Honestly, that's fine - Lemmy is now a known alternative and best of all, has time to grow more naturally and be better situated for the next eventual migration (I'm a Reddit migrant myself).
Not to mention, I spend way less time mindlessly browsing lemmy—Reddit was like a compulsion. To the point that, when I knew I was leaving July, I was actually getting worried about my ability to do so. I never want to feel that way about another app. I get on lemmy, I browse around for a bit, but I don’t feel the utter need to keep scrolling. Some stuff interests me, some doesn’t…but the stuff that doesn’t is usually relevant to someone in my life. So I send it to them, and sometimes these are people I don’t typically talk to regularly.
All in all, lemmy has been a net positive in my life. I still get the app I can scroll when I’m looking to kill time, I can still write about stuff I care about, I can interact with other people…it’s the perfect balance for me. I don’t need that “everything all the time” shit. In fact, I’ve been trying to pull away from that entirely baseless desire in my life, which is nothing but a capitalist mindset. We don’t need everything. I don’t want to think I want everything.
Lemmy still has the natural limit of content being posted to the platform at a slower rate than you browse them.
But who, exactly, is supposed to create this “niche content” for them? I think this is something we underestimate—large swaths of people see themselves as consumers of quality content. It is not for them to bring in comments or interesting finds to the communities. This I think is what makes the internet ripe for centralization. You can’t be a non-paying consumer and choose your menu. You can pay with your behavior datapoints and get fads packaged to you, or you can help create an ecosystem where you don’t have to be spied on every click and tap of the day. Choose your path and make peace with it. The worst would be to help create content for a community and be spied while at it.
When Lemmy has a critical mass to support communities that aren’t the main ones the niche content will come.
It’ll just take time.
There’s no rush because reddit is not getting better.
Lemmy will only improve with more people who will come after each successive reddit fuck up.
Reddit didn’t start with niche communities, that was the tail end of years of community building.
You’d rather it be slow growth. The developers need time to tune the software.
Agree with you.
One thing I have always found precious for my 10+ yrs on forums like reddit and 3+ yrs on fediverse is how high quality conversations are by people who usually don’t obsess about numbers and publicity in likes and upvotes etc.
Genuine communities here on the fediverse will evolve at their own pace.
To Reddit? No. They fucked up RIF, and that's how I browsed.
Both suck.
Reddit has the base and the niche communities and the activity, but is scummy for its own reasons.
Lemmy has the structure/organization but none of the niche interest activity that kept me on Reddit for so long. Plus it's got all the weird pro china shit and an even worse problem with the hive mind bullshit than Reddit.
With the death of third party apps, I would say that my time that was formerly spent on Reddit is now spent 10% still on Reddit, 15-20% on Lemmy, and the rest just isn't spent on that sort of thing anymore.
I've been reading more, maybe a 2-5% increase on Facebook of all places, going to the source for news (Axios, Washington Post mostly), gaming with the computer time, maybe a 15% increase on YouTube time...started streaming more shows and stuff, and spent more time outside, even in the sweltering summer heat.
So basically for me, Lemmy has turned out to not be a reddit replacement, and instead that time has just been split up many different ways.
I do miss Reddit, and wish that Lemmy had indeed been a workable alternative, but it's just not. I won't go back to Reddit because I accessed it 95% on a mobile 3rd party app...but just because I won't go back doesn't mean that Lemmy is just as good.
As time goes on, I'm starting to realize that the time I still spend here is mostly because I want it to be better and I'm trying to be active long enough to see that change happen...but the longer I just kill time here waiting for it, the more I see shit I don't like.
I would expect that while I'll still keep my account open, I'll probably be done with Lemmy by the end of the year.
I feel most of these issues are just due to how small the userbase is.
I just see too much of the same posts and I'm not sure if it's a user issue or not sometimes i reopen the front page after 3 days and 25% of the posts I've already seen plus a lot of posts are about reddit anyway :(
6/10
Thing is that is a fixable problem. It's technologically very possible to set up a simple algorithm to try to get like 3-5 posts max from one community, have them be as recent as possible, and return the most popular ones.
Reddit has a problem that is rooted much more deeply; their CEO.
Lemmy reminds so much of the beginnings of Reddit when I started there over 17 years ago.
Totally. I can only see it improving from here. It's clear there are tons of committed users, one's that will continue posting for years to come.
I am one of them.
Honestly kinda cool that I recognize a few recurring people
The cat heavy content is a throwback lol
A bit of downtime is good. Gives me chance to work on Sync until the next wave joins.
The lack of niche communities is one thing, but the real long term drag is the fact that most of this place is just c/Linux or c/linuxmemes even if it's just c/memes or literally any community.
Can't go anywhere without some "Microsoft bad, Chromium bad" content or comments clogging everything up. Keep that shit in the places it belongs or you're going to see more people abandon the site as they realize it's all just the same people with the same three interests in every place.
That and it really feels like the worst of reddit came here, I've seen people get downvoted to hell over obvious misinterpretation of their comments by people who have almost zero reading comprehension skills.
Lemmy needs to fix its shit.
Me: I am the niche content now. Starts up 10 communities and actually posts to them.
Like, I need help, I can't keep this pace of posting up forever... Please contribute!
I’m not a creator (certainly not very good at it anyway) but I do my best to engage with content and comment. Especially those lonely, lowly posts with little traction.
I admit when I join a community and I frequently see only one poster, I pretty much assume it’s dead and move on.
It's a bit disappointing that most of the communities for specific content are so inactive on here, but I still prefer it to the types of banal, waste-of-time, repetitive content and comments that plague reddit and have caused my eyes to roll in a tailspin.
Do I really have to choose one or the other, though?
I like motorcycles and assholes, I have a hard time not going back to reddit.
It's good for me, keeps me online for about an hour before I go out and get an irl life
I am just never going back, lemmy has less content of course but the comments on what is here is just a totally different level, reddit just feels dirty and corrupt in comparison,
I'm really trying to be positive, guys. I'm daily driving Lemmy, watching all the content here. I've only logged to reddit once thinking "at least old.reddit.com works", and it does, but after clicking on posts it goes back to new so I said "screw it" and I'm sticking with Lemmy for now. But all communities I've followed on Reddit are either small, non-existent, or just bots reposting Reddit posts. I know about this site, and I'm guessing a lot of you too, by googling "reddit alternative". Hate on Reddit will only get you so far. Maybe I'm wrong here, but in my opinion main problem of Lemmy is a lack of reach. I like Lemmy and I'll definitely stick with it, but I don't think it will be as big as reddit. Lemmy needs something that would make people go to it, and "it's not reddit" is not enough.
I used to use Sync for Reddit. Now that you can use Sync for Lemmy, it's easy for me.
Hopefully the next exodus, Lemmy will have a better way to boost visibility of niche communities in active/hot timelines. Reddit was good at doing this, not sure how they did it. Right now it's really hard to grow small communties unless you explicitly keep checking on them. So it is a problem, but there is a solution that hopefully we'll figure out soon. Also we have pretty mature phone apps now, but the desktop site is pretty lacking unless you use one of those alternative front ends.
The only reason I left is removal of third party apps. The more Lemmy users shit on the rest of it the more likely I am to return occasionally on desktop cause it makes me think people here dont want the same things I want, or actually have problems with the things I want.
With the exception of a few of the "grad" communities, Lemmy has just been a whole lot less toxic. I don't deny occasionally slipping back into reddit for exactly two subs that don't seem to have any chance of taking off in Lemmy. But Lemmy has really killed my reddit urge permanently. Every time I enter reddit, I see a message trolling or attacking me or whatever.
I constantly see super mega niche communities here. To the point that it is completely absurd, like a "memes with black and white pictures, no text and 2 emojis" community would be. What is up with that? Everyone on Lemmy has his own "community" or what is this nonsense?
Nah. I think I'll stay.
I, a manifest Redditor, have sat down, and shall refuse to go back to the empire. I have satted, and shall remain seated.
For all those returning to the grave where the Snoo once stood, good luck. I hear the bots are awful this time of year.
I will probably leave eventually. I won't go anywhere else. I'm pairing down my social media. More specifically the ones that i use too much. I want to keep it for a few more months and see not some kind "shiny new toy" thing.
You'll be back, soon you'll see, you'll remember that you belong to me 🎶
I can't go back. I was ina ban purge and I wasn't even a mod.
I'd love to see more niche communities, but honestly I mostly just accepted it as is. I needed less time on social media anyways so it works for me.
Isn't Lemmy itself niche?
People are leaving Lemmy for Reddit?
Hells no. 13 years of Reddit and I'm done with the place. Even if Lemmy burned down in flames I'd still not go back to the poison place called Reddit
