I've been testing lemmy and it's been working great so far. It only requires some fixes and influx of users.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I have more posts than I know what to do with. I have subscribed to a lot of communities from a lot of different instances so it's a lot of activity.
I recommend everyone to do this and then later turn off some if it becomes too much. But being able to see most of the posts and contribute there will help Lemmy take off. :)
I'm going to do exactly that right now. Thank you.
I think it would actually be a better user default to be included in the most popular communities so they see a lot of posts. Otherwise if you subscribe to a instance with not many of their own communities, you will think there is nothing going on.
I was thinking to write a guide for this. Users need to go to search, pick All instances and then search on something. But that's not easy to know on day one.
A ELI5 guide for lemmy is sorely needed. I can now see the amazing potential, but it took me some time to wrap my head around how it works. A simple guide for beginners so they have a start point is much required.
It's good to see the subreddits fight a bit, but the internet of today is not the liquid ever changing space it was 10 or 15 years ago. Websites like reddit facebook and twitter are full on mainstream. Their userbase is huge many of which lurkers who dont pay attention or engage with a lot of the content.
Reddit especially is so compartmentalized that they helped kill off message boards and are essentially a series of small esoteric forums into themselves. At the end of the day there is a lot of value in being able to get pretty much any hobby and find a little active community for it and that really cant be replicated elsewhere. Much like how Facebook has been controversial for years the exodus did nothing because for a lot of people facebook is the internet. Twitter is a cesspool and even the mainstream is clowning on it, and yet it still lives and thrives.
There will be a bit of an exodus, but many of those people will likely begrudgingly go back home to reddit, and even for those that go away forever there are enough users that wont notice or care. Heck look at the new reddit/reddit mobile fiasco. A lot of noise and lots of "Im never going to use anything else". In spite of that you see tons of people with avatars and newreddit style profiles, and you see lots screenshots shared showing the official app and people outright surprised that there even are alternatives when they complain about it. Reddit is too big to fail.
That said enough people will leave and seek alternatives to finally kickstart alternatives in a serious way. I know Ive taken a look at lemmy in the past a few times but upon exploring found instances with double digit monthly user counts that were mostly dead. I dont mind a smaller site and in fact reddit got too big a long time ago, but it needs to be semi active and Im not interesting enough to do it myself. The threats alone have added quite a few users already.
Reddit wont die it will burn on, but the embers it sheds thanks to these events will finally ignite other alternatives.
@lemillionsocks @anji I think that's a bit pessimistic. Reddit is nowhere near a Facebook or even a twitter, and its owners seem to have forgotten it got where it is now when digg's owner lost the curators. I doubt it'll die as quickly as some predict but I also don't think it'll survive unharmed. The truth is probably in between.
A quick google search(so take this number with a grain of salt) tells me that reddit has 52 million daily active users and 430 million monthly active users monthly active users.
Reddit is BIG. Really big. And websites just dont die or pop up the way they used to because of how theyre designed and because of how the current era of the internet has matured.
That said I wouldnt call my take pessimistic. Reddit has gotten too big and there is an appetite for many users to leave for greener pastures but there just wasnt enough momentum to breath more life and activity into the alternatives. New reddit will chug on but enough people will leave that alternatives will sprout and grow. Whether that is Lemmy or something else it's hard to say this early on, but it means that reddit alternatives will have enough users to thrive.
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This is inspiring. I'm here from Reddit. I just joined, and it feels very familiar. I just hope an influx of reddit users won't make things worse for the regular Lemmy users.
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Apparently, the substance and quality of thought Redditors post may be a disposable commodity. That is eyeballs on ads may be secondary to our function as generators of natural language as grist for training artificial intelligence—with third-party apps a civilian casualty in a bigger war for the almighty dollar.
Part of the motivation for Reddit’s plan involves the surging popularity of artificial intelligence.
Large language models such as ChatGPT are developed using training data, which in many cases is sourced from content found across the internet. Reddit should not be expected to provide that data to “some of the largest companies in the world for free,” CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times in a recent interview.
Who would've thought that someone would actually PAY to see what people on Reddit think?
Huffman is full of shit. Now I wonder who generates all that data and content on Reddit. Most of it absolutely wasn't stolen from other sites, right?
The TOS literally says they (Reddit) doesn't own it.
Lol The hippocracy of Huffman. The Newhouse family should really can him.
They can pitch a fit and protest all they want, but the only real way to get traction is to show there is a viable alternative. Want to renegotiate your Oracle license fees? Run a credible fraction of your enterprise on PostgreSQL. Want to get WotC to stop screwing 3rd party publishers with a new license? Start playing pathfinder. These are only two examples that I've experienced. Twitter will never improve as long as people keep using it. If reddit API users (3rd party apps) shift 5 to 20 % of use to Lemmy, you'll see API pricing drop incredibly fast.
Such a blackout could help accomplish that goal though.
I’m hoping the blackout drive fediverse adoption to the point that we don’t care what reddit is up to, any more than we don’t care about slashdot, digg, fark, et. al.
That'd be amazing.
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The circus is burning, as its owners tried to heat it up. Let us enjoy watching the flames from a safe distance.
I'm still a bit sad about Reddit's seemingly approaching ending. I never cared about Twitter so moving to Mastodon was a snap, but Reddit has had loads of amazing content posted and I've enjoyed it for 15+ years. I love the Fediverse, and Lemmy is great, but it may take some time before these platforms and communities can replace Reddit for me.
Yeah. As much as I want to abandon Reddit completely if they go through with this, I'll probably be forced to use new reddit and the official app because most communities probably wont migrate at all. There are many niche communities that I'm subscribed to, like related to a specific anime/LN series that's not too big.
Just for curiosity: which is the anime/light novel series?
On-topic: I hope that other communities start migrating, once Reddit's downwards spiral becomes too hard to ignore. I'm also considering to set up a few weaboo communities and one for conlangs, once I find a good instance for that. (lemmy.ml is already rather overburdened; perhaps someone could set up an instance for this sort of geeky stuff?)
There are many but a few that come to mind that I've been browsing a lot recently are:
- r/KumoDesu : The final volume (volume 16) is coming out on the 20th and I've started rereading the series. I actually finished reading the WN a couple of days ago (I love this series so much asdfaklmsv).
- r/IsekaiOjisan : Just plain fun
- r/Mashle : Not small but still one of my favourites. I don't watch shonen a lot but this is a great manga.
I've considered hosting a couple of fediverse (and nextcloud) servers before but servers are expensive 😞
I mainly want an exact alternative to r/Anime and r/Manga for the episode discussions and I also want r/WritingPrompts and r/Animemes because those are my gotos to kill time.
I've been meaning to check out Kumo for a while. I'm a big fan of Honzuki no Gekokujou and apparently there's a lot of overlap in the fan base.
I watched a little over one season of Honzuki no Gekokujou and I didn't find too interesting tbh (I only watched that many episodes because I was really bored at the time). It just felt like a "base building game" (I can't think of any other analogy for some reason). Is there something I'm missing, like the anime not adapting the source material well? Because I see a lot of people who like but I can't seem to understand why. To be clear, I don't think it's that bad but it seems more popular than it should be.
The beginning is a bit slow, I will admit, but the first season is a very good adaptation overall (later seasons skip a lot). So maybe it's just not your cup of tea. I don't think I follow the base-building analogy 🤔
As for its popularity, I think it does a lot of things really well, better than most other series, and the sum of it is superb.
- Characterization: there are almost no 1-dimensional characters. Even random side characters, or seemingly comic relief characters, have their own motivations and goings-on outside of what Myne (the unreliable narrator) sees. These are often revealed to the reader in side stories, and can recontextualize a lot of what's happening.
- World building: we start with a straightforward medieval city. Then a small bit of magic is introduced. Then we find out about a bit how the country is governed, then more about how magic works, histories, politics...all in a satisfying way, because Kazuki-sensei planned the whole story from the beginning. Which brings me to:
- Foreshadowing: EVERYTHING is a Chekov's gun. There's a lot of stuff to find on a re-read, and the theorycrafting people come up with in the weekly chapter releases is a lot of fun too.
- Themes: this series does not shy away from serious themes. Poverty, children starving, sexual assault, the ramifications of a strict caste system, slavery...There's a lot that sucked about medieval times. But also:
- Humor: absolutely great comedic moments. It's rare for a book to make me laugh out loud. For example, there's a scene where Myne hosts what is essentially a J-Pop concert and it's just nuts.
I could go on...tl;dr it's a great series!
Looking back I'm not sure what I meant by base building game here. I usually use that to describe Tensura (I don't like it personally. I dropped it after 1 season. It felt like there wasn't any threat or anything interesting to work towards in the plot).
In the case of Honzuki I think the reason I felt bored was because the goal of the plot felt too vague. But maybe I'll give it another try because apart from that, I 100% agree with all your points.
If you do, I'd suggest reading over watching. The anime skips a lot, especially season 3.
Honestly, I appreciate the protests, but this whole kerfuffle got me to realize how much I... don't like reddit anymore? There are certain communities that I'll stick around for (shoutout to /r/BravoRealHousewives), but I've already set up an RSS server for news and I'm probably going to unsub from a LOT of the more general ones. Too many bots, too much negativity, etc.
Glad to see so many subreddits contributing to this. Reddit IPO is the worst thing that happened to it and the original founders would have never allowed reddit to get to this point.
The thing is that people would gladly play 2-5usd/mo to keep 3rd party clients but Reddit is making super difficult on purpose. No way they are getting 5usd/mo per user from ads.
This is the third time Ive written this out because Jerboa keeps crashing so Im using the web interface instead!
Hopefully, I'll remember the salient points I made and maybe be even more succinct!
and the original founders would have never allowed Reddit to get to this point.
Unfortunately, at least one of the original founders has allowed, quite possibly even driven this policy. Steve Huffman is still very much at the helm and what he has exposed of himself in interviews, he doesn't sound like a very nice person (re: post apocalypse, he sees himself being on top and having slaves)
It's great that subs and users are organising to fight this but maybe Reddit should be allowed to carry out this change and metaphorically shoot itself in the face? This is just the latest in a long horrifying series of policies that the admins have pushed through, actions they have failed to take, or when they finally did, it was long after the horse had bolted.
Remember the jailbait (and worse) subs that they allowed for so long (and were rumoured to have participated in) and when they finally did something after Anderson Cooper shone a light under that dark, seedy rock, they picked their sacrificial lamb and blamed it all on him? Remember the secret santa parallel site someone set up that Reddit then forcibly absorbed and let wilt? Remember how they dealt with Victoria who arranged all the celebrity IAMA's? Remember how they brought in Ellen Pao (with her own set of issues) to deal with horrific amount of far right and misogynist subs that were actively calling for peoples and groups deaths, and then threw her under the bus once they got what they needed? Remember how they were banning people and deleting posts when it was revealed that 5 mod accounts were basically controlling the top 100 subs? Remember how they appointed to the admins a person who was found to be grooming teens and was supportive of their father who was convicted of serious sexual assault of a child?
The list is never-ending....
The sad fact of the matter is that centralised social medias one driving factor is money. They acquire that via data points collection from engagement. They dont care what kind of engagement as long as theres plenty of it and hateful content drives engagement.
There is no sense of community among the admins and execs of Reddit. It is entirely from the users.
The original founders allowed this to happen, if they didn't drive this. Many similar times previously, and undoubtedly, many more times to come.
Maybe Reddit, just like every other centralised, corporate owned social media sites time is over?
I just dont believe its something worth fighting for, despite how commendable the actions of all those subs is.
That’s what I want too. It’s time to take more control over platforms we use (and platforms that make money off of us existing). I’m happy most blackout posts either mention lemmy as an alternative directly, or it’s in the top 5 comments.
When all the apps are effectively blocked I bet they push a release to the stores with directions to an alternative. Can Apollo, RiF, Boost, Sync and all the others launch gateways and point their users at the fediverse?
They could, but have no incentive to do so unless the dev specifically likes the fediverse or something.
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I've people who remember the web in the late 90s / early 2000s, repeatedly comment that they miss finding weird, leftfield and wacky blogs and sites and that the last decade has been corporates vacuuming up anything that was interesting, subsuming it into their ecosphere to then let it wither and die because they didn't understand it, just that it was gaining popularity.
If you look at the front page of Reddit now, its just recycled memes, content cross posted from the same corporate own sites such as Twitter and TikTok and endless reposts by bot accounts that are karma farming so they can be used for astro turfing.
There are niche communities and they are the ones suffering from this API policy but its time they all bailed and found better homes.
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So far, Lemmy > Reddit. Was able to easily find equivalent communities and honestly, I enjoy it. :)
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More power to the protest, but I am skeptical that it will do much good. I think reddit has strayed so far from its original mission and values that today it is nothing like the platform the reddit founders originally envisioned.
I think the reddit executives have probably already run the numbers on this and don't care if every single user & mod who uses 3rd party apps and the API walks away from their platform. At this point they only care about the IPO and what they need to do to increase shareholder value after the IPO.
They may even see the exodus as a positive. They may think of these power users and API-utilizing mods as a drag on their bandwidth and worse, they are users who seldom if ever see any ads and increase their ad-viewing numbers.
Will the quality of reddit content suffer? I think it very likely will. It's already been going downhill for a while now.
However, the executives mostly don't care about content quality, either. As long as the free content they get from their users doesn't stray into illegal and controversial waters, they are happy. If the content is mediocre memes and cat photos, they are quite happy with that. The goal is to serve as many ads up to as many users per hour as possible. They are banking on millions of "casuals" to stick around and scroll through the content and see those ads. Content quality is way down the list of their concerns.
My guess is the suits are are no longer interested in an "engagement" platform in the same way that Twitter and Facebook try to be (in their own ham-fisted and evil social-engineering ways). At this stage of the game, reddit just wants to be a mindless app that bored people can scroll while in the doctor's waiting room, the airport, in the bathroom, or wherever they are and need to kill time.
Have the reddit suits made a miscalculation here? Will the exodus make reddit another "not cool anymore" type of platform like Digg that almost everyone abandons? Will the mass exodus only leave bots and karma farmers behind to talk to each other? Maybe, I don't know. It's hard to predict that kind of thing. But I think the execs are willing to roll the dice on this because short-term profits are all they care about since they will be going public. If the bots and karma farmers fool the people buying ads, reddit will just roll with that.
(You'd hope anyone buying ads on reddit would check to make sure their investment is actually increasing their sales...but there's a lot of poorly managed businesses out there).
Either way....for those of us who enjoyed old reddit (and Digg before that, and Usenet before that) I think the path forward is a new platform such as this one.
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Very good. People have had enough.
I deleted my almost 11 year old account and moved here because of this. I used there shitty app for way too long and after switching to Apollo i suddenly saw all the old subreddits I subscribed too become more prominent in my feed. On there app if felt like I was getting fed rage bait.
Same! I used nothin but Boost, the idea of going to their main app was atrocious, why actively alienate your userbase? They've been falling into a corporate shit-hole for too long
I tried to use Reddit over old.reddit and I was OK with it for a while, but I gave up when topics with barely any engagement would show up at the "top" in my feed and I would get suggestions from other subreddits that I wasn't a part of.
I can adapt to a UI given time and I did like some aspects of their new layout. I'm not on board with desperately trying to fill my feed with "something new" every time I visit the site though because sometimes I want to follow up on a topic from earlier. It just kept burying things and I switched back to old.reddit after maybe six months of trying the new one.
For the sake of the app developers, I hope Reddit reverses course, sets a more reasonable cost, or the devs find ways to hook into something like Lemmy so they can keep doing what they do best. That said, I'm happy to have found a much better community in the whole process :)
Was thinking perhaps subreddits could just stop moderating and auto approve everything en masse... that would create a spam hell more beautiful than anything we would have seen before...
Unmarked NSFW stuff highly upvoted on the front page, crypto bullshit in every sub, every subreddit doing a "If this gets 2 times X votes, I post again" making the frontpage useless. It would be total anarchy and cause Reddit to implode on itself before you can say "What Snoo".
I doubt this will happen in reality because people actually care about preserving their subreddits. Anyway enough pipedreaming.
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Reddit has shown their cards and in my opinion even if they walk back these changes the writing has been on the wall for a while that they are looking to change the site in ways that people who prefer old Reddit will likely not prefer. It would be better to move on
Yeah, I already pulled the trigger on deleting my account. I've no interest in staying there with what they're doing, and like you said, even if they roll back on it I'm done. They've shown time and again they give zero shits about the user base, and I for one am sick of it.
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