Why is my Lemmy experience feeling so lame? **UPDATE**

Xylarthen, 10 months ago

I had the same issue with Lemmy, so I use Kbin more these days because it seems to be better at getting interesting posts I haven't seen before. I'm sure the Lemmy devs will get to it though.

Hypx, 10 months ago

@Xylarthen

@SPOOSER Getting the algorithm right is a challenge. Reddit struggled to get a balance of both interesting topics while keeping spam off of the front-page. Kbin/Lemmy will have the same problem. Kbin seems to do a better job than Lemmy IMO, but it still lets too many memeposts/shitposts on the front page. You still have to block the worse offenders.

PenguinJuice, 10 months ago

Kbinites rise up!

Saturdaycat, 10 months ago

Nuh uh, you're lame! Lame-o!

.

JK!! I am on kbin and as others suggested to play around with the settings, otherwise just engage to your hearts content !

Anitabath097, 10 months ago

I feel the same way because i have no friends :'(

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I’m glad you got something out of it, there’s all sorts of resources for finding servers, but very few have more than the server description on them

I like reviews, because while your interests may differ from the person, you get a read on them and through that on what they’re reviewing

Maybe one of these days I’ll make a community for this, if we standardize the format we could use it to do reviews on individual servers - it would be a great way to help people trying to pick a server

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I’ve never really used it (I’m not very into micro blogging), as someone else said Lemmy is to Reddit as mastodon is to what Twitter used to be

It’s a more complex system of federation than Lemmy, my understanding is that Lemmy is more tightly federated, but mastodon has additional mechanisms to spread posts through the network.

I might get more into microblogging when I add kbin support I might get into it - I’ve found learning enough about something to write code for it often ends with an appreciation for the thing. If that happens I’ll do a similar server experience post somewhere

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Ugh… Thanks for the catch, that’s one less bug making it to the beta.

The frustrating thing is I specifically remember looking this up when I was writing the function, because it was weird to me that images were the opposite order

My renderer handled both though, so I might not have noticed for a while

Astroturfed, 10 months ago

What, you don’t like all the crazy fury porn? Cuz I mean, if you don’t like fury porn… Ya there’s a lot of it.

SPOOSER, 10 months ago

I have, thankfully, seemed to have avoided a lot of the furry porn. If you like it, more power to you! I’m thankful I can avoid that kind of content!

Astroturfed, 10 months ago

I’ve blocked, so, so many communities browsing all. It’s wild.

Kolanaki, 10 months ago

I haven’t seen much fury porn. Nobody hatefucking 'round here.

altima_neo, 10 months ago

I keep getting months old posts in my hot feed. It’s weird.

But yeah, Lemmys missing on some “power posters” like Reddit had.

fujiwood, 10 months ago

You’re not going to like what I’m about to say.

You’re part of the problem. You can fix it though.

Ready?

You need to make original content for the communities you are apart of and stop expecting others to provide you the conent you want. Because if that’s what everyone did, then there would be absolutely nothing here.

That’s just the way it is right now. There’s not enough original content creators on Lemmy yet.

What does original content mean? It doesn’t mean reposts from other websites. It doesn’t mean articles from other websites. The original content was already posted by the writers of the articles, on the original website. It doesn’t mean comments you make. My comment here isn’t original content. It’s a reaction.

Original content is something you make. You baked some sourdough bread? Post. You made a chair from wood? Post. You made something out of leather? Post. You took a nice photo? Post. You made some digital art? Post. You drew a sketch of a building? Post. You did “insert hobby”? Post. You’re a collector of this niche thing? Post.

The truth is, original content can be hard and time-consuming. It takes a certain mind to want to post original content. If everyone here would make just one original content post, I think that would help make Lemmy a better social media site.

Be the change.

Zeroxxx, 10 months ago

Instance war, ideology clash resulting in censorship, random rules on different instances.

That is also the cause why some people are reluctant to contribute.

Imgonnatrythis, 10 months ago

Is there a look at my turd sub, because that’s about the level that 99% of users will contribute to IF prodded. Beyond that, the “it’s you, your the problem it’s you” argument will not produce change. It’s simply a numbers game. Need to get enough users that 1% producing content is still a lot of content. Awareness / marketing tactics can help. Mention Lemmy on reddit boards and threads or whatever the kids are using, (instabook?). Oh, also someone needs to get some money and get some famous people on here. I could give a damn what they say, but the youth hang on their every word. Get that rapper guy or one of the telltubbies or something talking about Lemmy and you’ll get people to flock.

fujiwood, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

That isn’t true. It is not a numbers game. Reddit didn’t start off with numbers. Facebook didn’t start off with numbers. Tumblr didn’t start off with numbers. Twitter didn’t start off with numbers.

They all started small. Growing gradually. People stayed because they enjoyed the content and the community.

Hype and influence only attract a certain type of person. Fools. That will just create an inferior community. You’ll have a digital Fyre Festival that way.

Artificially inflating numbers creates a community with no respect of the community itself. There’s no thought in that. When you put no thought into something the results aren’t good.

Imgonnatrythis, 10 months ago

This is already started. Those things started out small but succeeded because of aggressive marketing practices and huge investmentments. That could be the next phase for Lemmy. Growth can happen without but it will be slow and there is high risk of implosion during that period of slow growth.

fujiwood, 10 months ago

When I joined Facebook in ~2006 there was already a decent amount of people using it. There was enough interesting content for me to stick around.

When I joined Reddit ~2009 it was also starting to really become popular. The Digg exodus helped tremendously.

The difference between them and Lemmy is that they already felt polished compared to Lemmy. Lemmy feels almost as though it’s in Beta. Lemmy goes down practically everyday for me. There’s not a lot of original content and it’s a very different experience than any other social media sites. Honestly, it’s complicated compared to the straight forward nature of other social media sites.

Instances, communities, Fediverse etc. I’m going to say that a lot of people will not like the hassle.

Can there truly be an implosion of Lemmy? I thought the nature of the Fediverse was that it can’t be controlled by a single entity? If an instance goes down, can’t there be something to replace it? As long as there are servers and people willing, it will remain. Right?

Blaze, 10 months ago

If you are experiencing downtime, you might want to create another account on another instance and clone your subscriptions using github.com/CMahaff/lasim

Imgonnatrythis, 10 months ago

Yeah, maybe implode isn’t the right word. Remember what happened to slashdot? Sad fizzle is more like it. Hard to kill Lemmy maybe, but I can easily see this devolving into a few grumpy communists and crappy ads for diet supplements. I sure hope not, but there’s no reason to be overly optomisitic about the tech world these days. It’s all so damn sad.

Hyggyldy, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

It’s not that easy to make stuff. I find myself pretty creatively dead. I have communities I’d love to make content for but I’m a talentless waste of breath.

SPOOSER, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Your rant post is ill-placed, because I’m trying to do that. I’ve already posted and commented multiple posts in communities I enjoy trying to garner attention and content. But i’m also a busy person who’s trying to live with a family, children, and a budding carreer. I understand I need to be a part of the community and I am doing more now than I ever have on Reddit.

EDIT: I also wanted to add that this post is not about me complaining about a lack of content, it was a misunderstanding of the sorting algorithm. After posting this, I got lots of very helpful advice to help me use Lemmy’s sorting better and my enjoyment of Lemmy has improved immensly to the point of where my experience on Lemmy is no longer lame.

EDIT 2: I must have misread your post because it was not condesending, but more motivating. I appreciate the sentiment and redact the condesending part, but stand by the rest of what I’ve said. I deleted the entire second paragraph because I was defensive and wrong in its entirety. I appreciate the sentiment while affirming I am trying to contribute more while my life is still very busy. I apologize for getting defensive.

fujiwood, 10 months ago

You’re right, I didnt look at your profile. That was my mistake. My comment wasn’t intended to be an attack on you. It was more of a generalization of a problem of Lemmy at the moment. I should have gone out of my way to look at your profile and to better phrase what I was saying so that you and others wouldn’t feel as though I was making a personal attack. Sorry about making you feel attacked.

tabularasa, 10 months ago

I commend your amazing apology. This is what makes this community better than Reddit.

SPOOSER, 10 months ago

I think what your post was getting at was valid, and I promide I will do my best to not be the reason Lemmy has a lack of content, i want to do my best to contribute! I don’t think your intentions were wrong, and hope you continue to advocate for people to contribute.

constantokra, 10 months ago

This type of ‘post or you’re the problem’ comment really gets on my nerves too. If no one replies, people won’t post again, and if a sub is nothing but single posts no one’s coming back.

It’s great you’re putting in the effort to post, and people should appreciate that. I’m autistic and I can’t post. I can give incredibly detailed information in response to a post or a comment if it relates in any way to any of my special interests. And I do. And so do people like me. It’s why you can find the answer to basically any question on the internet. These ‘post more’ people need to cool it, because the reason people like content like this is depth and engagement and it’s not going to happen without people engagine with the content too.

CoderKat, 10 months ago

Yeah, I’ve made some posts trying to start discussions on a game I played or the likes. Posts that, to the extent of my knowledge, have literally never been made on Lemmy before (I searched – though admittedly the search system makes Reddit’s search look like Google). I actually did get a couple of replies to some and some were really great replies too. But it’s barely a trickle compared to what I’d get from even a middling popularity post on Reddit. I want waaaay more discussion, especially for novel topics.

And there’s so many niche posts that I can’t make. I really enjoyed communities like AITA or Best of Legal Advice or the likes. What, should I make up scenarios? I’m happy to contribute to comments of posts in such communities, but they basically don’t exist here.

Local communities are even worse. I’ve made several posts to my city’s community and can’t recall if I ever even got a reply to a single one. On Reddit that never happened.

constantokra, 10 months ago

Yes. You put more into a post, so it hurts more if you don’t get anything out of it. If I were to make a post i’d agonize over the wording and set aside time in front of an actual keyboard to respond and then i’d be completely overwhelmed anyway if there was even a modest response to the post. It’s a pretty self centered, basic misunderstanding of people to think that everyone can or should make their own posts.

If I reply to someone, I assume at least they read it. As a person who requires little social interaction that’s enough for me, even if I wrote an extremely detailed wall of text.

GustavoM, 10 months ago

“Hey man. Just uhhhh… you know… paint some walls with colored rainbows and ponies and shiz. That’ll make the world better.”

• (You)

I mean, I know that complaining won’t change anything, but holy bimbles in my dimples, you are really suggesting this guy to just ignore all the porn and start adding some “healthy content” in? There is this thing called tendency… and if a certain community/place/etc has some “furry porn” in? Then its not him that’ll (magically) change it “for the better”. It’ll not make the “furry porn apologists” (suddenly) stop being degenerates. Its one guy versus a bunch of porn-addicted, degenerative individuals. He doesn’t stand a chance. Your post is just plain “wishful thinking”.

RunAwayFrog, 10 months ago

Sort by “best” is coming to Lemmy, in case you didn’t know.

Blaze, 10 months ago

That’s great

bloopinator, 10 months ago

This place is lame because it’s somehow even more obsessed with politics than Reddit. It’s draining to go to a social media site and constantly be subjected to negative headlines.

codapine, 10 months ago

I’m subscribed to a few meme communities, a few news communities and special interest. I browse on Subscribed and if I see no fresh posts I look through All for a bit. If I see nothing of interest/new then I stop lurking for a bit and come back later.

If you’re seeing too much xyz, it’s because you’re subscribed to too many xyz communities.

lemming007, 10 months ago

The problem with browsing Subscribed is that the subs I’m interested are dead/have very low activity. The problem with browsing All is that it’s infested with politics and negativity.

Hazdaz, 10 months ago

I’m shocked you have had any discussions at all, quite frankly. Step outside of the some of these more visited subs and you see threads that are many days or weeks old with 0 replies. And lots of them at that. It doesn’t make you want ot contribute because you know you won’t get any replies either, so that kind of perpetuates the problem. You need a certain critical mass of visitors to a sub to get it going and sustain itself.

Also, I too have noticed that the same threads appear over and over again, days later. I can’t imagine there is such little traffic that more posts aren’t getting posted, but who knows.

Blaze, 10 months ago

What are your interests, if I may ask?

fmstrat, 10 months ago

Once clients add “mark read on scroll” this may go away, too.

DaveNa, 10 months ago

My takes: 1. Lemmy is small yet, so, few content. 2. A lot of propaganda accounts. You need to block communities and users. 3. Once in a while a small community make it to the top, so you found about it and subscribe to it. 4. Little by little your feed gets better. 5. Human nature, you can’t escape from it, you know, that quote about how stupid is the average person and so. 6 Accept the limitations and enjoy the platform. PS: I do like all the silly memes.

theneverfox, 10 months ago

You’re doing Lemmy wrong, and it’s not your fault. People keep saying “instance doesn’t matter” - sure, you can interact with anything all over the main lemmyverse, but the best experience is to find a home server with a community that feels right. Subscriptions and the sorting will get there, but right now ALL (or maybe even local) is a way better experience

Here’s the servers I checked out:

Lemmy.world

What I signed up on. The most people, the most content, civil community. Moderation is there, but you mostly feel it by the sense of civility. They keep getting targeted and they’re experiencing a lot of hiccups, but they’re the biggest source of content right now. Feels to me at this point

(Sh.itjust.works)[sh.itjust.works/signup] About as close as you can get to freedom of speech while keeping out the aggressive bigots. I think one of their rules is along the lines of you can drop n-bombs or argue for whatever you want, but not use slurs against actual people. That says a lot… But they’re great for shitposts and are experimenting with democracy at !agora

(Beehaw.org)[beehaw.org/signup] I’d describe it as a safe space. Heavy moderation and curation of content. Those kinds of places feel uncomfortable and tense to me so I find it hard to give it a fair review. Not my thing, but they claim to be closest to Reddit… I’d give lemmy.world that title, but it was a big site and I was constantly searching out the medium sized subs.

(Lemmy.nsfw)[Lemmynsfw.com/signup] A stable server that will show you plenty of sfw content, and the community is welcoming. And of course, there’s the obvious…

(Blahaj.zone)[lemmy.blahaj.zone/signup] The flip side of why I go to sh.itjust.works, lots of queer shitposts. I like the memes, I like the people, not so sure about the admin… She’s been stirring up a lot of drama the last few days. Maybe there’s more to it, I’ve mostly just seen her posts that look a bit power-trippy from a distance. I’ve also been waiting for that to happen to see how we as a community handle it, so

(pawbs.social)[pawbs.social/signup] This is my main home server now. A while back I came to realize furries are always big early adopters of every new tech, they’re super welcoming, and they don’t care if you’re not a furry so long as you don’t care that they are. I like the art anyways so it doesn’t bother me. A lot of tech stuff too. They are most definitely furries though, and you’ll see OwOs and all that comes with that. They’re very chill, until someone isn’t, so if you can’t handle that you’re going to have a bad time

(Lemmy.ml)[Lemmy.ml/signup] The original devs instance. They’re going through some stuff with their domain and definitely anticapitalist, but after digging for evidence and talking to them they’re far from extremists, but the constant stream of people heading over to there to pick a fight, the site was on edge when I went there a few weeks ago. A good place if you’re into good faith debate on economic and governmental systems

lemmygrad.ml was a more extreme version (literally someone came in to start a fight in every thread i saw) they’re understandably pretty wary. Their ideas are out there, but they’re definitely not pro genocide and don’t worship Stalin (at least as a whole).

Lemmy.ml I wouldn’t pick until they get their domain issue shaken out, but I included them because after an afternoon trying to get to the bottom of it (the only proof of anything I found was a mastodon post about someone very vague about what was said and ending with “unfortunately the conversation was deleted”), so it seems to me they’ve been getting misrepresented. I’m very open to more concrete details though

(Dbzer0.com)[lemmy.dbzer0.com/signup] They sail the high seas. Less content, but what was there was pretty interesting if you’re into tech, security, or digital rights

Those are the sites I remember off the top of my head after exploring around, there’s >2k instances (although about 100 were populated by users when I went through the data dump a few weeks back)

If you’re on Android, I’m doing bug fixes before launching my app very soon, and iPhone build is coming once I can get one to test on. I pushed back the launch to pack on features, I’ve got keyword filtering, you can explore servers without changing accounts, it saves your place, hides read posts, it offers URL replacement (I accidentally went to Twitter for possibly the last time today and YouTube yesterday, the logo change was worth it but nitter is less jarring).

You can interact with Lemmy links, collapse comments, post with a control bar that doesn’t float around, save drafts, and it’s all in a dark material-design style (but with way less cards). There’s still a lot to be done, but after bug fixes and optimization v2 will be focused around combing feeds and accounts to get just the right mix. Eventually I’ve got eyes on pixelfed and maybe even things like friendica - the beauty of the fediverse is how amazing a foundation it is to build on

For today, there’s still occasional bugs and jank, but at this point I can say it’s pretty stable when the servers cooperate. I’ll be covering for more and more of it through the client as time goes on, but for the last 2 weeks I’ve been using it exclusively. My friend convinced me I need to wrap it up and put it out there and get feedback, so

Check out !flemmy if you’re interested, I just posted some screenshots (it will get prettier, but hopefully it’s good enough to not be distracting)

Tedesche, 10 months ago

Thank you for posting this! I realize it’s just your assessments of these instances, but I’ve been interested to see summaries of what other instances are like, since I’m not completely satisfied with Lemmy.world. Having read your descriptions though, I think I’ll stick with it a while longer.

Blaze, 10 months ago

Alternatively, lemm.ee, sopuli.xyz or reddthat.com could be interesting alternatives, pretty generalist too

yoz, 10 months ago

Thanks. I needed this

pinchcramp, 10 months ago

Thank you for taking the time and writing out such a detailed response 🙏

RagnarokOnline, 10 months ago

Saved this even if only you have a good description of the major instances.

Thanks for this!

Shardikprime, 10 months ago

Commenting for dot

miles, 10 months ago

Great instance review, thank you! FYI your markdown links are broken, switch the brackets, links are [like] (this) not (like)[this]

Tsunami45chan, 10 months ago

👍

CheshireSnake, 10 months ago

In my instance, we use Arch.

Jk. We’re pretty chill although we’re too small to be anywhere popular. We like memes but not really overrun with it. The admin and the owner are nice and relaxed. Not much content since we’re just a small group, but some members are pretty active in their communities.