The death of Sync for Reddit is what has made me join Lemmy

Princess_Auggie@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 725 points –

I barely use reddit anymore save for porn and niche subs but after that glorious app I had used for ages finally died a few days ago I felt devastated. it was like losing an old friend. I hope reddit dies an even slower and more painful death

107

Thanks to everyone who left reddit because they killed the useful mobile apps, lemmy is becoming a viable alternative.

I've been waiting for a viable alternative that isn't as toxic as reddit for some time now. I hope they kill off old.reddit soon.

I mostly left because I saw an abundance of bootlicking posts and comments, people dunking on mods for continuing the protest and saying that it doesn't concern them cause they don't use third-party apps. Granted, some of them might've been bots or payed, but a lot of frustration seemed genuine and fron real accounts, and it rubbed me the wrong way.

I really don't get it. I also used official app for years now and now I'm here and reddit is becoming a memory because how they treated it.

Same. I hadn't used a 3rd party reddit app in years, and I slowly watched as my reddit experience got worse and worse, but when they mishandled the whole situation it made me wonder why I'm sticking around.

Same. The app was shit, but I didn't want to bother with finding something else. I supported the protest but it was not enough for me to leave - their reaponse though, the strongarming of the mods and all the shitshow around me just made me snap. I was aware reddit is going down a bad path, but I was a frog being boiled. This made me realize it and thank god for that one guy on r/lotrmemes mentioning Lemmy as an alternative.

I haven’t been to Reddit since mid June, wondering what portion of the posts you saw complaining about protests and the blackouts were real and what portion were made by bots / ai / etc? 🤔

Welcome kit

I’m sure this “welcome kit” is meant as a helpful thing but I have to wonder if it is exactly the problem that prevents Lemmy from being adopted.

When someone joins Reddit, they don’t need to read a literal plethora of guides on how to use Reddit. It’s obvious.

What looks like a helpful thing to do is instead going to intimidate and confuse new people.

So ultimately the question is: why isn’t Lemmy obvious to use, and how do we make it so?

Reddit wasn't easy to understand either when I joined 13 years ago. I guess discovery is part of the fun.

With time. Reddit is 18 years old I heard. Lemmy few months old

Lemmy is like 3 years old. But yes, it's only really gotten attention for a few weeks and development has ramped up considerably in that time.

Reddit wasn't easy to understand either when I joined 13 years ago. I guess discovery is part of the fun.

Thing it though, you don't really need to read any of it.

The experience is pretty similar for the end user. However the guide is very useful if you want to get to the back end stuff.

I think it's really the choice of federation. I imagine it's against the spirit of federation, but is the answer just to direct people to lemmy.world to first sign up? From there, do what you always did on reddit, but check note that you can sub to other communited not on lenny.world? I just migrated a few days ago, but it was that initial choice that was confusing to me and delayed my signing up.

When someone joins reddit it isnt obvious what to do. A lot of people come from more common linear communication systems like bbs and etc and the whole reddit comment chain can be confusing to follow. It also is extremely confusing about joining communities and what that does to your feed. The thing is reddit has been around for a lot of years and those of us who have used it have forgotten how confusing it was in the beginning.

2 more...

Could you open a pull request to categorize all this into the awesome list for lemmy?

I see you've added the Awesome Instances list, but dbeley's is more general, e.g:
alternative front-ends, mobile apps, libraries, tools, guides, etc. Thank you!

3 more...

I think Sync for Lemmy is being fast tracked.

I'm using Connect for Lemmy. It's no Sync but it'll do in the meantime.

I'm using Jerboa. It does the job but looking forward to Sync!

Connect, Thunder and Liftoff are all great alternatives so far.

Connect is barebones now but it is the closest in rendition to Sync.

Well. Judging by my world feed, the porn is coming.

We really should have the ability to block entire instances as users.

You can turn off NSFW content. I suppose if I'm browsing all then I should expect it.

While that is reasonable, its really just the porn I want to filter, most people won't really give you too much trouble for a lot of the non-porn things that get labeled nsfw, some won't even really register it, but porn always catches peoples eyes.

Mine has the blur filter on it.

Reminds me off the day Reddit removed porn from its all feed and everyone was upset. Lol

Where do you turn off NSFW? I checked the box to allow it when creating my account. Where can I turn it off now?

In your profile settings

Ahh ok in the settings of the website of the instance? Would be great if there was an option in the apps themselves, but I'm guessing there's a reason it's not like that?

Some apps do have it as a setting, or at least one I tried did. I think app development isn't far enough along. There's all kinds of basic functionality that isn't implemented yet in the available apps.

I have hope for Sync, it was such a great Reddit app. Right now I'm using wefwef, which is interesting because I've never used an iPhone before.

That's not good enough. Some NSFW users may want to see that isn't porn. Being able to block instances like "lemmynsfw" is way more effective.

I'd wager most people who want to see NSFW don't want to see it in all. NSFW seems like it's more of a thing you search for at specific times rather then something you want popping up while you're browsing for the other kind of entertainment. Not that I'm speaking from experience of course.

Also, as others have mentioned, the more gorey or profanity filled style NSFW isn't something I'd like to have blocked from all, but it is something I don't want to autoplay or be uncensored in case I'm actually at work.

I think on kbin you can. Hopefully it will be added on Lemmy too

On kbin you can.

Where? I'm not seeing it.

click your name on the top right, settings, check "hide adult content"

When you're on an instance, instead of clicking the subscribe button on the right hand side, click the circle with a line through it.

Ah - "on an instance," I hadn't ever done that. While I'm not seeing a handy "click to browse this instance," I have sorted out that I can do kbin.social/d/[instance} to get there. That works well enough for my purposes. (And kbin refers to these as "domains.")

Just for future knowledge then, you can click on the little name of the instance/domain below a post and that'll take you to that same main page you're manually navigating to.

Thank you! I promise I'm not stupid, just ignorant.

No judgement here. I just wanted to make sure you knew so you could utilize it in the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if the large "mainstream" Lemmy and KBin instances start degenerating from the NSFW focused instances before too long.

I hope they don't. Users should have the power to decide for themselves what content they want to see.

I understand that but at the same time instance admins need to take into consideration whether they're willing to deal with NSFW content in terms of moderation. Especially with NSFW content from other instances that they have no control over. When you're talking about consequences that could include legal issues, it's completely fine for admins to decide they'd prefer to not deal with it at all. Especially especially since for the end user, the way to get around defederated porn instances is to just have an account on or simply visit a NSFW instance.

Errr.. this has nothing to do with illegal content or even specifically NSFW content. Users should have the power to block instances they don't want to. It's impossible to find an instance that blocks all the instances an individual user wants to unless they host it themselves or are friends with the hosts.

Agreed, but they are working to get the federation scaling issues resolved, first.

We'll have to make do with blocking communities.

Reddit on mobile no longer exists for me now that Sync for Reddit's gone.

Can't wait to try Sync for Lemmy and see it grow.

Welcome! For me, it was Apollo (try WefWef). I love it here except for the server issues. All in due time.

Edit: I just tried all kinds of gestures for closing image preview, and apparently swiping up now works! The update today said something about this, so wefwef all the way for me. It also just added top day (and top hour!) the best app on all fronts so far.

Wefwef is the best in many respects - but the inability to press images to close them is almost a deal breaker for me. The back button takes me out of the feed and into the side bar, with the image still opened on top.

I'm not gonna press the x in the top right corner every single time, it's bad UX, my phone's too tall.

Connect for lemmy has this functionality right, it's just ugly looking in my phone (the images in the play store look so nice, I suspect it's a bug with my specific phone)

Looking forward to Sync - it showed me UI with UX I hadn't even considered requesting. Sync just got everything right for me.

I’m using wef wef now. I saw some bugs but I feel that eventually it would get better

Be sure to use different servers! Experiencing server issues (with your server or choice) is a pretty sure sign to spread out and try somewhere else.

Won’t I need to subscribe to all the channels all over again? It’s the main reason I haven’t.

Unfortunately yeah :(

There's an export type functionally to make it easier but the server needs to be functional in the first place.

More viable for new users who don't have an account yet or very few subscriptions.

I’m using wef wef now. I saw some bugs but I feel that eventually it would get better

Same here. I don't want to use reddit's official app given how spez spelled out he will do everything he can to squeeze every penny out of that place. I want to browse interesting communities, not endless ads.

Reddit's bad decisions brought me to Kbin and Lemmy.

Welcome to the party, pal.

Come out to the Fediverse, let's get together, we'll share a few menes

Same here but for RIF is fun. I've had that app for a decade and when it finally closed I moved straight to lemmy.

One of the best apps I ever used, reddit related or not. RIP RIF.

Same for me. Sync for Reddit was my app of choice as well and with the announcement of Sync for Lemmy I've joined here as well. Make sure to check out the community for the app as well: !syncforlemmy@lemmy.world

I feel the same but I've also had reddit mods who do not like anyone having a different opinion. So yeah I was done with reddit quite a while ago.

I once was banned from all of reddit for saying I suspected a love Island contestant acted like he was gay. I didn't even do it maliciously it was just an honest opinion and I stated as much.

Same here. Such a fantastic app. Sync for Lemmy is in development, and I can't wait!

Flip flopping between Lemmy and Reddit ever since they killed Apollo. The main app is just a pain to use so it definitely killed my enjoyment of browsing reddit

I still haven't dared to use the official app lol. Boost hasn't died yet so I'll still look at it here and there until it's gone, but I'm really hoping Lemmy succeeds (although I'm unfortunately not expecting much, since it's not the easiest for the average user to get into).

Yea I saw some workarounds for Android but IOS is still kinda lagging behind.

I'm barely using main reddit now tbh. Mostly check it like once-twice a day to see if I missed any news and move on

Have you tried wefwef.app or liftoff?

I'm using Memmy for now. It works pretty well, aside from the issues with Lemmy servers.

I'm using Connect for Lemmy, and its okay. Very impressive for how fast its come out, but its no sync. It's like diet sync, which is good enough.

Can't wait to see what ljdawson comes out with.

You're among friends... Everybody here, with a very very very small exception, is in the exact same scenario as you.

I joined kbin because of the upcoming "death" of Infinity for Reddit. Infinity still works for now, (for free, I mean. But after a while it will be subscription-based) but I joined kbin before the "death" of Infinity because WHY NOT :D

Same here bro, same here, how did the notice of Sync for Lemmy impacted you?

Try out Thunder while you wait for Sync, it has similar qualities.

Thunder or liftoff have been the most similar ones from the ones I have tested as well.

I didn't realize I could transcribe on mobile using 3PAs until a few days before the takedown. It was frustrating and shitty, but the biggest thing that drove me away was looking at that site that told me how many shadowremovals and silent moderation I got without even realizing it, for completely innocent things. I was done.

Ngl liftoff is still really iffy about mobile transcribing on Lemmy but I'm working with/harassing to dev on that (I got a reply saying they'll look into it and now it's just a waiting game ig)

Dude really just admitted to using reddit for porn lmao.

Like half of reddit was porn, what do you expect?

I used Redact to rewrite all of my accounts' comments, since Spez will restore deleted comments, so you must overwrite them.

I have a had a few very negative experiences here with political extremists that already occupy some of the busier or perhaps more rabid instances. Not only that, but I hope that free speech instances will become populated enough to ensure vibrant content and users. The fewer rules that clone Reddit the better it is for all users in the end.

I used powerdeletesuite before the api access ended and deleted almost 11 years of comments. Just checked my account and only one comment seems to have survived. Seems like results may vary.