this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to become a member of the community, theres a reasonable amount of subs (or whatever the other word for em is) that fit my interests, enough linux content and shitposting for my liking, and the overall random posts made by people equally fed up with Leddit. (also i admit i used reddit a little cus there was this post on the fedora sub showing how to fix a sound issue i been having after a recent update)

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[–] honk@feddit.de 31 points 1 year ago

At least on my instance everything is running fast, snappy. I like the clean interface. Haven't encountered any major bugs yet.

The only downside for me so far is that there is not a lot to see yet. The only active posts and communities are about lemmy itself. Which is understandable of course but I can't wait to actually get to the phase where I actually get to experience real content lmao

[–] oranges@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Well, I'm here !

I have removed my Reddit account after 10yrs + 100k + karma and more hours invested than I would like to admit.

This time, I'm legit done with the place. I don't like where they are headed and decided to give Lemmy a go.

So far, so good :)

I got my account approved and I'm good to go. This is my first comment of many, many more to come.

Good to be here folks...

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[–] Skimmer5728@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

great, i've really liked lemmy so far. its really the first alt big tech platform like this that i've gotten into, was never big on mastodon or any of the others out there.

lemmy is honestly a breath of fresh air. really great platform so far, i think it has very strong potential.

i still use reddit for some things, but overall i'm starting to use lemmy a lot more. great work from the devs, can't wait to see the future!

[–] GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mastodon is so much like a Twitter/Facebook replacement that I'm not even interested in it. Reddit/Lemmy's focus is not on broadcasting yourself but rather link aggregating and conversations about those links in the comments. It's always been so much better of a forum type of experience than Twitter/Mastodon/Facebook.

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[–] Neptune014@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just signed up a few minutes ago. I honestly really like it so far. I was never into Twitter but I did try out mastodon and just couldn't get used to the look of everything. It was also confusing to sign up. So far Lemmy has been great. I am surprised how many active users there are. I was worried it would be super dead.

edit: spelling

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[–] wtvr@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey I'm new here bc fuck spez. There's definitely potential here. Would like it to be easier to find communities (sublemmies?) And the app needs work but I'm ready to go all in. Did I mention fuck spez yet

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[–] jarrod@lemmy.one 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now I've got my head around how the instances work and how everything is connected but not connected at the same time I'm growing to like it. Once more communities pop up I think it's going to be good

I like it a lot too, the fact that I can roam around servers from my home server is really cool

[–] slashzero@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m not ditching Reddit, just here trying out alternatives.

How has your lemmy experience been so far?

Well… I’m scrolling and F5’ing as if I was on Reddit, so honestly doesn’t feel that different, yet.

[–] catshit_dogfart@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me the biggest problem is lack of content, a platform like this (and reddit) lives and breathes on their user submitted content. I mean, reddit wouldn't be much either if there wasn't much to see on there.

My hope is more users equates to more content, and this platform grows into something akin to reddit. Best case scenario - it turns out better, or at least like reddit used to be.

[–] slashzero@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

Time will tell. Given Reddit’s behavior recently, alternatives like lemmy are bound to see a spike in users. Just keep in mind that more users doesn’t necessarily mean good content.

[–] Soullioness@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

I'm honestly really lost and just stumbling around in the dark. It's been really confusing to learn about federation and what ever makes lemmy so unique.

But I'm really happy to see an open source alternative to reddit which is cool.

[–] XPost3000@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh man it has been unironically great! First day I joined there was basically nothing but a meme sublemmy and a couple of tech subs too, but nowadays there are communities popping up left right and center, and I'm seeing so many familiar subs recreated on here, too

Overall my past week of using Lemmy have been phenomenal, and I'm happy to say that Lemmy has become my mindless scrolling app of choice now

Edit: correct number of weeks

[–] harbo@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago

I really don’t like the cringe tankie culture here, hope that gets diluted as more people come in

[–] moof@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago

So, first day of Lemmy and so far I’m enjoying it. I’m looking through communities and seeing what I’d like to follow or not.

Criticism (hopefully constructive) that I do have:

  • I miss the random niche subreddit side of things, but I’m not sure if that’s as a result of lack people on the platform, or the UI not promoting that style of thing much.
  • I am missing a good iPadOS client. I’m currently using the Web UI, which works well enough, but it’d be great to have a more native app.
  • It seems strange that I can’t have a One True Fediverse Identity where my mastodon identity is the same as my lemmy identity and vice versa. I note that Takahē has started refocusing into more of an identity broker for ActivityPub and less of an online experience, so maybe it will be the one true unifying identity.

On the plus side:

  • There are a lot of fun general communities on here.
  • People are really nice, in general, and this doesn’t seem to be changing, compared to the histories I’ve been browsing
  • I really like markdown as a way to post, and it seems to work ok from my iPad

All in all, it’s been a positive 24hrs, I might give an update after a week or two.

[–] illegalbat@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like others have said I'm going to miss the niche subreddits and the thousand different cat subs lol

[–] Obeyyourbrain@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, same. But that's why we're gravitated here. To grow those gardens back.

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[–] rimlogger@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm very impressed with the federation here. Kept thinking each instance was on its own but you can post across different instances. Kind of neat.

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[–] maniel@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (12 children)

it's nice, but we need more content and more 3rd party mobile apps, i mean Jerboa is nice, but many of us are used to their favorite reddit app

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[–] mcribgaming@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I'm excited for the possibilities, but daunted by the realities.

It's going to be tough to get enough foot traffic to start populating smaller subs. It seems like the Reddit API drama is the big break needed to hit a critical mass of users, but how many will take the time to figure out something like Lemmy? And are the Lemmy instances ready? It's strange to root for Reddit to go through with the API changes after using Reddit for so long. But if there was ever a time to pay a bit extra for additional hosting resources, June 11th (or now!) should be it. If a large influx of new users crash Lemmy instances, and no one can sign up, a golden opportunity will be lost.

Signing up was not a flawless process. You are asked to make a choice about servers with little guidance on what it all means.

Requiring a 10 character password with additional character conditions is going to turn a lot of possible new users OFF. It should be 6 characters, with no conditions. Yes, it's not secure, but we need sign ups above everything else. Users can choose to get as complex as they want, but simplicity should also be an option. If people later grow to value their Lemmy accounts, they can secure them at a later time. But extremely easy sign up should be the default for now.

Asking people to write an extensive answer as to "why you want to join this particular server" should also be suspended temporarily. Again, it's about ease of signing up. We should try to get as many signups in as quickly as possible, and weed out the problem people later. After the possible Reddit migration boom ends, you can go back to application essays as a requirement for entry.

The web interface is buggy. The site will often "reset" as you are reading a thread, and the whole thread will act if "refreshed". If this causes users to lose a long post they are typing, they might quit Lemmy then and there.

The community structure needs to be more unified across instances. It's confusing that there are local groups as well as "multiverse" groups across federations, often with the exact same name. It's a bummer that the communities can be splintered, and will have people not realize what's really available.

I think we're might see some weaknesses of a distributed system like Lemmy in the next few weeks. It's hard to organize and get everyone rowing in the same direction with no "CEO" or clear leader. It does feel like little fiefdoms doing their own things, and that makes it even harder to hit critical mass.

In terms of content and userbase, so far so good. It obviously leans heavily towards the technically competent. Lemmy sort of screens for the technology inclined since it's only well known to those who are up to date with the latest in tech. So of course it's easy to feel like everyone is like minded and cool for now. But we need to attract casuals if we want vibrant, non-tech groups to exist and flourish too.

I've only been exploring for 2 days though, so I can be very wrong.

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[–] Herb@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

This feels a lot like Reddit did 15 years ago, when they first introduced subreddits-- like I'm seeing something brand new for the first time, but it's somehow comfortable and innocent.

[–] Diogo@lemmy.pt 12 points 1 year ago (10 children)

It's taking me a bit to grasp the practical use of the "federated" thing.

It seems like there aren't a lot of tutorial-type instructions on the web of how to use it. Like a YouTube video.

I would be nice if a good number of redditors would join for activity to flourish.

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[–] csm10495@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's generally ok. Though its tougher to use than reddit. To be honest I really wish that it did a better job of merging similar communities or something like that?

Like almost like a multi-reddit of cats to include all cats communities with dedups.. similar idea for other categories.

[–] Gray@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago

To be fair, Reddit doesn't merge similar communities either. You could have /r/cats, /r/catpics, /r/cat_pics, /r/PicturesOfCats, and so on. The point is, Reddit also needed time to establish popular communities before they took hold. I think it's less a structural issue with Lemmy and more just a small forum problem. In time it should self correct so that when you look up "cats" on Lemmy, the overwhelmingly most popular community pops up and you can subscribe to it. The one downside is that you could have multiple /c/cats communities on different instances, but that still won't be that big of a problem. The most popular one will still be the first search result and it won't be too hard to remember that it's the Beehaw cats community that's the popular one (not literally - just to use a random example instance).

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[–] creek@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I had a bit of a rocky start, but I picked up the concepts fairly quickly.

The Good:

  • The discussion threads here remind me of what Reddit's discussions were like about five years ago.
  • Comments feel more meaningful and thought-provoking as opposed to a race to "craft the wittiest meme."
  • The community here seems to be relatively friendly and welcoming.

The Less Good:

  • I find the mobile experience quite clunky at the moment. For the site, there seem to be some random overflow issues, and the interface and UI elements feel a bit too small for a mobile experience. The lack of polished, dedicated apps is somewhat of a bummer, but I'm hopeful the community will fill these gaps over time with dedicated applications.
  • The onboarding process is somewhat lackluster. It seems more geared towards an audience that is already familiar with federated services. I feel most new users will default to lemmy.ml out of an unwarranted sense of FOMO for not being a direct member of the largest instance, simply due to a lack of understanding of how federated apps work.
  • Redundant communities across multiple instances could become problematic over time. Personally, I would like to see something like user (or even mod) specified mono-communities, grouping multiple communities across multiple instances into a single thread. For example, if a user went to m/movies, whoever runs that mono could add movie-specific feeds from places like lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc.
  • We need to have a serious discussion about generating funds for instances. Dedicated servers with high traffic can get incredibly expensive. I fear that many smaller instances will eventually go dark due to escalating operational costs. Ko-Fi donations will only go so far. We, as a community, need to start thinking of more sustainable alternatives that align with the community's core values.
  • The documentation for the JS SDK could use some TLC. Thankfully, it's fully typed with Typescript ❤️, so it's not too cumbersome to work out what everything does, but more code examples and descriptions for all the various methods would be a welcome change.

All in all, I'm happy with my decision to check this place out and am hopeful more people will come aboard in time. It's already become a part of my daily routine.

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[–] Manticore@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm rapidly coming to appreciate it.

Maybe it's the demographic of users (young vs old, tech savvy vs casual, w/e) but threads here have far more activity in ratio to the number of subscribers and members.

Reddit just feels like a popularity context. Tell your 'I also choose this guy's dead wife' joke, get your karma, and for god's sake DON'T USE EMOJIS! Subs rapidly became echo chambers, or lose identity as they get larger.

Lemmy however... while not all threads have activity (it's small after all), the activity is legitimately interactive. People actually discussing ideas. We're talking like thinking adults, and I'm enjoying it.

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[–] gaytswiftfan@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

this app I'm using is pretty bad (no offense to the dev) but once there's better ones on the market I'm sure the experience will be more enjoyable

I'm not a fan of the whole wordnews ppl banning anti-CCP/anti-russian content tho

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[–] GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

I was on Hexbear and I forgot how much I missed having a mixed crowd, as it was. Conversations are so much more fun that way!

[–] MisterBroda@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

So far it is mostly fine, but confusing at times. Especially navigating and finding things. But so was reddit in the begining.

Besides this, there are a lot of communities missing. I hope there is a way to extract post-histories from subreddit so we don't loose the accumulated knowledge. Especially for troubleshooting and programming, reddit it a valuable source. I hope we will keep those and transition to lemmy (or another alternative) smoothly

[–] SpiderPig2000@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A bit rough initially as you might expect with a new platform but I've now got an account on a (geographically) local instance and subscribed to some communities in general interest areas on other instances. Looks promising. Now I just gotta find some niche communities.

[–] RomanRoy@lemmy.fmhy.ml 8 points 1 year ago
  1. Searching communities is still hard.

2 )There's a featured/pinned post that appears to me on my account home on lemmy.one, but I just can't see on this account. I went to the community, I searched It top-down and nope, it just doesn't exist for this account, I don't know why

The link also can't be shared, as if I copy its permalink, I got to the lemmy.one instance.

This is one of the biggest improvements it should see, but I don't know if it's possible at all.

  1. Also, the Jerboa app is not very good, but it works(Lemmur doesn't even work). But it is secondary to me, as I think if Lemmy grows, we'll see improvements gradually in this regard.
[–] TeaHands@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Pretty great tbh. The tricky thing with being an early adopter is you kind of have to be the change you want to see, but I'm old enough to feel no shame about just barging into places and starting new threads as needed.

So far started two accounts on two different instances (I like to keep different subjects somewhat separate) and had really cool interactions on both.

Obviously there are a few UX issues, trying to sub to remote communities is kind of a nightmare, but hopefully I've subbed to enough that other people on my instance will find it a bit easier to find them through search.

[–] CheshireSnake@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm still hoping some of the subs I frequent will migrate here. That's my only concern, tbh. If even 90% of the subs I'm following on reddit move here, I can quit reddit altogether. I'm also concerned about nsfw content (not just porn), but reddit is killing that too.

Can't start my own subs because, 1) I have no time, experience, nor patience to mod, and 2) idk of many of the people from those subs are already here.

Overall, though, lemmy/fediverse has been nice to me.

[–] DJDarren@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I'm enjoying figuring out how the place works. For example, when I first signed up, I couldn't work out how Beehaw.org was part of Lemmy was part of the Fediverse, but I'm now subbed to almost as many communities on other servers as I am on Beehaw.

The learning curve has perhaps been more steep than on Reddit, but no more so than Twitter > Mastodon.

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[–] Elbullazul@lem.elbullazul.com 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It's been okay, the main instance has been somewhat slow and some posts take time to show up in the feeds.

However, once I started using my self-hosted instance, it's been great! Snappy, content shows up pretty fast and federation has worked well for the time being.

I wish Jerboa was a little more polished for when I'm on my cellphone, but otherwise, the app is pretty good

[–] amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Jerboa definitely needs polish, RedReader (My favorite Android Reddit client) was considering supporting Lemmy after the API changes, so it might just be a matter of time until some Reddit clients also work for Lemmy.

EDIT: RedReader has released a statement about their future trajectory after being granted non-commercial accessibility exemption (the app will still work with reddit):

My long-term vision for RedReader is to restructure the app to more easily support other sites, including Lemmy, and perhaps others such as Tild.es and Hacker News. Before the API changes were announced, I was already considering adding RSS reader functionality to the app, and I think it would be cool to work with some kind of "open forum protocol" which would allow a variety of websites and apps to interoperate with each other through a uniform API.


I see this as a huge win, as RedReader with Lemmy support would be just about as perfect of a mobile Lemmy experience as i can image.

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[–] xenago@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I've just been lurking so far, but that's been good. Mastodon is great so I'm sure Lemmy will grow out of its initial pains.

[–] Gray@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

This doesn't particularly matter, but in the interest of answering your question, the equivalent word to "subreddits" here is "communities". Thus the /c/ instead of /r/.

[–] stappern@feddit.it 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love it so far,only needs more people

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[–] tenshi_exe@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like it so far but my issue is that since Reddit had SUCH a huge community. Even niche subreddits were semi active. Here I think it'll take a while before we hit similar levels (or never at all)

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[–] Obeyyourbrain@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I think its pretty promising. There are some improvements that could be made with UI, but thats the tiniest gripe.

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