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.

  • Zebov@lemmy.world
    45·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • Extra_Cucumber_2979@lemmy.world
    26·
    2 years ago

    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 😅

  • Wander@yiffit.net
    25·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • YolkBrushWork402@kbin.social
      9·
      2 years ago

      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

      • Wander@yiffit.net
        5·
        2 years ago

        We need to ask Louis Rossmann to join the fediverse. He’s been super critical with Reddit on YouTube.

        • impulse@lemmy.world
          4·
          2 years ago

          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.

    • Houdini@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      Exactly. Let the milquetoast mouth-breathers stay behind. With sufficient brain-drain, Reddit will eventually look like Quora.

  • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
    12·
    2 years ago

    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.: [email protected] and [email protected]). 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.domain for 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.

    • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
      31·
      2 years ago

      Regarding #2, I think not defederating might be an easier sell if users had the ability to block instances. Right not 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.

        • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
          41·
          2 years ago

          Lemmygrad is thoroughly obnoxious. Full stop. Also, you clearly have no idea what western chauvinism is if you’re calling me one.

          • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.mlEnglish
            23·
            2 years ago

            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.

            • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              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.

              • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.mlEnglish
                11·
                2 years ago

                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.

    • bankimu@lemm.ee
      1·
      2 years ago
      1. 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.
      • aster@lemmy.ml
        11·
        2 years ago

        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

  • NRVulture@kbin.social
    11·
    2 years ago

    Of course there’s no viable alternatives to Reddit. Why would someone create another dumpster fire?

  • XanXic@lemmy.world
    10·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • Kroxx@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years ago

      Honestly it’s pretty great this way, lemmy is most of what reddit was to me without all of those problematic groups you mentioned.

    • cranstonapple@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Hey hey hey. I’m chronically online. That’s why I care enough to be here instead of Reddit!

    • jpenczek@lemmy.world
      51·
      2 years ago

      My biggest issue with Lemmy is lack of userbase… which is fixable by signing up for Lemmy.

      Figured best case scenario other people make the switch, worst case I’ll forget this service even exists.

      Also does anyone know how to enable dark mode, or if there is a dark mode?

      • ImDonaldDunn@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 years ago

        Once there are good mobile apps in the app stores, I think we’ll start seeing a surge in adoption. The other big piece is moderation tools. If Lemmy can manage to build better mod tools than Reddit, it would be a big draw for power mods

      • Aurix@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        There is a lot of activity to spend many hours here. Discover more communities here. There is a dark mode, go to the settings page. You will find it in a drop down menu.

      • Mintyytea@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        yeah that’s what I’m struggling with too, like it’d be great if we could encourage people to try these, but at the same time I don’t want to give them a bad first impression to turn them off forever if they can not stand it’s still a baby project (understandable). I honestly don’t think it’s that hard to start using these fediverse products though, and I feel like the posts saying “lemmy will never take off”, “kbin is too hard to use” only gave me barriers to start using it. And then when I did start, I was like oh this is great, everyone’s talking, it’s a close community

        • moon_matter@kbin.social
          2·
          2 years ago

          The biggest issue is how easily people are taken “off-site” when linking to another instance, leaving them essentially logged out and unable to subscribe or otherwise participate. Users should be presented an option to be redirected to the relative view within their instance or go external. With the “external” link in much smaller font below the preferred option. Kind of like how Steam or Discord has a pop-up asking if you “trust this site” whenever you leave their spaces.

  • ono
    8·
    2 years ago

    Some subreddits are also using automod to remove comments linking to Lemmy.

    I hope journalists will put a spotlight on the deceptive tactics Reddit is using.

  • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 years ago

    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

  • bigbox@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 years ago

    It’s too tiring going back and forth with these types of Reddit users. I gave up and just chill here

    • forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml
      2·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • Soltros@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      Also, Lemmy is a great alternative, simply because regardless of the devs political views, literally anyone can fork it on GitHub, make Lemmy2, and link it up with OG Lemmy and Kbin.

    • Micromot@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      Reading the OP in that post argue physically hurts me, they just seem to be such an annoying person

  • PortugalSpaceMoon@infosec.pubEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    As a tech savy person, I can confidently say lemmy is not a viable reddit alternative at this stage for an arbitrary reddit user. The UI and clients are just terrible and full of small bugs, annoyances and inconsistencies. Sure, it will eventually get there, but negative opinions about lemmy are not completely unmerrited. Just as I’m typing this, I get screen tears and flickering elements. It’s just very, very bleeding edge and I can absolutely see how someone trying it for 5 minutes would be turned off. If you want to capture the masses, the user experience has to impeccable.

    PS: my first try at submitting this response timed out. This is my second try.

    • killick@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      It doesn’t have to be impeccable. It doesn’t need corporations to buy ads. It just has to keep getting better and not die. Look at Linux. It never did overtake MacOS & Windows on desktops. But it keeps getting better and it didn’t die and it took over server rooms. Look at Mastodon. It’s nowhere near as popular as Twitter and maybe never will be, but it’s 5 years old and is steadily growing. I like hanging out there. Oak trees start as acorns.

      • TheDudeAbiding@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        That’s the thing though, criticism of lemmy does not necessarily mean hate. We can acknowledge and be honest about the problems without shitting on the platform. My experience over the last week with kbin would have been way beyond the technical know-how of say, my sister. It’s ready for the average user. It will be, devs are kicking ass, but we’re not there yet and that’s okay. I would rather people know what they’re in for here than to show up expecting a polished, bug-free interface.

    • AlexanderESmith@kbin.social
      31·
      2 years ago

      Thing is; I don’t want the “arbitrary reddit user”. I want the low-effort user to get irritated and leave.

      • AnonTwo@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        That would likely also err content creators to leave, just because fewer people would be available to see the posts.

        There certainly can (and should) be places that your typical user doesn’t want to go to, but if there’s nowhere for them to go then it will cause a hard stop on fediverse adoption.

        Plus, it’s not like many of these issues wouldn’t affect non-arbitrary users. just they’re willing to put up with it. And that’s not a sign of a good site.

    • HawkMan@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      you only need to move the more techie knowledgeable user base here. The ones that mod and post content.

      The average user provides nothing to the site but dead traffic. They’ll come when the content is here.

    • XGC75@kbin.social
      01·
      2 years ago

      Here’s an example: how can I subscribe to the topics I want to follow? I don’t want to see the 198 or whatever it is posts. Nor programmer humour. Lemmy has a great community of fans and users but if I can’t see only what I want I’m not going to use it.

      • hihusio@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I don’t know about lemmy but I’m using kbin and it’s pretty easy to subscribe to magazines (aka communities) and block the ones I don’t want to see

        • AnonTwo@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          Speaking of Kbin i’ve had one gripe

          If you turn on the top bar, it doesn’t show your subscribed magazines, just random magazines. I can click the Subscribed page but if nobody has posted in that magazine today It won’t show up.

          I did just find that there is a place that just lists the magazine subscriptions if you need to see them, but it’s tucked in profile and you actually have to scroll to the right of the profile options to see it.

        • Killakomodo@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          Yeah tbh while obviously not going to be as polished as the reddit app or a third party app because they have YEARS more headway, I find kbin to be working pretty fuckin good. If you told me a few months ago I would be rarely if ever checking reddit I would have laughed.

          It has it’s problems as anything like this will , but most of the stuff I want is working fine.

      • maegul@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        “Oh no … my very new free software that’s not selling my data and run by VC overlords has some bugs”

        I know I’m being an asshole there, but this is about more than usability, it’s about values and speaking with your feet. Not that your comments about usability and bugs don’t matter … they do! My issue is that it is way too normal to put convenience and usability front, center and above everything else.

        So many conversations with intelligent people about things like this end with “but is it as convenient!?” If that’s all we care about, then we don’t really deserve anything better. In the mean time, we can try to adjust what we and others care about.

        • XGC75@kbin.social
          0·
          2 years ago

          I could really care less if it’s a part of something “good”. I just want somewhere to kick back and relax, maybe learn something or gain a new perspective. For that purpose convenience is king. In any case the better the product the more others will use federated alternatives and better/more diverse the content would be. And yeah, I already threw money at the devs to show my appreciation for what’s been built so far.

          I mean, I’m willing to subscribe to a Reddit service, too, if their in-house app wasn’t hot shit.

          • Account5600@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 years ago

            Couldn’t.

            If you COULD care less, then you still care to some degree because there is a level of caring you COULD go down to.

            If you COULDN’T care less, then you are literally already at the lowest level of caring and could not possibly go lower.