Looking for a Reddit alternative? Lemmy tell you, they currently kinda suck

Futurespeed@kbin.social to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 37 points – Looking for a Reddit alternative? Lemmy tell you, they currently kinda suck
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Yeah, this describes my experience so far. I really want to like it here, but so far it's been an effort.

I am using Mastadon more, hopefully with time we see a similar level of polish. However, even there it don't see a dent in Twitter.

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I like this place. A lot. Yes, everything is not super polished. Yes, I have to be more active to find the content I want. Yes, there's a lot less content than on reddit. But the people here feel like real people, not people and bots who push agendas.

And I've always been somebody who contributes, so I'm here to help build the place I want.

i feel that, i have lerked on reddit for so many years. But i am ready to make a change, and do my best to make these platforms the new home of the internet.

But the people here feel like real people, not people and bots who push agendas.

that's what my experience here has been too, it's really nice to be honest

I’ve been a lurker on Reddit for the last decade so contributing here has definitely been a learning experience. One issue I’m running into is, how does one easily share what they are contributing with everybody else? Discoverability is somewhat of an issue on here whether you are trying to make a new community or a new instance.

I mean, you're on fediverse.boo, and I'm on kbin.social, and I saw your comment here, and am replying to it. I'm pretty new here myself, but I'm finding no issue discovering communities on other instances and subscribing to them to have them show up in my feed. So I'd say subscribe to the communities you want to contribute to, and post. I'm sure we'll all be able to see it and interact with it.

On the plus side this place feels smaller so instead of just lurking all the time it feels meaningful to participate.

I think this is really spot on. I wasn't looking for a "reddit alternative" that "kinda sucks" because it's not reddit. I was looking for an actual "reddit alternative," not a reddit clone. And yes, I've just been lurking up until now, but so far this seems so much more sane and reasonable. For the time being, at least. Until someone finds a way to turn it into a reddit alternative.

Lemmy isn’t currently usable by “normies” but we, the weird ones are already here, building great communities, fixing bugs, developing features. Give it 6 months, and Lemmy and kbin will be ready for prime time. The world will watch it rise like a giant middle finger shown to /u/spez.

PSA for non-developers: "six-months" in the software world is slang for "optimistically, one year".

I consider myself only moderately tech-savvy and definitely not an IT person. I managed to make my way on here, and decided to create an account on a lesser-used instance after the second evening of looking around. Granted, it took some figuring out (didn't see any guides), but after about an hour I had most things set up to how I wanted it, and had Jerboa installed on my phone. If I can do it, 90% of the general population can. They just need the motivation.

The way I see it is, do you even want the general population on here? Maybe it’s a good thing they can’t figure it out.🙃

Definitely don't want it popular enough for bots. But more engagement in niche (or non-techy) subjects? Yup.

Kbin is much more polished already. While lemmy is more or less a clone of old reddit, kbin is more like modern reddit just without the suck. Also, both are compatible.

Kbin is much more polished already.

It really isn't. It just has a nicer UI.

Not just the UI.

i think it is really nice that you can use a time filter of 3h, 6h,12h 1d in kbin.
This makes finding new content so much easier without having the raw state of new

The UI is a gigantic improvement, but beyond that it is in a more working state. Also the software isn't made by tankies which is a nice plus

For a server that Ernest put together as a proof of concept, I was surprised at how polished kbin felt when I first joined.

do you know if it's possible to migrate an account from Lemmy to kbin?

Sadly you can not. You just make a new account on a kbin instance and move your stuff manually sadly.

As a new kbin user from Reddit, it's... jank to say the least. My biggest gripe is the new comment box being at the BOTTOM of the page.

I prefer it that way, because I'm like forced to read what other people commented previously.

I think the idea is to promote reading comments before writing.

@gnp

but what happen when you have a MT with thousands of comments? (there are already some here.)

At least for me, the comments are currently paginated. I don't like the pagination, but it makes getting to the bottom easier. I'll say that I would prefer the comment box to be at the top, but I'm sure as hell not going to let that stop me from enjoying this site. kbin and the fediverse have done a great job replacing Reddit for me.

If you're on desktop you can use the Kbin enhancement userscript which moves it to the top, also shows peoples tags like @lemmy.world

My scroll wheel hated me until I figured out I could just hold the space bar for a sec to jump to the bottom lol. I would imagine it needs to be changed sooner than later before the number of comments in the threats increases.

The "End" button on your keyboard should be instant, and there for exactly this job btw.

there are several scripts or styluses to fix this for now.

The thing to remember is that the user experience on Reddit, Twitter etc. is only going to get worse from here on in. But on the fediverse it's only going to get better.

A Reddit alternative is going to end up like Reddit. Kbin/Lemmy are not like Reddit, and that's a good thing.

Personally I don't need it to be "polished", and too much polish would smack of corporate excess to me. I want lively but friendly discussions on a variety of topics that interest me. And it's fun to watch something grow from early(ish) stages into a more complete package. I hope this will be a good social media home for me.

ETA I upvoted you for good topic and discussion, rather than downvoting in disagreement.

Apollo was polished. It can be good and look good at the same time.

It's going to take time to spin back up the reddit communities. Also, some behavior adjustments will need to be made (though I do miss having notifications I can instantly click to get to the replies. I suspect that's in the works.)

Kbin has the notification feature, though it’s been a bit buggy from time to time.

I created an account about 24 hours ago and this is actually better than I expected. Of course, I wasn't expecting a complete and polished interface from something so new, but I had read plenty of horror stories about how lemmy/kbin signups were impossibly complex.

I like it. It's already pretty intuitive and I like that it's not a 1:1 Reddit clone. I can easily imagine this expanding and growing into something really interesting

Also, I got the username I wanted.

But unless something changes dramatically, it’ll suffer the same fate as Mastodon or Bluesky.

I have no idea what's going on with Bluesky, but mastodon is... fine? It's not twitter and never will be.

This doesn't mean Lemmy doesn't need a bit of work, though, I don't think anyone would deny that. I don't think they've had quite the pressure to triage issues like they do now, so a decent list of priorities is probably emerging.

I'm tempted to try to help, but I'm (generously) a rust novice. I worry I'll waste their time with bad PRs.

Bluesky is in beta, it isn't even out yet. But somehow it has already suffered a fate?

New things like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Kbin don't have to kill the current things in order to be successful. We don't have to rule the world, we don't have to be perfect on day 1.

I think the biggest thing probably tempering Bluesky at the moment is a queue that is 3+ months at a time to actually get in. It's creeping close to ~6 on my end and still nothing.

I still intend on swapping, but most people are going to lose interest in that period of time and just stay on Twitter.

Yeah, Mastodon's going pretty strong. I don't really get what the message here is supposed to be.

"I, a tech writer, am not using it"?

'I'm not using it nor are the people I surround myself with therefore it is a failure.'

A lot of people think that unless it's a humongous smashing success instantly, then it's a complete and utter failure.

Majority of the people here are super helpful, much friendlier, and supportive even with all the flaws that we are experiencing. Building a community takes effort. Everyone’s effort is focused here so that we can have the place that we want it to be - a place better than reddit.

I agree with this 100%

It's the people that make a platform a success. For all its popularity and polish, reddit often felt toxic and abrasive. I haven't seen too much of that here.

Thing is, people looking for a Reddit replacement are going to be in some way disappointed, since part of the idea of developing a new system is to avoid the things that made Reddit turn terrible. The sad truth it Reddit is probably too big for its users to just leave, but maybe they will financially just crash since their efforts to become profitable aren't looking all that effective.

I agree. While some users are able to leave the platform, most will stick around - but as you mentioned, they will definitely struggle financially.

This is better than Mastodon by far. At least that's been my experience. Much easier to find communities here.

wanted to try mastodon, but what really annoyed me was the the blinding bright post box in dark mode. Everything was nice and dark, but the post box had to be white. tried to find a user script to fix it, but there were none

His issues are that he misses the cultivated nature of Reddit. Reddit didn't start out cultivated, and took time and effort by volunteers to figure out it's identity. The same thing will happen with the fediverse. It will get cleaned up and streamlined as people put in effort. People look at a lump of carbon and say it's worthless, but with time it becomes a diamond.

Some people only see the value of something in it's present form and miss out on potential. The fediverse has a lot of potential so long as it is active. It's open nature will bring in freelance development help and it could very well become BETTER than what reddit was. Keep the faith

The same thing will happen on the fediverse if there are enough people using it. It's a circular problem.

The technical and usability aspects of Lemmy/Kbin will get ironed out, and probably sooner rather than later. I just want there to be enough critical mass of people that I have communities for most of what I want. E.g. gaming is well covered, but I don't have a replacement for /r/nfl which was my primary NFL news source.

Also, I imagine that the NFL mag will pick up when the season actually starts. The NBA mag was fairly active for the finals, so long as people are still active here they're gonna wanna talk pigskin

Danny and I have been sharing topics on the NFL mag, help us out

Unlike Reddit, Lemmy instances are individual servers that come together like an interweb of subreddits.

That is not how it works, like at all. This same thing happens with Mastodon when journalists come on with a negative attitude and don't really want it to work so they don't really try.

You know what I love about kbin/lemmy - no goddamn Nazis. I'll take the growing pains of a burgeoning platform over Nazis on my timeline any day of the week.

I ended up switching to Kbin and like it a lot more in regards to how the main page provides threads. It still has it's issues, but they're for the most part outside of the main loop.

I'm somewhat surprised at how much the dynamic page load really messed with my ability to navigate Lemmy. Basically if I went away for any given time it would go from top threads for the day to random junk that had no activity. It really needs a way to turn that off.

These burgeoning communities are rough around the edges. But as @dan96kid said, there's space for us to speak up, rather than simply lurk. I'm getting a kick out of this disruption.

Reddit wasn't all that amazing either when they first started - it took a while for things to get ironed out. Then they had to go and ruin a good thing

Just gotta give it some time. The Reddit apps have years of development behind them; the Lemmy apps weren't really seeing wide use until the last few weeks. There's now a lot of pressure for better alternatives, and a few other options are already in development (for iOS, at least - I assume for Android, too). Rome wasn't built in a day.

I'm really starting to like this place now! At first I was hesitant, but it's great!

Are you using the jerboa app? I find it to be very close to the old experience.

It can still be a little buggy at times, but I've found to be the closest to my RIF experience so far.

I have been using the kbin webapp; but I did try Jebora. I might try again.

Needs to fix the "hot" sorting. Then I'll actually be able to evaluate.

I would love a sorting type that just gives a whole new page of posts when I hit F5. For now, I guess I can sort by New.

I actually like kbin more than I did reddit. Reddit has a huge advantage though, over a decade of content. What I like about kbin though is it feels smaller, I see familiar names and interaction feels like I'm talking to a person not a thing.

I think it's important to note that when the Mastodon migrations really picked up, the software was already 4-5 years old with organized development. Lemmy is only around 3-4 years old and kbin is only a couple years old (with very limited public use). That makes a big difference in what you can expect from them. With the influx of interest in these platforms, you're going to see far more help and contribution to the underlying code alongside better third party app support in the months ahead. These are both very young platforms and have a lot of room to grow in the next while.

“Currently” is the key word here. I’m using the TestFlight beta of Mlem and it’s coming along quite quickly. I haven’t been back to Reddit since the day before the blackout. Admittedly I’m spending a ton of time just searching for the subs that migrated over to communities here.

I‘m actually relieved if it doesn‘t become too big, I‘m afraid if it does, the corporations and other bad actors might come to destroy it again. I‘ve gone through this often enough.

The good news is that federated open source projects should be a little harder to destroy.

With the popularity of Reddit and how simple (in theory) of a concept it is, it blows my mind that there is not an alternative. Kbin and Lemmy are okay, but they are pretty big compromise so far.

I can forgive the issues with Kbin and Lemmy because Reddit has had more time and resources to build the platform. My hope is that with the new attention and the open source nature that Lemmy will show consistent improvement to where I don't feel like I'm compromising.

To be entirely fair with Kbin:

From Kbin.pub: "NOTICE: This is a very early beta version."

For being an early beta, kbin is usable and remarkably polished. I think the downsides for most people are deciding what server to join and content discovery.

There's been little demand. Give it some time. Enjoy being in in the ground floor, or wait until it's a little more mature. The more use and demand the more we're going to see improvements and alternative mobile apps and such.

I fully expect it's going to get better. None of the issues mentioned, from a quick skim, are insurmountable except figuring out where to sign up.

Because there isn't enough resources to develop it without any real interest. Most of fediverse projects start as personal projects and evolve as they gain traction.

This version is the worst it will ever be. It can only improve from here as corporate greed is not a factor with open source project.

I think kbin is working just fine. I'm willing to give it time to grow. Patience.