To follow-up on the Reddit thread yesterday, here are a few elements that can be interesting to discuss.

Link to specific instances and apps rather than just saying Lemmy

Just quoting “Lemmy” or pointing to join-lemmy.org can lead to a very unintuitive and clunky experience, as people can just end up randomly on a very small and/or outdated instance. Recent post by a new joiner 9 days ago, they had to change server 2 times to get a satisfying experience: https://lemmy.world/post/24220536.

Using something like

"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users

Feel free if you have any questions"

Can already point them in one direction, and avoid them getting lost in the too many options.

If people want to debate the choice of those two instances, I’ll add my thought process in the comments.

The Lemmy feed looks as depressing as Reddit’s All, and how to mitigate that

Some feedback I received when promoting Lemmy the way above

Just checked out lemmy to see if it’s different from reddit. Im very disappointed lmao.

First post I see is a comic about cultural appropriation with an ifunny watermark. Next are several posts about the proton vpn ceo “going full maga.” And finally a post I saw on Reddit days ago that is ragebait making fun of the cybertruck.

Yikes. It’s the same exact thing.

–

Lemmy still has a pretty obnoxious tankie problem. Even if you block the .ml instance, pretty much every thread about US politics or world news on any major instance gets hijacked by the same handful of trolls and their associated vote bots. Hopefully this will become less of a problem as more sane people join, but just as a word of caution, be aware that you will be called western imperialist scum by a bunch of 14 year olds.

–

Lemmy is utter rubbish, it’s as if their entire userbase consists of the top layer of scum carefully siphoned off from the Reddit cesspool. It got the worst of the annoying political echo chamber and “very smart” argumentative users from Reddit.

I just clicked on half a dozen random Lemmy servers, and all of them had at least one link about Trump in the top 5 posts. Even ones that seem like they’re supposed to be about tech.

Normal humans want the Reddit of 10+ years ago back. We don’t want to use a different site colonized by the same modern day Redditors we loathe interacting with.

–

To be fair, you can’t say they’re wrong. Open https://discuss.online , by default you’ll be set on All - Active. Out of the first 9 posts you see, 8 are about T or M, the last one being a meme.

What I try to do in such instances is to give something like

"While politics are important, you can still very much block them. Here are an example of some communities that can interest you:

I also wrote a long post about that issue that you can read here https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/

As a side note, I recently started a discussion on [email protected] about a potential political-free instance for new joiners, feel free to have a look: https://feddit.org/post/6819084

Lemmy is too small, 42k monthly active users is nothing

Discuit, the centralized alternative to Reddit, currently counts 181 weekly active commenters: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/NlAdOWAp

You can also mention that NodeBB is now federating with Lemmy:

That’s all for now, happy to discuss in the comments.

Note: if you’re not interested in promoting Lemmy, feel free to hide this post, you are able to do this on specific posts if your instance is running 0.19.4 and newer

  • freamon@community.nodebb.org
    3·
    9 days ago

    Oh, yeah. It’s still ongoing. You can track the progress at https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/app/api/alpha/routes.py if you like. At the bottom of that page, things with a ‘Stage 1’ are what’s left to do.

    The remaining stuff is mostly to do with chat / notifications. Once done, a basic app could be released, and then improved to include stuff that’s missing (things like uploading an image to post or a comment, and viewing reports)

    EDIT: sorry, this was meant to be a reply to another comment. Still getting the hang of NodeBB. Now will this edit work …

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    I had to read your title three times before I realised you weren’t trying to convince carpenters to join

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    54·
    9 days ago

    And again blaze doing the hard work for shaping fedi in positive ways while lemmy.world mods are busy censoring speech!

  • Free_Opinions@feddit.ukEnglish
    91·
    9 days ago

    This is the best platform for constant live updates about what the people you don’t like are up to. Then there’s articles about everything that’s wrong in the world and also some memes - mostly political.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    9 days ago

    The thing I hate worst about Lemmy is that a lot of people are dickheads about their opinion, which often is barely different from the persons’ opinions you see them aggressively shitting on. In other cases the opinions are pretty different but start with the same basic premise, yet some users see no common ground at all. It’s become really disheartening honestly. There are probably more than 30 users like that which I had to block for my own sanity

    • BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      9 days ago

      This is the twitter and reddit ethos. Everyone is Super Smart and You Are Wrong Ha Ha.

      On reddit you can find smaller communities where people are more normal and it’s closer to having a discussion at a bar than it is going on to /r/politics or something.

      People DEFINITELY don’t like showing up at a new place and posting stuff and people piling on with snark and stuff.

  • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    7·
    9 days ago

    An official Android and iOS app called “Lemmy”. If you wanna go big, you need the mobile platform.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    32·
    9 days ago

    Yep, lemmy definitely has a problem with too much politics.

    I propose that no post should include the head or face of any politician. Seeing a politician typically ruins your day. Best to either keep politics abstract (memes) or not do that at all.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      73·
      9 days ago

      And then only with deeper knowledge of how the Fediverse functions under the hood - like how “instances” relate to “communities” and specific moderator names, especially when working from a remote account on a different instance than the community structure… Hey, where are you going? 😯

  • thoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    9 days ago

    Sounds like we’re filtering out the exact type of people I would never want to come from Reddit. Dunno why y’all want them.

    • aasatru@kbin.earth
      7·
      9 days ago

      I generally try to avoid political shit here myself, it’s too depressing and I’m not sure reddit-like forums is really a good format for that.

      But for those who are out there posting cybertruck memes, thanks for scaring away the MAGAs for the rest of us. It is much appreciated.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      7 days ago

      because the only reason I still use Reddit is to interact with adults in my profession from around the world with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints and with good hearts but limited tolerance for spending time learning obscure tech

      so anything to reduce the barrier of entry for those people is one less reason to ever use Reddit again. that’s a win in my book. if you want to stick to your ML communities y, that’s your right. but are you really going to change the world by shutting everyone out?

      • thoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        No one is going to change the world by posting. Very few people have the time or energy to discuss or debate every day. I’d rather just not deal with an entire host of opinions and takes that I already deal with every day in real life.

        What I’ve learned over my time using sites like Digg and Reddit is that allowing conservative views to fester and form their communities on a platform allows them to organize and grow and seep into other “non political” spaces. The Donald, gamergate, transphobia, general reaction, whatever.

        And the “anti-politics” enlightened centrist types are enablers that allow this.

        If people come here and go “wow they sure are critical of Israel, America, Trump, and billionaires. I hate this”, then they’re self selecting themselves from joining and I just don’t think that’s a loss.

        The measurement of a platform to me is the quality of the users, not the quantity.

        • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          “non political” spaces.

          The Donald

          Was it really considered non-political? Not that familiar with that sub history

          • thoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            No. My point was that as Reddit became more mainstream, it became more conservative. As it became more conservative, more conservative spaces were created like the Donald and gamergate subs. And people and ideas from those spaces ended up seeping into other “non political” subs, like technology, gaming, movies, etc.

            The amount of xenophobia, transphobia, anti-feminism, etc. I saw in general purpose subs grew post Digg migration, especially in gamer subs as gamergate happened in 2014.

            Conservatism and centrist liberalism are the dominant political beliefs in the US, UK, and seemingly most of Europe too. Those voices will outnumber and browbeat leftist voices over time if they join an online platform en masse, in my experience.

            • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              7 days ago

              I see where you come from, but I would say that this would happen when Lemmy gets really mainstream, like let’s say 500k or 1 million users.

              I would just like to reach 100k or 200k so that it feels less like if 25 people stop posting the whole platform dies.

      • thoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        I’m sure there are fine people on Reddit who don’t know about Lemmy, but your quoted examples consist mostly of certain type of faux-“apolitical” person and that’s where the solutioning is stemming from.

        I don’t think bringing the average default sub Redditor over would be a net positive for the platform.

  • twinnie@feddit.ukEnglish
    10·
    9 days ago

    Just a thought I’m having, but rather than just spamming Reddit with Lemmy links maybe we should promote it more on Linux type areas, at least people coming from there will find their niche content here.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      7·
      9 days ago

      Isn’t every Linux user aware of Lemmy by now? I’ve seen a few posts about it on a few Linux forums during the API fiasco

  • 4Robato@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    9 days ago

    I think one of the biggest barriers of the fediverse is decision paralysis.

    So stop looking around! Go to https://lemmy.world/ and join :)

    If you want to expend extra time, there are more servers and you can join a different one, if you are undecisive join the one above :)