Becoming mainstream started the slow strangulation of Reddit for me. The conversations became more polarizing and stiffling. The takes less thoughtful, and the unoriginal comments more prevalent. So I hope Lemmy doesn’t become mainstream.
I do think Lemmy can grow, but if the recent events were not able to slow down the Reddit juggernaut; I do not see another platform coming to rival Reddit.
if the recent events were not able to slow down the Reddit juggernaut; I do not see another platform coming to rival Reddit.
I do think they were able to hurt Reddit or we wouldn’t have seen the reaction they had (threatening and suspending mods, spez giving a press tour to reassure everyone that the protest wasn’t affecting anything, etc.). And I’ve seen people say they noticed a change in the content on Reddit’s front page ever since the protest started. That is to say, the quality of the content has degraded further ever since the protest started, and it hasn’t recovered.
Not to mention some subreddits are still protesting. For example, /r/PICS is still posting only pictures of John Oliver, and they just marked the entire sub as NSFW, not because of gore and porn (which is still banned by the /r/PICS mods; this circumvents the “issues” /r/interestingasfuck ran into when it went NSFW), but because people were using profanity (which, according to Reddit policy, is NSFW) and not just vulgarity (which isn’t mentioned in Reddit policy regarding NSFW material).
After using it for a few days and having an account for a few hours (this is my first comment), I don’t think it will ever directly compete. But I think it does have chance to represent a “significant minority” of internet traffic if it doesn’t peter out early on, and it may already be passed the threshold for that happening.
You’d never say email can “compete” with twitter, but it’s still a significant way people interact with the internet. If lemmy does for independent communities and niche forums what email does for messaging, I’d consider it a huge success!
It has potential, bu I hope it will not become like those mainstream soc-med…
Fediverse is like a village where each denizen trying to self-sufficent and helping each others while mainstream soc-med is like train station or mall where users just come and go while giving money to its owner for their services…
We may need one or two mainstream soc-med to be alive to keep up with news or to socialize with normies, but we also need a place to retreat like current fediverse.
edit:typo
Right now? Absolutely not. The platform itself is insanely buggy, normies still can’t wrap their heads around federation, and the big instances are only just beginning to stabilize and take shape.
But long term yes, I’m very bullish, and it’s for this simple fact: this is only the beginning of enshittification. All those r/NBA whiners you saw bitching on Reddit about the protests are gonna have their “leopards ate my face” moment when spez decides to start charging $14.99 a month for the privilege of subscribing to more than three subreddits at a time or some shit.
As many have said, interest rates are high and the gravy train has stopped running. This means the only way these huge platforms with massive server costs are going to survive is by making a profit, and they can’t do that without resorting to Twitter Blue-like subscriptions.
If people want to consoom and shitpost for free, at some point they will have to end up here in the fediverse, where the costs of running such a huge platform can be distributed among a bunch of large and medium-sized instances, which will probably be mainly funded by donations.
I think this is the beginning of a big transition, as big as the one from web 1.0 to 2.0. And ironically it’s gonna look a lot more like the internet of old than the era of massive social media platforms.
I like how in your point of view it appears (please correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth or misrepresenting your position) that the platform getting better would be nice but it’s actually not that relevant compared to the fact that other platforms are getting worse and will likely continue to do so as they prioritize shareholders over users.
It’s like a reverse marathon where you win by not running backwards as fast as everyone else. A leisurely stroll forwards is like moving at super speed.
What makes you so confident users won’t by and large accept the charges and boot from large social media platforms? Debatably piracy and a home media server have a lot of the same pros as Lemmy and the Fediverse. For the most part, however, people tend to cough up the 10-25 dollars for a streaming service. It’s not because of any practical reasons, at least directly. The true decider is cultural and societal attitudes towards the platforms providing a service. People practically don’t pirate because of the learning curve, but realistically don’t pirate because of their preconceived notions surrounding the practice. Maybe they think it’s wrong. Maybe they think it’s too hard. Maybe it just feels like too much work to set up. Maybe the communities feel too insular. Whatever the reason, it’s fundamentally because of some idea or feeling they have surrounding the medium. Who’s to say these big tech companies won’t successfully execute their goal, and push a larger cultural shift to make the idea of subscription social media more appealing to the average user than the idea of a clunky service using ActivityPub. Maybe the narrative of these spaces being too techbro-y gets pushed, and they garner a similar reputation in the public eye that piracy communities have. It could be seen just like streaming services and piracy. The public could be convinced of the value of familiarity and convenience. Has great work been done to fight against this corpo push lately? Absolutely. But don’t look at these “blatant missteps” that places like reddit and twitter have experienced as of late as omens of an imminent downfall of centralized, capitalist social media. Rather, look at it as a warning sign. A warning sign that heralds the first in a long, deliberate line of many who will follow in those footsteps, gradually pushing the Overton Window surrounding these prices towards their goal. Today Reddit and Twitter are the bad guys so that tomorrow Meta and others can make the same moves, with the added benefit of “it’s just not our choice, we must make these changes to remain viable in the current market.” In the eyes of many, not all, but the majority; this is an absolution. They will be able to succeed. They know this, that’s why they’re doing it and it’s happening now. The Fediverse and a free net will not survive unless the battle can be won in the public consciousness. We must overcome the significant hurdles between federated software design and mass adoption. We must take a direct, meaningful, and effective course of action to directly fight against this, it will not passively be won.
EDIT: Typo; missing word
“Rather, look at it [as] a warning sign.”
Because of quarterly profits. We have to hit those KPIs!
But, yeah. Honestly, I’m fucking done with mass appeal websites. You know what else is mass appeal? Reality television and pop music. Let the idiots have TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, that should be enough for them.
Yea that’s a good point. I want it to be popular enough to have a good time and business to thrive but I don’t need it to have all the users from previous places. A smaller, more involved community is good for me
What is crazy is that I feel like Lemmy is already approaching that fun size, you know? There’s a steady flow of content and comments. But it’s not full of shit yet.
Personally I would love to see it grow by enough that some of my favorite types of communities (specially state-specific and sports team specific) can thrive. But I am really not interested in Lemmy becoming big enough to rival centralized alternative platforms like reddit. Being that large brings far too much baggage along for the ride.
I definitely feel that it is almost there. Most enthusiat forums are filled with millions of users, but a couple thousand max. Dedicated users and some casual users would be best for this place to get to where it needs to be
Yes, I learned not to advertise to anyone about a great thing. Idiots would flood and troll leading to decline. But you’d still want some diversity of opinions and not create an echo chamber.
Lemmy/kbin and other reddit alternatives, I think they have a higher chance than mastodon, diaspora and other alternatives more focused on “web presence”.
Reddit and Lemmy are about threads and posts, stuff that you’re supposed to interact with hours, perhaps days, after the initial post, stuff that you’re supposed to look for and find later on. Evergreen content
Twitter and Mastodon are about the “right now”. Stuff from 3 days ago is a lot less likely to be interacted with, or stay relevant. It needs new content to be consumed on a daily basis, just like Pixelfed (fed insta) or Tiktok. I think that makes Mastodon less likely to remain relevant long term, but what do I know?
It might get a huge boost in usage now that Meta released Threads. In the main page, it said that the app will be able to connect to the fediverse and specifically mentioned Mastodon as an example. Maybe someday I’ll be able to stop using reddit altogether. But that day is not today.
I’m hopeful but it will take a while. I want to see where we are in 6 months from now. Apps need to be pushed to the stores (at least on iOS).
That being said, it needs protocols for migrating instances when an instance is dead or about to die. Then there are some privacy concerns and such. It’s also not clear how it all can sustain monetarily except via donations.
But seeing the recent growth spurts and increase in new posts, I am still hopeful that this place has staying power.
They will eventually. They probably just don’t wanna build up communities. They just wanna browse memes. That’s valid! Just means we gotta do the building.
just like RSS feeds did not become mainstream while Reddit did, the current state of the fediverse will not gain mainstream popularity; however, it’ll serve as a stepping stone towards a new federated internet that’ll be seamless and intuitive for non-technically-inclined individuals and those who are indifferent to the implications for privacy and digital freedom.
97% of people will only jump from walled garden 1 to walled garden 2
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
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Becoming mainstream started the slow strangulation of Reddit for me. The conversations became more polarizing and stiffling. The takes less thoughtful, and the unoriginal comments more prevalent. So I hope Lemmy doesn’t become mainstream.
I do think Lemmy can grow, but if the recent events were not able to slow down the Reddit juggernaut; I do not see another platform coming to rival Reddit.
I do think they were able to hurt Reddit or we wouldn’t have seen the reaction they had (threatening and suspending mods, spez giving a press tour to reassure everyone that the protest wasn’t affecting anything, etc.). And I’ve seen people say they noticed a change in the content on Reddit’s front page ever since the protest started. That is to say, the quality of the content has degraded further ever since the protest started, and it hasn’t recovered.
Not to mention some subreddits are still protesting. For example, /r/PICS is still posting only pictures of John Oliver, and they just marked the entire sub as NSFW, not because of gore and porn (which is still banned by the /r/PICS mods; this circumvents the “issues” /r/interestingasfuck ran into when it went NSFW), but because people were using profanity (which, according to Reddit policy, is NSFW) and not just vulgarity (which isn’t mentioned in Reddit policy regarding NSFW material).
Yes I do. What I am looking for is federated/web3 replacements for Instagram, and some kind of well encrypted, decentralized messenger app
Signal is well encrypted and very much respects privacy of data, but I don’t think it’s federated. It can interface with normal texts though iirc
Only if a site like join-Lemmy.org can be promoted on every instance and actually direct you to a server that isn’t overloaded and is fully federated.
Right now, it directs you to sadly overloaded servers that are terrible choices.
If that doesn’t happen, then some big instance needs to scale up with its popularity and be well funded by someone for some reason.
After using it for a few days and having an account for a few hours (this is my first comment), I don’t think it will ever directly compete. But I think it does have chance to represent a “significant minority” of internet traffic if it doesn’t peter out early on, and it may already be passed the threshold for that happening.
You’d never say email can “compete” with twitter, but it’s still a significant way people interact with the internet. If lemmy does for independent communities and niche forums what email does for messaging, I’d consider it a huge success!
no
It has potential, bu I hope it will not become like those mainstream soc-med…
Fediverse is like a village where each denizen trying to self-sufficent and helping each others while mainstream soc-med is like train station or mall where users just come and go while giving money to its owner for their services…
We may need one or two mainstream soc-med to be alive to keep up with news or to socialize with normies, but we also need a place to retreat like current fediverse.
edit:typo
Right now? Absolutely not. The platform itself is insanely buggy, normies still can’t wrap their heads around federation, and the big instances are only just beginning to stabilize and take shape.
But long term yes, I’m very bullish, and it’s for this simple fact: this is only the beginning of enshittification. All those r/NBA whiners you saw bitching on Reddit about the protests are gonna have their “leopards ate my face” moment when spez decides to start charging $14.99 a month for the privilege of subscribing to more than three subreddits at a time or some shit.
As many have said, interest rates are high and the gravy train has stopped running. This means the only way these huge platforms with massive server costs are going to survive is by making a profit, and they can’t do that without resorting to Twitter Blue-like subscriptions.
If people want to consoom and shitpost for free, at some point they will have to end up here in the fediverse, where the costs of running such a huge platform can be distributed among a bunch of large and medium-sized instances, which will probably be mainly funded by donations.
I think this is the beginning of a big transition, as big as the one from web 1.0 to 2.0. And ironically it’s gonna look a lot more like the internet of old than the era of massive social media platforms.
deleted by creator
I like how in your point of view it appears (please correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth or misrepresenting your position) that the platform getting better would be nice but it’s actually not that relevant compared to the fact that other platforms are getting worse and will likely continue to do so as they prioritize shareholders over users.
It’s like a reverse marathon where you win by not running backwards as fast as everyone else. A leisurely stroll forwards is like moving at super speed.
What makes you so confident users won’t by and large accept the charges and boot from large social media platforms? Debatably piracy and a home media server have a lot of the same pros as Lemmy and the Fediverse. For the most part, however, people tend to cough up the 10-25 dollars for a streaming service. It’s not because of any practical reasons, at least directly. The true decider is cultural and societal attitudes towards the platforms providing a service. People practically don’t pirate because of the learning curve, but realistically don’t pirate because of their preconceived notions surrounding the practice. Maybe they think it’s wrong. Maybe they think it’s too hard. Maybe it just feels like too much work to set up. Maybe the communities feel too insular. Whatever the reason, it’s fundamentally because of some idea or feeling they have surrounding the medium. Who’s to say these big tech companies won’t successfully execute their goal, and push a larger cultural shift to make the idea of subscription social media more appealing to the average user than the idea of a clunky service using ActivityPub. Maybe the narrative of these spaces being too techbro-y gets pushed, and they garner a similar reputation in the public eye that piracy communities have. It could be seen just like streaming services and piracy. The public could be convinced of the value of familiarity and convenience. Has great work been done to fight against this corpo push lately? Absolutely. But don’t look at these “blatant missteps” that places like reddit and twitter have experienced as of late as omens of an imminent downfall of centralized, capitalist social media. Rather, look at it as a warning sign. A warning sign that heralds the first in a long, deliberate line of many who will follow in those footsteps, gradually pushing the Overton Window surrounding these prices towards their goal. Today Reddit and Twitter are the bad guys so that tomorrow Meta and others can make the same moves, with the added benefit of “it’s just not our choice, we must make these changes to remain viable in the current market.” In the eyes of many, not all, but the majority; this is an absolution. They will be able to succeed. They know this, that’s why they’re doing it and it’s happening now. The Fediverse and a free net will not survive unless the battle can be won in the public consciousness. We must overcome the significant hurdles between federated software design and mass adoption. We must take a direct, meaningful, and effective course of action to directly fight against this, it will not passively be won.
EDIT: Typo; missing word “Rather, look at it [as] a warning sign.”
I sure as hell hope not.
To me, that’s like looking around a great little cafe with terrific food and saying, “Do you think this could ever become McDonalds?”
Why would I want that?
Because of quarterly profits. We have to hit those KPIs!
But, yeah. Honestly, I’m fucking done with mass appeal websites. You know what else is mass appeal? Reality television and pop music. Let the idiots have TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, that should be enough for them.
Yea that’s a good point. I want it to be popular enough to have a good time and business to thrive but I don’t need it to have all the users from previous places. A smaller, more involved community is good for me
What is crazy is that I feel like Lemmy is already approaching that fun size, you know? There’s a steady flow of content and comments. But it’s not full of shit yet.
Personally I would love to see it grow by enough that some of my favorite types of communities (specially state-specific and sports team specific) can thrive. But I am really not interested in Lemmy becoming big enough to rival centralized alternative platforms like reddit. Being that large brings far too much baggage along for the ride.
I definitely feel that it is almost there. Most enthusiat forums are filled with millions of users, but a couple thousand max. Dedicated users and some casual users would be best for this place to get to where it needs to be
Yes please. First thing I had to do on new Reddit accounts was always unsubscribe from the giant, bot-infested communities.
Yes, I learned not to advertise to anyone about a great thing. Idiots would flood and troll leading to decline. But you’d still want some diversity of opinions and not create an echo chamber.
Lemmy/kbin and other reddit alternatives, I think they have a higher chance than mastodon, diaspora and other alternatives more focused on “web presence”.
Reddit and Lemmy are about threads and posts, stuff that you’re supposed to interact with hours, perhaps days, after the initial post, stuff that you’re supposed to look for and find later on. Evergreen content
Twitter and Mastodon are about the “right now”. Stuff from 3 days ago is a lot less likely to be interacted with, or stay relevant. It needs new content to be consumed on a daily basis, just like Pixelfed (fed insta) or Tiktok. I think that makes Mastodon less likely to remain relevant long term, but what do I know?
Ah, and now I’m reminded of YikYak.
Hyper-local time-sensitive social media that ended after it became used for mostly pranking and bullying.
For a little while there though, it was a pretty cool.
It might get a huge boost in usage now that Meta released Threads. In the main page, it said that the app will be able to connect to the fediverse and specifically mentioned Mastodon as an example. Maybe someday I’ll be able to stop using reddit altogether. But that day is not today.
Precisely. I’ll likely block all traffic from Meta’s instance, but that would cause a ton of users to migrate.
I’m hopeful but it will take a while. I want to see where we are in 6 months from now. Apps need to be pushed to the stores (at least on iOS).
That being said, it needs protocols for migrating instances when an instance is dead or about to die. Then there are some privacy concerns and such. It’s also not clear how it all can sustain monetarily except via donations.
But seeing the recent growth spurts and increase in new posts, I am still hopeful that this place has staying power.
Yes, will it? No.
Eventually, yes.
No. I’ve got a bunch of friends who are just as techy and nerdy as I am, and they won’t move. “Yeah, Reddit sucks, but I’m not going to change.”
They didn’t go to Mastodon either, just Bluesky, which infuriates me, as it’s just another walled garden.
They will eventually. They probably just don’t wanna build up communities. They just wanna browse memes. That’s valid! Just means we gotta do the building.
97% of people will only jump from walled garden 1 to walled garden 2
Unless it politically comes to the center, then absolutely not. Right now it’s a circle-jerk of tankies.