So, what do you think about Lemmy/kbin so far?
I found it complicated at first (didn't know which instance "will last", where to register to not lose anything when instance admin decide to turn it down), but now it's going good. We are missing mobile apps though.
What's are your thoughts about Lemmy/kbin?
Honestly, Jerboa in alpha is already better than the official reddit app for me. It's no TPA reddit app, but the number of contributors (in github) has risen by a lot so I'm expecting/hoping development will pick up and it'll get better fast.
I appreciate the community the most in here. They've been very welcoming and minimal, if any, toxicity.
Using Jerboa too.
Just got started an hour ago and loving it so far, as a boost user I felt right at home.
honestly, once I wrapped my head around the idea of federation (which is very easy given I've been active in the P2P torrent field before- federation is but a simple extension of that concept) lemmy has pretty easy to use. It's simple. The interface is clean and has what I want right in front. I search what I want, deal with a couple minor bugs, and then look at what I want to look at.
My only biggest concern with Lemmy longterm is community fragmentation. As more instances spin up with the user influx, and Lemmy being (currently) limited in horizontal scaling of individual instances, we are going to have cases of tens, maybe even hundreds, of instances all ending up with identical, but separate, communities. Federation of a single instance's community can only work so well, if we're expecting users in the millions, and such fragmented communities that may or may not end up federating with one another can artificially make the service feel a lot less active than it really is and/or potentially lead to a lot of content being missed by some users.
Good point, valid concern! I hope existing (real) communities (from existing subreddits or elsewhere) can have leaders pointing users to a specific Feddit community. What would be even more awesome, is if communities could be merged: that way we could 'repair' in a sense, fragmentation that happened naturally without losing the users and content that one of the communities already amassed.
If something like multi-reddit comes about in Lemmy, I believe it could solve that issue. Just make a multi-reddit of what is the same community (roughly) over multiple servers. It won't solve the problem of duplicate posts though. But Reddit had the same issue at times, where multiple subreddits for the same topic existed, although generally it merged down into a single subreddit that was actually useful.
Ah - interesting point. So you're saying scaling limitations could arise if a particular community (akin to a Reddit 'sub') gets big enough to outgrow one instance. I wonder if multi-instance federated communities will become a possibility.
Isn't this partially intentional? If you don't like the moderation or community or one instance, you can join a community with the same name on a different instance. I don't know how it works out in practice, but this should reduce the power of moderators who hang around forever without actually moderating.
There are benefits to it, but it naturally limits maximum community size since it will be a problem if any community significantly outscales the instance it is from. I don’t see an easy way around it, it likely needs a better hosting/funding solution for the servers that support the “big” communities.
I expect a small boom of loudly announced instances, that will be essentially unmaintained, half of them will silently disappear while taking users identities with them in less than a year, and the rest spliting the federation in half by implementing ideological blacklists, some properly shutting down when the money runs out, or lawsuits and takedown notices starts to flood in.
Let's hope I'm wrong.
Every party needs a pooper. That's why we invited you.
Glad to be here! :)
Lots of people here with the opposite opinion of me, which is that I like the website and not the mobile apps, but overall yeah I'm pretty convinced this format is probably the best poised alternative to replace Reddit for a lot of people. Maybe not everybody, but I am willing to "settle" for quality over quantity ;)
I agree. I too prefer the website as a progressive web app. Though I'm playing with the idea of making a cross platform app highly inspired by relay for reddit. But with my history of procrastination that probably never will get finished.
I'd love to see some of the existing Reddit client apps pivot over to Lemmy.
I'm a long-time user of Reddit is Fun and would love to continue using it!
Same. Much easier to use the progressive web app, and it seems to function better than Mlem.
Once the mobile apps are more mature I’ll probably switch over, but for now the progressive web app works best for me
I've just been using the browser or a progressive web app on mobile so far. Seems to work more or less okay.
I'm reading this through Jerboa right now. It's clearly new and not as mature as RiF (that I prefer) but it's an excellent start. This platform and community has a lot of potential.
I'm also on Jerboa but coming from BaconReader and I share your sentiment.
I'll have to try Jerboa at some point, but just the mobile site alone works quite well.
I haven't used Mastodon, but does account exporting allow you to move subscriptions and other account info from one instance to another?
Lemmy.ml needs to lose "default" status. I changed servers due to their load and inability to deal with it. They're practically unusable right now.
They kind of have taken away their default status. They removed lemmy.ml from the list of instances on join-lemmy.org.
They have, but they're also incredibly slow at adding new instances to that list. I've been waiting for lemmy.cafe to be added for a few days now. In the meantime more and more instances are getting overloaded.
I don't care about what instance will last too much. I'm not that active contributor so if my comments/topics will disappear the world will not end. I always can create a new account on another server.
I chose Lemmy for now because Kbin seems to be not mature enough. I don't like some background of Lemmy devs that I was reading about, but I'm still not sure what make of it... Does it matter much? I support freedom of speech, and from my perspective people can have opinions very different from mine and still provide great value for community.
I'm currently exploring available communities and subscribing to stuff that I was subscribed on Reddit. Considering creating some communities too, but not sure how that works yet and how much involvement it will need.
Regarding software - using Jerboa. Overall very usable, but there are some UI issues that are irritating.
I don’t like some background of Lemmy devs that I was reading about, but I’m still not sure what make of it…
@pound_heap@lemm.ee – out of interest, what have you read? 👀
Yup, that what other person replied. There was a post on r/privacy which I cannot look up today due to the boycott - it was about Lemmy developers being very radical communists.
The software being open source makes this less concerning, but in case original devs start doing something crazy it will damage the project significantly.
Lemmy developers have communist figures as avatars. They manage the lemmy.ml instance, which other instances tend to defederate.
That should not prevent people from using a platform they don't manage (Lemmy.world or Beehaw) and they can't influence in anyway. The code is open source anyway.
Jerboa is a good and rapidly improving android app for Lemmy.
It's tough to find new communities on Jerboa, though. It doesn't seem to have the capability to search for them. I keep having to go to the browser to do that.
I noticed that too. I ended up just subscribing in the browser, so that I can access it via the app. However, I do like the app. It loads images in a way better format/UI than the browser does, IMO at least.
Try using -
I used it to find all the instances I'm in and have found it really helpful in switching to Lemmy. Something built into the app would be nice though.
This is true, though it is being updated rapidly. I expect it won't be that long before you can. What I really would like to see is a way to consolidate duplicate communities.
One problem with Federated systems is that he end up having to do design by committee, which takes a long time and sometimes requires compromises that in the end make things worse.
I wish it supported older Android versions. I really miss Infinity :(
I've been using the Jerboa android app today, it works pretty well. It reminds me of reddit mobile apps 10+ years ago, which isn't a bad thing.
I'm excited to see how it turns out though and what fediverse/social platform will end up being the most popular.
Second Jerboa. Used reddit Sync and they feel very similar.
Likewise. I miss swipe to dismiss/read and to come out of comments. That's about it.
Same just wish there's a way to jump to a person's reply when viewing the reply in the messages area
I am very happy to see people trying to use federated apps, it's a movement back to the old days of internet, when communities and real people make things, not big corporate companies with ad based model bulding sites to collect massive amounts of data.
People here are more friendly, more community oriented, and just generally more enjoyable to speak to
This is my biggest take away so far - been here about a week now. I know many ex-redditors probably didn't use the platform long enough to remember this, but this is how Reddit used to be. I remember when you'd log in and there would be little/no movement in the top posts, it wasn't the non-stop content it is now. The flip side to that is you could jump in the comments and have fun, amicable discussions with internet strangers. It wasn't the constant bickering/non-stop arguments or copy/pasted bot fests you get today. Comments would spark entire sub-comment discussions with multiple users going back and forth like a real conversation. It was lovely!
@BrainisfineIthink @sandblast it still kind of blows my mind to realize I’m looking at lemmy post on my mastodon app.. fediverse is amazing. Am I posting on lemmy right now? 🤯
I miss downvotes. How do I get a post that I have no interest in to leave my feed?
Other than that, pretty happy.
I do as well. At least the threads I've read through, most of the time reddit was pretty good about downvoting the shit out of a comment that has misinformation or the user is being a dbag (racist, sexist, unnecessarily negative, etc) which was one of my favorite things. I could always count on users to call out those types of comments. It made searching for answers and information so easy and also amusing
Sometimes I would run across a comment that just downvoted purely for their opinion, which was one of the problems it had, but in my opinion (10+ years on reddit), it doesn't seem nearly as often as people claim
To answer the thread: I like it, I use Jeroba for Android but I'm a long time user of reddit boost which I think is way ahead. I'm not a fan of the website yet but I just think it's a little confusing
Am I missing something I see a downvote button?
It looks like the lemmy.one instance disables the downvote button. My other account on lemmy.ml has it enabled.
I like the idea and general functionality, my biggest concern is what happens if the owner of Lemmy.world gets hit by a bus? Eventually you'd lose your account, all your subs, etc. Same goes for any other instance really. It's pretty much my only reservation at this point.
Yeah I'd like to see a mechanism to move subs and accounts between instances at will. If that also includes the ability to merge subs it'll fix 90% of the things everyone is worried about.
There is an open issue for adding a mechanism to move instances, people should go vote for it
I don't think merging subs is necessary, I would like to see a user based grouping function. That way you can add duplicate communities to one group and see them all while maintaining the benefits of decentralization (primarily redundancy whether through server issues or power hungry mods). Plus it would allow you to group any type of communites you see fit (gaming for multiple gaming subs, sports for multiple teams you follow, etc) without forcing it onto others
Thanks for linking that issue, I've voted on it.
I'm in the same boat as you. Now that I've spent a day on Lemmy & Kbin I feel much better about using both sites and it's been a fun experience learning something new.
I personally am treating them as betas so I'm willing to forgive them not being as smooth experiences to browse as I'm used to on Reddit. Also because of this, I'm hesitant at this stage to suggest them to a lot of my friends until more kinks are sorted out.
Actually, I think there is a a dedicated instance for the kinks and other NSFW communities lol
It seems to be working well enough. There will be growing pains, but I'm more than willing to live with some bugs & limitations while this all matures and grows. There's a risk of losing all comment history & whole communities if an instance decided to shut down, but that's true of centralized sites today. I'll take the chance on something less centralized that one single asshole corporation can't screw up.
It's exciting to be here, honestly. It will be fun to help build communities and to watch them grow.
I'm on desktop. Everything is working as it should in spite of a little lag, due no doubt to an influx of visitors. Like others have mentioned, it's just a little confusing at first but that is to be expected. I think we're off to a good start.
(I've yet to check out Kbin.)
need a lot more tooling but it seems livable at least.
kbin looks more modern but I havent tried it yet. biggest sticking point is the discovery workflow. Im not sure I can get most people to do that. Its like asking them to setup a damn crypto wallet.
I think its great. Joining remote Communities can be a bit iffy but its okay and the UI is a bit janky but that will improve by time I hope :)
With regards to Lemmy I think that may things are really good, but I'm not 100% convinced yet mostly due to how desentralised it is. imho the different "subs" should be what is self hosted and not entire trees, but I'ts probably just to get used to =)
I like the idea of instances, but would like to see the development of more "themed" servers. So maybe one instance is a cluster of related topics (science, arts, LGBT, whatever), or one that caters to a specific country/local area, or particular users (IT professionals, students, mechanics, librarians, etc).
Currently everything seems a bit slapdash, with larger instances each having a bit of everything. It will be interesting to watch the cultures here develop.
These align with my thoughts almost exactly. My logical brain wants there to be an instance that is field-based with communities hosted on it that are relevant. Think kind of like programming.dev then having like PowerShell, C, Rust, Java, etc. communities on it. But I also understand that that's not really how this works, and that's completely okay. Overall I've had a pretty good experience thus far.
The engagement, because of the significantly smaller userbase than Reddit, has made my first little stint much more enjoyable!
A lot of the communities only seem to have like 50 subscribers. I know a lot of people are exploring options other than Reddit, so I'm confused where everyone is at.
Or maybe I just have weird taste. I am not so interested in shitposting, memes, politics, news; this may be where where everyone is? I'll give it time to see who trickles in. I like the forum/discussion board style of this as opposed to Mastodon, which is obviously more timeline/feed based, but can feel like a random assortment of things.
On the other hand, since many of the communities are empty, I either do not have interesting topics to yet follow, or am not quite sure where I feel comfortable posting. Somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum, but okay that there is differentiation. Would like to see the fediverse group together (Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, whatever else believes in this approach), as alone there may not be power, but together, maybe something impressive can be made.
Imperial theme looming in the background...
What did you sub to on reddit? I've found a music-related instance with just a small handful of people, but I'm already enjoying the feel of it. I hope it turns into something slightly larger, but time will tell. I'd suggest looking for communities that are similar to your tastes and stick around for awhile. The party is early, and I think many are too shy to make a move to break the ice. The more active a community seems, the easier it is for newer people to start sharing as well.
Yeah, I'm not going anywhere. I do like the smaller atmosphere in some ways because it's less Social media heavy. I'm hoping all the recent chaos initiated by whacky rich CEOs signals the doom of the social media framework that has been predominant for the last ~10 yrs. I'm not saying Lemmy is hopeless. I wouldn't have bothered to join. I think it's really cool concept.
I wasn't a very active redditor, tbh. My account was fairly young. Most of my time was on r/leaves, r/cardistry, r/playingcards, r/wood, and probably a few I haven't remembered. The dust just needs to settle so I can find the proper places here. So far, a lot of the crafting and hobby themed communities are based upon sharing completed works, where I find I'd much rather see content that is instructional, educational, or problem solving. But I think maybe I'm better served by instructables or something in that regard. Probably also YouTube, but I hate video media. 😵💫
There's maybe an interesting effect similar to domain name hoarding, so I'm going to watch and see how federated system handles important communities being made but not really invested in. I found a music community that was named well, but the only post was the sole moderator peddling their own album, which felt odd. I imagine a different community with the same name but on a different server instance might become more popular in that case and dwarf those. Natural selection of communities will be fun to observe.
Most people are probably just doing something completely unrelated. Remember 99% of people aren't spending a ton of time online.
Just joined Lemmy, seems nice so far. Currently waiting for a Kbin Android app, then I'll give it a try.
I'm still completely lost!! haha
It’s seems great. But I am very visual, I miss big thumbnails layout as in Apollo. Do I miss a setting?
After finding the right instance (which doesn't block any other instances) I'm really happy. I'm surprised how many communities exist that existed before on reddit
Any tips on finding a good instance?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
First I looked up which instances still accept new users. Then I wanted to see if the instance is blocking other instances or porn and stuff like that. And after some research I found the right one. Besides that it's German and the person behind that also hosts other fediverse services.
A hard concept to grasp but seems decent enough. Jerboa for lemmy works well enough for me as an app
The devs got really busy, almost everyday there is a new release.
I think it's missing a few things. Notably, for me at least, an option to block communities directly in the feed instead of having to go in to the community to do it, and the option to hide posts from the feed. Unless i've missed something. It does all remind me of old reddit before it got flooded with users and it started getting filled with memes and joke comments prioritising karma instead of discussion. I'm sure I'm not the only person who noticed that subs on reddit had a critical limit of users, that when reached tarnished the quality of the posts on the sub. I like that all the instances have their own communities which I think will help with that problem. Some instances might not care too much and let the users be joke tellers while others will want to keep quality up. The idea with most instances beeing NSFW-free with a dedicated NSFW instance is a really good one. There's still so much I need to learn about the fediverse, but the decentralised nature of it all will hopefully keep the money out of it. Overall, I'm enjoying it so far.
I'd like to see new posts to my subscribed communities, without having to go to each one to check. Maybe it's there and I just haven't found it. I can't stand anything on my phone, so this is only referring to the website.
You should be able to do that selecting "subscribed" instead of "local"
@sinfreefor00days is this not the view you're looking for? https://lemmy.one/home/datatype/Post/listingtype/Subscribed/sort/New/page/1
Ah thanks. I'm an idiot. That is exactly what I was missing for some reason.
it's nice :)
Good start, but it needs mobile apps that are polished, and more users. The more people who switch the better.
I agree. It has been nice talking to people from my country on reddit and discuss recent events. These people did not find their way to lemmy, unfortunately. There are some international groups in topics I like, but I was on reddit especially because of my countrymen.
It's still very barebones functionality-wise, same as mastodon and pixelfed
Lemmy for us was very broken, having many bugs. Kbin works a lot better, even though we had some issues with federation. Overall, the platform itself is quite nice and smaller communities are still fun!
Not quite sure yet. I just joined Kbin, but am having trouble getting a handle on how to get my content viewable on other Fediverse instances (although remote content seems to load here just fine)
I understand, but dislike kbin choosing their instance uptime over federation, and thus decided not to use it for the time being
it has a lot of different names, not sure if that will help or hinder
I feel like it is heading in the right direction. It is great that users control the feed instead of corporate interests.
I think in general users feel giddy and hopeful like when starting a BBS in pre-internet days and birth of the consumer internet. Possibilities bring hope. Let's hope it continues.
I myself stood up lemmy instance to try things out and feel the same giddy feeling.
I think having your account tied to an instance without an option to move is a huge issue. Now I'm still dependent on the instance owners rules and willingness/ability to keep it up. Just like reddit oranzy other centralized network. Accounts need to be movable including history and linkage to posts. Same goes for communities. We are just hyper fragmenting now. Communities need to.be able to span instances tobincrease performance and uptime as well as resiliency.
Jerboa works fine for me. The overall experience and peoeple are nice enough. We just have technicalities to iron out.
Wait can you not easily migrate on Lemmy?? I’m coming from Mastodon and just assumed that data portability was part and parcel of the fediverse. That’sa huge problem that needs to be remedied.
Not yet, at least. I've seen a few posts about it and I agree it's an important feature. I hope the devs are seriously considering to add it.
Is there any information on this being a planned feature? That would make a huge difference for me personally. I don't mind losing my posts but I'd rather be able to keep them through a migration
That's why i chose the opportunity now, early in, to "move" to an instance in Germany. I still have to rely on the instance owner, but at least juristidiction is that same as where i live and GDPR/DSGVO is something i can somewhat count on. But in the end, it also is the question where the server is. Is the instance hosted on a QNAP NAS in someones basement or on an AWS instance in the US. That's my biggest gripe when everyone in the privacy community recommends federated stuff. The notion that some dude in Iowa or such is more trustworthy than some corporation is pretty questionable if you ask me.
Don't reuse passwords, 2fa email, etc.
But really how different is trusting some guy with a server from trusting some corporation with a server farm?
There is a younger project called Nostr, that came up as a twitter / mastodon replacement. It deals with user identities in better, more sustainable way. Thle client generates a keypair for you locally (you can back it up and use it to "log in" with any other client). Then you choose relay server (or even multiple relays) that will save and forward your posts to others.
Most of the client software resembles twitter UI, but there are some with more *chan/reddit like look.
Since the Nostr protocol is built primarily by people around bitcoin related projects, there is software ready for the relay operators to accept payments. Most of them are currently free, but thanks to bitcoin lightnong network, paying for a relay is pretty fast, and trustles.