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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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
The thing that’s confusing me most is links, whether to communities or individual posts.
I see links in a format like this:
!communityname@instance.whatever
Sometimes the exclamation mark is part of the link and it works, and sometimes it’s there but not part of the link, and my phone thinks the rest is an email address.
Is there a guide anywhere to how to do links properly? TIA.
EDIT - yeah, so in my example above, the exclamation mark is not being treated as part of the link for some reason?
This is definitely the biggest barrier of entry. I love the idea, the execution not so much.
I think it’s a little confusing for everyone right now. I’ll try to explain the easy bits at least.
You can do relative links for communities like this: [text](/c/community@instance)
But these will only work if your instance has already discovered the communities. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion behind all of this first becomes an issue. Some links only work if your instance already “knows” it exists.
To get your or any instance to learn about a specific community, you first have to search for it. The most reliable way to do it is to just put the full url of the community into the search box.
And then wait. It sometimes takes a moment to actually find the community. Once it’s found the rest should work.
For comments, posts, and threads it’s different. Since those will have different unique identifiers on a per instance basis, my understanding is that it’s much more complicated for relative links to work. I haven’t seen a simple solution yet, unfortunately.
Thanks, this is really useful, and greatly appreciated.
Feels like if someone can come up with a working solution for all this it could really help tip the balance towards mass acceptance.
I know nothing about programming, and I do realise Lemmy is all about being federated, but it feels like it needs some central system - not for ownership or anything, but simply to do the job of linking instances more easily. Perhaps even multiple ‘central’ systems, all doing the same job as each other, all consistent with each other, but not controlled by any one group/person, so as to avoid disputes and the risk of any single actor dominating the whole.
I dunno, I’m just kind of spitballing here. It’ll need someone smarter than me to untangle it!
Somehow, it never came to mind to use relative links for communities…
A reasonable solution for those could be to auto-detect community links in their various forms (/c/community, !community@instance.example, https://instance.example/c/community) and auto convert those into a local link for the user’s current instance.
I’d contribute to the codebase if I had time, since community links has been the biggest issue for me so far, having to copy, paste, search etc. for each new community on other instances that I’m interested in, depending on how they’ve been shared
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
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!
It really feels like how Reddit started, before all the rage-bait and eye-catching bullshit. I miss the floofs, the memes, the fun reasons I joined. Now 90% is politics that keep popping up even though I don’t subscribe to any political subs and keep blocking
Seriously, I’m not from the USA and I’m not supposed to know the names of American senators, MP’s, governors or lawyers, or of who shot who, or who had a panic attack in an airplane, or why people are shouting at each others at a mcdonalds drive-in. Does any american ex-redditor know the name of a single european politician besides Merkel?
The news cycle proposed by reddit is filled with american politics ad nauseam and by ragebait. The european subs of reddit are filled with russian shills. When you add up all of this there is no point into opening reddit for the news.
Lol way to put it in perspective, I know maybe 2 politicians in all of Europe. Idk when, Reddit used to be global but it’s gotten incredibly America-focused, and maybe that’s just with the size but holy crap is it annoying now - and I’m American. I get bombarded with politics daily, can’t I just have a place that’s just memes?
Quite enjoyable and, since seeing the sub.rehab site someone else posted, even better. I’ve found quite a few subs that have made their way over to Lemmy.
My only gripe is that quite a few have made their way to lemmy.world, and it’s buckling under pressure. I can’t sign up on that instance, nor can I remotely sub to communities from my own instance. Once that’s resolved, I think I’ll definitely be happy to call Lemmy my new home.
Can’t go back anyway - deleted my Reddit account.
Yes, sub.rehab really helped. And the lemmy link extension for chrome.
Greatly improved after I found out about https://mlmym.org/ (old Reddit UI for Lemmy)
yep i can hardly tell the difference on this interface.
I really don’t like the cringe tankie culture here, hope that gets diluted as more people come in
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
https://browse.feddit.de/ cam help to find communities
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.
I just got approved here, but have been on Mastodon for a couple of months. Mastodon signup was a lot glitzier, and yet I still couldn’t convert my friend, who was like “I don’t understand, what do you mean it’s like email? >_<”. I don’t have high hope for Lemmy atm…
I think Reddit will backpedal and renegotiate with users/devs down the line, once the initial backlash has died down, and they have lowered everyone’s threshold of what they would consider a “victory”. Things like Lemmy will act as a sword of Damocles/safe harbour for the next time they screw up, sure, and that’s a good thing. But I doubt Lemmy will explode in popularity, even if some 3rd party Reddit clients are discussing adding Lemmy support to sort of rugpull Reddit, and that’s for 3 reasons(imo):
- The hosting costs will be exorbitant for all those new users, considering
- Lemmy will be stuck in the exact same boat as Reddit re:all those unpaying users, except now there’s no ads either. Donations are the honourable business model, but a couple thousand well-meaning people with disposable income can’t properly finance a popular platform.
- Even if the Lemmy community solves the above 2 problems, you still have the deciding moment of the “let’s jump ship today” user tidal wave, which will make or break such a migration happening. Closest thing I can think of is the WhatsApp Privacy Policy shenanigans in '21. Melon Husk said “Use Signal” - a fine suggestion, tbh - but Signal wasn’t ready for this, and so their servers crashed and burned during the tidal wave, while for-profit Telegram just paid for more servers and thus converted the refugees into users.
I am so happy this exists. I wish it continued growth and success. It feels like the good old early internet and that’s a very good thing.
First day of browsing Lemmy. So far so good. It took me a while to grasp the concept of an instance, but it seems to make sense to me now. I’m just hoping more communities start filling up and that the iOS app can get more development. Mlem is functional but veeery barebones right now. The browser works fine though!
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.
I think that’s inevitable of all such social media type sites eventually though - as they grow, the ‘popularity contest’ feel grows with them, initially as a way to be heard in the every-growing crowd, and later as an end in itself.
It’ll probably happen to Lemmy too at some point - but if it does at least it will mean that Lemmy has managed to survive and grow. And people here in the early days will have the pleasure of being able to say “Lemmy wasn’t like this at the start, I’m leaving for Flangscrawchler” (or whatever)
Bonus for Lemmy being federated, though - if lemmy.world or lemmy.ml no longer gives users want they’re looking for, you can start your own flangscrawchl.er and choose whether or not you want to federate with them.
Corporations will have their own draw; shittification is a thing they do after they have majority market share and their users are entrenched. A new social network service could rise (even one made by Google for Facebook) that is easy to use, has QoL features that network it with its corporate siblings, etc. It sees increased traffic, it gets big… then it shittifies again.
As long as users are following corporate interests, this cycle continues. It’s a slow-burn likeness of competing ISP sign-up contracts throwing in Xboxes. (Though I hear the US has service deserts, so that mightn’t happen there.)
Lemmy probably won’t shittify to the same degree; while larger servers like Lemmy.ml can house a huge percentage of Lemmy users, it can’t ‘go rogue’ in a way that means anything to Lemmy as a whole.
It also can’t offer the same QoL features a corporatized service can, because those can afford to operate at a loss while building market share. A subsidiary can be used as a ‘loss leader’, ie: it doesn’t matter if it costs more to run than it earns directly, because it gets users into the door for things that do profit.
What you describe can, and mostly likely will happen. But Lemmy’s nature makes it more responsive to user interests.
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.
While not every community is on Lemmy yet that I visit on Reddit, by people migrating from Reddit to here, hopefully that issue will be solved soon. The community here seems way more welcoming than the Reddit community is too
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LMAOOOO
Much nicer than StackExchange too:
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dude helll yes i also just remembered theres that stupid barried of entry on many subs which ask u to meet really weird requirements to participate… the other day i prompted gpt to say smt funny and wholesome (it was praise towards the aur(arch user repository)) and tried to post it on some linux/arch sub but the first 3 that came to mind wouldnt allow it, one didnt accept memes, the other had a bot which took it down automatically and the third asked me to comment and participate in the sub before posting… like come on man.
The barrier for entry for some subreddits is too high but to be fair, ChatGPT “funny responses” are low-quality content and should be removed.
It’s a learning process. There is definetly a mild learning curve as to how things work here compared to traditional social media platforms. But maybe that’s even a good thing as to pre-filter certain audiences.
So far the interaction possibilities seem very satisfying, community seems friendlier than current reddit (maybe that’s just the size of the userbase) and there is already enough, I’d call it “base content” as to be a reasonable alternative to reddit. - Which is why I created an account here.
I especially like the threaded, color coded conversation view. Makes it really discernable who responded to whom. I also like the UI very much. Clear and easy to navigate. Only critique here: There is kind of a lot of wasted screenspace on both sides on a 4k resolution.
I think shortcuts for common mouseclicks and formatting like in RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite) would go a long way here too.
Well thats my 2c.
