Asklemmy

You aren't doing anything wrong! This site/app (lemmy) and the concept (fediverse) are still super early days so there are going to be many problems. The site has some layout issues and there isn't nearly as much content as Reddit but that's just because it is new.

The most important bit, to me at least, is that the fundamental idea of the fediverse is good. We have had to many instances where social sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter can just decide what people can and can't say, they can remove our content and they can monetize it all without doing any real work of their own as far as creating content. The idea of the fediverse ensures that no one server, person or company has all the content and thus the control.

I really hope people stick with something fediverse whether it be lemmy, kbin or any of the other projects out there. Post content there, cross post it from Reddit if you really have to post to Reddit too for whatever reason. Please don't give these companies all the control anymore.

i mean so far, I'm enjoying it. sure, the community isn't as large, but that's mostly a good thing. on reddit, if i made a post, it would be like a 25% chance to get hundreds of comments, and a 75% chance to get none. here, I've gotten a few, high quality responses on every question post I've made. i do miss the "auto hide read posts" feature, but maybe that'll get added some day

I have a similar experience, but its like a user base of 200k vs idk how many million on reddit. There wont be an infinite amount of posts until lemmy grows more.

I think only 1 percent of all users on lemmy and reddit post. So its 2k active posters vs 60k active reddit posters (assuming reddit has 6m).

The sorting has been bad i also see dead posts but overall im enjoying lemmy more than i had reddit in the later years (joined 2010).

It's very new. Very valid concerns, but most of them are growing pains. If people just stick with this for a while it will improve by leaps and bounds.

Personally I've focused more on the community aspect than the software for now, since the latter is actively being worked on by a lot of people, so that's just a waiting game. The community has been fantastic, though. Already a nice feel in a lot of discussions.

The community and the app is still relatively new. To be honest, I prefer smaller communities where I can leave for a few hours without half the posts sliding to page 5 and beyond. Instead of uncritically consuming digital content, try to contribute to smaller communities, post a couple of cool links, or even (Gasp! Horror!) do something else for a while.

I am also new here and I am a long time lurker, 2008, from the place that shall not be named.

My initial feel is that Lemmy is very much like pre Digg days and a kin to the traditional style forum boards where discussions aren't old news when the post is only 12 hrs old.

This is a breath of fresh air even with the growing pains I expect may come with the sudden influx of refugees.

I mean, you're being realistic, and nobody can fault you for that. The jank is going to be too much for some people, they'll come here maybe but won't stick around. Other people will come and think that the positive aspects are more important than the negative ones and they'll migrate.

I'm a FOSS nerd and advertising makes me physically sick, so I'm more than willing to put up with the frustrating things about Lemmy.

My one advice is, if you want to see more content then post it.

I would say to breathe deep and take your time. Lemmy is not a clone of Reddit, and it shouldn’t be viewed as, say you would compare functionality between 2 third-party Reddit apps.

Think of it as coming in to a new MMO after having played the old one for many years. Some things will be familiar, and some things will be different. Some mechanics may feel like a “step backwards” while others are cool additions.

Lemmy isn’t new, but it’s getting fresh eyes on its user experience and that is a good thing. And unlike Reddit, each community/server/whathaveyou can be far more responsive to their users feedback. That said, not every response will be a “yes” but you don’t have requests filtering through various levels of technological red tape, which I understand has been a challenge for the Reddit moderators, who still do not have the necessary tools to effectively moderate their subreddits.

When I first joined Beehaw, and saw, originally, a “lack” of diverse subreddits (including my mainstays) I was a bit disappointed, but then I thought to myself: “damn the torpedoes, I’m just gonna wing it” and subscribed to a bunch of communities that looked promising.

I’ve been on Lemmy since the disastrous AMA and have not looked back. I’ve even engaged more in these last 5 days on Lemmy/Beehaw than in the last year on Reddit. And while I still miss my 250+ subreddits (including r/superbowl and the subreddits I collected as part of a Reddit gestalt (r/inthesoulstone, the subreddit for Purple button pushers, r/buddhistasfuck (created as a lark, someone posted it wouldn’t last a day and I stayed to prove them wrong, and while it was a quiet subreddit, every once in a while someone would post something they thought was “extremely” buddhist)) the Lemmy communities have provided more meaningful interactions. Plus, Lemmy will create its own gestalts, and I’ll have new ways to experience the never-ending stream of random data tidbits I have grown to crave.

You make it sound like not doomscrolly is a bad thing

The problem with Fedi apps is that they're built as replacements or clones of other apps like Reddit (Lemmy), Instagram (Pixelfed) or Twitter (Mastodon).

People come to expect the same experience that they had there and they're disappointed by the small community and confused because it's built on a fundamentally different philosophy and concept.

And of coruse, bugs are to be expected. It's not a multi million dollars company that's building these apps but a community of volunteers.

What is your experience with lemmy?

Personally I am glad that decentralization is slowly picking up again with things like Lemmy and Mastodon. To me using it does not feel all that different from Reddit actually (UI-wise).

I grew up in the days of the old internet where newgroups and mailing lists were the way to interact with other "netizens" (a term I have not heard being used in years btw). Very little moderation and yet people behaved themselves, though of course the number of non-tech people on the net were far lesser as well so that certainly had something to do with it. Lemmy has that advantage too currently of smaller, ideologically-inclined, and willing-to-jump-a-few-hoops people.

TL;DR: I've no issues with using Lemmy and I like it so far, including smaller size of the community.

Honestly man, as much as I 100% agree on the UI difficulties, it's like a breath of fresh air. There's good music posted, people posted books and I looked and really wanted to read them. It's more human. There's this tiny little handful of content here, but it's not all same-y and in-joke-y and weird.

I'm not trying to hate on reddit, I still go to reddit for news because of more or less what you're talking about (the weird sorting in the newsfeed here and the lack of certain content). But what I like about here is that there are nerdy people, there's real content, there's not this weird hivemind and endless dopamine content. The great stuff about reddit was always the in-depth storytelling and unique content, to me, not just the gratification aspect of everything working right and new content popping up. I'm happy with Lemmy despite the hiccups because it seems like it's getting back to that.

One of your issues is probably sorting by Active instead of sorting by Hot. A major difference in the experience on Lemmy is the "Active" sort method being the default.

Agreed. Its all a bit too confusing. I'm sort of understanding it all now after a few hours. I think great apps for android and iOS will definitely help a lot, but also I just really miss apollo :(

my biggest adjustment outside of the very sus censoring on some subs, is that my front page on lemmy is almost entirely about reddit :/

I know it will eventually die down but rn its kinda like ... why bother browsing

I had trouble with Mastodon, primarily because I had a very curated list of people I followed and most of them didn't move to Mastodon. Those that did are clearly using some type of program to just copy posts over from other platforms.

But for Lemmy, it feels different. I've been able to find most of the same communities I was a part of over there. The fact that they are smaller and less busy means I can spend less time scrolling, but still feel like I got my "fix" in for the day.

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example. Lemmy should prevent this, community names should be unique, it should have an index of all the Lemmy Fediverse where instances can lookup if a community exists instead of waiting for a user to import that community to his instance. Something similar to what BTC does with the decentralized ledger.

i setup my own instance ('bin, not Lemmy), and have subscribed it to so much content my doomscrolling is sitting at a comfortable, pre-reddit-death level. i am still scanning the 'verse for new instances to subscribe to.

they just added a feature in mbin that automatically groups crossposts, which is very nice.

i guess i prolly shouldnt have answered cuz im not using lemmy, technically...but

i would recommend:

• checking another instance, maybe you'll get better content ( mine is public!, https://moist.catsweat.com )
• subscribe your instance to more external content

There are definitely a few bugs or perhaps performance issues that are annoying, but the experience seems already 1000 times better than just 2 days ago. I have also checked on lemmy every few months for about 2 years now, it's day and night. It already feels kinda like 2012 reddit to me, and that's a good thing in my view.

Newbie question, can we just use the standard Mastodon application for IOS?

The reality is that there was/is no reddit alternative and right now we're all in this transitory phase where we're all looking for a new home. We'll all just have to wait for the dust to settle. Lemmy isn't perfect but is improving and additionally other alternatives like kbin and tildes are in the works.

To your larger point, much of what you're feeling is the abrupt break in habits. I've been using the gap to develop more positives ones, and it's been great.