I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
Yes Lemmy is smaller and doesn’t have instantly fully formed communities. Reddit has been around for almost 2 decades. Lemmy is newer, smaller, and actively fights the sorts of shenanigans that Reddit initially used to get big.
If you want more niche activity, make posts and interact with posts. Lemmy is user driven- that means you. It isn’t a giant megasite where you can just expect to be a passive receiver of endless content.
I once read somewhere that mentioned how Lemmy is actually bigger than reddit was at the same age. I don’t know if that is true or not but that’s pretty cool if it is and I think it means Lemmy is on a good track.
The difference was that Digg used to be the site. Then Digg ticked off all their users and 90% of them migrated to reddit, which was already available.
Reddit had its dumpster fire moment over the last couple years, but there was no available place for everyone to quickly migrate over to other than Lemmy, and it didn’t really happen. Lemmy is a bit harder to get used to and figure out, so we missed out on a huge migration.
So its doubtful that lemmy will ever expand out like reddit did. Not for a long time, anyhow. It will be great if we make it to a couple million active users. At that point, I’d be totally content. Things get too sloppy once you go over 10 million users, it seems.
I was their in reddit beginning. There were no initial shenanigans. It was a good place and existed at just the right time, when people wanted to leave Digg because it was turning into a dumpster fire, similar to what reddit has done.
When reddit started turning to shit there just wasn’t anything for the masses to migrate to that was available other than here. Problem is that here isn’t as simple to get into. In lemmy, the learning curve is slightly higher than “bare minimum”.
Sort of, but it didn’t really work. Reddit existed in 2005, but wasn’t popular. It only became popular in 2010 after all of Digg went to it, because it was pretty much a Digg clone, but with owners who weren’t Digg.
I’ve presented you with the proof that early Reddit was populated with large numbers of sockpuppet accounts by the owners, creating whole cloth communities to draw in users, which is not something that is happening on Lemmy.
The entire reason the Digg mass exodus was viable was people leaving Digg found these “preexisting” Reddit communities and felt more comfortable joining in.
Lemmy doesn’t have that socketpuppet population to springboard with, so growth is slower and unpopulated communities are not falsely full of fake users.
I hung out on reddit long enough over the previous couple of years when people were up in arms to leave. It wasn’t the lack of subs or community size that kept people away. It was simply that it was harder to figure out how to get up and going. You can’t just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff. Further still is that now people want an apk for phone browsing and particularly when the masses wanted to leave reddit, there was also no “use this apk and its easy”. Plus, creating an instance is much more work than creating a subreddit.
It was never about the size of the website already appearing to be in place. Lemmy just has a harder entry fee. It keeps lemmy at a lower user base in the same way every subscription service in existence knows it wants to make things super easy to sign up, but time intens8ve and difficult to cancel. Because it takes a bit of effort, lots of people don’t get around to doing it.
You can’t just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff.
Go to https://lemm.ee/
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
Go to https://lemm.ee/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world to see communities (equivalent of subs) that might be interesting to you.
Use Voyager as a mobile app: https://www.lemmyapps.com/Voyager. When they ask for your “instance”, use “lemm.ee”
If you want more choices for apps, have a look at https://www.lemmyapps.com/
I think the Lemmy devs political stance and instances such as hexbear are more detrimental to the success of the platform than the entry bar.
Edit: Discuit is a centralized site, and now has 209 weekly active users: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/OiU8YjZ_
This is great for people looking now, but the info, the apks, and the knowledge to get there was less known or not very good a year or so ago.
Also, I’m personally a big fan of “thunder” for my phones lemmy apk. It’s awesome.
On Lemmy you feel like your voice is heard more because it’s smaller, IMO.
I hear you dude! 😜
you gotta realize reddit didn’t just “appear” one day with those obscure niche topics built out. There is a network effect large communities have. We need hundreds of thousands more members before that is possible.
I think you probably weren’t there for early reddit, but most of the active posters here on Lemmy were. It was tiny. Like Lemmy.
You can’t force those niche communities to exist here. It doesn’t work. But what you can do is post and create valuable content. and eventually we may get there.
It’s so weird to me that people are so spoiled today that they feel inconvenienced when there isn’t limitless content in their niche fields of interest being served to them on a platter every single day.
Those of us who remember the before times can tell you that the absolute best of a platform comes before that point. I’m sure it’s lovely getting your full every single second, but the best conversation, the best education, the best introspection comes when you’re allowed a few minutes between stimuli to think.
I feel like “Old woman yells at cloud” but I really feel like our younger folks who crave endless, mindless interaction, don’t know what they miss out on.
I can’t blame them, because they’ve been conditioned to be consumers of content. While they idealize creators, they also put up barriers in their minds as the the level of quality a given comment, piece of content, whatever, needs to achieve before getting involved.
I try and think of Lemmy as the equivalent of the Linux. We’re just going to have lower adoption because there isn’t a corporate juggernaut behind us promoting this thing.
But if people really want to know why reddit was able to become reddit, it happened here yesterday with cats. It’s bean memes. Its Stör. Its us developing culture of our own as a community.
So its fine. I’m not too worried. We’re doing great.
I didn’t get a wall of voids and honestly, I feel a little left out lol.
Maybe that’s part of it, but it’s not just that.
For example, I preordered a Nanoleaf Sense+ switch, which just shipped for everyone on the preorder. I’m excited to hear other people’s experiences with the product as it uses direct communication with lights via the Thread network.
If I go to Reddit’s r/nanoleaf, there are enough members that I see people posting about Sense+ within a few days of the product shipping.
And it’s not just consuming. I want to help people set up the switch too. For example, Nanoleaf has a very confusing menu in the app that took me a while to figure out. I saw someone else with the exact same issue and left a helpful comment.
Seems to be a good topic for a thread on !homeimprovement@lemmy.world ?
This is usually how it goes. The larger communities keep growing until they can branch off into the more niche ones.
Doesn’t seem that obvious, some people in the comments here point out that they prefer to have a dedicated community for their niche topic rather than posting on a generic community
And a lot of those people arrived when those communities were already built up on reddit.
This seems to be a type of post that keeps popping up more and more. Some people are venting and mourning their loss of reddit, which I get… but others have a sense of entitlement, of wanting to have things without needing to work for it. They want someone else to put in the blood, sweat and tears and be the ones to reap the benefits.
Imagine pilgrims coming to early North America and no one wanting to participate once they arrived, because no pre-built cities exited? We wouldn’t have a country in the US (though I’m sure that must have been the attitude of some)
Pardon me for wanting to have a place where I can discuss my hobbies, I guess.
You can still do that.
Start the conversation. That’s what we all did, and where these communities got their start.
I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried. Posting a bunch of threads out into the void doesn’t suddenly manifest a like-minded community to reply to and engage with those threads. It won’t truly be viable until there’s a much larger userbase to begin with.
And honestly, it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.
it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.
It is absolutely patronizing for people to say that. And you are right to feel that way.
Maybe think about it like this. I collect and propagate one species of orchid as a hobby. Its an obscure species among orchids, which are relatively obscure plants among plant collectors, and plant collecting is a relatively obscure thing among people growing with and interacting with plants, which is a relatively obscure thing in the grand scheme of all things.
So lets assume a 5% conversion rate at every step: There are maybe 40k active users on lemmy?
So of 40k users about 2k are into plants.
Of the 2k users into plants in some manner, about 100 are into plant collecting.
Of the 100 users into plant collecting, maybe 5 are into collecting orchids.
And of the five users collecting orchids, I’m the quarter of one user who collects Vanilla planifolia and Vanilla planifolia var. tahitensis.
So if I acknowledge this, I’ve got a couple options. First, I could just start a vanilla community. But I really shouldn’t expect other people to participate, because I recognize that I’m probably the only vanilla grower on all of lemmy. If I do that, I should probably think about it as a place more like a personal blog or place for me to record my story. And maybe over time, it can grow in popularity and get a following.
Alternatively, I can share my exploits on larger subs, like c/plants, where I’ll probably do well because there are more users, and the content I’m sharing is interesting and unique because so few people are into/ do what I do.
So if you can adjust your exceptions, there absolutely is a place for you here. But we’re the flea market to Reddit’s mall of America approach. But remember, Reddit too started as a flea market. It was a place for internet weirdos with weird hobbies and senses of humor. But appreciate you’ll be a lone diamond here, but that gives you a chance to stand out.
because I didn’t try hard enough.
That would be pretty patronizing if I said that, I agree.
What I did say was, you need to start the conversation.
However, now that I’ve looked at your account… unless you have a secondary account to the one I’m replying to now, the whole 21 posts you’ve made over multiple communities, and that being your whole history for a year’s worth of account… maybe I am saying “try harder.” If you want to feel like that’s patronizing, that’s fine.
All the bigger communities on lemmy (like tenforward) happened because first one person posted a lot, every day. And then they were joined by others. And then the community they were in had drama so they moved to tenforward, but my point is, if you want people to talk to you about something, a single post once in a while doesn’t do it. You gotta pump out content, post memes, attract people who want to be part of the conversation. Reply to like, everyone. Be friendly. Be engaging.
Okay, now you literally are saying I didn’t try hard enough.
This is not my first account (it’s also not anywhere close to a year old, not sure where you got that idea). I’d tried to start a few communities over on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.
I don’t have the energy to spend several hours a day flooding threads nobody will engage with, just in the hopes that if I keep it up forever eventually one of them might get a reply or two. It’s not that easy, and it’s patronizing to act like that’s such a simple solution I should’ve thought of.
This is what I was getting at: communities don’t come from nothing. You’re welcome to stay where they’re pre-built for you but posting endless content is how communities get started.
When I was younger, I was someone who ran a few of those communities myself. If it’s patronizing to say you didn’t try hard enough (while you’re also declaring you, yourself, don’t have the energy to do it) then it should be less patronizing, but still fair, to say… if you don’t want to do it, don’t complain that someone else isn’t doing it for you.
If you don’t want to be on Lemmy, then don’t. Come check back in periodically to see if someone else had the energy to do what you didn’t. It’s fair to say you don’t want to do the work. Whining someone else isn’t doing it doesn’t get it done faster.
And how do you think that larger userbase is going to come into existence?
Not overnight, that’s for sure. It’s going to take a long time to ever get that kind of critical mass.
What I’m trying to get at is that people need to stay for a critical mass to be reached instead of going “there’s nobody here” and leaving.
Which particular niche topic(s) is it?
Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong. !fgc@lemmy.world and !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social exist, but are pretty barren. I’d also previously tried to start communities for them on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.
Also arcade-style versus puzzle games, but those are so dead these days that even on Reddit they didn’t have an active sub.
I hope you get more engagement in the community. But you should probably engage more with others posts as well.
are pretty barren.
Have you tried promoting the fighting games community on !newcommunities@lemmy.world and generic games communities? That could help you find at least a few other people who would like to discuss that topic in the fgc community
Also, !fedigrow@lemm.ee is a community dedicated to community growing, we have regular threads to discuss “shouting into the void”
A lot of people want that, it’s not that easy to find and it never was.
We just got spoiled by the good days of the internet.
Yeah, the reason I like Lemmy is because it reminds me of old reddit. Like old old reddit, before the Digg migration.
Feel free to block communities with political content.
You can also use an app or alternative frontend to filter keywords. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has a post about that.
For communities, !newcommunities@lemmy.world can help
For home kit, the Apple communities are probably more active, and you should be able to post about it there too
To add to this using these two features has really helped remove a lot of the threads that were taking a toll on my mental health from my feed.
definitely agree. this has helped save my sanity in recent times.
How do I do this? Because honestly, yeah, I’ve come to a point where I’m realizing that, while it’s my responsibility to do what I can in the world, it is not my responsibility to just bear witness to suffering when I can do nothing to prevent it. All it’s doing it hurting me for no gains to anyone.
One of the front ends that have keyword filtering is voyager.
And if the user uses Mbin instances, he/she can even block posts that link to other domains, as often political posts link to news sites.
A lot of focus is put onto posting, but I like to encourage commenters. I’ll post and respond all day, but if nobody is interacting, it’s going to stay quiet. Put the quiet to your advantage by doing things like:
If you like an image, say what you like about it. Lately, I’ve been having people talk about how they really have been enjoying dawn/dusk pictures, so I’ve been collecting more of that so I can post what people are in the mood for. It gives me good feedback, it gives people a chance to agree or disagree with you, and you got to participate.
Do you ask anyone any question? Take advantage of the relative quiet. With not having a million comments on every post, I have plenty of time to give you really detailed answers. I got asked how to differentiate between 2 animals yesterday, and I had time to make a nice visual guide, highlighting key differences and giving multiple visual examples of potential variations while still simplifying the process of identification. If there’s a million people talking like on Reddit, it’s hard to give people that much attention, but here it’s easy. I pretty much take time to respond to every comment.
Don’t be afraid to go off topic. Rules seem to be looser in many communities because of the low post count. This week, I posted something from a country with a different language, and I ended up having 3 days of conversation with a native speaker who filled me in on tons of subtleties of the language pertaining to our niche topic. I got to learn so much, and they got to learn a few things about English.
I feel you have to do something to have a good time here, but it needn’t be to post multiple things every day, but it’s more than just up or downvoting something like you can get away with on Reddit. We’re too small for you to have a free ride. But make someone laugh. Let them know that you liked their post with a short comment. If you don’t like it, say hey, do you have any content on such and such instead. Make a post saying, hey, what’s your thoughts on this? It doesn’t need to be something groundbreaking or insightful, you just need to give a sign of life so we know you’re here, and one of us will probably talk back to you.
Interact enough like that, and you may find what you enjoy doing, if that turns out to be posting, or you become the resident expert on a topic even if you’re not an expert, being a serial commenter, or whatever it may be. It’s a great opportunity if you make it one because it is so easy to get attention here if you try.
I’m not typically a social person, but being here has let me talk about what I want, when I want, and somebody will listen to it, and I can ask about things I want to know and get answers. There’s much less shouting into the void like at Reddit. Play Lemmy to its strengths and you will find enjoyment. And if you don’t like it, go to where you’re happy. Nobody’s going to hate you if you split time between here and Reddit.
I agree with you. It’s disheartening when you see something you want to talk about and the comments are empty.
Or when you comment and no one else ever chimes in.
Yup, my questions in the Maori article have been up for 24 hours now, so time for people in that part of the world with direct knowledge had time to see it. My comments and questions got 7 upvotes, so other people seem interested in some more elaboration, but the thread is probably dead.
Someone’s leaving an audience that wants more hanging, and nobody even gave a yes or no saying if my understanding of the article was right. 😮💨
Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.
the cats
The voids whence the content shall come!
One suggestion I saw a while ago was to use more general communities for things you’re interested in and as it grows then the more niche communities can be made. Ex: post about a specific game you like in gaming up until enough people like it to make a sub for that game. Or post about a song you don’t know in asklemmy until enough people do that to make whatsthissong
I totally get wanting the niche communities and, personally, I just lurk reddit completely not voting, posting, or commenting unless as a last resort if I really need to find info that Lemmy isn’t able to provide.
It’s a slow process and I don’t think there’ll be another boost of users in Lemmy until reddit does another thing that enshittifies it to annoy people to leave.
Our community !homebrewing@sopuli.xyz has for now everything beer, wine, cider… it didn’t reach the point of creating another specific, niche community. So I totally get the niche interests aren’t represented here yet and the number of homebrewers is big.
Still we get good engagement for lemmy and there are active people from industry, so I wouldn’t call it exactly small.
And some times, having the initiative to create such more specific communities could be a change factor for the growth of a social media. Also, with federation, not just the person can choose where to create the community on while not making it a walled garden as other sites would still have access to it, but also if a community for the given subject already exists but the user thinks he can do better, he/she can more easily do it with how expansive the “fediverse” is.
Yeah there are times where I’d want to make a community but the necessity of moderation makes it a big hurdle to even want to begin that process.
All I’m getting lately in my feed are cats!
Not a bug! That’s a feature.
Would you rather have cats or beans?
Cats have beans, duh.
Beans have cats, duh.
Honestly, that was what early reddit was like too. Lots and lots of cat pics.
reddit was once smaller than it is now too
The Fediverse is virgin territory. The trails aren’t blazed for you here; it’s your job as an early adopter to make it the way you want it to be. You want a community? Start it and participate in it.
Joining an existing community is usually easier than starting a new one.
!newcommunities@lemmy.world can be a place to find an existing community?
Joining an existing community is usually easier than starting a new one.
There’s also the problem of management. Lots of Lemmy comms are abandoned and, while there are some I would like to exist, I just do not visit regularly enough to be responsible for moderating more and more and more communities across the fedi. So I don’t create new comms.
Definitely
Enjoy being the only one posting.
Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable; the fewer users it has, the less useful it is. Reddit has more users than Lemmy. It’s that simple. People won’t start switching until everybody else switches.
Bluesky is only barely starting to compete with Twitter, and that’s after Twitter drastically worsened. Lemmy is a long, long way from competing with Reddit.
To me, it’s a matter of time. The structural advantages of the fediverse mean that it’s more stable on the long run; what i mean by that is, for-profit Reddit will get worse while Lemmy remains good, leading users to migrate here, so Lemmy will eventually outlive Reddit. And then along the way there will be a few big moments where Reddit really fucks up and a wave of people washes up on Lemmy. This is already happening, i’m pretty sure all of us here made our accounts after the Reddit API changes.
Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable;
Forums used to be lively and self-sustaining with memberships in the low hundreds. You only need “mass adoption” if you want and unending stream of novelty bullshit that you don’t actially want to engage with to entertain yourself with while on the toilet.
Enjoy being the only one posting.
Pack it in now then. This platform isn’t going to see huge influxes. Normies are too stupid to pick a server. I don’t really mind it being somewhat of a niche space, maybe the advertisers will continue to mostly ignore us.
Yeah and Lemmy and Mastodon at the moment but more so Lemmy seem to be working against that goal by opting for onboarding methods that are unintuitive and frustrating to normies. Opting to make people apply like this is a fucking club, and deny people if they are too boring.
Great job guys, you’re really gonna get lots of engagement that way. You don’t want engagement? What are you even doing wasting money on an almost empty site barely anyone is joining?
You seem overtly negative over the whole platform.
People are trying to keep communities active, as shown on !fedigrow@lemm.ee and !newcommunities@lemmy.world
I mean those efforts are great but if the flow of people onto the platform is bottlenecked it doesn’t do as much good as it could. And since a majority of all Lemmy servers are pushing for applications effectively turning all the current instances into clubs that will ultimately effect how many people will be here to have an interest in communities in the first place.
Applications are mostly there to prevent spam. Not ideal, but admins seem to find this the best system
Because they are lazy and overconfident in their ability to determine truth from lies, AI from real human. They could set up a script or automod to stop spam, but they don’t. They make excuses like this one.
It’s worse than not ideal, it hurts the ability to use Lemmy as a social media, as an alternative for Reddit. Turning it into a private club hurts this place because without people, especially the normies who make jokes and upvote posts this place is dead.
I just realized, it’s no wonder much of Lemmy’s current base is in their 30s (and older.) The social aspects of the internet we grew up with was more forum-based. The slower pace we currently have here isn’t a deal breaker, because we knew a time where this was normal. We participated in and built communities because if we didn’t, they wouldn’t exist. There was no pre-made social media behemoth for us to get lost in.
But people who’ve grown up with modern social media didn’t have that experience. They’re accustomed to riding fast-paced rapids, where things quickly change, and where algorithms control their feed and direct the whole experience. That’s their normal. By contrast, Millenials and older came online to gentle, quiet streams. We had to learn to row the oars manually (creating novel communities and content.) That gave us greater control over where we’d go and what we’d see.
Lemmy is a gentle stream right now. People who come here expecting white water rafting are going to feel like something’s missing. People who grew up with pre-made online communities probably never took the steps to build one up before.
I’d love to see younger people taking up the mantle of building a new corner of the internet. Especially in an era where personal control is increasingly limited by powerful monied interests, learning how to create and run communities can be very empowering.
I hate reddit as a platform but I still have to use it every once in a while because people won’t move to Lemmy/mbin/piefed.
I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.
It’s aggravating how dumb people can be but hey, that’s the world we’re living in. I’ll continue to use Lemmy and visit reddit if I have to.
I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.
Network effect in full blast
Yeah. It’s the same with Mastodon. “There are a bunch of toxic people making me feel unwelcome” can be met with “so I left” or “so we flooded the place and took over, because there were only lile 800 people there”
Politics is the one thing we all have in common.
The good old days where everyone watched the same five TV shows and discussed them are over.
US Politics is the one thing
weyou all have in common.Do you come from a country with no politics?
No, but how interested are you in HK politics?
Actually, yes. I’m curious how it compares to western politics
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
People often just assume things with American mindset. Especially for hard topic like religious harmony, ethnic discrimination, immigration, etc.
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
Ironic as no large instance is managed by US citizens
Yes Americans participate, but the person who posted 'politics," is something we all have in common I believe was saying it as in all humans need air, prefer to not drown, appreciate love and have politics in there life. Whether they choose to ignore the politics or not.
Honestly, enough where I would read an article if it was posted but not interested enough to seek out articles that don’t appear on Reuters or the AP’s front page. It is depressing to watch my country fall to authoritarianism and it would be interesting to see how a formally democratic society is dealing with authoritarianism being imposed on it. An article on a new cat cafe or a dog parade would also be nice.
We Aussies doesn’t care less about who is out prime minister. As long as they can make more houses for us to live in without becoming bankrupt honestly
So politics. Like when I see people arguing about whether to keep the king around
firefly was mid, there I said it.
Straight to jail. Right away.
Everything Whedon has ever done was mid, and I’m going to be banned for saying that, probably.
Yeah, I think it makes waaay more sense to complain about US politics infecting all of social media.
I know I can post and be the change I seek.
Imo, this is your answer. I’m not sure exactly what other solution you want. Content will not appear on Lemmy without someone first posting it. Advertising the platform to help draw people in is also important.
I like it as a platform but the userbase just isn’t there.
They said, in a thread that has literally tens of thousands of words in replies.
Compared to Reddit the userbase here is miniscule.
Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It’s a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.
Removed by mod
Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.
