I just saw this post over on r/modcoord which is basically a massive list of subreddits participating in the blackout protest. If I’m being honest I haven’t seen this much anger and coordinated frustration since the era right before the digg exodus.
Assuming more and more subreddits join in, it’s going to send a pretty massive message to the users who interact with a blacked out subreddit. Then I’m trying to imagine what happens if after a massive coordinated blackout, Reddit continue on the current trajectory. Is Lemmy even prepared to handle the amount of potential incoming traffic that API closure could lead to? It’s absolutely bonkers to me that the Reddit team might just stay the course…
I do have to wonder if Reddit knows something we don’t… This is… wayyy too much to ignore. I assume they’ve done analysis of the worse cases and mass user departure. The only reason I can assume they’re not backing down is due to the very high upfront costs of Reddit. Less users = less costs which theoretically means more profit. You have a very good point, and its something all Lemmy server owners need to be prepared for, which is a huge influx of users joining on the blackouts, even then, it may not be enough, unintentional DDOS attacks are still DDOS attacks. This is a golden opportunity of a lifetime for Lemmy, but I fear with even a 10th of Reddits current userbase, Lemmy admins won’t be able to keep up… I feel for all the developers and admins that make Lemmy possible, and I really hope it goes well for everyone involved. Donate to server admins and the main project if you have a few dollars spare, or if anyone is comfortable with coding I’m sure they need some devs.
Reddit knows something we do know: that Lemmy is still young and still has some serious issues with scaling. By pulling the plug and dumping that many people on Lemmy now, all those people will be met with an error page instead of a viable Reddit alternative, driving them back to Reddit.
I can only hope it doesn’t actually play out like this…
This was my initial experience. Tried Lemmy, it wouldn’t let me sign up. Back to reddit. Tried again a day later (yesterday) on a different instance and it worked. People who aren’t so persistent might not try again though 🤷♂️
I hate to say this but Lemmy is way less user friendly than Reddit. I doubt anything close to 10% of reddit will come over here. This site should focus on improving new user acquisition.
Not a good name for a social media site. Google/Youtube searching “Lemmy” just gives results for a guitarist
The average joe doesn’t understand how federation works
You have to decide which place to make an account
You have to write an essay to join (I’ve seen people complain about this)
The top instances look very political/left wing
If you’re persistent, educate yourself, and make it through the process, you can join a site with ~1000 active users.
Following remote communities is unintuitive. You have to search the link from your instance to subscribe to another instance (e.g., if your account is on beehaw, you have to search [email protected]. You can’t click their subscribe button on lemmy.ml.)
You and I know that different instances of Lemmy are mutually accessible and so #3 and #5 are not a problem. But for the uneducated all the above are significant barriers for entry/retention.
“just gives results… for a… guitarist.”
lol! Lemmy was mind-blowing amazing and I’m not at all surprised he’s all over the top results. I get your point though and def not trying to disparage you :)
I’m more into black/death metal so I’m not too versed on Motorhead. But I hear Lemmy was the GOAT
#1 Same with a lot of new social media, discord actually meant something different before 2015
#2 They don’t need to at a technical level
#3 If you find it challenging to decide which server to join then I really don’t know what to tell you. Its a small barrier to entry and objectively a good thing. An small IQ test of sorts.
#4 I’d imagine this is for spam / bot protection, and it may change in the future. I kinda like it, it keeps a lot of toxic users / trolls out. Sure the community is smaller but its more inviting for those that took the time.
#5 How is that different from reddit? View r/all at anytime and it was composed of left wing articles and users.
#6 Not 100% sure what your arguing here
#7 I actually find the idea of similar communities on different instances confusing (eg. [email protected] & !memes@beehaw)
edit: spelling
edit 2: it may be a little confusing to users that all servers can talk to eachother through federation so thats probably what confuses people. This could be explained better on the join-lemmy webpage. either way this will probably be similar to mastadon in terms of how it’ll go down, lots of users join, instances have a hard time keeping up at first, then they stabilize.
Personally I think the requirement to explain why you want to join a lemmy instance is 100% brilliant. If you can answer coherently you’re clearly not a robot, and probably don’t intend to spam.
The text field itself doesn’t require any minimum or maximum character counts so there’s no pressure to be wordy. In fact I think those who read that information appreciates when you can achieve some brevity but still communicate clearly in your own words why you’re signing up.
Additionally different instances have different priorities and needs; so I suspect they can ask for even more information or writing samples if needed; or ask for as little as possible to discourage users from being too crazy.
100% agree, I kinda hope they keep it in a way because its probably better than most standard captchas.
You’re right, and the manual signups should help slow the flood of users.
Like I said, #3 and #5 aren’t a problem if you know about federation. But without understanding the concept of federation you might have some misunderstandings about Lemmy. For example, you might think that when you sign up for an instance you can only see communities on that instance. So the choice of instance becomes very important. Alternatively, you might think that all instances are automatically connected. So you might not know that instance admins can block other instances (like how beehaw blocks lemmygrad). Then, because you want nothing to do with lemmygrad, you might decide not to be a part of Lemmy.
By point #6, I just meant to say that Lemmy is a much smaller community than redditors are used to.
Also, as an addendum, not all of these are problems for me. Clearly, I’m using Lemmy so I made it past these hurdles lol. But, yeah, some people are going to see that you have to write an essay and just nope outta here. Some of those people aren’t toxic, they’re just lazy. And, in many ways, Lemmy forces you to go that extra mile which is going to hurt its user growth.
Yes and thats true aswell, some instances aren’t connected to one another so that might be an issue for someone just picking a random instance. The solution is quite simple though, make it clear in the join-lemmy page the federation status, or have a link to all the banned instances the admins have put in place. Overall I’m still very hopeful and worried about the coming days, this community has already grown but its not over yet.
I saw one of the Lemmy devs say they’re a little unprepared cause they’re working on a pretty big performance overhaul still.
Timing is critical with these kind of migrations and if a lot of people flock to Lemmy just to have it croak at the new load it could really turn people off of Lemmy before they can even try it
Reddit knows they have sudo access, and that ultimately the upset users are not that large, just fairly vocal, and won’t miss them. They’re probably planning to let this play out and know they can force the subs open again with new moderators if it comes to it. I think they’re banking on most users merely being annoyed that their favorite subs are closed for a day and then forgetting all about it.
if they are it’s a good approach: look no further than climate protests for how people get when they are even mildly inconvenienced even though it’s the literal existence of the planet we’re talking about there. a lot of ordinary people love protest–as long as it literally never affects them in any way, and they never have to see it or hear about it. they’re probably not going to like it when it’s something this… banal.
I’m hoping for the best, but fearing the worst as far as Reddit goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the math and just don’t care.
If lemmy keeps growing, and I can source a cozy one stop spot for hentai and memes, I’ll nuke my 11 year reddit account.
Reddit might nuke the hentai subs long before then (since they’re going public). Hell, Imgur just deleted all NSFW content (after the creator sold it)
That’s why I’m here, patiently waiting.
they know that they can circumvent moderators’ lockdown and make subreddits public at will and sack the mods who don’t agree with the change, and they’ll still have tons of people willing become a moderator for the sense of pride and accomplishment that you get from ruling your tiny little castle.
I’ve got my popcorn ready for whatever happens down there.
popcorn tastes good.
Me too, here we go!