I really want to like lemmy, but it's difficult. I'm new to all this fediverse thingy, and I might just have old habits and perceptions how things should work but... I keep seeing the same posts more than once, iOS experience is not that good really, sometimes I see dead posts from 2 years ago for some reason, despite having subscribed to like 30 communities there aren't that many new posts to read.
Part of it probably that subreddits had millions of people so a lot of posts every minute, but it still feels underwhelming.
It's not as doomscrolly. Maybe I should find something else to waste my time on haha
What is your experience with lemmy? Maybe I just do things wrong. Let me know
i mean so far, I'm enjoying it. sure, the community isn't as large, but that's mostly a good thing. on reddit, if i made a post, it would be like a 25% chance to get hundreds of comments, and a 75% chance to get none. here, I've gotten a few, high quality responses on every question post I've made. i do miss the "auto hide read posts" feature, but maybe that'll get added some day
Is there a way to stop the endless loading of posts on the website? Because every time I try to click a post, it moves down because a new post loaded, and this happens every ten seconds, constantly.
Fediverse currently reminds me of Reddit from 10 years ago in frequency of content. There is something nice about not being in the rat race, less toxicity.
The reality is that there was/is no reddit alternative and right now we're all in this transitory phase where we're all looking for a new home. We'll all just have to wait for the dust to settle. Lemmy isn't perfect but is improving and additionally other alternatives like kbin and tildes are in the works.
To your larger point, much of what you're feeling is the abrupt break in habits. I've been using the gap to develop more positives ones, and it's been great.
A thought came to my mind when reading your comment.
Instead of finding a new home, let's make lemmy our new home. Let's try to populate lemmy more, get its activity up, and post more than we would've on reddit (since we have less users, we would need more posts per user), so it can stand a chance at being a reddit competitor.
Yeah I agree and am working on it in terms of engagement. Usability is going to be key for whichever platform eventually takes over. It could absolutely be Lemmy, but I'm watching for other possibilities as well.
Yes, make homes! we need so much more hardware, while personal instances may not be a good idea, we are so short on compute that if you are inclined run your own instance, bring your friends!
The experience on smaller faster instances is already comparable, the content flow, really not bad either though it takes about an hour of finding and subbing to the communities you want and a day for your instance to really start grabbing the content for you.
I've been told my handle should work on all the lemmys but so far it only works on lemmy.one. I tried logging in with this at lemmy.world and beehaw and it didn't work. I tried creating a new login on both of those and it also didn't work. I want to like it but I'm confused and frustrated. I'll give it some time and see where the dust settles as you said. Call me old fashioned though but I just don't think shitposting on a forum should be so damn complicated.
You should never have to go to the actual websites for the other instances. Just like email, you wouldn’t expect to be able to use your Gmail account to log into Yahoo, right? Use lemmy.one as your homepage and browse everything from there. From there, you can use the Communities section to search/browse communities hosted on any instance, including Beehaw and lemmy.world.
You don't need to create multiple Lemmy accounts. You can search for and find and join subs from lemmy.world on your Lemmy.one account. it's not instantly intuitive coming from Reddit, but once you make the connection to the other subs on different instances its established for you
Agree that it shouldn't be so complicated. I see that as a major flaw of the platform that will curtail adoption, but who knows, maybe one will win out over the others?
In any case, my understanding is that you can't log into the other instances with your username from lemmy.one, but you can read posts and interact with communities on different lemmy sites. For instance, I'm commenting from lemmy.world on a post you made using lemmy.one at a community hosted on lemmy.ml, but we can both read each other's comments, and so can people that signed up on other instances like beehaw.org.
It will get better quickly—there are people working around the clock on apps and improvements right now. This isn’t like your normal social media site where they can use seed money and advertising to buy the best infrastructure right off the bat. This is a grassroots effort to make something that can evolve into a unique and independent service.
If we all stick it out with alternative options like this right now, we will be looking at a much freer future for online communication later. If we get annoyed and go crawling back to the capitalist overlords at FB/Twitter/Reddit, then we give them everything they wanted in the first place, and the internet will take one more step towards being a walled garden casino of ideas.
Are you on mobile or are you using desktop? The mobile app is definitely still in development so it's missing a lot of those QOL things that you are missing.
For me it's been helpful to use that fediverse search tool, and copy and paste it into the search. Seems to work better on desktop. I've got a decent feed going today, but it's definitely a work in progress.
I remember HATING Reddit after the great Digg migration. The information was presented in a different way and the discussions seemed to be the focus rather than the linked content. It took a while to get used to it and I'm feeling a bit of the same here. There are a ton of similarities that are already here, so it's not as jarring and things are improving every day.
I feel like I'm interacting more here than I did on Reddit for a long time. By the time anything showed up on my feed over there, it was 1 day old, had 5000 comments, and had devolved into memes.
You aren't doing anything wrong! This site/app (lemmy) and the concept (fediverse) are still super early days so there are going to be many problems. The site has some layout issues and there isn't nearly as much content as Reddit but that's just because it is new.
The most important bit, to me at least, is that the fundamental idea of the fediverse is good. We have had to many instances where social sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter can just decide what people can and can't say, they can remove our content and they can monetize it all without doing any real work of their own as far as creating content. The idea of the fediverse ensures that no one server, person or company has all the content and thus the control.
I really hope people stick with something fediverse whether it be lemmy, kbin or any of the other projects out there. Post content there, cross post it from Reddit if you really have to post to Reddit too for whatever reason. Please don't give these companies all the control anymore.
What I'd recommend in your case is sorting the posts by "hot" instead of "active" which is the default setting. Posts get up the active sorting whenever somebody comments on them or upvotes (I think?), even if they are very old, whereas hot should only show you new and currently popular posts. You'll still see the post that you've already seen and a setting for that is clearly missing, but it should still be an improvement.
Honestly man, as much as I 100% agree on the UI difficulties, it's like a breath of fresh air. There's good music posted, people posted books and I looked and really wanted to read them. It's more human. There's this tiny little handful of content here, but it's not all same-y and in-joke-y and weird.
I'm not trying to hate on reddit, I still go to reddit for news because of more or less what you're talking about (the weird sorting in the newsfeed here and the lack of certain content). But what I like about here is that there are nerdy people, there's real content, there's not this weird hivemind and endless dopamine content. The great stuff about reddit was always the in-depth storytelling and unique content, to me, not just the gratification aspect of everything working right and new content popping up. I'm happy with Lemmy despite the hiccups because it seems like it's getting back to that.
I got the beta Mlem for iPhone. I’m liking it better than the mobile web. For two days it seems to be growing ok. I don’t miss the ads every other post for sure! (Didn’t have on Apollo either)
I’m on an iPad and using the web experience and am really liking it. I was able to find enough similar communities that I’m getting a similar feed to Reddit and it’s growing like crazy. I’m not seeing posts and content pop in very fast. On the home page I sort by new and subscribed
Yeah, that's been my experiance too. The platform only has about 12,000 active users on it. Mastadon, in comparison, has 1.2 million active daily users. it's alot more than previously, but still nothing in the grand scheme of things. More people are coming in though and it is still growing but at this rate, what I believe to be 3,000 new active users in a day, it'll take a bit.
In the mean time, thank you for taking the initiative and posting. To others be the change you want to see, try posting a bit.
Give it some time, you'll start to see more and a bigger variety of posts. Additionally, change your sort of posts once in awhile, and enable the "all" selection and you'll see a bigger variety of posts
I mean, you're being realistic, and nobody can fault you for that. The jank is going to be too much for some people, they'll come here maybe but won't stick around. Other people will come and think that the positive aspects are more important than the negative ones and they'll migrate.
I'm a FOSS nerd and advertising makes me physically sick, so I'm more than willing to put up with the frustrating things about Lemmy.
My one advice is, if you want to see more content then post it.
One of your issues is probably sorting by Active instead of sorting by Hot. A major difference in the experience on Lemmy is the "Active" sort method being the default.
If I'm spending less time staring at my phone and more time picking up a book or something, all the better for me. I've found myself engaging more and doomscrolling less though, so the time feels more well spent even though I'm spending less time then I would have on reddit.
I agree, I think it has a lot of potential, but the difficulty in discovering other communities is a barrier that most won't want to cross. Having to manually search a specific string in order to subscribe is just too cumbersome. I hope that improves. I think if discoverability was better, everyone would be here and interacting. But it's too different that I could see most giving it a quick try and then giving up. Im an addict though so I'm muddling through it. I think people here don't really realize what the average user is like, and how most don't even know that third party apps exist.
I’ve had old posts pop up a few times, but not often.
I mostly lurked on Reddit, because it felt pretty useless to comment in larger subreddits. So far, it’s a lot more pleasant to comment here and see how communities might grow.
Getting out of the habit of doom scrolling has been the most positive change for me. I pop in a few times a day and check active and then new, then find other things to do. It’s better for my mental health and I’m more productive.
In my opinion, were in the 'keep swimming' fishing boat scene from Nemo.
Reddit wants to stay the 'homepage of the internet' but also force everyone to go through their tools for ad bucks.
If we succeed, we can bust our communities out of the centralized net and reform on the other side.
We fail by not working together here today in this moment, we have to use this event to convince the average person to switch now, we might not get another opportunity like this.
The default sorting is by "active" which to me doesn't show a lot of new content (from the last hours). Switching to hot improves the experience a lot.
Since Lemmy isn't built to trap you for hours on end to get that sweet ad revenue, you can just run out of new stuff to see and then stop lemmying. Bust open the eReader or get to that backlog of bookmarked articles.
Recognise that I used to spend too much time on Reddit and I should spend less time on social media in general. "Not as doomscrolly" is a feature for me, although I recognise this isn't for everyone.
I know what you mean. The biggest issue I'm having is finding and subscribing to communities that are not a part of the instance I joined with.
I kept seeing links that listed communities I was interested in subscribing to, but then it would ask me to log in, I'd put in my credentials, only for the log in to not work. I finally realized I had to make a new account with that instance, and then i could log in and join it. I don't want to have to juggle between 3 or 4 accounts to enjoy content, plus much if it is duplicated as some instance are linked, but others are not.
Also I use Jerboa to browse lemmy, don't have a PC, and would rather use an app than my web browser(Brave).
You can subscribe to remote instances from your own instance. You shouldn't be using multiple accounts.
For example, you are on lemmy.world, and the group you replied to is on lemmy.ml. I'm replying to the conversation from lemmy.blahaj.zone. The instances communicate with each other.
What you need to do is search for the instance you want to join. So if you see a cool group called CoolGroup on a server called some.instance, you would go to the search box and search for !CoolGroup@some.instance. That will let you find it.
Yes, that could and should be easier, but lemmy is not a finished product, and it was not prepared for the reddit influx, so it will take time to iron out usability stuff.
I'm confused to be honest, but I admit I just started. But like, where do I look at pictures of houseplants and post mine? Do I find a server devoted to houseplants? Or maybe I should just finally figure out Instagram for that.
Linking is a bit clunky and a lot of people post direct links to a community with its home instance URL, which causes problems when you're browsing around. That's an issue I hope improves over time as the software matures.
Edit: I don’t know if that link will work in apps. I’m using the TestFlight of Mlem on iOS and it just crashes the app 😂. But in the browser it’ll take you to the community in your home instance instead of the community’s home instance.
Yeah I would agree with all these things. Hopefully, the fact that this project is open source will mean that someone or a group of people will put some time and effort into improving the UI bits as issues with it come up.
If you know how to use greasemonkey there is a script to make lemmy look more like old.reddit here Personally, it fixed a lot of the UI issues for me.
What do you mean by 3? you shouldn't need authorisation to join a federated community.
I find it exciting. Very reminiscent of the Digg exodus. Sure, it can be a little frustrating at times. But reddit was going downhill for me long before the API stupidity. Lemmy feels like returning home in a way.
The community and the app is still relatively new. To be honest, I prefer smaller communities where I can leave for a few hours without half the posts sliding to page 5 and beyond. Instead of uncritically consuming digital content, try to contribute to smaller communities, post a couple of cool links, or even (Gasp! Horror!) do something else for a while.
I would say to breathe deep and take your time. Lemmy is not a clone of Reddit, and it shouldn’t be viewed as, say you would compare functionality between 2 third-party Reddit apps.
Think of it as coming in to a new MMO after having played the old one for many years. Some things will be familiar, and some things will be different. Some mechanics may feel like a “step backwards” while others are cool additions.
Lemmy isn’t new, but it’s getting fresh eyes on its user experience and that is a good thing. And unlike Reddit, each community/server/whathaveyou can be far more responsive to their users feedback. That said, not every response will be a “yes” but you don’t have requests filtering through various levels of technological red tape, which I understand has been a challenge for the Reddit moderators, who still do not have the necessary tools to effectively moderate their subreddits.
When I first joined Beehaw, and saw, originally, a “lack” of diverse subreddits (including my mainstays) I was a bit disappointed, but then I thought to myself: “damn the torpedoes, I’m just gonna wing it” and subscribed to a bunch of communities that looked promising.
I’ve been on Lemmy since the disastrous AMA and have not looked back. I’ve even engaged more in these last 5 days on Lemmy/Beehaw than in the last year on Reddit. And while I still miss my 250+ subreddits (including r/superbowl and the subreddits I collected as part of a Reddit gestalt (r/inthesoulstone, the subreddit for Purple button pushers, r/buddhistasfuck (created as a lark, someone posted it wouldn’t last a day and I stayed to prove them wrong, and while it was a quiet subreddit, every once in a while someone would post something they thought was “extremely” buddhist)) the Lemmy communities have provided more meaningful interactions. Plus, Lemmy will create its own gestalts, and I’ll have new ways to experience the never-ending stream of random data tidbits I have grown to crave.
Agreed. Its all a bit too confusing. I'm sort of understanding it all now after a few hours. I think great apps for android and iOS will definitely help a lot, but also I just really miss apollo :(
i setup my own instance ('bin, not Lemmy), and have subscribed it to so much content my doomscrolling is sitting at a comfortable, pre-reddit-death level. i am still scanning the 'verse for new instances to subscribe to.
they just added a feature in mbin that automatically groups crossposts, which is very nice.
i guess i prolly shouldnt have answered cuz im not using lemmy, technically...but
i would recommend:
checking another instance, maybe you'll get better content ( mine is public!, https://moist.catsweat.com )
Personally I am glad that decentralization is slowly picking up again with things like Lemmy and Mastodon. To me using it does not feel all that different from Reddit actually (UI-wise).
I grew up in the days of the old internet where newgroups and mailing lists were the way to interact with other "netizens" (a term I have not heard being used in years btw). Very little moderation and yet people behaved themselves, though of course the number of non-tech people on the net were far lesser as well so that certainly had something to do with it. Lemmy has that advantage too currently of smaller, ideologically-inclined, and willing-to-jump-a-few-hoops people.
TL;DR: I've no issues with using Lemmy and I like it so far, including smaller size of the community.
Very little moderation and yet people behaved themselves, though of course the number of non-tech people on the net were far lesser as well so that certainly had something to do with it.
I remember the pre-AOL Internet, and what happened when AOL opened the gates to the masses. That was the day the civil internet died, and soon after the commercial internet devoured it, forever changing the way people can scam, deceive and show hate towards each other.
Yups, I remember getting AOL (or maybe CompuServe) floppy disks with some US Robotics modem purchase back in the day with a free one-month subscription or something.
Not being in the US, I never used it, but later found that AOL spammed everyone over and over with these disks and later CDs. That was indeed the beginning of the end I think. And then a decade or so later the proliferation of smartphones was the final death knell for the old internet. "Netiquette" is dead and people feel anonymity means civility is unnecessary.
The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example. Lemmy should prevent this, community names should be unique, it should have an index of all the Lemmy Fediverse where instances can lookup if a community exists instead of waiting for a user to import that community to his instance. Something similar to what BTC does with the decentralized ledger.
The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example.
I agree, to an extent. You're right in that if you were part of the vibrant community of /r/piracy then it's miserable to see it shatter here on lemmy. That said, this only applies if you're expecting lemmy to be a 1 for 1 reddit replacement. For this type of community to remain cohesive, /r/piracy would have had to spin up their own instance and in /r/piracy direct everyone to lemmy.piracyinstance.whatever.
You can't really "fix" this in a central way because even if you did, it would be trivial to create an instance that would allow duplicate community names. Also, I can see a lot of use cases for lemmy which do not intend to be federated.
That said, it's not necessarily as big a problem as it appears, if you just accept that this is how the fediverse works. There's no single source of control, so of course people can create 147 different /c/piracy communities if they wish to. Once you accept that, then it's not really that difficult to subscribe to all the /c/piracy communities you can find.
The problem itself could be diminished by a few new features which I feel certain will emerge in the future:
linked communities, where one communities content is syndicated to another. So if you post in !selfhosted@lemmy.world then you also post in !selfhosted@lemmy.ml. This would work differently to cross-posting, all comments would be reflected on both instances.
grouped communities, where you can subscribe to a group of /c/selfhosted communities with one click, so you see them all in your feed.
I think what they really need is an autosubscribe, so you can autosubscribe to /c/Piracy on all federated servers. (Then of course be able to block certain instances if they're horrible)
Having 'no single source of truth' is part of the joy.
If you're not happy with /r/cars moderators banning everyone who drives a Skoda, then you're out of luck. Here in federation land, you can just go to a different lemmy.something/c/cars place.
Of course you can still follow and interact with all the /c/cars communities from any Lemmy instance (and interact a little from Mastodon).
Part of the issue is that we hardly have enough people to sustain one random community, let alone several semi-independent ones. That barrier alone will turn others away and the cycle of not having enough souls will repeat itself
@jaykay@kamasupra sorta… like I’m replying via my Mastodon account. Currently there isn’t post creation, though some googling has shown that it’s something they’re working towards.
But you basically copy the Fediverse Logo Link of a post and paste it on search in your mastodon client. It appears as a toot and you can comment; Lemmy will display it natively like this comment.
Favoriting the post on Mastodon counts as an upvote.
I'm still feeling my way around and have subbed to a community or two here and there, but (using Jerboa on Android) so far it's actually not that different from using rif (for me, anyway.)
The only real issue that I've encountered so far is I kept getting timeout errors whenever I tried to comment (though the comments seem to have posted anyway) or when I clicked into a comment thread, but those seem to have subsided for the most part...
It's given me an obscure error and timeout when hitting the post button while commenting once and it was a detailed comment that took a while to type. It did not post. That was a bummer