I came here a couple weeks ago precisely because of the recent upcoming Reddit API changes. They have kept breaking the trust of us users for many years and we have just rolled with it and adapted, but at this point i just don’t want to be part of it anymore. So, now i have a huge Reddit-shaped hole in my internet life, currently checking what will fill it. Lemmy holds promise to fill it, although there isn’t remotely enough users/communities on it yet to fully fill it, and i’ve yet to get used to it. We’ll see, hope it works for me.
I want to see more FOSS/FLOSS projects succeed. One of Lemmy’s biggest obstacles is its lack of users so I joined to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.
Hopefully Reddit’s changes provides similar benefits for Lemmy that Elon’s Twitter changes did for Mastodon. I’m not sure if Lemmy will ever reach the size of Reddit (or even Mastodon), but it honestly doesn’t need to if the community is engaged enough.
As you say, size isn’t end-all-be-all. It’s the engagement. There’s plenty of old-school forums online that thrive with around 100-200 members. Lemmy probably has double that in active monthly users spread across the 4-5 big instances. It already feels bigger than VOAT ever got. And, at least this instance (beehaw.org), seem to be way better modded and ran.
I agree that beehaw is rad, but the last few months were very quiet on lemmy. Too quiet for my taste. Since the recent reddit thing there was a big influx of new users and also new ideas and whatnot.
I use it because it’s the best shot we have to build a real alternative to Reddit. It feels a bit like Reddit at 2008 or so.
But I have the feeling that I might just stay for the community.
Both? I started using it because it’s on the fediverse, and I keep using it because it’s on the fediverse and it isn’t reddit
Huh … hi Ada! Blahaj.zone has a Lemmy too?! Cool! Is it in any way integrated with your calckey instance? What got your hosting both a lemmy and calckey instance?
Yeah, we have a lemmy too! Basically, I tried to join some lemmy instances, but had to wait too long for account approval, so we decided to spin up our own instance. There’s no integration at the moment, aside from those included in default federation.
Same admins though :)
Nice! Very glad to see!
Yeah both for me too. Reddit is good, but federated makes sense.
Gonna be honest I don’t really understand the Fediverse yet but I’m here cuz it feels cool and reddit kind of annoys me these days
Same here. I know Lemmy should, in some way, connect to Mastodon, which is getting bigger
mastodon, lemmy and a few other softwares can speak activityPub, a standard, just like e-mail is one. You can follow a user, read their posts etc. Lemmy uses this differently than mastodon, where on lemmy there is an emphasis on the groups feature (which is shown on lemmy through the reddit like communities), while mastodon focuses on users and their posts. It’s not yet 100% compatible in all ways, but it’s getting there. For example you can follow a lemmy community from a mastodon server and you’ll see that community as a groups that boosts all the posts and comments that are made. Something like that ^^
I don’t even understand it 100% anymore, it’s getting more complicate the more things are built. But I think in the future it will get easier and each software (lemmy, mastodon, etc) will focus on something and then have a set feature set of what they can do with other servers.
That’s what I’m feeling as a new user looking for a reddit alternative. This whole thing shows a lot of promise, but it feels very complicated and not especially intuitive. That’s ok, though, nothing wrong with complex, it just going to take some getting used to.
The fediverse is the future of the web. Reddit has been a massively important part of the modern web experience, but it looks like their pursuit of profits will begin to diminish It’s usefulness. Lemmy is slowly filling that void for me. Hopefully it continues to grow and fill that void for others too.
Lemmy being an open source project has been the main reason for me, Fediverse support is a bonus. I think that social platforms fundamentally need to be open and publicly owned. I wrote about this in more detail here https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/
I enjoy your posts!
thanks!
Can you elaborate on how you came across this post? I’m having a hard time understanding the federation.
Are you following asklemmy@lemmy.ml?
@butter
I just recently learned you could cross-post. I don’t have a lemmy account so I just copy/pasted the URL from lemmy to mastodon’s search so I can comment/upvote. looks like you can follow specific lemmy communities tho! Search for asklemmy@lemmy.ml on your mastodon instance and click the “+” to follow.That’s amazing. I can’t wait to be able to follow mastodon from Lemmy. Afaik, you can’t yet
@butter you can follow lemmy from mastodon. Interacting seems more challenging.
Because of Reddit, but I’m very excited to see the fediverse grow such that Reddit is the last network I have to leave
I still browse reddit without an account for informative material and niches but my activity is all dedicated to lemmy, mainly for its open source and non commercial nature.
Mainly because of fedi. Had been using fedi for years, never had a Reddit account.
I am not a fan of micro-blogging style social media. I find sites like reddit and lemmy a lot more useful for me.
I think the answer to your question is maybe both? Lemmy is attractive both because of its reddit-like features and its fediverse features. But maybe more reddit than fediverse
@koncertejo@lemmy.ml @asklemmy@lemmy.ml I use it because I prefer shared spaces to posting solo.on the Fedi. Reddits just slowly moving through the cycle locking things down bit by bit, not interested in contributing there.
I’d agree with both. The generally calmer and ad free experience here makes it a good Reddit alternative. It being federated opens things up better as well.
Finding out about Lemmy was this amazing extension of the Fediverse that could improve (and maybe eventually replace, but I’m not there yet) Reddit, which I’ve used for 10+ years and really love.
I use it because I miss what reddit used to be. Now, all the moderators talk about subs as their “projects”.
