It’s almost exactly a copy of reddit issues but most people that use reddit haven’t heard about it.
This isn’t an issue of Lemmy itself, but I realized after I made the switch that I personally am a bit burnt-out from the Reddit model in general at this exact moment.
I’m using other Fedi apps more at this moment in time. I’ll probably be more active later in the year, but it’s a nice little break being on the smaller Fediverse apps where things are a bit more personal with the people I’m interacting with, which has been fun for me.
I think Lemmy/Piefed will grow to get more Reddit sized with time. Personally, I get like 10x the engagement on comments and posts here than I ever did on Reddit, which to me makes it much more joyful to be around.
On top of the myriad of things others have mentioned here, it hasn’t gotten bad enough/inconvenient enough for the average redditor to switch platforms en masse.
The API fiasco moved the needle a little bit, but not by enough. The multiple ban waves moved it even less. Theres still millions of people on reddit and that disincentivizes anyone to make the first move.
My hope is that when they get rid of old.reddit, it will cause another mass migration that could tip the scales a bit more, but I’m not holding my breath. Because now, reddit has hundreds of thousands of bots creating fake engagement that simulates human activity to those unaware of LLM-pattern speech. So that’s another unknown unknown.
Here’s to hoping, though.
over half of reddit is bots, little to no bots here
I might be a bot. Those “I’m not a bot” puzzles? Tricky!
If you are not a bot, say penis
Amongst stated reasons, “signing up” is more difficult here. Its not as straightforward a process and content isn’t as spoon fed to you as other platforms. The tech literacy needed to get here isn’t high, but as I learned the average tech literacy is abysmal.
About 10ish years ago when I was 14, I helped some people print something. They tried printing something from a computer plugged into the printer, an error popped up saying “printer not connected”. I thought, thr printer must be, yknow disconnected. Some 6 people had gatherd trying to troubleshoot this but were stumped. I pointed out the error message that kept coming up, didn’t click. I followed the cables from the pc to the printer, it was disconnected, I plugged it in and reported back. They where stumped on how I possibly knew what was wrong or how to fix it.
I am not good with technology, but im good enough to know im not good with technology. I have found most people, even those younger or same age tend to not be tech literate.
Finding the application and filling it out for any random federated instance may seem like nothing but it requires an ammount of literacy many Americans dont have.
a less relevant example:
many people in general lack the literacy. my entire school thinks I’m able to hack the pentagon because I accessed the boot menu and installed mint on a school computer for my sanity, because last time I used windows on a school computer, I was going through some tough stuff, so on top of it being clunky I have bad memories linked with it. I did not delete windows or touch system files, but I really, really want to. They all treat me like I could hack government systems, even though I’ve never hacked anything in my life. The average user should be able to access that.
A more relevant example:
fucking everyone at school, staff and otherwise can’t do anything with tech. basic shortcuts? nope (except copy/paste)! indenting in word? nope! using anything other than google as a search engine is seen as suspicious, and no-one can really tech there. most of my school is average in every way, and this is no difference. my english teacher believes that wikipedia still hasn’t added any security to who’s able to edit articles, spoiler: they have (on most articles) such as peer-review and most of them requiring peer-review and account requirements of 500+ approved edits. the list goes on.
“why isn’t the printer printing my 3 page essay done in 30 mins?” It’s out of cyan. really. go change your cyan, mrs. b. “but the essay is b&w (black and white)” the printer won’t work till the cyan is replaced, go tell mrs. b (principal) that the printer is out of cyan. printer says “fuck you, no cyan”
On top of this, don’t assume someone’s tech literate just because they’re in a certain field. It took me seeing first hand at a previous job how the IT techs did their job to realize why we ran into so many issues.
We were having some software installed on every computer which apparently had to be installed via PowerShell. While watching our usual IT tech go through the steps on the machine next to me, I offered to help him get this job done faster by starting it up on my machine then he could run his credentials whenever the prompts came up. He knew I was computer literate since we had talked about tech stuff and about how I was at the time trying to get a job in IT, so he gave me a copy of the .txt file with all the instructions and commands to run.
In the file was an 11 step process written by the director of the IT department explaining how to open PowerShell, copy the command below, and run the command. 3 of the instructions were to highlight the command (between the quotation marks without including the quotation marks), right click the highlighted portion, then click on “Copy”.
The tech didn’t believe that I had actually copied the command when I just did Ctrl+C, so he specifically stopped me to tell me to right click the command. I told him that it was copied already with Ctrl+C, and he told me, “No, it won’t work if you don’t do the right click.”
I also found out later that said IT director didn’t seem to be aware that there were multiple types of USB cables. He was setting something up in my boss’s office and sent someone to ask for “a USB cable.” Said person knew I had a bunch of cables at my desk as part of my work at the time so they relayed the request for “a USB cable.” I asked them, “What kind? USB C to C? A to C? Micro? Mini?” “Idk, they just said ‘a USB cable.’”
I think, “fair enough, my coworker isn’t very tech literate so I’ll just ask the man myself.” I bring over an assortment of cables and walk to the office with my coworker. Director see my coworker with me now next to them and ask me for “a USB cable.” “What kind?” “Just a regular USB cable, if you have one.” I show him my bundle of about 6-10 assorted cables, explain that I have a variety, see that he’s working on a small printer/scanner, and offer him one. “Would a type 3.0 USB A to B cable work?” “What? No, I just need a regular USB cable.” I show him the A to B cable and he responds “oh yeah, that’s what I was saying. A regular USB cable.”
Reddit is bigger, more established, and Lemmy is smaller and more unknown. As reddit gets worse Lemmy will get bigger.
yeah and a lot of bots are filtered whereas on larger sites, such as reddit, most of site usage is bots. It’s also very anti-troll and yeah I agree size matters a lot
Reddit removes (or at least did at one point) any lemmy links or posts trying to get people to switch to Lemmy.
Not yet during the api blackout thing. I saw Lemmy posted everywhere. I kind of thought a lot more people would move over.
I wonder if other platforms do the same.
Not the only case of this happening; Corporate Social Media providers do not want the Fediverse to succeed at all.
Instagram (and Fascbook, and WhatsApp, and Threads) all censor references to PixelFed.
If you cross post, it is best to watermark your photos with your PixelFed address.
Because in my opinion people are used to reddit, and is the biggest one, baiscally everyone else is there, why changing for a platform where you have evem to choose " an what? An instance?"), with a fraction of the users.
I stopped using reddit after the api rules changes, i quit twiitter as sson as that nazi guy bought it.
The main socials I use are mastodon and lemmy.
How many of my friends are on madtodon? 1 or 2, how many of them are active there? 0. And i think my nbers are even higher than wjat i think they should be because most of my friemds works in the IT
People unfortunately just wants everything quickly, without hassle, and are not prone to change.
A question on reddit? Probably you’ll get an answer in few hours. On lemmy? You are luckynif you’ll get one.
I have a small crafting page, that I’m trying to spread using only mastodon, it’s much harder. These are the reasons I think.
And most people don’t even care about the content of if their timeline is 85% ads and suggested pages.
They will just scroll. Algorithms are shitty, but who cares. Everyone is there…
The network effect. It’s big enough that small forums get enough posts to stay active which keeps more people using it.
For example Lemmy has a 3d printer forum that has a few posts a week. Reddit has forums not just for 3d printing but for every specific model of printer and each gets a much activity as Lemmy’s generic forum.
If I’m searching for something, Google will show Reddit content but not Lemmy because there isn’t an answer on Lemmy.
FOSS has a reputation for poor UX, and not for nothing either. Users who value slick, easy experiences tend to drift towards corporate software for basically all software solutions because corporate solutions can use money and the corporate hierarchical chain-of-command to respond to user requests faster than open-source self-organizing governance systems.
Reddit’s UX is awful though, at least on the website. But I guess most people use the phone apps?
Functionality on Reddit’s app is even worse than their website, if you can believe it.
Among other reasons, there’s no marketing budget.
Too bad because this is a really great site
I reckon that is one of the reasons. Lemmy’s (and the entire ActivityPub/Fediverse ecosystem/graph) attracts people with a positive, progressive attitude.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
There was a lot of negative being accepted (and sometimes actively pushed) on some instances, but most other instances defederated from them.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
This is a nice-sounding story that flatters our egos, but unless scientific studies corroborate, that’s all it is.
As long as it stays semi-obscure, the powers that be won’t notice it much so maybe it’s a blessing and not a curse. Reddit didn’t start as a shithole, you know. 😕
The powers that be have had their eyes on us for a few years already. Previously. Previously. Previously.
Yikes. Well, let’s hope we’re low on the list…
because reddit actively prevents promotion of the fediverse and its platforms.
if you want to help, convince an entire sub to move their community to the fediverse. we need all the people we can to realize they do not need reddits walled garden.
also, keep in mind lemmy.world is one site of hundreds and only 1 of dozens of platforms that intercommunicate. different platforms offer different features.
im using https://moist.catsweat.com/ which runs the mbin platform. no lemmy involved, but i can see and respond do your post. check out https://fedidb.com/
for example heres my interface hovering your account shows something like karma and includes downvotes;
Its hard to break into peoples minds with no advertising budget.We can’t tell people on reddit about Lemmy because reddit bans your account.
Lemmy got a ton of traffic after the api black out and it did an incredible Job at retaining a lot of those users. There were 200k active users and Lemmy was much more unstable at the time. Active users did fall off as expected but 50k stayed for 2 years. Thats great in my opinion. If we had another migration wave I reckon the retention would be even higher.
For someone to switch from reddit to Lemmy three things need to happen
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They need to know it exists
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They need to dislike reddit or centralised corporate controlled social media on an ideological level.
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They need something disruptive to happen. Either a ban or a change they dont like.
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There’s only so many Linux furries on the planet
It’s popular enough for me
