I run a few groups, like @fediversenews@venera.social, mostly on Friendica. It’s okay, but Friendica resembles Facebook Groups more than Reddit. I also like the moderation options that Lemmy has.
Currently, I’m testing jerboa, which is an Android client for Lemmy. It’s in alpha, has a few hiccups, but it’s coming along nicely.
Personally, I hope the #RedditMigration spurs adoption of more Fediverse server software. And I hope Mastodon users continue to interact with Lemmy and Kbin.
All that said, as a mod of a Reddit community (r/Sizz) I somewhat regret giving Reddit all that content. They have nerve charging so much for API access!
Hopefully, we can build a better version of social media that focuses on protocols, not platforms.
It’s looking great! I joined just 2 days ago and the communities I subscribed to are already looking much more lively today. Thanks, Reddit blackout!
Also written in Rust, btw :)
How do you know something is developed with Rust?
Don’t worry, the devs will tell you.
Check the GitHub! It’s linked at the bottom of the web page (“Code”)
Biggest issue right now is the inability to hide posts you’ve already read. Will this eventually be addressed?
I know it’s in its infancy but the great thing about Reddit was I could search any niche topic and guarantee there was a subreddit setup for it.
Obviously this is solved by more and more people using Lemmy but I personally can’t see Lemmy appealing to the the masses. Depending how active the communities become I can see me using Lemmy going forward but I don’t think it will be the “One site for everything” that Reddit has become but rather 1 of many sites I check going forward instead
In general, it works pretty nice, but there are some limitations.
The biggest one for me is discoverability. The federation means that there is more fragmentation and it’s harder to find the right community for something.
For example, there are country/city communities for my country/city on multiple instances. And since it’s hard to find the “correct” one, it fragments out much harder than Reddit did. Combine that with generally lower attendance numbers and you get really tiny communities.
This is not aided by Jerboa, which doesn’t open internal links internally. So if someone posts a link to a community and I press it, it instead tries to open it with my email app.
Finding “the right community” is definitely an issue, and I’m sure will continue to be one for a while. But remember Reddit had the same issue, with multiple redundant subreddits when one would have been better.
I’m sure things will consolidate over time, with less popular communities going quiet and their subscribers moving to more active ones.
That is true, that was an issue on Reddit as well. But here it’s even worse, since you can have a community with the same name on different instances. It basically adds another dimension to the discoverability issue.
It’s true, but I guess it’s the price of federation. And Reddit having a single namespace meant a lot of subreddits needed to have “real” or “true” prefixed to their names, which was pretty confusing.
As sad as I am by how Reddit turned out, this was the kick I needed to start truly indulging in the fediverse! Everybody’s been nice so far, and I hope that it continues to be that way
I like it so far, but my reddit was very well curated, it can’t live up to that yet. Lemmy can be a bit confusing at times and the ‘all’ option seems to be either not moving at all or at a million miles an hour. It will take me a while to get a nice feed, I think.
Lemmy has bugs and lacks features. Assuming those get ironed out and I expect they will in time, I’ll like it a lot better than Reddit. Actually even with its shortcomings I like it better. The issues facing Reddit are of a different nature and for sure those will never get worked out, only worsen.
Otherwise the content on Lemmy is adequate for me. What’s interesting is I actually get more rounded information here. Reddit is so big that I can only subscribe to a limited number of subs before I get overloaded. Here I’m subscribed to a healthy set of communities so I see posts on a wider array of topics.
I think people are a bit intimidated by the Fediverse at first. Once you have a basic understanding of what’s going on, it becomes pretty transparent. It’s just the added step of finding a good instance to log into. Once you’ve overcome that, it’s all downwind sailing.
I’m very impressed. It just needs more 3rd party apps!
There are already many! The problem is they lack polish, to varying degrees.
EDIT: Damn, Thunder wasn’t showing me my comment!
I hope the #RedditMigration sours adoption
I think you meant spurs lol
Anyway yeah I’m liking Lemmy and the fediverse so far. I actually prefer the UI/UX of https://kbin.social more for desktop, but Jerboa is great for mobile. If they stay actively in development it’s going to be hard to beat IMO
I’ve followed from Fark to StumbleUpon to Digg to Reddit, and now many years later, to Lemmy. I think the communities being spread across instances is extremely powerful for overall global community resiliency (if the separation is respected and we don’t end up with a bunch of duplicated “subs” everywhere).
I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of people say this today, but the one thing I feel the most is excitement. The chaos reminds me of the early-ish days (~1996?) of the web when everything was discoverable and not already aggregated to be served up to you inbetween advertisements.
Yep, I actually caught that typo and edited it, but it’s frustrating that the edit didn’t federate to your server. Oh well, maybe that will improve with time 🤷♂️
I love the concept of decentralization. Feels more like the internet of old.
This is also something I really like. Dedicated forums on dedicated web sites for different topics, but this time they’re accessible through a single interface and you can communicate across forums.
Exactly! I used to think of reddit like that, until it became something…different. I’ve found myself going back to old forums instead of reddit lately.
What perhaps will be the final nail in the coffin for Reddit is working here perfectly! Mobile apps! Jerboa is perhaps lacking some features, but works like a charm.
The apps need some work, but overall it’s “okay.” The rest of my gripes lie entirely around the lack of content, which can’t be helped
Just remember: Only You can prevent dead communities!
it can be helped!
The community, particularly Beehaw, is fantastic! I love it.
Lemmy itself needs a lot of work. It’s incredibly far behind, but my expectations are staying measured and I’m excited to see how it develops. Right now it’s not a case of me enjoying the platform itself, but more so ‘putting up’ with the limitations of the platform to access the nice community.
Jerboa is the mobile client I’m using currently, and it’s off to a good start but needs a lot of fixes to be fully usable. Such as sorting comments and searching. The ability to easily click a button to jump to the next comment thread is my most missed feature as well from clients such as Boost for Reddit.
Additionally, I still have issues signing into the mobile website. I can sign in through Jerboa or the Beehaw website on desktop, but not on mobile (or at least not always). So I’m often navigating content on the mobile website, then using Jerboa to comment on it. Most won’t deal with these issues, but I’m still holding out to see what comes from it all.
A couple of last side notes, it’s really annoying to need to click on the title, and not being able to click on the text of a post to navigate (mobile site) - and visually it needs some improvements to draw more people in. That last part seems minor, and for a large part of the existing community, myself included, it truly is minor - but for widespread adoption it needs a big revamp.
so far it’s really nice, it’s what I liked in reddit and before that forums, without being what reddit became.
the fediverse is hard though, but it kinda makes sense. I’ll see if I get more used to it
It desperately needs a compact, efficient UI similar to old.reddit’s design philosophy. Otherwise its not bad. The auto-refreshing front page is very frustrating to use. I want to click on an article, and between when I move the cursor and click, new articles have refreshed and the link I clicked was the wrong one
The auto-refreshing front page is very frustrating to use.
Sounds like that’s being fixed soon.
What I like about Lemmy is how it’s UI and backend are completely separate. I’ve seen others already asking for old.reddit type of an interface, so it is just a matter of time now…
