As an incoming Redditor who’s thrilled to see Fediverse alternatives getting some content and traction

Yeah I prefer this style of interaction far more than the Mastodon style. I just never could get into the twitter style of social media.

Same. I like a forum-like style. I still think Twitter is a "shout to the void" and same to Mastodon. I like the... slower? Yeah slower, more thought out, and more interactive of this style. Like everything kinda has a purpose to exist.
- Yeah, i think reddit model is perfect balance between recommended content and what you are subscribed to. Glad things like this now in fediverse too.
- And it was accompanied with their character limit. It is not enough to elaborate on anything, its only use is to shout out anything that you got mad about without thinking.
- Twitter/Mastodon: shout to the void, maybe it shouts back
  Reddit/Lemmy: shout into a room full of people that share the same interest
I don't understand why people want to follow people. I want to follow topics of interest. It makes all the difference.
Agreed. I feel like federation is a lot easier to wrap your head around in this style too
same, I tried using twitter and mastodon several times but could never stand them
- Well twitter is unbearably toxic anyway
same

Honestly Lemmy is much better than I thought it would be. My main problem is the lack of some niche communities that are on Reddit. For example as a GW2 player I get all my news about game updates & store discounts etc from the GW2 subreddit, but I don't see Lemmy taking that over anytime soon, if ever. Maybe I'll need to use a Reddit scraper for that, if I want to completely abandon the platform.

What I dislike about Reddit is the system of incentivizing karma farming. This leads to unhealthy posting behaviors that always bugged me. So far to me it seems Lemmy does not have that, so it's a huge win.

Not seeing any reposts is honestly so refreshing
Well lemmy.ml/c/guildwars2 exist, we just have to revive it!
If it doesn't exist, you get to create it ;)

Feels like 2000's message boards as I've said on a few posts now. It's nice - I do feel like my contributions matter more so I actually hit "post"

I'm surprised my first whimsical drunken post got so high up in upvotes. I am also slightly saddened by it lol. I need to up the effort next time .
- Time to dig into the 'ole meme library! Old memes are new again on here haha.
Yes! I’ve really been missing message boards lately. I didn’t think I’d get to feel that joy again, and here we are! Just gotta keep the momentum going.
I rarely post anything outside of the Fediverse because I can just FEEL whatever it is being leeched upon by advertisers and such lol

I have been trying to comment instead of just lurking. Its against my natural tendencies, but I want to see this place live, so I thought I would be the change I want to see in the world.

Same here. I'm trying to do my part as well. I think I have commented more in a single day, than I would have done in a few years on Reddit.

For me I think it has to do with the fact that by the time I got to a thread on reddit, everything that could possibly be said about the topic usually had been said already. How many times would you visit a thread only to find that exactly what you were going to say is already the top comment?
- or the top 30 comments were stupid circle jerk jokes
When it gets overwhelmed with users it eventually becomes a monoculture and then devolves into an echo chamber. I slowly became a more functional user with time, but generally stuck to the 1-2 subreddits that I thought were worth participating in, and observed the rest.
- The smaller community is really a blessing, rather than a curse. I've seen this come up on reddit again and again: the best subs are the small ones that cater to niche interests. Lemmy is essentially composed entirely of those small subreddits right now.
i do hope we can grow further while still remaining an open and friendly community encouraging everyone to comment their thoughts!
Same, I've been more active here than the past 6 years that I've had a reddit account. Posting anything always felt like you were screaming into the void, so I never bothered.
- Reddit was also actively discouraging discussions since people would downvote anything they didn't agree with right away. Became a total echo chamber...

I lurked because everything I had to say had already been said, or so it seemed.

Seems like, with less users, that's less likely to happen. Been nice.

This has been my experience with reddit since it's so big. It's been nice to feel like comments I leave here will actually be seen.

No lurking? Okay, hi everybody. 👋😄

Yeah as a lurker on Reddit (I use libreddit) I really wanna see some change for the better, Fediverses' seem to be the future, we just need to get the general masses aware of its presence :)

My concern is lemmy in general is too complicated a concept for the average user just wanting to browse. I've already encountered 2 users on reddit recently who might have stopped because of this complexity. One said he/she felt like lemmy makes its users answer queries before being able to join a sub, and one just couldn't get why there has to be different instances and was turned off because he/she couldn't quite understand how it all works.
I'm not sure I understand everything completely myself, but I'm willing to try. I don't think a lot of people do, tbh.
Edit: I'm aware why lenny is like this (generally) and I am definitely not criticizing it. Just mentioning some points as to why it may be hard for other people to follow us here.
- Lemmy will have to learn to hide the sausage-maker if they want laymen to enjoy their sausage. That is to say they'll have to make a way for the everyman to interact without the barrier to entry.
  Though, no one says Lemmy has to become a AAA social media site
- I agree, this concept of decentralization is not really widespread. I consider myself informed in topics of open source and privacy, but I also needed to get used to how e.g. searching for communities work. It is definitely not as convenient as reddit, where you have a search bar and can seek out any community, here you need to browse several nodes to find the communities you are looking for. It would be nice if Lemmy caught the interest of many and things like this could be worked out.
- Yeah for sure, usually if it doesn't "just work" or if its not convenient or they just "don't want to" then it'll be hard to convince anyone, getting all my family to move from standard SMS to signal was hard, there was no real barriers yet it was still too inconvenient to switch, even with all the benefits it offers. The two biggest issues I've seen so far is the "sub-lemmys" or just communities that exist, multiple similar communities can co-exist and have separate users, which isn't good for growth. The second issue, and by far the most worrying currently, is performance and stability with the instances that currently exist. Already we're seeing the main lemmy.ml instance being brought down to its knees with all the new users. If reddit doesn't reverse their API decision by the 12th (which at this point seems unlikely considering all the backlash already with no response) then I can't imagine how bad it would be to see even a 10th of current active reddit users trying to join at once. Its an ticking time bomb with a very quick expiration date if its not addressed quickly. I do have hope however, although my programming experience is somewhat limited a threw a few bucks on the opencollective, which I suggest everyone do if you wanna contribute in some way and you believe in the idea of a more open free internet, circa the late 90s.

Man, to me all of this smells the internet from the 2000s and I can’t tell how excited I am

Yes! I’m realizing how much I took that for granted when social media came on the scene. Not anymore. I’m not letting this version of the internet die out if we have the chance to bring that energy back.
Same! I was a longtime Reddit user and I’m still learning the ropes here but am getting vibes of my Reddit subs as they felt 10-15 years ago. I hope we continue to grow in healthy ways here
Exactly! I’m really glad I found kbin first. I was along time Reddit user and this community is giving me vibes of what my Reddit subs felt like 10-15 years ago. I hope we grow in a healthy way here!
Oh bring the good ol' sweaty LAN parties.

I'm commenting to boost engagement!

"I'm doing my part!"
- "Service guarantees citizenship!"
- It's honest work!
Is this a TechnologyConnections reference? haha
- lol, yes
Same, I will not lurk this time, and hopefully later too. 🙌
bro same!
I'm doing my part!

I tried Mastodon and I just couldn't do it. But I don't use Twitter either. I've been using Lemmy/BeeHaw for 10 minutes and it already seems like a drop-in, minimal learning curve to reddit. this looks super promising!

Took me a few minutes to figure out Lemmy, but agree it seems like a decent replacement for Reddit assuming the communities continue to grow.
In the same boat here, created a account on mastodon.lol (rip) and never ended up using it. But i'm enjoying Lemmy a lot more!

Just joined, reddit refugee here. I’m just trying to figure out how to sign up to all my related “subreddits” on here to see posts like my home feed

Refugee here too. Took me a minute to figure it all out, but the learning curve isn't quite as steep as all the FUD tech articles made it out to be. I love the potential the fediverse has
- I have a dumb question. Can I add more communities through jerboa, or do I have go to lemmy site to add communities?
- Speaking of this, has anyone found a good alternative to /r/videos?

I'm excited to see the concept of federation gaining traction. I can't describe how disappointed I was when Jabber/XMPP failed, IRC faded from relevance, and Facebook/Twitter became the way to talk to people. Now, seeing everyone here and on Mastodon, I'm finally feeling a bit hopeful again.

@argvminusone @MrsEaves Honestly I am so glad something like the fediverse exists. This is so much more in parallel with how I try to live my life than some top-down centralized system.
Come to think of it, I’m surprised I didn’t learn my lesson with centralization when AIM died. I just accepted it as a natural part of the tech lifecycle and found a different centralized service. But seeing the decisions and actions of these companies over the past few years - platforms I trusted - hit differently, and hit even harder when I went to look for forums and RSS and realized my backup options were dying. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, or pretty close to being gone. It definitely makes me want to support federation and indie web efforts - it’s much closer in spirit to the web I grew up with.

It's easier not to lurk when the odds of getting a strangely hostile reply over nothing important goes down

Agreed. I always felt like I had to add five different disclaimers to my comments to avoid bad faith arguments and angry responses. Wasn’t a fun experience at all and often lead to me just deleting comments.
I may have been a little... overzealous when I wrote my beehaw application but I echo this point when I submitted
My last comment on reddit was 6 years ago. I was afraid of what it and the internet at large was becoming. Afraid to be a human online because the trolls and the dox and the swats. The mission statements in the side bar, the long and insightful posts that hope to bridge new people to the culture of beehaw that speak of being nice and compassionate, of working together to build a community of varied interests and peoples let me dare to dream that there exists a place where I can be a human on the internet again.
It's going to take a lot of deconditioning to not be a lurker!
- That's quite philosophical really. Beautiful text.
It was so bad on reddit that i was surprised if i got a friendly/helpful reply
I DISAGREE!
- HARUMPH

This is the way

I feel attacked. First post on my feed when I open Jerboa.

It ain't much, but it's honest work!

While I’m sad about the Reddit api changes. I’m also happy about them if they make Lemmy popular, I’d love to ditch Reddit altogether.

This is where I’m at too. Reddit is my last non-Fediverse social media account, and I already had some reservations about keeping it. I don’t think I’m ready to delete it just yet, unlike FB/Twitter/Instagram.
I'm really glad we're not all just jumping onto the next centralised platform. It makes me hopeful for this system.

Haha same! I've already commented here more than what I have on reddit in the past 5 years at least. And I'm not even forcing myself to comment. It just feels authentic. I feel that my voice won't be lost in the void of the internet. I agree with @Disgusted_Tadpole. Last time I had this feeling was on orkut back in the 2000s. Exciting times! :)

Sigh. Yes, I'll do my best.

I feel like it's easier and more rewarding to comment when it's a smaller community. The problem is that I don't have anything interesting to post :/

Yes you do. What did you do yesterday?
I went to watch Into the Spiderverse. It was pretty great. I like the original way better, but man this one delivers.
I definitely have this feeling too. I’m finding that memes and other picture-based posts are a little easier for me to start with because they do some of the talking for me.
It's fine, even simple posts like what games are you playing gets responses. I asked what communities you want to see gamewise as Lemmy grows and it got up to 100 responses. Even the littlest posts help

I wish it didn't take a system/site/service imploding to get people to try something new.

MySpace got silly, enter FB. Twitter gets Musked, Mastodon finally takes off after years of not. Reddit nukes their own service, Etc.

Not that bad projects shouldn't die off, but it's always a reactionary move for the masses, rather than a proactive "let's try this new thing because it might be better".

I think Reddit is an outlier in the sense that until now it has been a good service with fairly minor flaws.
FB is totally garbage and had been that for many years now and yet people are not seeking alternatives, maybe because that kind of social media is not that interesting anymore to the types that would care.
- It's definitely been going downhill but by choosing good subreddits and using a 3rd party app that strips out all the new "features" it was still usable. Now it won't be usable.
- @sina @dukethorion FB is for lazy boomers who are too scared of anything truly technological
- I've recently returned to Facebook after many years away from it specifically for some local outdoors groups (lots of good posts there about local trail conditions, good training routes, what stores have/offer X, etc). I keep the blinders on and avoid the main News Feed, and it's been fine. It might be just me, but the idea of having super localized communities on Facebook makes more sense compared to somewhere else like Reddit.
Many people won't rock the boat (or even think og doing it) if the current thing is sufficient. Luckly, it seems that, with time, all monitized, centralized platforms inevitably fail.
In my own defense, I had literally never heard of Lemmy until yesterday. Maybe I'm just following the wrong things on reddit though haha
- I am also usually in the same boat.

no lurking? okay hi

hail from another lurker

Man I use to be a mad lurker too, I'd occasionally repost a 30K upvote banger, but other than that I'd always second guess myself when I write a comment, go "nah" and then return back to lurking

On Lemmy tho it's different, and I love it

Speak for yourself.

…oh, wait. Shit.

Feeling pretty seen here. I've registered 2 years now and this is my first post...

Post early and post often

I'm still going to lurk

Same

I love it when the communities are smaller but I do hope they get bigger too, maybe I won't lurk this time and be more involved but as long as the content is good I don't mind lurking again haha

End of the month is gonna be D-Day when people need to make a decision. I'm pretty confident that a large majority will suck it up and switch to the official app, but that still leaves huge numbers of people that will be migrating. I hope Lemmy is ready for the real wave, this is all just precursor shit.
All that is a long-winded way of saying this is about to get a lot bigger.

/lurk

I've been doom-scrolling reddit for a while and see this as a chance to kick the habit better than deleting and re-installing a week later

Its so hard not to lurk...

For real, I feel more confident commenting and posting on here than I ever did on reddit

Cheers to new beginnings. Hi everyone!

Yeah I'm pretty bad for that. 😬

yoo i heard ab the thing and i wont be usin Leddit for the next days. exited what to see what everyones up to.. on a different platform

OH YEA! Love what I'm seeing

Me too! I'm primarily a lurker as well. I'm really enjoying Lemmy so far and hope to see it grow. :)

yep, by the end i hadn't posted on reddit for several months. i just saw no reason to give my own effort to reddit to make money off of.

No promises!

And back to the shadows...