What are your thoughts on the Lemmy ecosystem?
I’ve been trying it out for the last week. I have my own opinions, but I’d like to hear others and see if we have common ideas on what is good/bad/indifferent about the Lemmy ecosystem.
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The on-the-fly meme-making by the Trekkies is positively inspiring.
Welcome here!
Copy pasting from a recent thread on /r/RedditAlternatives trying to address usual criticism against Lemmy.
Federation is confusing, people want a single website they can go to
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Go to https://lemm.ee/
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Have a look around, see if the content and the formatting is appealing to you, register an account if you want to be able to curate your feed further
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Go to https://lemm.ee/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world to see communities (equivalent of subs) that might be interesting to you.
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Use Voyager as a mobile app: https://www.lemmyapps.com/Voyager. When they ask for your “instance”, use “lemm.ee”
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If you want more choices for apps, have a look at https://www.lemmyapps.com/
Email has been working on a federation model for decades. People have to remember if they use Gmail or Outlook, but that’s it. It’s similar here.
Several communities have the same name, it’s confusing, active communities are hard to find
Reddit has a similar issue: you have /r/games as the main gaming community, but there is also /r/Gaming, /r/videogames /r/gamers, etc.
How does someone know what the main community is, whatever the platform? Looking at the number of subscribers and active members.
There was the example of beekeeping: if you search for that topic, the most active one is definitely https://mander.xyz/c/beekeeping with 97 users per month.
The others have barely 1 user: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=beekeeping
To find active communities: https://lemm.ee/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world. There are regular threads with active communities on topic such as gardening, movies, board games, anime, science, etc.
Who is going to pay for the server costs?
Here is a link to this question to Lemmy admins: https://lemm.ee/post/41577902
Summary of the answers:
- lowest number so far: lemmy.ml with 0.03€ per user per month
- a few others (feddit.uk, lemmy.zip) have around 0.11$ per user per month
- some instances are running on infrastructure that the admins would be anyway, so it’s virtually “free”
Most of the instances costs are paid using donations. They regularly post financial updates such as this one: https://lemm.ee/post/41235568
Obviously there is a sweet stop where you can minimize the cost by having the maximum number of users on a fixed infrastructure cost.
If you want to have a look at the number of monthly active user (the “MAU” column): https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/
Anyway, $ per user is usually meaningless because most of the servers are small enough to be hosted on some random cheap server - adding more users doesn’t cost more because they are still well below server capacity. Only the biggest servers have to worry about $ per user.
I had posted this earlier this week on this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fiuuo5/how_much_does_it_cost_per_user_to_host_a_lemmy/
There is too much political content
You can block entire servers and specific communities.
Instances to block to avoid political content
Communities to block
- https://lemmy.world/c/news
- https://lemmy.world/c/politics
- https://lemmy.world/c/world
- https://lemmy.ml/c/worldnews
- https://lemmy.ml/c/usa
With those blocked, you are avoiding 95% of the political content. There might be a few other communities that pop up, but blocking them is still one click away.
Lemmy is developped by hardcore tankies and I don’t want to use their software
As Lemmy is federated using an open protocol, there are other options to connect to the communities without using Lemmy itself.
The first one is Piefed: https://piefed.social/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world
The other one is Mbin: https://fedia.io/m/newcommunities@lemmy.world
However, those are stil a bit less mature than Lemmy, so for instance if you want to use mobile apps a lot, Lemmy is a better choice.
On top of that, every Lemmy server is managed by different people. You can see regular criticism of lemmy.ml (the instance managed by the Lemmy devs) on threads such as this: https://lemm.ee/post/33872586 or even dedicated communities like https://lemm.ee/c/meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
That shows that even the Lemmy devs are not protected from criticism.
There isn’t enough people
Lemmy has 46k monthly active users (https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats) (Mbin and Piefed have around 800 each). Active user is someone who voted, posted or commented.
In comparison, Discuit, which was praised during the API shutdown as “easier to use as it’s centralized” has 234 active users: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/KdiI1akq. Not 234k, 234 total.
For obvious reasons, the activity is not going to match Reddit levels, and niche communities aren’t there.
But it’s not an all or nothing situation. Most people on Lemmy still use Reddit for their niche communities, but are also active on Lemmy.
Also, having less people provides better interactions, as your comments are less likely to get buried in thousands of others. And bots on Lemmy are quickly spotted and banned, while Reddit doesn’t seem to do much about that: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1fmcelm/askreddit_is_simply_over_run_with_bots/
sweet stop
I think you mean sweet spot. Now I’m wondering if it’s a typo or an eggcorn.
You’re correct
Because everyone at this point uses Gmail, I prefer to use phone networks as my analogy go to, as usually most people know others with a different carrier
Outlook is still strong, especially for companies using Microsoft, but indeed phone carriers work too.
Lemmy is developped by hardcore tankies and I don’t want to use their software
I think the main point about this is that, so far, the development has been completely politically neutral and developers have in no way interfered with any instance having other political opinions.
So they have been more neutral than Reddit developers even if they are public about their tankies ideas on their personal publications.
Furthermore, it’s open source, so it could be forked any time if needed, unlike Reddit.I agree with you, that’s just a point I’ve seen raised quite a few times in the past, in a similar way to https://old.lemmy.sdf.org/post/17733
There was an infamous post by feditips against Lemmy, but it seems to have been removed
Why are you actively against lemmy.world?
On Reddit you list several alternative instances, and you somehow left us out.
LW is already the largest community by far, to a point where geographically distant communities cannot stay synchronized
That is a software problem, I thought you guys were all computer experts.
If world wasn’t so big, it would have probably not even been noticed, now it is hopefully getting fixed with the next update, if I understood that right.
Federation works waaay better than when the big reddit influx happened, that was kinda disappointing and I’m glad Lemmy will be prepared better for the next wave.
It’s also a governance problem as well.
If a billionaire buys LW tomorrow for a few millions because they host most of the Lemmy active communities and users, and prevent instance migration overnight, how many users are going to go through the hassle of creating new accounts from scratch, create new communities? That could kill the platform, with the LW starting to show ads and only being compatible with an enshitiffied app, so most users would probably go back to Reddit.
Also, there has been some concerning behaviour from LW mods, which know they can just go with it as people are already on their communities and are not going to move: https://lemmy.world/post/20947890?scrollToComments=true
If a billionaire buys LW tomorrow
lol that is a new one.
concerning behaviour from LW mods
Would you look at that, a mod of a big community for heated discussion said or did something that people took offence to. Surely must be the instance’s fault, would not happen anywhere else.
Fair. I don’t agree with most of your points, but you make a good argument.
I still think we over prioritize decentralization. Federation is important, but’s not a primary feature to be sold to users. It’s not because we need a thousand instances. It’s so that if Gmail gets too enshittified that we have another email option.
World is where the activity is, and you do a reasonable job of balancing that.
World is where the activity is, and you do a reasonable job of balancing that.
It depends.
!movies@lemm.ee is more active than !movies@lemmy.world in monthly active users.Same for !showsandmovies@lemm.ee and !television@lemmy.world, which also doesn’t have any moderator besides bot accounts.
How does someone know what the main community is, whatever the platform? Looking at the number of subscribers and active members.
I don’t disagree but this is also kind of sad. We’re just recreating the same issue on Reddit of “definitive” subreddits controlled by whichever moderators were there first, and once a mass of people settles there, it becomes virtually impossible for smaller alternatives to grow.
You’re also basically just telling people to go to whichever community happens to be on Lemmy.world. Which means centralization on one instance, which is the opposite of how this place was sold.
Edit: Ignore the double comment.
I’m not
!movies@lemm.ee is more active than !movies@lemmy.world in monthly active users.
Same for !showsandmovies@lemm.ee and !television@lemmy.world, which also doesn’t have any moderator besides bot accounts.
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com definitely outclasses any other piracy community
!greentext@sh.itjust.works is the most active for green text
!map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz is the best community for maps
About mods power tripping, you can have a look at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com . I reported there an example which shows that you can create a better community over a power tripping mod.
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I would say no to me it’s more like IRC. Its small enough to be not noticed by influence operations as much and each instance has its own personality just like IRC networks. It’s a great mix of local community and access to a wider view points.
“Am I ugly?” (Link to butthole pics on Onlyfans)
“Too the moon with this new crypto scam!!!”
It’s feels to me like how the ancient redditors said reddit worked.
Some servers come closer to reddit like world which copied all the popular subs.
Others are definitely smaller communities, maybe a post or two a day and plenty of discussion.
I feel great about it all so far.
Yes, it has the vibes of pre-Digg 2.0-exodus reddit, which is why I haven’t gone back (well, except for porn lol)
Definitely feels more like reddit used to feel - though with caveats.
Indeed. With no central control, it seems easier for a single individual/org to dominate any given discussion, but otherwise it seems close to what reddit originally claimed to be.
I’ve used them both the exact same way, which kept me away from a lot of the junk on Reddit until they killed my access via Apollo. Then I just switched over and subbed pretty much the same topics.
As a ‘front page of the internet’ it has been a pretty great replacement for me as it’s where I go each day to just see what’s going on. However, due to the smaller size you do lose a lot of the activity in more niche communities and the sheer volume of posts/comments compared to Reddit. That’s the biggest downside. Still, you also lose the incessant ads/bad UI/UX decisions and ever accelerating late stage capitalism driven enshittification so that’s a big plus.
There’s also a wide and endlessly customizable variety of web/mobile clients, something reddit will apparently never have again.
e: Federation is pretty cool, too.
However, due to the smaller size you do lose a lot of the activity in more niche communities and the sheer volume of posts/comments compared to Reddit.
That also leads to a lack of diversity of opinions.
Same as reddit when it was new.
I’d actually say Lemmy feels larger over the same timeframe, but that’s just sticking my thumb up in the air sort of measurement.
The problem with growth is that too much, and it ends up trolls and bots making up the majority, and too little growth means it withers on the vines.
With federation (and the ability to defederate), I think the ideal ground can be found. We’ll see though!
Part of the difference I see on Lemmy is that there can be multiples of the same topic area being discussed on different instances with no connection between them and no straightforward method of determining which instance will have the more active discussion.
Usually the number of monthly active users for the comment is a good indication
Active subscriber count should be the more active one, but I agree.
Ideally we’d have native multi a communities right now, so I could see all of my subscribed Linux communities in my Linux multi, all of my subscribed ttrpg in the ttrpg multi, etc.
Definitely an improvement that could be in place. I think letting the user combine the groups to see would be best, because then you can group how you’d like. Having multiple communities with similar topics is no different than reddit, but reddit has multis.
i think there’s plenty diversity outside of .world
That’s part of the issue. There’s a hundred instances that each have their own version of most of the subs, and none of them can see each other without users having to find and follow each of them, or at least look at them to find the most active 2 or 3.
Yeah, I love it and actually prefer it to my old reddit experience for general browsing.
What isn’t quite there yet is the ability to like, sit down all day and scroll and post in a community dedicated to my current hyperfixation of the week. Be it guitar maintenance, some indie game, or whatever.
But reddit also didn’t have that when I started using it. Excited to hang here and watch the garden grow
I’m sure this gets repeated on Lemmy all the time, but I feel like the quality of Reddit posts, even in niche communities about guitar maintenance or whatever, has really gone downhill in the past 10 years or so.
This might come off as mean, but I’ve noticed a significant dumbing-down in terms of what people contribute to Reddit communities but also what people expect to be spoon-fed by those communities. And it’s all presented as this sort of democratization of hobbyist knowledge, where it’s every hobbyist’s duty to educate newcomers on all of the absolute basics and persuade them of why they should care about any of it.
Maybe this is just a side effect of Reddit recommending subreddits to non-subscribers and pushing to become a Facebook-type service for “regular” people - after all, that’s how they make the line go up.
I still prefer old-school forums, which tend to be more insular, less accessible, and expect you to arrive with a modicum of understanding or at least RTFM first. To be blunt, I miss the days when the internet was primarily for geeks.
“can’t scroll all day”
I keep saying that’s a positive thing for other productivity, but sadly, that’s not happening for me. Turns out, I want to sit and bum just as much as I always did before. I’m more likely to actually read articles, but I know meta gets more screen time now. As you said, lemmy doesn’t have those full niche communities. I know, sacrilege to admit around here.
I know, sacrilege to admit around here.
It’s not, but we also try to promote active communities to a wider audience on !newcommunities@lemmy.world
Is there also something like m.lemmy.world/posts/lemmy.world/c/upcomingcommunities ?
But reddit also didn’t have that when I started using it.
reddit also didn’t have to compete with reddit.
Wasn’t reddit competing with Digg, or whatever else was popular at the time?
I came to reddit from fark, before the digg migration or exodus or whatnot. There was also stumbleupon, and the others are all lost to me.
No but it was competing with Digg and Slashdot until Digg screwed the pooch. It’s been a while, but reddit really owes its size and popularity to Digg 2.0 and the fiasco of bad decisions driven by investors.
I’m talking mostly about the vibrant niche communities the comment above mentioned. That all happened well after the Digg and slashdot stuff. Niche communities grew on reddit relatively unchallenged.
Sure, reddit could have a similar meltdown to Digg, but I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion. Social media has inertia. The bigger a platform is is the harder it is to lose people, because the mass is the feature.
Some of us old folks remember when it had to compete with Digg.
A far more popular competitor that made some unpopular decisions and lost their user base to reddit.
This biggest thing that helped me was putting the app icon in the same spot on my phone as my old reddit app
Sure it’s the same thing without all the corporate interference. Reddit was small once.
Been on Lemmy a few months now and it feels like moving from shitty Digg to fresh Reddit. I had canceled my account on Reddit even before the last enshitification, and kept just reading. Lemmy feels good enough to participate in posting and commenting. Small is good.
It reminds me a lot of Reddit in the first few years.
I initially joined Reddit because Aaron Swartz’s involvement convinced me it wasn’t going to go the route of other corporate social platforms, but I think Swartz would have been far more at home on Lemmy.
In terms of design, I find Lemmy to be basically a 1:1 replacement for Reddit. It’s a link aggregator with communities, comments, and voting.
I like it a lot, even though the communities are smaller and there’s less content. It’s just a nicer communal experience for me compared to Reddit. I feel more pressure to actually comment since the communities are smaller and every little bit helps, lol.
If you’re looking for hundreds of microcommunities, lots of activity by the hour from anyone or anything .etc then Lemmy is not going to do it for you. We’re a year in and Lemmy’s userbase is basically a piss of a squirt to Reddit’s volume. And that could get at you if you’re someone that just needs something to read or want some interactivity whereas Lemmy is just more of a stop and then go kind of approach.
I’m here because I like the idea of defederated social media, but I hope there will be further attempts at making even better alternatives.
Depends on what you are looking for. I think Lemmy works great and I only really go to reddit when a google search leads me there for something. Though I do miss the niche communities and the “there is a subreddit for everything”.
Lemmy is also healthier, I used to just scroll through reddit for literal hours, it’s possible to reach an end of sort for the time.
Not yet but its getting there.
It’s working for me, but might not be for everyone.
I like that when I scroll through the comments, I recognize names. Commenting feels less like shouting into a random crowd, and more like having a conversation at a party where strangers may pop in and out.
There’s definitely less content. If you’re looking for something to doom scroll, you’re going to burn through everything quickly, but for me, I open it up when I’m bored, see what’s new, and in 5-10 minutes, I’m all caught up and back to the real world.
Not everybody is looking to ween themselves back from constant social media, but it’s turned into a benefit for me.
