What value did you get from Reddit that you hope to realize or expand upon here?

mcpheeandme@lemmy.world to Lemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.world – 232 points –

For me, it's a few things.

  1. A way to burn time that doesn't feel like a digital sugar rush.

  2. Support, camaraderie, and kindness, primarily from /r/stopdrinking.

  3. Niche stuff, like ideas for local hiking and backpacking trips, propaganda posters, and kayaking info.

195

I love the communities for my hobbies. I hope they will be just as active as on reddit.

Same here! Crossing my fingers hard and commenting and posting way more than I did for years on Reddit.

I have to say that I totally agree with the notion of looking for something that isn't. 'digital sugar rush'.

I enjoyed the deeper and harder discussions around politics, theology and philosophy. However, I only ever posted when I had something to add to the conversation as a lot of the subs I was in were modded by experts, and I'm at best an interested layperson.

I think for the moment at least, I need to brave commenting more. I guess we will have to so is we can attract the same experts to this platform, and get the same level of discussion.

I think I need to find communities that were closer to what I subbed on reddit before I post. I mostly liked meme subs and a lot of the main communities aren't fragmented enough yet for me to post memes on specific shoes/movies/gnaew I like yet. But I've been commenting a lot! ✊🏾

It's going to take time. Reddit took many years to develop that level of niche communities. We've got a really nice surge of momentum right now, so it makes it easier to keep commenting when everything is exciting and growing. But when we do have a lull in activity, try to keep that same energy and stay active. I'm also commenting like 10x more than I used to in Reddit.

It's important to enjoy the journey, right now we still don't have many of the communities we were used to on Reddit, but we do have an environment that is way more positive and hopeful than the jaded feeling of Reddit in 2023. I'm trying not to worry about the niche communities too much and just enjoy the things I couldn't do on reddit, like poke my head into a wide variety of groups and be welcomed in by other users who are happy to engage. On reddit people were much more hostile to each other by default. As long as we maintain these positive vibes, the communities will organically grow back over time.

thank you! that's how we gonna make this work

Yeah! I'm all here for that. Feels good to be a part of something like this

Hobbies are really the thing. And a source for funny videos. I don't need the big subreddits for politics and news, much as I tend to get sucked into them, but I do really like having a wide range of subforums for my niche interests. It's much easier to find someone to talk to about a small tabletop RPG on a large aggregate site than it is to search for sufficiently active independent forums.

This so much. And if you're thinking of starting a new hobby, there is a sub for it to help you get started. Not only do you have a group of veterans to ask your newb questions to, but lots of them have curated FAQs and starter guides to get you rolling. Reddit honestly improved my life in many ways for this reason.

Recommendations and reviews about everything under the sun from actual users and not sponsored ad reviews.

I am looking for curation and durable content here.

For me, Reddit was a curated source of information. You have these communities full of knowledgeable people. If you went into that community you'd either find the info you need, already asked and answered, or you could ask and get a good answer. Discord is just real-time chat. It has virtually no search engine find-ability, no categorising, tagging, or reasonable way to go back and find something someone asked a year ago that was answered perfectly. Many of the social media are really personal and 'now' oriented. I'm eating a donut. This person pissed me off. I'm getting married, etc. Video streaming platforms have individual creators, who often have a theme, but they don't have communities or top-down categorisation. And video sucks as a searchable archive. It's really hard to know that 17 minutes into this video with a clickbait title, there's a really useful nugget of information. But Reddit (and now its federated clones) is user-curated and categorised. If I jump into a Windows-oriented community, I won't find a bunch of Linux stuff. If I want to look at a sport or a hobby or politics, there's a place to go. But it's not one creator/curator. It's organic.

You just distilled and clarified into text exactly what I was feeling. Thank you.

Yes. I like Mastodon, but Reddit was exactly as you described. I got real value out of it, and I hope that something coalesces to take its place.

I'm looking for community engagement without the homogenised superculture. I'd like to be able to discuss books on a small book community without someone jumping in with "I also choose this guy's dead wife" or "not my proudest fap" because it's a low effort way of garnering meta-points. I also like the lack of an account-based point system.

So far Lemmy is delivering and so I'm engaging here a lot more actively than I ever did on Reddit.

Exactly, it wasn't like this before. But the past couple years in every post in every subreddit I keep colapsing the same top comments until I find a decent comment tree with meaningful conversation.

There was also a huge problem with people posting the same comments over and over. After browsing for 10 years you could read the title and assume the top 5 comments.

Comments used to be the best part. So many different opinions, made me say "hmm haven't thought it that way" but now I just say why bother.

The smaller communities for specific interests (music genres, hobbies, etc).

Reviews and opinions. With Google results becoming worse by the hour, fake reviews flooding Amazon, paid reviews in almost every site/blog, when I'm about to purchase something I'm not 100% sure about I just search reddit to see what actual people are saying about it.

And last but not least - mostly sane discussions for news/articles with nested comments and a voting system. Lemmy already offers everything needed for that, what remains to be seen is how the community develops and grows.

In the twilight years I mostly just used Reddit as an information aggregate.

I'm primarily wanting a place where I can read information for both niche and general topics, as well as read the dissent to that information in the same space.

Maybe I become more engaged in the community. But going from:

Private forums > old reddit > new reddit

Each step felt like I knew and was known by fewer people. All while knowing less about the people I did recognise. I spent a lot of time in "off topic" sections of the private forums, commented and generated a fair amount on old Reddit, and mostly lurked on new Reddit.

I think the whole situation has me cynical about the idea of "internet community", and maybe that's something I need to work on.

I'm primarily wanting a place where I can read information for both niche and general topics, as well as read the dissent to that information in the same space.

Man, you nailed it, here. The thing I valued most about reddit as an information aggregate was the ability to go into the comments and expect that I could hear some different viewpoints, maybe get some additional information about the original article, etc.

No longer the case on current day reddit, but in the past in the news subreddits, when an article was clickbait one of the top comments would usually point out that it was click bait and why. And that made reddit for me a very useful source to get news from all over the world because it was easy to skip through the biased/clickbait articles.

Then also the specific gaming communities. Lemmy is far to small to have a community for every single game so that's a big loss for me.

This.

Plus the shitty humor. There was a time when the memes and shit-posts were actually fun (or at least somewhat creative.)

Then the Facebook and Instagram crowd moved in and reddit was reduced to 9gag re-posts and selfies with zero context.

I feel so old writing out those words...

That's probably how this will end up too if it takes off in the same way Reddit did though.

You either die a 9gag or you live long enough to become a 4chan

I wonder how much interest there is in bringing /u/alternate-source-bot to the news communities/sublemmies/magazines/whatever we are calling them now. I feel like there could be some utility but I haven't seen any bots in the wild yet, and I don't want to spam or otherwise overload instances.

Reddit was my biggest source of news. Not just because it was usually pretty up to date, but I greatly appreciated being able to check the comments as a bullshit detector. That and the article being in the comments instead of news sites' paywalls.

Product reviews, restaurant recommendations (regional searches on Reddit for Vacationing/etc was awesome), tourist recommendations - this was the truly useful part of Reddit that will take Lemmy a very long time to catch up to.

I’ll second this one. All the niche communities made me feel like I was connected to the world around me in really organic way. I wasn’t being advertised at, I was experiencing life alongside other people with my shared interests.

Selfishly - A place to essentially have content delivered in an easy to find/use format 24/7.

Less Selfishly - A place to take part in discussions on shared interests & hobbies.

Unrealistically - A Reddit-like archive of posts to help in troubleshooting or recommending things. Pretty much impossible to replicate what Reddit has at the moment, and, if I understand how Lemmy works well enough atm, not something that's going to happen on Lemmy.

I just like a 'digital public square' aspect. I want to see what people are interested in today. I want to catch up on the latest news. Maybe I want to learn something new in a hobby community.

Reddit was okay at that at first, but it did start to feel 'gamed' over a decade ago now. People were starting to notice common reposters, 'super users', and its only devolved from there with sponsored posts, awards, and advertisements. That takes away from the public square aspect and instead makes it feel like you are consuming a product.

Quick responses to oddly specific questions in niche communities.

Users aggregating links on a specific topic like buildapcsales and gundeals from reddit.

I liked the positivity of the community for the most part. Reddit, to my mind, was the only largely non toxic form of social media and that will be hard to replace though I’m liking Lemmy so far.

I always liked getting into micro communities and hearing how they talked about their worlds. That might include life in obscure (relative to me) places around the world, getting into the weeds of various occupations I’ll never work in or learning about the fine details of hobbies I’ll never have. Real people having good faith conversations about highly specific things relevant to them.

I liked the positivity of the community for the most part. Reddit, to my mind, was the only largely non toxic form of social media and that will be hard to replace though I’m liking Lemmy so far.

I think the voting system plays a huge role in that. On other social media platforms engagement always pushes the content, no matter if the engagement is positive or negative.

Reddit and it's users are good at hyperfixating on a topic and building a community around said topic, with different skill levels. Therefore if you want to also participate, you can simply look up a subreddit for that topic and nearly instantly get answers to your questions and tips on how to start.

I primarily used Reddit to get involved in niche hobbies/interests and learn more about them. After seeing a lot of my favourite communities jumping ship, I thought I’d jump too!

Niche communities are what made Reddit fun/useful to me. It was really nice to have discourse with a community that liked the same video game, movie, hobby, political ideals, etc, that you did.

Guides and tutorials were the other big thing. I utilized and contributed guides on Reddit regularly. It was really nice to engage with a community to solve an issue rather than use some AI generated or ad ridden article.

I hope to see Lemmy fill these gaps and it seems it has the potential to do so.

I mostly used it for extremely specific obscure tech issues that were solved 10 years ago in random threads πŸ™ƒ

That's why I hope that most subs make their content available again, even after shit went down the drain.

Exactly this. I work in IT and when looking for an answer I would Google search my question followed by Reddit and normally find a post with the answer I needed. I hope Sysadmin here becomes just as active.

I wish someone could archive all that info and bring it over. I think /r/datahoarders was working on something like that

Language models basically have done this in a funny way

Recommendations and reviews about everything under the sun from actual users and not sponsored ad reviews.

  1. Same point on burning time
  2. Specific in-depth discussion on hobbies and interests
  3. Humor (the kind I like)

A lot of learning and reading. I spent most of my time on Reddit just lurking and reading things, but I can't help but notice the overall higher quality of conversation here. I'm pretty happy.

The comments from knowledgeable individuals - frequently involved in the post itself. How often did I read of an astronomical paper, only to have one of the authors comment. Or read about some random fact about plumbing or medicine or whatever, and an academic or professional from the field would offer further insight

Not to mention the spectacular recommendations in various areas: whenever I'm in the market to buy literally anything, I'll search for the best of it on Reddit. The amount of high-quality information available on Reddit is not easily replaced. For that reason, I'll probably continue making such enquiries there, even if I do give up on Reddit in every other way

I'd say these three

  • Sharing memes and clip highlights with the streamer communities I care about
  • Learning new things from tech specific communities
  • Troubleshooting to figure out if there's a solution someone already derived or share my own for those who end up with the same problem

This is how I've used Reddit

I definitely used Reddit for troubleshooting and finding information. It was extremely helpful that it was indexed by search engines, I worry that instances won’t allow themselves to be indexed so the useful information will be harder to discover.

Creative posts and some "historical" lessons, like how being a hivemind isn't exactly too good of an idea for communities in Reddit...

I think unfortunately the hivemind happens no matter what. Put enough like minded people together on the internet and they'll make an echo chamber

A massive search engine registered database containing years of knowledge from millions of people. Its going to be hard to replicate that.

Unless we copy it onto here.

So this is the third time I've brought that up. I should probably specify I'm willing to do all the necessary work myself, I just don't have any money for it.

can you elaborate?

So, there's people that have used the Reddit API to make basically a backup of it. If you could get a copy of that, you could very likely translate it into something Lemmy can read. Then, you go somewhere with protective laws in case Reddit gets involved and set up a special instance that just serves old Reddit content.

Afterwards, to re-use an example from one of my earlier comments here, you could seamlessly go to !SpeculateEvolution@fediverseredditclone.ru and see u/CanadaPlus101's post about metal and aquatic aliens.

So sort of create a read-only Lemmy instance that re-creates the accounts and posts from archived Reddit?

Oh hey, look, here's the exact software for doing it already written!

I wonder if someone started this already. It would be great if we can search through old Reddit for collective knowledge even post-Reddit Inc.

The trick is just hosting it. I don't know how much data that would be. I guess it might not be too bad since it's just text. Again, if anyone wants to fund it I'll make it happen. Otherwise we'll have to wait for the next person to set it up.

My need that I want to fill is a bit unrealistic and unfair to expect but... everything.

What made Reddit slowly morph from just another interesting webpage for amusement to a place where I spend a lot of my time and rely upon for so many things was how it slowly came to intersect with everything.

It became a kind of a separate google when you didn't get much joy from traditional web searching. It was a place to feel one belonged but at the same time a place for anonymity when I wanted it (at least to other Redditors anyway), a place for serious discussion and pointless shitposting seeing news as it unfolded but also stupid cat videos.

It was a placeholder for every niche you could think of so if you were trying out a new hobby, or watching a new show, or starting a new career, or trying new software there was always a sub for it.

Lemmy and other alternatives theoretically could do that, but, it'd be hard. Reddit couldn't really do that because of a great design, it just naturally progressed that way when it had more and more people in one place. That centralisation was it's flaw and it's strength so it's a difficult line for any would be successor to straddle. Ultimately though I think, if nothing ever does pull that off, Reddit ultimately created the need for Reddit and we were all fine before it and should be fine after.

I see a lot of potential and huge advantages with the approach of Lemmy. I'm interested enough and it feels fresh enough to keep using and watching it evolve. All it takes is the a decent enough sized community to keep at it.

I think you are right on all your points about what made Reddit great. For as much as there was hive minded tedium, rage baiting and corporate manipulation. There was also a very diverse and intelligent group of people having interesting discussions and supporting each other on everything. Anonymity and a well-functioning comment system is all we really needed to get together and discuss globally. I feel I have extracted huge benefit from Reddit over the years. I would feel a loss if I couldn't turn to an intelligent and diverse community like that.

I'm old enough to remember the earlier parts of the internet. I'm talking Prodigy and AOL keywords–the era of "You've Got Mail!" and 14.4k modem speeds. The era of if someone picked up the phone inside the house (the one that was tethered to the wall with a wire) you'd get disconnected and have to go through the logon process again.

At the time, just being able to access anything was a marvel. Then the internet exploded, and in just a couple of years modem speeds were 56k and it was wholly impossible to see it all. Then we saw the rise of one of the first iterations of a link aggregator in a browser tool called StumbleUpon.

I absolutely time-traveled with SU. One click and I was brought to the next quasi-random site that was generally within my predefined interests. This was about 2004-2009.

Then SU stumbled (I can't remember why) and I made my way to reddit. It had done a lot of what SU did, but condensed onto effectively one single page, and the community could vote on whether or not it was "good" and discuss nearly any aspect of the content.

It was that juncture I liked. It was part BBS, part StumbleUpon, and the entirety of the internet conveniently laid out. It didn't try to do too much. At the time, it didn't try to link us together, harvest our data, generate avatars or any of that other goofy shit. It just served all of the internet quickly, and simply.

My oldest reddit account is 11 years old and as reddit grew, I grew with it. I was there for the Chuck Testa memes. I was there for poop knife. I was there for the Coconut. I was there for /u/Hornswaggle rise to fame with 1985 Sweet 1985. That was big deal reddit news at the time.

And I was there for the rise and fall of Alien Blue, from whose ashes rose Apollo. I grew into a heavy mobile user that only third-party apps could keep up with.

I found reddit through the the fall of Digg because I was wandering from the demise of SU. Now it seems I'm cast into the Fediverse.

SU stumbled (I can't remember why)

They attempted to make a social network out of it, and I think a link aggregation site like Fark.com or Reddit are more engaging because you don't generally leave the site - or at least not for long. With SU you were constantly on a new site.

It's not terribly dissimilar to what Reddit is doing now: trying to force through a change that nobody wants, nobody asked for and one that's making the experience worse.

I do often miss SU, but sometimes really great information hides in the comments section on Reddit. SU's shoehorned comments section just wasn't the same thing.

Oh for sure, the means of discussing a particular site on SU was clunky, but so was all UX/UI. The thing reddit did right was to flip that particular experience around. Make the discussion the focus and let us visit the site at our leisure, rather than the site being the focus and letting us find the discussion. With reddit you find the content through the discussion.

I miss SU nostalgically, but modern link aggregators provide a superior experience. SU did it's job well for the internet at the time.

100% concur that what reddit is trying to do is a similar echo to SU, Myspace, and Digg.

In general, responses and knowledge from actual humans with experience on the topic I'm looking for, in this age of generated SEO results and AI, that information is more valuable to me.

Well said. It's something I've done often without realizing I was doing it. There's something valuable in hearing the perspective or advice of what seem like real people and not a marketing campaign.

I'm looking forward to Lemmy becoming a useful DIY or reference tool. I always used to finish Google searches with 'reddit' because someone somewhere will have asked that specific question already.

On top of that I'm going to miss those really supportive subreddits like r/dadforaminute and r/momforaminute. Though, it does seem like a lot of the people who made up subs like that have migrated here, so I'm hopeful!

I guess I'll be the piece of shit who says porn lol

I'm hoping some good ole fashioned porn gifs make it over here in some capacity.

Access to some really great knowledge combined with a friendly community .. I think of subreddits like Picopresso and Selfhosting among many others

The subreddit sidebars were a treasure trove of great starting information on almost any topic. It was always my first stopping point when wanting to learn something new, travel to a new place or start a new hobby. It was legitimate helpful information that wasn’t trying to promote or sell anything. I hope to find that here.

firstly: actual information that isn't a slurry of AI-generated buzzword SEO designed to get you to click an ad; real experiences from other people, real answers to questions.

secondly: participating in specific hobby communities.

thirdly: a place to go when my brain turns off and my fingers just type an address into the URL bar and hit enter.

Definitely number 3. I completely agree that Reddit was great for the niche stuff.

I mean, if not for Reddit, I wouldn't have organised multiple hiking and backpacking trips, sticking up propaganda posters about kayaking.

I'm not sure how all this federated stuff works. I just want to browse absolute rubbish and hope I learn something in the meantime.

A lot of us are still learning, but I think I'm figuring it out here. I was/am on kbin too, but they aren't federated with anyone so it's just a reddit clone currently, and it was hard to understand without context.

If you go to magazines and search, you can see some with normal names and some with @ names. The normal named ones are here in Fedia, the @ names are a different instance (Lemmy, Beehaw, kbin when it federated). You can subscribe to communities there and see their content, interact with the users, etc like you would normally. You won't even be able to really tell the difference.

The part where it differs from reddit is that you will have multiple of the same sub, as each instance grows. Ideally, you would start with an instance you agree with 100%, but that's not realistic. So as you navogaye the Fediverse (hate that term), you'll see where you fit in best with instance rules and ideology. Assuming everything is still fairly similar, you would be able to federate with the same instances and still see the same content, but from the instance you choose.

Kbin is federated with Lemmy and other fediverse services, however to stop the Rexxit hug of death, the kbin.social instance of Kbin were forced to temporarily turn on Cloudfare protection which breaks federation. They're working on it though.

I'm commenting to you through fedia.io currently. It's a Kbin instance that is federating properly (probably because of the lower traffic levels as compared to kbin.social).

I'm also commenting to you on Fedia! Lol I ended up here because I wasn't able to understand how this worked on kbin. In due time it won't matter, and I can decide whether or not kbin or Fedia is the instance for me. I'll stay here now though as it'll let me get my feet wet with how this stuff all works.

Are you me? Are we us? Am I you? I've got accounts on both and just trying to wrap my head around it.

I'm figuring it out I think. I think my questions now pertain to how the community will be somewhat unified, but I guess that goes against the "spirit" of federated content. The point seems to be to build smaller communities that fit what you want, but at the expense of bulk content. Less users posting more stuff each in more locations.

Definitely want to continue the game threads for NBA/NFL games. It's really fun to have a small community of people you can shit talk with especially when they aren't around in person

I highly valued the discovery of niche communities. Like solo ttrpgs as my current hyper fixation. I always lurked on reddit so I hope to be more involved here. And of course memes.

Same! I keep searching for a new solo instance, magazine, whatever. I'd start one, myself, but I can still barely figure out how to use this stuff.

My most productive usage of Reddit was as a fast, easy way to find good information on pretty much any subject - at least as a starting point. Anything from home DIY stuff, to building a PC, to self-help and fashion advice

It would be wonderful to have a version of Reddit that didn't have a crazy profit motive and was focused on the users.

"A way to burn time that doesn't feel like a digital sugar rush" - well said, that was definitely one of the main reasons I used it habitually. In my experience, reddit had a fairly unique balance of being able to facilitate both serious and silly content.

  1. Get a view of world news that does not fit into traditional spheres and biases from unanticipated (by me) categories of importance.
  2. Keep track of hobby-like subs (Magazines here?)
  3. Community, which drives the above two.

Yeah, I'm 1000% community focused. In "niche" hobbies, you might have a few local people who participate. On Reddit/online communities, you have thousands. Their experiences are varied and provide insight not local to you. It's just a way better way to have that community.

It also did a fairly decent job of providing news and updates. It had it's shortcomings, but it was decent at aggregating and the community was fairly knowledgeable and able to give corroborating or opposing info as needed, which then would be corroborated or opposed. You were able to "go down the rabbit hole" in a linear, easy to follow fashion.

Hobbies, learning and hopefully a place I can share things I make with people without being called a spammer... At least for a few years.

Getting new ideas for some hobby's, like 3d printing, photography etc. Also helping people that are new to those when they have issues. Also memes and funny catvideos.

I mostly lurked on Reddit, but #3 was pretty big for me. If I needed to ask a highly specific question and get an answer from a real human, there wasn't really any other option. Until now, hopefully.

News links with mods keeping links relevant and trustworthy sources. Bots summarizing paywalls, discussions, that sort of stuff. /r/animetities basically

Also memes. me_irl

Ironically Reddit mostly became a β€œfilter google bullshit response” site. I miss the community stuff from Reddit of 5 years ago, I think Lemmy is heading in a good direction.

music discovery/discussion. I found so much cool music on reddit communities for bands or genres I like

resources for learning about & discussing some of my hobbies and interests like FOSS software, Linux, gaming, guitar etc

communities for people local to the city/state I live in

communities for people local to the city/state I live in

Yep. Those communities on Reddit always seem to be a bit on the pessimistic/angry side compared to the general public, however they definitely had their usefulness and were great to keep track of local happenings. Local paper journalism being what it is now, it's a good way to keep a pulse on things.

I really hope the educational subs like learn programming, personal finance, and so on can be successful here.

I went from the rough equivalent of graduating with a 1.5gpa in high school and suicidal to making a grand total of 1 application and getting into a top 10 CS university in the States, literally giving me a second shot at life.

Mainly news. Not just world/region but hobby news.

So far just the world/region news is here, which aren't particularly great discussions if you're trying not to get hotheaded.

I liked using r/all to kinda keep tabs on what news what getting lots of attention. I don't want "all news" - that'll just upset me. But the big stories rising to the top from the hivemind were helpful

World news, national and local news, Linux and Linux gaming related information, memes.

For me it was always about information. I like learning new things and having access to current events, facts, documentaries, feedback, insights as well as learning resources. Im completely lost here. I subscribed to communities, but I have no idea what else Im missing from other instances.

  • Distraction

  • Discussion

What was good about reddit is that the front page could be interacted with as a quick way to burn some downtime and distract your eyeballs with cute cats or "holdmy____", or it could be interacted with as a series of rabbit holes that could easily eat up hours of time.

Beyond interacting with content, the discussion around the content was the thing that kept me coming back for 10 years, even after I abandoned Twitter and Facebook years ago.

So far, the fediverse seems like a throwback and an innovation at the same time, and I mean that in the best possible sense.

amazing circlejerk subs

Oh gosh yes. I'm really going to miss houseplantcirclejerk and namenerdcieclejerk.

i'll miss chicanery the most

u/shittymorph

I know everyone is going to miss shittymorph but I am really going to miss sprog. There was something magical about finding one of his poems buried in a comment chain.

It was porn. All porn. All my interests, all in a multi Reddit.

One second I’m a big adult doing very responsible reading news things.

The next am goon.

well lemmynsfw.com seems to be trying to recreate that experience at break neck speed. Their communities keep getting bigger by the hour.

If the Lemmy dev's add a multireddit feature you're on your way lol.

I’ve been sending the devs several flavours of bagel in the hopes of them adding a multi community feature. Let’s see if it pays off.

u win prize for being radically honest.
probably true for lotsa peeps. but they never say it like u did.

Pretty much all sort of info, news or otherwise, and often backed with sources and references. For practical issues, people would often share tips or refer to helpful videos and step-by-step instructions.

I’ll co-sign all of that! Niche stuff is why I was on Reddit.

Fitness for FTM guys, my city’s local page, subs for my dogs’ specific breeds, Jewish cooking. The communities that grew organically in n niche spots brought me a lot of joy.

Also hey! Kayaking! If you know of a Lemmy community for it, I’m game! Always nice to run into other paddlers.

Have you found a Jewish cooking niche here yet? Because I would absolutely be into that! I'm not good at cooking, but one of the few exceptions to that is that I make fantastic challah, and I'm always up for sharing that.

That's great stuff! I really hope we can build Lemmy up so that it scratches our niche itch.

There's an unpopulated kayaking sub I found yesterday: https://lemmy.ml/c/kayaking (Not sure if I'm sharing that link correctly or in a way that makes it easy to navigate.)

I posted a photo yesterday. Would be awesome to help get it off the ground!

Seconding FTMFitness, but Lemmy doesn't have an active general fitness community yet, and getting the average trans guy to stop using centralized platforms is like pulling teeth because the knowledge of technology and privacy among trans men is dismal. I gave up on seeing trans men in FOSS and the decentralized web at any large scale after seeing how many of them chose to keep using Twitter despite the Elon Musk protests because the Fediverse is scary.

Rebbit was great for troubleshooting tech issues. Subreddits like r/thinkpad r/linux r/homelab etc were very useful it figuring out weird tech issues when google finds nothing useful.

Unsurprisingly, the tech communities are the ones thriving the most here already.

When my day job was tech, I learned quickly you either learn as much as quickly as you can or you stagnate and don't get anywhere. Guess thats spilled over to my personal life too.

Things to look at when im bored. I am wondering I should post things that I see on reddit and like back to lemmy or if lemmy content should be lemmy content.

The simplicity of the comments is why Reddit has been king. The separation lines between comments are too old school blog on here and I really don't it. The waterfall style of Reddit comments is an infinitely better mechanic

I’m a bit bummed no one from r/fcbayern has made it to the fediverse yet… I need my wild transfer speculations fix!

Tv episode/movie discussion threads, sports game discussion threads, fitness subs where I could search for basically any question on

People to talk to about things that annoy my wife lol. Mainly linux stuff.

these are the main things I care about, until a reddit alternative can provide this I'm going to stay mostly or frequently on reddit.

-somewhat reliable news headline feed from relatively neutral, serious center-right to center-left sources with little to no bad reporting/framing.
-reliably hear about social trends, but with some distance to them
-news discussion with some degree of different perspectives, some expertise, so it's not just all left to the popularity of the headline.
-discussion of movies and tv that is neither too fanboyish/popular leaning nor too indie/arthouse exclusive.
-collections of helpful pro-consumer information and resources, up to date megaposts in hobby communities
-a search function that will often enough lead to some helpful comments for most topics, googling "reddit xyz" was my go to for many years
-feeds for some types of videos, like publicfreakout, livestream clips.
-some communities that are more personal to me, like from my country or a political meme community, for venting and in-group discourse.
-control over what i see in my feeds, most recommendation algorithms and trending tabs just don't work for me
-control over where I engage with content and in what form it's presented, often I take a break from scrolling social media except for seeing some top posts in my rss feed. at some point I just want AI to read out summaries of all that stuff to me and actually visit website interfaces way less often myself.

-reliably hear about social trends, but with some distance to them

This is an astute point that I didn't really think about. Not being on other social media sites like facebook or twitter, and also lacking a water cooler to chat at work (I'm WFH), I can go days without hearing offhand comments about a popular culture phenomenon. I don't necessarily want to be "in it" but I do want to at least know about trends.

These are all pretty much on the top of my list as well.

I absolutely loved being interested in a new hobby, game, or activity, and searching for that activities subreddit and reading the stickies and top posts of all time. It's like viewing an entire community from a window and you pick up on things like their internal humor and group-personality traits. You also can learn so much on how to approach or even respect said activity as a novice. So much free, enthusiastic information!

Community/togetherness -- Since leaving Reddit, I feel more 'lonely'? Being here definitely scratches the social-itch.
Positivity -- Wholesome people and productive conversations.
Humour -- Some of the comments/posts on Reddit were wonderfully dry and/or edgy. One that made me giggle recently: "Avoid being misgendered at checkout by not paying :)"
News -- Following centrist/neutral subreddits, and r/outoftheloop was great too.
Niche interests -- As said in OP!

I think the only issue we may have is niche interests -- the other points are not contingent on 'size'. Loving what's here so far <3

Megathreads about exactly which entry in a video game series is the slightly better one to get into

Excellent shitposting memes, I hope that community proliferates here

It's the niche stuff that made Reddit useful. For example, Amazon reviews are no longer trustworthy, but there were really good recommendations in reddit threads about which devices or products worked. The DIY subreddits were incredibly helpful. I got good recommendations for motorcycle tires and ultralight backpacking gear and Android apps and hotels in particular destinations from reddit. I got walkthroughs on how to set up a Plex server or do a particular project with a Raspberry Pi on reddit. With so many subs, there was almost always a thread for what I was looking for. That was the value. I expect it will take a while to rebuild that elsewhere, but I'm sure it will be recreated.

There's an app called Fakespot that you can use to see what Amazon products are legit and which ones are scammer garbage. Not positive how it works but it was recommended on reddit a while ago. Not the same but may help.

Diversity and exposure to new ideas.

Whether I agree with the idea or not, breing exposed to so many different points of view changes how I look at various topics. Sometimes it reinforces and strengthens my position and sometimes I change my stance.

I feel like Reddit (and now Lemmy) allow me to engage / listen to discussions on an issue. Discussions that involve a wide assortment of different viewpoints. It's hard to find that in most places on the internet.

I loved the new Reddit UI, I should not have to click images to enlarge them. Really hope Lemmy gets something similar.

Reddit was nice because I could Google something like "best beginner DSLR camera" and I only got ai generated articles on the newest most expensive cameras, but I could search "best beginner DSLR camera reddit" and actually get good options.

part of that is just that reddit was around for so long and had such good SEO. I doubt any lemmy community will achieve that level of SEO so it won't be that easy. But if lemmy can just get a search bar that isn't a piece of shit then do we really need google?

Discussions for newly released movies is a big thing that I'll still likely go to Reddit for until it is fully established here. I prefer to read what others thought about them through sites like Reddit rather than normal reviews since i always read them after having seing the film and look to see if anyone else had different interpretations or revelations i didn't do i can get more out of the film retrospectively.

  1. Tech support that isn't an advert (Reddit was a goldmine for more interesting hardware)

  2. Cool stats/maths things to share with my students

  3. Snek and Fox pictures to get me through my marking sane(ish)

Talking about hardware is such a nightmare on Reddit these days that I completely avoid it. There's a never ending crowd of people/astroterfers/fanbois posting confidently about shit they have no clue about and are often completely wrong. Their arguments usually boil down to their feels and not objective facts at all.

Apart from the couple of occasional subject matter experts that you see pop up occasionally the tech subs are a write-off now.

Wanted to thank you for number 2. It sounds silly, but my physics teacher in high school would always pull up an invention of the week. Everyone loved it.

I was mostly on reddit for the information I got from the niche communities I joined. Posts regarding GPU passthrough for virtual machines, the configurations people used, problem solving for those virtual machines, I loved all of it. I only lurked though, very very rarely did I even comment, on here I'm trying to be more active. I'm hoping that as communities grow, I can get the same information I got from the reddit subs I lurked on

Primarily authentic opinions on things that I want some input for, like products, experiences etc. Also gaming communities for seperate games.

Mostly killing time in various situations. I do have a set of subreddits that I gravitate to for some news type situations, but honestly it's a pretty large time sink that I've really had my eyes opened to since yesterday. Hoping to find a happy medium between that and quitting this type of content entirely.

I loved the writing subs. Reading short stories and encouraging eachother to grow.

In addition to what's been said already - the community-specific wikis and megathreads. The amount of information I could find there about sometimes very niche topics was amazing. Hopefully something similar will be possible with Lemmy.

Reddit was a place to start the morning and get some news especially on the subs that I moderated. I spent way too much time with it. I am looking forward to friendly engagement of sane people. Reddit had way too much of us vs. them. And their Admins readily bannned all who did not agree with their political and cultural opinions. I enjoy engaging with those who have opinions different than mine, I just do not want them shoved down my throat as I would not force my opinions on others.

I literally just want to shitpost without a phd in Web 3.0, maybe it'll get easier in time though.

The communities or reddit gave me a lot of ideas and suggestions on how to improve my life. I hope that can continue here.

Also - product recommendations. Need a new router? Reddit was great for stuff like that. They would bring up pros and cons that I never would have even thought about on my own.

  1. Shitposting and nonsense
  2. Linux and other tech news/info
  3. News and commentary from normal people

The various subs that can help you get your life in order, in the way you chose. personalfinance and/or financialindependence, whatever diet sub to help you learn how to eat better and get recipes that fit the diet, exercise subs like weightlifting or some others. Things like that can have a huge impact not just from the community encouragement, but the knowledge that they include in the sidebar, etc.

Solutions to weird and oddly specific problems. If you go looking for a solution to a really weird, seemingly one-off issue with Windows, good luck finding an answer in any Microsoft forum. Put "Reddit" at the end of your search, and you'll find something helpful more often than not.

Also, shitposting. 4Chan and Weekendgunnit levels of shitposting.

After college, my reddit was mostly used to keep up with product reviews (especially in terms of durability), tech news, and biomed research, and a lot of times I got guidance on hyperspecific issues from a lot of the professionals in those communities.

Also have to give a huge shoutout to r/resumes and the other large jobhunting subreddits-- I don't think I'd have found a job at all if it weren't for their megathreads and resources

I feel like Reddit was a fantastic DIY resource. Whenever I needed an answer to a specific problem, someone years ago would have asked that specific question. I'm hoping Lemmy becomes such a useful resource one day!

When I first migrated from Digg I was astounded by how in a thread on some obscure topic you would find super informed nerds and enthusiasts who could wax poetic on the topic at hand. I learned so much! As the internet matured, and Reddit as well, those interactions seemed to become more rare and argument began to drive the conversation. Statements would be made and a slew of randos would plunge the depths of the interwebz to contradict, one up, or expand on that statement. I have to admit I learned a lot from this as well and did my fair share of educating myself and others. I was hoping to find that impassioned community of yesteryear where the topics were the inspiration, not the karma farming and argument. My experience to this point is that that is happening here because many of us have migrated and need/want to build these communities to the ideals asked about in this post! I am excited about the federated platform and the FOSS mentality and think it will draw these people.

Plenty of camaraderie, suggestions and wild discussions on /r/HPFanfiction

It's been mentioned, but product recommendations from real consumers that weren't listicles of Amazon affiliate links primed for SEO.

niche communities... like random skin care and chromeos

Niche stuff. I mostly came to reddit for discovering interesting/weird/rare plants and the best way to care for them. Googling has become absolute dogshit with obviously generated articles that are just parroting the same information (which for niche plants, can be false, speculation, and even harmful).

I'm in a couple of Discord communities (which have jumped up in activity in the last couple of days), but those communities are a bit harder to find that four year old post about "what does this type of growth mean", or something similar.

I also used reddit for tracking technology issues in much the same way - very specific, hard to locate issues that only a few people might be experiencing and talking about in a searchable way. Everything from video games, to work related technologies.

+1 on a Google replacement/enhancement. I used the site:reddit.com trick all the time on Google and it made results so much better. I am hoping that Lemmy can be a high quality open repository of information as Reddit closes things off. Trying my best to help get things going.

I feel you regarding all this. But I also have to ask: What's the weirdest plant you own? Any carnivorous ones? (I love pitcher plants -- don't own any, but I seek them out in nature regularly.)

Weirdest plant I own, Drosera Binata (which is carnivorous), I have two and a half Nepenthes (tropical pitcher plants, wife has one I take care of), some common "Spoon Sundew" Drosera Spatulata, a couple of Pinguiculas, and a Utricularia, those are my carnivorous ones. They are definitely the weirder ones, the rest are commonplace collector basics (begonia, orchid, calatheas, pothos, etc.).

I have a shot of my U. Reniformis and D. Binata, https://lemmy.world/post/79348 I don't know if that will work - first week here.

That's really cool. Forgive me for not knowing proper plant language, but its arms resemble a sundew.

Yup! Drosera is a sundew! It sounds pretentious AF, but a lot of plant nerds stick to Latin names because some plant common names get thrown around to plants that aren't part of that genus or species, and that causes some problems researching care and needs of the plant. After a while you just stop thinking about it.

If I had a nickel for everything named a cactus that isn't...

If you want to know more, just ask! I'll talk about carnivorous stuff all damn day.

Haha! Makes total sense. I appreciate your precision.

My knowledge of plants is mostly limited to stuff in the New Jersey Pine Barrens because I hike and paddle there often and read about it just as much. So when I think of a sundew, I'm thinking of the one I know that lives there.

(The Pines also has a cactus -- the prickly pear -- but now I'm questioning whether it's actually a cactus!)

Thanks so much. Next time I come across a cool plant that I can't identify, I'll post and tag you.

Absolutely! I need to know more about my own local stuff (I'm in New England. We have trees and poison ivy, so that's all I usually identify).

The Pine Barrens have a bunch of cool stuff! at least two different Drosera - Intermedia and Rotundifolia. Also Sarracenia (North American Pitcher Plants) and Utricularia (Bladderworts) - one of Charles Darwin's favorite carnivores - those little dudes live around most of the world except Antarctica. That seems like a super hiking spot, I'll have to visit there with the wife and go on a carnivore expedition.

Edit - wife is super excited to go, and we're going to try to get there this year! Thank you so much! This is the kind of stuff I found on reddit, and I'm glad to find it here on Lemmy ;)

New England is so cool! I've spent brief bursts of time there, mostly in urban areas, over the years, but didn't start hiking up your way until last year. Fell in love with the White Mountains last September and heading back in a couple of weeks. Also spent a few days hiking Acadia this spring. You guys have such an amazing place up there!

Wow -- I had no idea there were two sundews in the pines. I totally agree with you: This is exactly what I used to get from Reddit. So thank you. And I love a good bladderwort! I saw a bunch when I was canoeing with my wife and daughter last weekend.

So cool that you're gonna make the trip here. If you want to know about any cool spots to visit, I'm happy to share!

Off the top of my head, there's an easily accessible bog with a boardwalk called Webb's Mill (Google Maps has it by name -- it's in Forked River). I've seen a ton of pitcher plants and sundews there. Sometimes the entrance is flooded out because of a beaver dam.

Wharton State Forest has the Mullica and Batsto rivers, along with a bunch of wetlands. If you wanna take kayaks or canoes down them, Pinelands Adventures runs trips through mid-October.

Going off the beaten path is easy in the Pines, too. I have some bushwhacking spots that I love and am happy to share privately. The only problem is, I typically go when no carnivorous plants are out because the ticks and chiggers are brutal off trail this time of year.

Ah sorry for the novel. I grew up in what once was pine barrens but escaped the political designation and thus got super overdeveloped. And the culture escaped us, too -- almost no one I know has spent much time in the Pines, even though we're 20 minutes away. So I get excited when I meet a fellow traveler!