Nobody used reddit for a long time as well

Until people did

Lemmy feels like reddit around 2009

I use Lemmy

I was on Reddit a long time, it wasn't always huge. Usenet forums before that. I like following topics, not people, and like hosting communities built around topics but would hate to have "followers" of myself personally, that sounds hellish. So never used Facebook, etc, and don't even love Mastodon, really.

But apparently this is a minority view?

Lemmy, reddit, and other forum type websites are primarily text based. Microblogging and social media are short form and have plenty of pictures and videos, which catches and retains the attention of users more. Their algorithms are also more intense and curated compared to say reddit’s front page which is more generalized to all its users. Forums mean you have to spend time reading and typing while you can doomscroll and press a reaction button on social media and microblogging.

Reddit seems to be highly algorithmic now, so I think it has more of the “doomscrolling effect” that does accrue a lot of engagement.

Just gonna throw this out there: Lemmy is a bad and dumb name.

1. It's a joke about users being lemmings
   • this subtly denegrates the user on every usage
   • this implies the app/product itself isn't that serious and sounds kinda childish
2. It's not a satisfying word from a pronunciation standpoint. How many other company or product names can you think of that end with that ee sound? Reddit, Twitter, Threads, they all end with these conclusive consonant sounds. Lemmy sounds like it's trailing off while whining.
3. At best it conjures up images of rat like rodents.

2/3 of polled Mastodon & co. users use no link aggregator, neither Threadiverse not siloed ones.

Maybe microblogging is good enough for them?

The people love algorithms, even if they don't admit that. Reddit and the other platforms invest a lot of money to make people more addicted, and it works. Lemmy on the other hand... well people quickly engage with lemmy.ml and think what the fuck is this place

I would say Lemmy has bern growing more rhan pifed. Lemmy is still "new" compared to Reddit. A lot of users like the Reddit UI compared to Lemmy's barebones (like on Voyager).

"nobody", nearly 50k people.

Asking people on mastodon if they use lemmy also doesn't make much sense to me. I don't use mastodon because it's not threaded, people on mastodon probably don't use lemmy for a similar reason. I'm not sure how many people use both threaded and unthreaded platforms, but it feels to me like the two layouts attract different people.

In my view, people go to the areas where good content is happening, not different communications architecture.

Lemmy and Reddit usage are relatively low compared to their respective social media siblings. I've always believed the reason is in the difference in how they're structured. Most other social media is wired around people as the primary structural unit. "Who's saying what?" Reddit and Lemmy are instead wired around topics. "What are people saying about this?" And I assume the difference in popularity is evidence for how most people themselves are wired.

Social networks live and die by network effects. People don't use Instagram because it's the best. They use Instagram because that is where their friends are. Either everybody uses a site, or nobody does.

sue 2: Users could agree on one community. Or (a functionality Lemmy doesn't have), similar communities could be grouped or linked together. Instead of choosing between Linux@lemmy.ml and Linux@lemmy.world, users could follow a combined “Linux” topic.

Doesn't PieFed do exactly that?

The UX still has a long way to go.

I'm very tolerant of shitty tech and like a struggle, and even I am often like wtf.

Signed up to piefed.zip the other day, and the default feed is just horrendous

Most users will just quit instead of trying to figure out how to fix it manually.

No proper onboarding

I think its okay the way it is. Too much attention leads to many reposts, karma farmers, bots, now AI bullshit etc.

Finding communities can be confusing: There can be multiple communities about the same topic on different servers: For example: Linux@lemmy.ml and Linux@lemmy.world

I agree that finding communities can be confusing, but I don't think the problem is the naming.

For example on Reddit if you wanted to talk about video games you'd look at /r/gaming. However over time, since that was a "default sub", it became a bit of a mess and instead /r/Games was the community to have real discussion about video games. But of course over time that too became a bit of a mess and /r/TrueGaming was the best place to talk about video games. In fact for a long time /r/True was a common way to find the better community.

Of course the name of a community might be confusing to an outsider. On Reddit if I'm a fan of Game of Thrones there is /r/GameOfThrones, but what if I'm looking for something a bit more meme worthy, well that's /r/freefolk.

And that's true even on Lemmy. What if I want Star Trek memes? Well that's !tenforward@lemmy.world

I think discoverability is something that can be improved. Of course at the moment so many communities are so small, so looking at all of them isn't really much of a problem. You can usually find what you're looking for.

Since a few weeks I actively post lots of news in several mostly already existing communities. But it is frustrating. I do not see much user growth. If it just would be 1-2 new users per week I'd be happy...

Because it's a carbon copy of reddit and it replicates all of its problems in miniature. Also because everyone in here is extremely exclusionary and hateful of anyone who isn't wholesome 100. Also because it's decentralized but not peer to peer, which means that it's basically feudalism.