I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.

On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).

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[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 199 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (11 children)

Yes Lemmy is smaller and doesn't have instantly fully formed communities. Reddit has been around for almost 2 decades. Lemmy is newer, smaller, and actively fights the sorts of shenanigans that Reddit initially used to get big.

If you want more niche activity, make posts and interact with posts. Lemmy is user driven- that means you. It isn't a giant megasite where you can just expect to be a passive receiver of endless content.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I was their in reddit beginning. There were no initial shenanigans. It was a good place and existed at just the right time, when people wanted to leave Digg because it was turning into a dumpster fire, similar to what reddit has done.

When reddit started turning to shit there just wasn't anything for the masses to migrate to that was available other than here. Problem is that here isn't as simple to get into. In lemmy, the learning curve is slightly higher than "bare minimum".

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Shenanigans.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sort of, but it didn't really work. Reddit existed in 2005, but wasn't popular. It only became popular in 2010 after all of Digg went to it, because it was pretty much a Digg clone, but with owners who weren't Digg.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've presented you with the proof that early Reddit was populated with large numbers of sockpuppet accounts by the owners, creating whole cloth communities to draw in users, which is not something that is happening on Lemmy.

The entire reason the Digg mass exodus was viable was people leaving Digg found these "preexisting" Reddit communities and felt more comfortable joining in.

Lemmy doesn't have that socketpuppet population to springboard with, so growth is slower and unpopulated communities are not falsely full of fake users.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I hung out on reddit long enough over the previous couple of years when people were up in arms to leave. It wasn't the lack of subs or community size that kept people away. It was simply that it was harder to figure out how to get up and going. You can't just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff. Further still is that now people want an apk for phone browsing and particularly when the masses wanted to leave reddit, there was also no "use this apk and its easy". Plus, creating an instance is much more work than creating a subreddit.

It was never about the size of the website already appearing to be in place. Lemmy just has a harder entry fee. It keeps lemmy at a lower user base in the same way every subscription service in existence knows it wants to make things super easy to sign up, but time intens8ve and difficult to cancel. Because it takes a bit of effort, lots of people don't get around to doing it.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You can’t just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/ ?

Go to https://lemm.ee/

Have a look around, see if the content and the formatting is appealing to you, register an account if you want to be able to curate your feed further

Go to https://lemm.ee/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world to see communities (equivalent of subs) that might be interesting to you.

Use Voyager as a mobile app: https://www.lemmyapps.com/Voyager. When they ask for your "instance", use "lemm.ee"

If you want more choices for apps, have a look at https://www.lemmyapps.com/

I think the Lemmy devs political stance and instances such as hexbear are more detrimental to the success of the platform than the entry bar.

Edit: Discuit is a centralized site, and now has 209 weekly active users: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/OiU8YjZ_

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is great for people looking now, but the info, the apks, and the knowledge to get there was less known or not very good a year or so ago.

Also, I'm personally a big fan of "thunder" for my phones lemmy apk. It's awesome.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 21 hours ago

Reddit is still crap, so hopefully people are still looking for alternatives

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