to be so damn consolidated.
I don't give one shit about "Lemmy vs. Reddit". I care about Lemmy having active communities to engage in, regardless of what is happening on some other website.
Yes this is my thinking as well. Before reddit I was more than happy participating in forums on subjects I enjoyed. I had want I wanted. I almost have that here as well. That's success in my eyes.
I think so too. I used reddit up until rif stopped working about a week ago (for me at least). Ive always been a reluctant participant in social media largely because of how consolidated everything is. Which, at the end of the day just means we're easier to market to or monetize. I'm excited about the possibilities of lemmy in a way I've never been about social media before. The content is currently a little sparse; you have to go looking a little, but that'll improve quickly I'm betting. There's no shortage of content to be had. In a small way it feels like the Internet 25 years ago
Reddit has always had changes that made people want to leave. Removing CSS was the first that comes to mind. Now that lemmy exists it could be seen as a new platform to jump to every time reddit does something dumb or anti user. I have high hopes for lemmy
For me, getting rid of the old reddit design as default was pretty egregious. Usability tanked if I wasn't logged in.
By design sadly, to collect that juicy, juicy user data.
When i.reddit.com was gone, that did it for me.
"You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down."
This is probably my favorite part of Lemmy. The comment section feels more meaningful, and not a landfill of garbage posts. Additionally, if I make a comment, there is a higher chance that it will be read and responded to, so it feels like I am actually engaging with a community, and not just chucking my thoughts into space and hoping they land on a planet.
People actually talk here instead of racing to make an one-liner based on an in-joke to maximize karma usually. It's nice.
Absolutely. It's nice a solid portion of the silly Redditness is relegated to Lemmy Shitpost and Meme communities.
I think the biggest value Reddit had to humanity was its original content. The kind of stuff that has people putting "reddit" in their Google searches for myriad topics.
As such, I'm not hung up on the numbers. If one really looked at it, that content generation is such a small fraction of what activity goes on over there. I'll take quality over quantity here.
No surveillance capitalism. unlike reddit, lemmy isn't trying to monetize/track you.
Freedom/openness. Already, someone can use a third party app to use lemmy. Moving forward, I think, people will come up with new ways to utilize lemmy/activity pub.
Reddit has now checkmark/verified or whatsoever they call like any other centralized social media. Extreme cringe
twitter has transformed my view of people with verification checks to "most likely to be an idiot"
It could also be that they are forced to be an idiot, like for content creators (MKBHD, Tekking101)
i did say "most likely" :P
Paid speech.
Those people should be double and triple posting to different platforms.
There's no reason MKBHD can't post to both Twitter and Mastodon. You get the reach, and you enable an alternative.
Yes, it went from “person of influence” to “dumbass pays for attention” rather quickly.
That's why musk now allows people to hide their check
Lol I didn't know, I haven't been there in months now. That's awful... But good for us. :)
I definitely think having mobile apps is an essential step. I was looking at alternative platforms such as Raddle.me but using a mobile browser was an extra hurdle (similar to using the official Reddit app) that kept me from regularly checking in.
I could see this causing issues later. We've already seen issues arise with some instances using the .ml domain or not being updated immediately.
Defederation is another beast all together. Most of an instance might be fine but a few problematic communities could create problems leading to arguments and, as much as I hate the term, drama.
I agree. Some of the alternatives to Reddit are vehemently against mobile apps (ahem, tildes), so I doubt those will ever take off. Not everybody sits in front of a computer all day. But I think some of those don't actually want a big userbase, which seems counterproductive for a forum, but whatever.
Lack of an API is what's keeping me from using kbin, honestly. I know they're working on it, but Lemmy already had an API long before the Reddit protests started.
I hope Lemmy never gets to be the size of Reddit. We'll have some level of Eternal September eventually, but please not at that level. I really hope not. It's overwhelming unless you're in one of the niche subreddits.
If it never gets to the size of Reddit then it's destined to become 9gag with porn.
One problem I see:
You can google
site:reddit.com whateverBut if you googlesite:lemmy.world whateverthen you're losing a significant amount of results. To get good results, you need to know which Lemmy instances is likely to have your answer, and with communities duplicated over different servers, that can be tough.In the end I find I prefer this federation model, although I'm not sure although I'm a bit concerned about funding it if it scales up to the size of Reddit (same with Mastodon vs twitter).
Google should be finding searches with "lemmy" keyword, but it isn't at the moment.
Lemmy needs some SEO people.
I don't think lack of SEO is the issue. There's just not enough content and brand/domain authority to get results from here high in SERPS.
There might be something fediverse related that would affect performance in search, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about this setup to speak to it.
I think it's just lack of content, general awareness/interest, and longevity that's keeping Lemmy low in search
Lemmy contents are replicated by federated servers, so you might find what you want by using
site:lemmy.worldor other big instances because they might also has replicated contents from other smaller instances.This has more to do with how bad Google has gotten, such that you're forced to add restrictions like Reddit to get rid of SEO sites and get useful answers. A proper working search engine would show these (and any that are found in Lemmy) high up by default.
Ideally it would be popular enough that you wouldn't need the site modifier. Google would see that Lemmy has the most seen and perpetuated answer just like it sometimes does with Reddit now, whatever the instance.
In the eyes of a search engine, yes.
But once a site is popular enough for traffic and engagement to influence it's position in search, it's def going to be popular enough for bots, trolls, bad faith actors, grifters, etc.
People still often out the site modifier on just to prevent google from barfing up a bunch of crap they don't care about, even if they know that Reddit results will be near the top.
Welcome to the old Internet. Decentralization is good in a way, people will have to try harder instead of having everything spoon fed to them by Google.
I'm not personally a fan of that brand of elitist gatekeeping. Having it be harder to keep out the plebs is not a look I think we wanna get behind.
Decentralization is important, but the goal isn't to keep people out.
I guess I didn't exactly mean it as elitist gatekeeping, I see it more like people are being abandoned by major websites and this is the result.
The main difference for me is that I feel like I'm part of a global project, not just a product in some big tech's ecosystem.
The future of Lemmy has nothing to do with R whatsoever.
If that’s true, thrn Reddit’s explosion in popularity had nothing to do with Digg.
The critical mass of Reddit was many years after the Digg debacle.
Would the critical mass occur if the original wave didn’t join and produce content?
Lemmy hasn't gone a day without talking about reddit for a month and a half.
You don't wish to see it kill off R?
I'd rather not because then all the trolls will come here and it will turn into R2.0
As much as I want this to be true, it's simply patently false.
I agree with you, but I think there's a level where it is true.
Like Lemmy should grow and develop based on what users are saying and not what Reddit is doing to a degree.
Don't agree with that guy. He has a glaring conflict of interest.
A good many of us are here because of R's apps no longer working, including myself. It's been a month and now I don't even remember using R on my phone tbh. I did mostly use desktop, but I've also acclimatised very quickly.
Which is one reason I am confused by the response to Sync. We left because of third party apps getting screwed over but a segment of Lemmy is saying "Yeah, but only foss apps should migrate to Lemmy because, 'mah foss sensibilities'."
As a proud and loud member of the FOSS community, I will say this: The FOSS community is cringe as hell and people need to start going back to the root of the movement and remember that we are about CHOICE and FREEDOM.
If you're judging somebody for using the platform of their choice, FOSS or not, you are the problem.
Lemmy is literally a reddit clone, of course it has lots to do with reddit what are you talking about
Honestly, I don't know if it's the fewer users, the lack of trolls, the newer apps I've been forced to use or the topics that I've been getting into since joining Lemmy. But I have been considerably more active here both commenting and posting, than I ever was on Reddit.
It may have started as a way to do my part for the growth of Lemmy, but it's not been about that for me for some time now.
For me it's the smaller number of users. It is very likely that your comment will just end up at the bottom and nobody will see it if you comment on a reddit post with thousands of comments. If you comment on a Lemmy post with 25 comments or less it is way more likely to actually be seen by people.
Infiltration... As I've moved over from reddit the community feels much more open to discussion rather than comment section filled internal jokes.
We just need Lemmy users who are daywalkers to post links into reddit. Or recreate certain communities here, but bringing over the good and not the toxic. Ama, but maybe amapolitics bringing more hyper local awareness to the masses?
Quality over quantity any day
The important catalyst is good third party clients working with Lemmy as Voyager and Sync and people learning about the fediverse.
I agree with you. Currently on Infinity for lemmy and I love it! Def switching to a 3rd party app changes the experience completely. I'm normally a Boost user, but Infinity is amazing and the owner is smashing bugs pretty quickly. And FOSS! (That was the main reason I tossed Sync out the window)
I was so happy to hear someone was making a fork of Infinity for Lemmy!
Same i use infinity for lemmy and infinity for reddit (with my own api key) its working great
Where can you download it? I don't see it on fdroid or play store.
https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy/releases
Thank you for the Voyager tip! It's free and I like it.
#likeitalot
A huge userbase like reddit's is both a pro and a con. The big advantages include diversity of content (especially niche/hobby stuff), more content, and higher frequency of new content overall.
But it comes with some pretty big disadvantages, too. Moderation is difficult so they are happy to let a small number of "power mods" run everything. Subs that were fun & interesting in the past....after they hit the front page and become popular they go downhill quickly. Divisive USA-centric politics.
And of course the "asshole filter" effect: where the assholes drive away the non-assholes, so the concentration of assholes is always going up.
Fantastically written. I agree.
The fact most surprises me is that lemmy became a real alternative to Reddit in a bit more than a month. Idk guys, I just love internet
Was there ever really a gap? I got fed up with reddit and came right here and am very satisfied. I don't seem to be having a problem at all.
I was using connect or something before Sync came out and I simply did not like the interface versus the 3P app I used for Reddit. This made me not use Lemmy at all for a while - so there is / was a gap at least for me.
Also my main page takes a couple days to get all new content vs hours on R. Which I understand, but there definitely is also that gap
I think it was good enough but now is better maybe
It is definetly better
I remember that the website had first that new posts pop up at the top so a user dont have to reload the page, but made with the influx of people /new very unusable because after seeing something cool i had to follow it every few seconds or open it in a new tab
As a fairly early Reddit user I've seen a lot of change as the website got bigger. I would agree that growth is not necessarily good, there is a minimum size of community to keep content fresh and a maximum size before it loses the personal connection. Right now a lot of the larger Lemmy communities are getting active enough, but Lemmy is lacking the users to support the niche communities. Maybe it is best if Reddit keeps those and the two websites end up with a happy balance for all the types of communities.
lemmydotworld is down again, if anyone is missing harrypotter@lemmy.world they can go to the other harry potter community on lemm.ee !harrypotter@lemm.ee that I'm currently trying to build up .
On Lemmy you're automatically an extremist if you're not socialist.