I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it’s “dogshit” and “not going anywhere” get systematically upvoted.
Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like “yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org” 🤦♂️
It’s frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that “Lemmy is not ready yet” and that there’s “no viable alternative to Reddit”.
This and the overwhelming number of comments being “against the mod protests” just prompts me to question whether there isn’t some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.
Probably bots. Reddit has been using them for some time, but recently got caught using chat gpt or something similar to argue against the blackouts.
The majority aren‘t bots. Most of them are legit no lifers to whom Reddit going down the drain would be a huge blow. I mean you work full time as a cashier for taco bell and you are not really happy with that situation. Some people go to school again, learn a skill… others spend all their time one Reddit stockpiling karma. Those are the people who really hate lemmy and anything that could remotely make Reddit worse, because they are heavily invested in the platform for the wrong reasons.
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Unfortunately there’s probably a large amount of users who simply don’t care.
But that’s okay. What matters is content creators, not content consumers. Anyone with half a gram of decency and self integrity will have realized that they need to take steps to move away from Reddit.
When the content creators leave and go to Lemmy/Kbin, eventually those content consumers will leave and go with them too. Will be a bonus for the Fediverse
We need to ask Louis Rossmann to join the fediverse. He’s been super critical with Reddit on YouTube.
I’m sure he’s already aware and will make an account if he wants to.
There’s no point in shoving the Fediverse in someone’s face.
I reckon it’s mostly bots set up by Reddit admins and sad-sack mods who consider Reddit moderation to be a full-time job
I think there’s truth to some of the “not ready” claims… and this is coming from someone who really tried to get into Lemmy, ended up creating their own instance (as demonstrated by my user handle).
A few issues I think Lemmy dev team really need to address ASAP, from least technical (thus affecting most users) to more technical (this affecting less users) are:
1. UX/Discoverability – Finding communities are a huge pain in the backend right now, and with multiple communities on different instances serving same purpose (i.e.: !reddit@lemmy.ml and !reddit@lemmy.world). Sure, Reddit had same issues (the example I’ve heard is /r/meirl and /r/me_irl), but Reddit offered solution (multi on old reddit, community+community on new reddit). There must be a way to streamline it with meta-communities or lists on Lemmy such that the contents can be viewed in a unified fashion. I recommended
!community@(note the lack of domain) to streamline all of user’s subscriptions with same name on different instances as an example; and perhaps we can use#list$user@lemmy.domainfor users’s maintained lists to unify!homelab@lemmy.ml,!datahoarder@lemmy.ml,!homelab@lemmy.world, etc.).2. Trigger happy defederation hubs – a certain instance has unceremoniously de-federated a couple of other larger instances. This is not the way, but here we are, with users on those instances not able to access the broader Fediverse, and vice versa. Until discoverability gets taken care of, it will be challenging for users to find a good home – this leads to next point:
3. Authentication – The Fediverse at large needs to separate authentication out from instances. Instances may provide their own authentication, fine, but there needs to be better way to authenticate against something else other than an entire new instance of Lemmy. The ActivityPub protocol has clear definitions on what is an actor, and users shouldn’t need to deploy a Lemmy instance to identify themselves, separately from a Mastadon instance to identify themselves, separately from a… etc. This is because frankly…
4. Deployment of Lemmy is utter garbage. The official documentation’s getting started guide gets users setup with an instance where the UI container cannot talk to public, but the lemmy backend can? Why bother shipping an nginx container if the backend will just expose itself to the whole wide net? Also, let’s just pretend postgres container isn’t open to the whole world with a basic password… Trying to get it up and running with Traefik was a pain, just do a quick Google and see how many people have asked and gave up, as well as how many different ways people have tried to go at it (something something xkcd 927; I’ve contributed to a new one of my own per linked post on top!), and the dev basically just straight up going ‘we don’t support traefik’… also, each approach is not without problems…
5. Federation is a bitch. I am pretty proud of the way I’ve used override to not edit original docker compose, and locked my setup down a little. But, I’m not ready to have the instance open to the whole wide web without CloudFlare in front… but allegedly, Federation doesn’t work with CloudFlare… why? Good luck trying to get to even a popular sub’s scale without getting hit with DDOS when someone disagrees with something someone else posted.
There’s many more problems, and I genuinely want Lemmy to work. But, Lemmy is, lack of better words, “not yet ready” for prime time. It is thrown into the spotlight with Mastadon (which feels a bit more mature, at least from reading the docs) because of bad leadership at mega techs… It will take a lot of work for Lemmy to evolve and mature, before it can be “ready” to really absorb the mass of Redditors leaving Reddit.
- That certain community is beehaw.org by any chance? They also ask you to write pretty much an essay to join, and didn’t accept mine.
Not a lot of value in singling any community out… I think if it keeps up, eventually, they will just flip to private instances and de-federate themselves away from the larger fediverse…
I have an account on beehaw and I wrote like three sentences and was accepted, I wrote the same thing here on lemmy.ml not being accepted is probably more of an attribute of you
Regarding #2, I think not defederating might be an easier sell if users had the ability to block instances. Right now it’s just users and communities. Hate lemmygrad? You can block its communities one by one, but it’s kind of a pain. So instances only have the option of a full block.
Lemmygrad is a great instance, western chauvinist.
Lemmygrad is thoroughly obnoxious. Full stop. Also, you clearly have no idea what western chauvinism is if you’re calling me one.
Edit: To clarify, I don’t want Lemmygrad being defederated. It breaks up the Fediverse for little reason. But I do want users to be given the option to block instances on either the community or user level. Would I say the same thing about a right wing instance with a history of bigotry and hate? No, that’s another matter that goes beyond mere discomfort.
You for the past 3 years have been specifically propping up on Lemmy anything that aligns with NATO, while talking in a cheesy manner. You are the classical hideous western chauvinist. You hate Lemmygrad because you hate communism, and love neoliberal capitalism. Period.
Lemmygrad is not obnoxious, it is Anglosphere that is. Lemmygrad is pretty factual regarding history and geopolitics, and is the exact opposite of Anglo participants on internet. You hate Lemmygrad because they are anti imperialism.
You hate Lemmygrad because you hate communism
I dislike it because it is a personality cult and worships governments that have not earned that praise. Communism doesn’t enter into it. While I’m not communist, I don’t hate it. It has some interesting insights, but it’s hard to ignore that in practice it usually just makes a new ruling class that has no intention of ever releasing power. I’m interested to see where China goes over the next few decades as it shifts from playing catch up (easy productivity gains) to reaching parity (harder productivity gains).
western chauvinist
neoliberalism
At this point, you’re just picking pejoratives out of a hat marked “disagrees with me”. I don’t believe in Western superiority, even if I believe in certain values that are widely espoused in the West (free speech, democracy, etc.). But I’m not shy about being critical of my country when it goes astray from my values. And I’m free to do so because I live in a country where that is a right. Would you do the same for China? Would you feel safe doing so if you lived in China?
And for the record, my family has a long history of appreciating cultures around the world. I just don’t like authoritarianism, populism, and kleptocracy, regardless of what political brand is associated with it.
I dislike it because it is a personality cult and worships governments that have not earned that praise. Communism doesn’t enter into it.
It just coincidentally happens that all your history says otherwise. Years of your comments just being delusional abstractions, coincidentally siding with whoever is against China/Russia/Iran et al. It is definitely not a pattern, it is just mere coincidence. You have no degree of nuance, and its always hairsplitting aimed towards a goal of western neoliberal virtue signalling.
Countries that you say have not “earned that praise” happen to be countries that have not committed the atrocities that Anglo empire commits, which is funny since you do oppose the countries that do not commit atrocities, siding with the ones that do.
Again, you confirm my claims of western chauvinism, by claiming democracy is a “widely espoused” western principle. And it is funny, how China is more democratic than USA, since you bring that up. Hong Kong during the Basic Law issue had a poll conducted where citizens agreed to USA being a bigger threat to their democracy and freedom, than China would be. Guess what, Hong Kong does rank above USA on the Freedom Index, so there goes your argument.
Why has Assange not been freed in USA, land of the genocide, where he was extradited from UK? Why does Snowden live in arch enemy country of USA? How did Chelsea Manning suddenly become a NATO parrot? How come Daniel Hale suffered so much?
The fact is you love western neoliberal virtue signalling and Anglo supremacy, because you benefit from those atrocities and overseas superimperialist exploitation. Every government is authoritarian, socialists are just honest about it whereas liberals and conservatives are dishonest and malicious. You already are a populist when you parrot neoliberal trash. Kleptocracy probably best applies to USA, considering legalised and even fashionable lobbyist culture, where Europe is a very close second. Bribing and lobbying happens in all countries, but it happens the most in the countries that are on top of the superimperialist capitalist countries which are all Western, considering the transfer of wealth by means of imperialist plundery and loot has always been done by Anglos to East.
It’s sort of an asshole problem. All the cool people are walking away from Reddit, or at the very least trying to support the blackout/boycott. So all that’s left are the chronically online people, apathetic lurkers, and assholes who purposefully don’t care. The assholes are now seeming more vocal because all the logical voices are burned out or gone. Provided the good contributors/commenters stay away. Eventually lurkers won’t enjoy a ton of pissy comments on everything and look for more interesting discussion to peruse. Then the assholes will just be being assholes to each other, then be like man this place is full of assholes, and go look for a healthier community to be an asshole too because they don’t want people who fight back like they do lol.
Hey hey hey. I’m chronically online. That’s why I care enough to be here instead of Reddit!
Once - unfortunately - Apollo app will be down, in less than 2 weeks, I’m pretty sure Lemmy will surge and they will come complaining here 😅
Maybe. It’s not like there’s a Lemmy app (for iOS) that’s as good as Apollo.
Have you tried Jerboa for Lemmy? It is not Apollo but it is comfortable and ads free
Jerboa is for Android. Apollo is for iOS.
Memmy is in TestFlight if you fancied being a tester.
Same with mlem. It’s a little ahead of memmy in development right now.
Mlem has become really good since they updated the app two days ago.
They really need to fix some of their accessibility issues. Comment text cannot be resized which makes it impossible for me to use the app. Memmy respects the dynamic text sizing in iOS, so I’m using it for now. It’s not up to feature parity with Mlem but the developer is doing a great job with adding features.
Memmy also works natively on iPad. Mlem has just a zoomed iPhone version.
There’s definitely corpo sockpuppets and bots involved, some of which have even straight up posted AI bot warnings about not being able to generate offensive content (oops!) but there’s plenty of ignorant people too.
That said, I’m kind of OK with them staying on reddit because people like that had been making reddit progressively worse for years and years at it gained popularity. Hopefully the relative obscurity of Lemmy will prevent that from happening for a while yet.
I haven’t noticed that because I no longer look at reddit. I suggest you do the same.
Yeah, I don’t care what happens on there.
Yeah, OP is getting hate-baited hard.
Let them stay there then. We can’t force people to join us here. If they choose to believe those kind of brigading comments then they do not have the level of critical thinking to become a meaningful contributor to any site. Those who wanted to move have already moved. Those remaining there are those who chose to ignore the issue, or support reddit.
It’s too tiring going back and forth with these types of Reddit users. I gave up and just chill here
Years ago reddit put aside a cardinal rule of the internet: Don’t feed the trolls.
It was worse off for it from a user perspective. It’s been great for investors though.
“Don’t attribute malice when you can attribute stupidity.”
I would not be surprised at all if that user was not aware of which instance they opened or tried after opening join-lemmy.org. Many people are not very mindful or thorough or intentional in how they use technology or software or services. They probably do not even know what an instance is - and so linked the lemmy website.
Here’s the thing - we’ve been raised from birth to think “people don’t make things, companies do”.
Most people have never used software that isn’t company branded, they’ve never sat in a chair made by someone they know, they’ve never pulled food out of the ground. Almost all jobs set someone up doing a service with a supply chain behind them or doing one small step of something bigger.
It’s learned helplessness. They don’t have the concept of how they could do things outside of the hierarchy - solid chance they’ve tried, and since their skills are hyper-specialized and rely on big, expensive tools, they found they had a lot of gaps.
Anything you do outside of a company is a hobby to most people. And even then, people organize into sports leagues and buy fancy toys instead of just meeting up in the park with a ball… Do you really need to play by professional rulesets when you’re just trying to exercise?
This time around, I didn’t bother to explain why the decentralization is so important to my friends and family - even the technical ones are almost afraid of the idea of it.
Instead, I told them about the ways Reddit has picked up the harmful strategy that Facebook used, and that makes mobile gaming so addicting yet so unfulfilling: show them less of the content they want to change the reward schedule, training you to use the app longer for a smaller dopamine hit. Show you content that will make you feel angry, driving up engagement. And most importantly, always wave the promise of another dopamine hit.
The app is eggregious - it sprinkles in stuff from top communities I left a long time ago because they suck, it gives you suggestions for new communities and presents them like interaction from other users, and it sends you notifications to tempt you back in all the time.
And this is just the beginning, it’s going to get a lot worse With all the other social networks eyeing their own strategies to squeeze their users, it’s going to suck across the board, and good luck trying to build relationships outside these platforms
I think it’s important to remember we’re animals, and we’re not just trainable, we’re the most trainable by a large margin. The best of us have just a handful of moments where we see beyond our instincts and conditioning, and decide to train ourselves
This project is important, because it can give us back communities small enough to get to know each other, while providing a larger forum for ideas, and with a design that can shrug off attempts to control it.
It’s going to fragment. Sections of it will break off into echo chambers, admins will sell out their users, and parts will offer a curated walked garden hosted. But it can survive all that because of one simple truth - unless one person captures the majority of the network, they’re going to have to cut off the best part of the network. Social media can be profitable without sucking, but to rake in profits it has to suck - and even then, we can start up servers for friends and family, and rebuild the network organically
I’m working for an app streamlined enough I can send it to my mom and have her sign up without getting scared off, and I think I’ve got a solid idea of how to improve discovery of communities without becoming distributed rather than decentralized. Other people are building their own visions of what this can become, and a lot of people are writing impressive code (Lemmy has no business scaling as well as it has), and the beauty of it is that it all competes while adding to the whole.
I’ve been at it for 30 hours now, but I can’t shake the feeling that me getting this out this out in the next few days is going to matter if this is going to become what I hope instead of another shard of Reddit.
But every time I step away to take a breather, I end up back on here and see a glimpse of what this could be
The only way to change the world is to release something self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing and intrinsically positive, and hope it grows
Little pockets of culture can exist in the cracks of society. Kudos to all involved. I’m not sure I can meaningfully contribute as of yet due to family/time constraints but I’m here to comment and upvote.
That’s very exciting to read. Thank you for your service.
Is there a Lemmy c/bestof somewhere yet?
Where is the gold? Oh wait…
🏅
Neoliberals and saying “there is no alternative”, name a more iconic duo
The wheel of history will succumb redditors who refuse to accept that their system will pass just as all other before it have.
Spam-bots and strange links.
what does that have to with neoliberals lol
Probably a lot. They love bootlicking
Of course there’s no viable alternatives to Reddit. Why would someone create another dumpster fire?
The people who like it are here. The people that don’t are still there. Not that complicated.
Also, people have a natural tendency to form “teams.” Even if they don’t particularly like what Reddit’s admins have been doing they may identify as part of “team Reddit” and so see other teams as the enemy.
Besides, the way to convert isn’t by arguing. You do it by providing a good platform (not there yet), good content (not there yet) and good community (kinda there?).
I’d say we’re at “okay platform” level, and “okay content if you’re into the specific things we’ve got okay content for at this point.”
It’s a gradual process. The Fediverse is slowly getting better, and Reddit is slowly getting worse, and eventually someday they’ll pass each other in the wilderness.
