On the future of Lemmy vs reddit

Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:

  1. I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
  2. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
  3. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
lily33,

To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I’m willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.

Yes, I don’t need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.

whatisallthis,

Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.

There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.

If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve noticed that “Hot” turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.

Whenever I’ve posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).

Sl00k,

Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I’ve found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

That’s been my experience as well. I usually do top 6 or top 12.

gullible,

That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.

kat,

If you sort by “active” there should be posts with more comments. The “hot” sorting is not really representative for how active users on lemmy are, since it favours younger posts over older posts with lots of comments. You can read the details of the reasoning here .

DeanFogg,

I swap between active and hot. Seems to work well

ConstipatedWatson, (edited )

Reddit has a lot of international subreddits which don’t really exist here on Lemmy (they have like 10 users and they almost never post).

Reddit has huge lively communities. I’m having a ball here on Lemmy, but I too must check Reddit once a day to know if important stuff happened.

Sure, someone could say I should work on jumpstarting these Lemmy communities, but I’ve only been able to to what I can so far (that is, replying to posts and joining the conversation)

Ninja edit: fixed grammar

whatisallthis,

Yeah the issue is that with large online communities, your largest user group is always going to be that of least engagement.

So users who just read stuff is your biggest group. Then comes users who made an account. Then comes users who up and downvote. And last comes users who post.

It makes it very hard to grow a new social media platform.

flipthetube,

I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities, conversations and information entirely. I will not support their platform.

And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.

HobbitFoot,

Yeah, you need people to post and comment to develop a community. I’ve got one community where I post five times a week, but I’ve only had two posts from other people and only one person commented on a post.

crunchycircuit,

I checked it out, and tbh I think that the post requirements are pretty restrictive, especially considering that Lemmy is relatively new and doesn’t yet have a critical mass of contributing users.

Assuming that the axiom that states that only about 10-20% of users actually post is true, you’re already facing an uphill battle in terms of growing your subscriber base. On top of that, the community theme (art with no context) sounds like an interesting endeavor, but it’s also pretty niche. It’s gonna be hard to find the community organically. Or for your community to find you, organically.

Also, by requiring that the post be a non-flash photograph of the work of art as displayed, you’ve placed additional barriers in front of those 10-20% of content contributors. I mean, how often does the average person go to the museum? Also, does the poster have to have taken the image themselves, or is finding and posting an image you found online (that is a non-flash photo of an artwork as-is and adheres to the community rules and post guidelines) acceptable? The last sentence that reads, “Mods reserve the right to ask where you’ve taken the photo of the art.” seems to imply that the image in the post needs to have been taken by the person posting it.

I enjoy the premise/theme of the community, but I feel that you’re either going to have to lower the barrier to participate/contribute, or you’re going to just have to accept that it’s gonna take a fair amount of time before your community grows into a self-sustaining body. It’s like you’re taking care of a newborn pet, and, at least in the beginning, you’re gonna have to feed your community/pet with fresh posts pretty often. You’re also probably going to have to advertise your community when it’s relevant.

Remember that at the start, even Reddit went out of their way to populate their front page with posts from various dummy accounts to create the illusion of activity. Anyway, best of luck with your community, I sincerely hope you’re able to retain and grow the community you’re looking for.

For those that want to check it out: !no_context_art

HobbitFoot,

Lack of posts is one thing, but lack of comments is something else. People seem to be engaging with the posts with the like button, but that is all that is happening for now.

NathanielThomas,

And for now, I still have to use reddit for them

But you were banned from them right?

Right? That’s why we’re all here?

lily33,

Firefox + ublock (it has filters that block the “install app” on mobile, but need to be enabled from the settings) is useable.

Rolando_Cueva,

What about now?

lily33,

Still visiting several subreddits that don’t have corresponding active lemmy communities. Once of them actually has an “official” lemmy community (run by the same mods) but none of the people moved over, so it’s empty,

Historical_General,

lemmydotworld is down again, if anyone is missing harrypotter@lemmy.world they can go to the other harry potter community on lemm.ee !harrypotter that I’m currently trying to build up .

Reygle,
@Reygle@lemmy.world avatar

Fantastically written. I agree.

legion,

Lemmy has enough user activity to fulfill my time-wasting needs.

There doesn’t need to be one website that EVERYONE is at. The Web didn’t used to be so damn consolidated.

I don’t give one shit about “Lemmy vs. Reddit”. I care about Lemmy having active communities to engage in, regardless of what is happening on some other website.

Dumeinst,

I think so too. I used reddit up until rif stopped working about a week ago (for me at least). Ive always been a reluctant participant in social media largely because of how consolidated everything is. Which, at the end of the day just means we’re easier to market to or monetize. I’m excited about the possibilities of lemmy in a way I’ve never been about social media before. The content is currently a little sparse; you have to go looking a little, but that’ll improve quickly I’m betting. There’s no shortage of content to be had. In a small way it feels like the Internet 25 years ago

insertfloppydiskhere,

Yes this is my thinking as well. Before reddit I was more than happy participating in forums on subjects I enjoyed. I had want I wanted. I almost have that here as well. That’s success in my eyes.

stealth_cookies,

As a fairly early Reddit user I’ve seen a lot of change as the website got bigger. I would agree that growth is not necessarily good, there is a minimum size of community to keep content fresh and a maximum size before it loses the personal connection. Right now a lot of the larger Lemmy communities are getting active enough, but Lemmy is lacking the users to support the niche communities. Maybe it is best if Reddit keeps those and the two websites end up with a happy balance for all the types of communities.

Yerbouti,

The main difference for me is that I feel like I’m part of a global project, not just a product in some big tech’s ecosystem.

Sygheil,

Reddit has now checkmark/verified or whatsoever they call like any other centralized social media. Extreme cringe

bappity,

twitter has transformed my view of people with verification checks to “most likely to be an idiot”

rhaegar_shaka,

It could also be that they are forced to be an idiot, like for content creators (MKBHD, Tekking101)

bappity,

i did say “most likely” :P

Serinus,

Paid speech.

Those people should be double and triple posting to different platforms.

There’s no reason MKBHD can’t post to both Twitter and Mastodon. You get the reach, and you enable an alternative.

K1nsey6,
@K1nsey6@lemmy.world avatar

That’s why musk now allows people to hide their check

Tygr,

Yes, it went from “person of influence” to “dumbass pays for attention” rather quickly.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Lol I didn’t know, I haven’t been there in months now. That’s awful… But good for us. :)

hamid,

To me there is no vs. My web browser has tabs and I can have multiple ones open at a time. It is cool to have more things, I don’t need to commit to anything like an app or website.

Aagje_D_Vogel,

Get outta here with your rational thinking! /s

joseph,

Was there ever really a gap? I got fed up with reddit and came right here and am very satisfied. I don’t seem to be having a problem at all.

Noscharhar,

I was using connect or something before Sync came out and I simply did not like the interface versus the 3P app I used for Reddit. This made me not use Lemmy at all for a while - so there is / was a gap at least for me.

Also my main page takes a couple days to get all new content vs hours on R. Which I understand, but there definitely is also that gap

CarpeBumBum,

Reddit is of interest from a witnessing history standpoint, for ex-redditors who wound up here. How reddit swirls down the drain will be accentuated by lemmy being a known superior alternative.

Reddit tries to exert control with a stick, while lemmy is the carrot.

guts,

The important catalyst is good third party clients working with Lemmy as Voyager and Sync and people learning about the fediverse.

cpo,

Thank you for the Voyager tip! It’s free and I like it.

jBlight,

I agree with you. Currently on Infinity for lemmy and I love it! Def switching to a 3rd party app changes the experience completely. I’m normally a Boost user, but Infinity is amazing and the owner is smashing bugs pretty quickly. And FOSS! (That was the main reason I tossed Sync out the window)

owatnext,
@owatnext@lemmy.world avatar

I was so happy to hear someone was making a fork of Infinity for Lemmy!

Promethilaus,

Same i use infinity for lemmy and infinity for reddit (with my own api key) its working great

ArrrborDAY,

Where can you download it? I don’t see it on fdroid or play store.

PithyPolynym,

codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/…/releases

z00s,

The future of Lemmy has nothing to do with R whatsoever.

HR_Pufnstuf,

You don’t wish to see it kill off R?

adolf_hitler,

deleted_by_author

    •
    HR_Pufnstuf,

    Not that you might care… but I find that disappointing. :(

    adolf_hitler,

    It’s disappointing how much others focus more on bitching about another platform rather than the growth and direction of a new platform with its own unique, powerful features.

    HR_Pufnstuf,

    I’m not here to complain about R. I want to see options like T & R die off in favor of these wonderful federated models. It gives us so much better control over cleaving off nazi’s and such, ridding corporate influence on posts, having a voice in the use of ads on us.

    gaylord_fartmaster,

    R is living in your head rent free.

    Just let it go. None of those things are reliant on anything either of those sites does going forward.

    HR_Pufnstuf,

    So you are ok leaving safe harbours for hate speech? I’d prefer such avenues were extinguished.

    InternetUser2012,

    I’d rather not because then all the trolls will come here and it will turn into R2.0

    rab,

    I disagree. R messing up is how we get more users

    Vodik_VDK,

    No, us generating content and community is how we get users. Reddit’s conduct only creates episodic influxes of users.

    ItsMeSpez,

    As much as I want this to be true, it’s simply patently false.

    Noscharhar,

    I agree with you, but I think there’s a level where it is true.

    Like Lemmy should grow and develop based on what users are saying and not what Reddit is doing to a degree.

    heliosef,

    Don’t agree with that guy. He has a glaring conflict of interest.

    PredictiveTextNames,

    Lemmy hasn’t gone a day without talking about reddit for a month and a half.

    o_oli,

    Lemmy is literally a reddit clone, of course it has lots to do with reddit what are you talking about

    Historical_General,

    A good many of us are here because of R’s apps no longer working, including myself. It’s been a month and now I don’t even remember using R on my phone tbh. I did mostly use desktop, but I’ve also acclimatised very quickly.

    Subverb,

    Which is one reason I am confused by the response to Sync. We left because of third party apps getting screwed over but a segment of Lemmy is saying “Yeah, but only foss apps should migrate to Lemmy because, ‘mah foss sensibilities’.”

    Eddie,

    As a proud and loud member of the FOSS community, I will say this: The FOSS community is cringe as hell and people need to start going back to the root of the movement and remember that we are about CHOICE and FREEDOM.

    If you’re judging somebody for using the platform of their choice, FOSS or not, you are the problem.

    Tygr,

    If that’s true, thrn Reddit’s explosion in popularity had nothing to do with Digg.

    DosDude,
    @DosDude@retrolemmy.com avatar

    The critical mass of Reddit was many years after the Digg debacle.

    Tygr,

    Would the critical mass occur if the original wave didn’t join and produce content?

    teuniac_,

    Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

    And it doesn’t seem entirely impossible that our Elon Musk fanboy Steve will screw up again.

    I won’t be surprised to read in the future:

    • Reddit Introduces Its Own Version of X’s (Formerly Known as Twitter’s) Blue Checkmark
    • Backlash After Reddit Strikes Exclusive Deal to Provide Trainingsdata to OpenAI
    • Reddit Introduces Paid Membership Options for Communities
    • Something Money Grabbing Reddit Related
    MargotRobbie,
    @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

    Reddit charges a subscription for people to mod a subreddit.

    Tygr,

    That will be when they remove old.reddit

    Robaque,

    I’ve been wondering if the API change was actually a move to prevent anyone but themselves from using Reddit’s data to train AI.

    ArrrborDAY,

    Likely so, though scraping will still yield the data. Maybe they will make scraping harder too.

    Robaque,

    Maybe that’s why their mobile app and new website sucks lol

    demlet,

    Yes, they specifically have said they don’t want AI companies to get their user data for free. What’s interesting is that we as a culture have internalized and accepted the idea that our user-made content is something only tech companies have the right to profit from and fight over.

    AA5B,

    That’s what I assumed from the beginning: think of the gold rush for generative ai and they are using Reddit data. Actually, it even seems fair to share in the potential (but what about the users who created it all?).

    However if that was their intent, they sure screwed it up

    NathanielThomas,

    Lemmy is awesome… when it’s up. Which feels like never? Server uptime of 85% is brutal.

    fresh,

    It feels like it’s up all the time when I use it. Must depend on the instance. Even Reddit was frequently down for maintenance and other issues.

    Claidheamh,

    That’s an issue of your instance, not of Lemmy. Smaller, less populated instances tend to be more stable.

    NathanielThomas,

    So it’s Lemmy.world, not all the servers

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    Correct, I have an alt account on a different instance because .world is down so much.

    jack,

    Yes, the network load should be distributed among many small servers. That’s why my main acc is on monero.town

    Valmond,

    Do you have accounts on two (or more) servers?

    I think, for now anyway, that that is something everyone should do, hear me out!

    I have a server up and running but no users, I would be relieved if people subscribed but not with their sole account for the whole lemmyverse.

    So if you want a quick server, for an alt account/backup account head over to lemmy.mindoki.com!

    I might be slow at accepting, I have a full-time job, but it will be done!

    jack,

    I see no point personally in actively using more than one account.

    If you want many users registered on your instance, I suggest you make the server about a general topic people can identify with. E.g. programming.dev is generally about programming, so it hosts communities for all sorts of programming languages. It seems like you like art, maybe make the server about art generally or a (popular) direction of art and advertise your instance with that. I don’t think we have an instance about art yet

    Historical_General,

    hobbit.world has some great LotR related art btw.

    jack,

    Good tip

    Valmond,

    Hey thank you and except my computer related hobbies&work I do like the arts very much :-)

    I have a super user on the server otherwise I’m trying to use only one account too, mostly because hopefully my instance won’t get DDOSed all the time!

    Aux,

    Most of the communities I’m interested in are on LW. If LW is down, Lemmy is down for me. It is also important to understand that LW is experiencing these issues because it has the largest population. The more people come to Lemmy the more instances will cross this threshold and will go offline.

    alex,

    The more people build instances and the more people create communities outside of lemmy.world, the more resilient all this will be. Lemmy is the kind of place where you can fix your issues by building alternatives.

    Hosting an instance has some cost and technical difficulties, so I don’t go around recommending that, but creating an account on a mid-sized instance and creating communities there for what you like to talk about is in everyone’s power.

    ICE_WALRUS,

    One issue I see is reports as recent as a month ago of people bringing an instance to it’s knees with a python script on 1 desktop computer. It’s one thing to ask for more instances and investment into the hardware to run them from more people, but it’s another thing not realizing that the code itself is heavily under optimized. For now, and you can see this everytime there’s an outage via the atlassian uptime tracker notes, server owners are throwing more resources to bandaid issues.

    I myself am currently running an under optimized application for my company, we are using 4x the amount of money to run it as what it’s meant to replace currently. At a certain point even throwing the kitchen sink at problems stops working.

    Lemmy’s code needs to mature more, but im excited about the future for sure.

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    There is a nice button on each instance that turns off new registrations. Once an instance owner has enough users and don’t want to upgrade the instance anymore, he checks that one.

    It will be impossible to ddos every Lemmy instance, not very efficiently at least. Now it’s super easy to just bomb Lemmy.world.

    Aux,

    If I’m interested in community X on instance M and M is down it is irrelevant that instances N and O are up - I still can’t access X on instance M.

    I don’t know how you people browser Lemmy, but I only read subscribed feed. And most of the communities I care about are on LW. Thus it is absolutely irrelevant that other instances exist. And no, I don’t want to read the cache - I already saw old content.

    jdsquared,

    But even if I’m on my instance, lemme.ee, and LW is down, I’m not going to see anything from that instance. Which is where the most activity is. So I might see the same link for an article locally, with two comments, and no interaction from the instance with 300 comments.

    I mean, eventually other instances will grow, but then they will face the same problems as Lemmy.world.

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    While world is down, you can still read everything that was posted and federated before it went down on other instances. It’s not like you suddenly don’t have anything to read (unless you are on here 24 hrs / day).

    jdsquared,

    It’s not really just about reading, it’s the engagement. I can read something from a couple of hours ago, comment now, and then somebody might read it in a couple of hours. And then comment back. But then I’m barely interested in the conversation because I’ve moved on.

    But I’m just nitpicking. I know it’s going to balance out. Or it won’t and we’ll move on to something else that does LOL. Or I can always spend more time outside. Gasp.

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    Being outside is dangerous, it has fresh air and sunshine. :)

    pedz,

    It depends on your instance. I have account on lemmy.world and it’s indeed been having stability issues. However some other instances seem a bit more stable, like lemmy.ca.

    I’ve seen posts on lemmy.world asking for more voluntary admins because of the sudden growth. And apparently they are also the preferred instance to be attacked.

    shrugal,

    Try using one of the medium-size instances. You get the same experience as on lemmy.world, minus all the scaling problems. Just create an account on one of them and copy over your settings and subs with lasim. You can even use the same username if it’s still available on the other instance.

    Aux,

    If communities I’m interested in are on LW then it doesn’t matter which instance I use. If LW is down then Lemmy is down.

    MBM,

    You can still see posts and comments from lemmy.world while it’s down. Making new posts/comments might be an issue though

    Aux,

    I can see old stuff on archive.org from all over the web. But when something is down - it’s down. Because the whole purpose of communities is online communication between their members.

    kungfuratte,

    You’re right. On the other hand, beginning to use smaller instances might help to reduce the overload of lw in the long run. It might also make the Fediverse more resilient. Reducing the dependency on big instances in my opinion is a good thing.

    tea,

    Yeah, if I were LW, I would stop allowing new users. I feel like servers should be either user or community based, not both. One for users has nice things like alternate skins (e.g. a.lemmy.world or old.lemmy.world) and ones for communities are focused primarily on having good moderators and being super reliable so that federations to them work 100% of the time.

    Historical_General,

    I beginning to feel that lemmydotworld isn’t totally acting in the interests of the lemmy community.

    Aux,

    It won’t help if the communities you’re interested in are on LW. It doesn’t matter if you register elsewhere - if LW is down then your community is down. The end.

    kungfuratte,

    I know that. That’s why I wrote “in the long run”. What I meant is this: If more users register on different servers in the long run more communities will spawn on those servers. If everyone just registers on lemmy.world, new communities will find their homes there.

    shrugal,

    It does matter. You can still browse and even post and comment on LW communities, even when LW itself is down. But maybe more important is that LW is having problems because many people are using it, so switching to different instances actually helps LW be more stable.

    Aux,

    Mmm, nope. If you are on instance X and view instance Y when it’s down, you only see a cache. If you post or comment your content will only propagate once Y comes up. If Y is down it’s down.

    shrugal,

    I would call that browsing, posting and commenting, even if it doesn’t sync to other instances until the source instance is back up.

    Aux,

    You can use notepad to the same effect.

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    Do your part and try a smaller instance. lemmy.today has not been down even once. I’m a heavy user there.

    But if you don’t like that one, pick any other smaller instance and you won’t have this problem.

    tea,

    Yeah, I joined lemmy.today so I could have a place to go when my OG lemmy.world is down. I like lemmy.world, but it’s constantly down (like right now). I suppose there’s no reason I shouldn’t just use this one as my primary, though I do like the other skins that lemmy.world added (old.lemmy.world and a.lemmy.world) when I’m on desktop.

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    I haven’t looked into it but couldn’t those skins be installed on other instances also? Hopefully open source thingies.

    tea,

    Yeah, but they have to be installed by the server admins. lemmy.world added them. I’m not aware of any other instances that have them, but I’d love for them to be standard. The a.lemmy.world is my favorite lemmy experience so far (though I can’t…ummm…use it right now).

    1984,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    Admin of Lemmy.today added all of the them yesterday. I like how fast old is actually, but I’m on mobile app almost always anyway.

    HulkSmashBurgers,
    1. No surveillance capitalism. unlike reddit, lemmy isn’t trying to monetize/track you.
    2. Freedom/openness. Already, someone can use a third party app to use lemmy. Moving forward, I think, people will come up with new ways to utilize lemmy/activity pub.
    NathanielThomas,

    Reminds me of Google when it took over from Yahoo-Altavista. And then the money came and they’re Dr. Evil cookie cutter Corpo scum

    cpo,

    Difference is: when that happens, it will be forked and will live on!

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