What the title says. I think there is still a long way for that to happen but i’ve been hopeful. What do you think?
Being on the internet used to be not cool.
Email and www. … .com was as foreign to the mainstream as the Fediverse is to the mainstream today.
The nerds build cool shit, the corporations chase the hot new thing to milk every last dollar out of the mainstream who want the cool new toys, and the mainstream inevitably ruins the cool new toy because they don’t understand how or why it was made in the first place.
This is the way of human nature. It has played out on the internet since the start (and probably well before that) and it will probably play out again on the fefiverse (just look at Meta).
shit, meta has no place in the fediverse. Evil bastards.
100%, and their advertisers don’t either, however do their users have a place in the Fediverse?
Of course, if they can figure out how to get past the sign in spinner buahahahaha
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.
It’s possible. I think the biggest obstacle is that the corporations feeding on people’s data are not going to just stand by while it happens.
Another big obstacle is the general UX of these platforms. Major companies have teams of user experience analysis and researchers that, while not always “winning” as compared to product or business driven decisions, absolutely have a (generally positive) impact on the product. Onboarding, retention, etc.
The fediverse has all the standard frictions of most OSS, like talking about itself, it’s technology, etc when the fact is 99% of users dgaf.
I might go so far as to argue the perceived complexity is a bigger barrier than the risk of sabotage from other businesses. I am optimistic the growing list of third party apps will help solve some of these issues, as long as they take things like the sign up process and server selection into their scope.
I don’t think UX will be that big of a problem, in the past the unofficial reddit apps were all better than the official one. Major companies design by committee and the UX is meant too maximize profit and engagement statistics for advertising, rather than be “good”. A lot of open source UIs are better than their paid counterparts. I think PopOS is far nicer than windows 11.
Nah, most open source UIs are really pretty bad. Most devs are horrendous designers.
Your comment about profitability is true when it comes to social media companies specifically but definitely not true for the industry as a whole. UX is a huge selling point for enterprise software and the goal there isn’t to drive clicks or views, because that’s not how those companies make money.
UX won’t be a problem as long as the maintainers are open to feedback and not stubborn about their current approach. And even if they are, an alternate front end could be introduced separate from the default one.
That and the servers are under such stress that it makes for a stuttery beginning for any new usrrs. Even just trying to upvote you and comment was a process. First this page wouldn’t load properly, then then the upvote didn’t show, then the screen jumped around when I tried to reply.
This site and any other will only replace Reddit etc if it’s got people. It only gets people if new users can use the platform. We’re not quite there yet. The people here now are willing to put up with growing pains but if it doesn’t improve soon people will move on
The problem is that everyone has consolidated on one gargantuan server. The whole point of the fediverse is to spread out so no one server is carrying the entire load. I’m currently using lemm.ee and have experienced none of the issues being discussed here.
But yes, I agree that it could be a potential turn off for newcomers.
At the time of this writing, I have accounts on two servers. One on the big server, and one on a tiny server.
Obviously, the gargantuan server’s biggest issue is performance. That will probably improve with time, but with its size comes some noticeable benefits, which I will touch on shortly.
The tiny server, which I actually joined first, is blazing fast, but I’ve run into constant issues trying to find communities and posts that the bigger server can find no problem. Initiating a federation request is not intuitive at all, and your average user is going to wonder why the hell so much stuff isn’t showing up when they click All on a smaller server.
I tried manually copying my subscription list from the gargantuan server to the tiny one. It was quite a chore, even though it got better in 0.18. Most of the communities returned a “not found” error. Having to retry a search several times or manually input the URL and reload the page several times until the server can find the community on the remote server is not something the average user is going to want to deal with, so they’ll end up on the huge servers that already know about the communities on the other large servers, if they don’t give up.
Hopefully this gets better, but that’s my best guess as to why everybody ended up on the gargantuan servers.
Spreading out would help the performance of the servers but would still expose inefficiencies in the backend systems that they use to talk to each other. The page might load, but the content will be all kinds of fucked.
It’s a huge turn off. And federation itself adds to the problem when the servers don’t match up properly.
I’m testing out Mlem on iOS and so far it is a much cleaner experience than even the desktop version of Lemmy’s webapp. Lots of nice QoL features.
Yeah, the apps have been spotty for me, but at least the layout is cleaner.
Not a good sign when you need an app to properly use your website though.
The mobile site for Lemmy is at least usable, without a huge banner telling you to download the app. That’s more than I can say for Reddit.
We’ve been using reddit for years…
And? I don’t remember Reddit being difficult to use when I signed up a decade ago
I imagine reddit felt little different than this at launch in 2005. New services are never going to be perfect from the start and it’s obvious there is a community of devoted devs working on this project.
Why are you even here?
Create an account off of lemmy.world and see if you have the same issues. A smaller instance can handle things easier. It have 2 but use the one that was most up-to-date and responsive.
See that’s part of the problem. You shouldnt need to have to create a bunch of accounts just to use a site. People aren’t going to stick around to find time their social media. They want it to just work.
I don’t disagree that it’s a weakness. But that just is how it is for now. I’d guess that it will settle down to a few dozen “strong” instances that are all federated together, with hundreds more smaller instances available, but right now there are like 5 super-packed instances (lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, kbin.social, etc) which are getting killed with a double-whammy: all the users and all the communities are on them.
We’re still very early on. It’s not going to be a digg to Reddit style thing. But Reddit will keep making bad decisions and people will trickle over here over time and with each influx, things will have improved. I’ve been here a couple weeks and it seems like every day it gets better.
Also, the technical barriers aren’t as scary to people make it out to be. Yeah we won’t get all the boomers, which is very sad. But I’ve got some very tech illiterate friends who have started using memmy with no problems.
And do we even want to get as big as Reddit? Reddit was great 15 years ago. Then teenagers got smart phones and the olds spread out past Facebook and it’s been on decline ever since. I’d be perfectly happy if it got to like 20% the size of Reddit. Maybe not even that big.
Yeah we won’t get all the boomers, which is very sad.
I hope boomer is a state of mind, because otherwise you might be disappointed to learn how old some of us are.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea we will see a continuous trickle of users here as reddit makes more bad decisions. It will be waves, not a constant trickle. And each decision after the API changes will be incrementally smaller, driving fewer users away.
Right now we will also have a retention problem. People came here as an alternative to reddit, a d if the site is too slow, too hard to use because it is slow, then they won’t stay. Theyll fall back into old habits and go back to reddit, because it’s easier and familiar.
Edit: case and point: I’m using Jerboa. I just posted this comment, but when I did it took about 30 seconds, then I got a network error, and it didn’t seem to post but it had, in fact, posted. This is pretty normal on this app right now. I understand stuff like this will get ironed out, but for new users who aren’t fully committed it’s a BIG turnoff.
Decentralized nature of Lemmy is also going to be confusing for the average Joe. When they to go to web site of Lemmy and see a list of instances to choose from, with communities spread all over them they are just going to nope out.
yeah, lemmy’s current web app is very much in the “made for nerds by nerds” category as far as i see. lots of cool tools to express yourself and not many useless limitations, but on the other hand it’s kinda confusing if you’re not that techy. it’s absolutely learnable but it would do very poorly on a hallway usability test.
and it’s understandable why that is so, lemmy itself is being developed by two people who have their hands full putting out a thousand other fires, as well as sorting through the community’s contributions. but there’s still a lot that will have to improve in the future – although I’m completely sure that when it does, it will be way better than what a corporate alternative would be like. those tend to do well with attracting new users but they also tend to be out of touch and suffer from stupid one-off decisions by middle managers trying to get promoted.
Even a healthy competitor, niche, or mainstream would be so nice. Lemmy already hits with some solid weight imo.
And do what? Make a better product? The beauty of Capitalism is that consumers really are the final say on whether your product succeeds. You can make an app with as many addictive hooks as possible, but that doesn’t make those users permanent. And any sabbotage by Reddit will only dig in our heels at this point.
I hear what you’re saying, but Lemmy was created to oppose the capitalist exploitation cycle. With Lemmy, we aren’t consumers or a product. Lemmy is actually firmly rooted in anti-capitalism and arose because capitalism destroys choice.
Capitalism isn’t necessary for innovation. It is just the private ownership of things. Spez didn’t make Reddit great, for example. Other people did. Spez is just a do-nothing owner who is now the mouth piece for bigger do-nothing owners looking to wring out maximum profit from unpaid laborers.
I’d argue that capitalism stifles innovation, which is why everyone agrees that you need competition. A market economy. And broad anti-trust regulations, since capitalism is inherently authoritarian since it is a top-down hierarchical structure. A free-ish market is what allowed us to innovate so quickly.
But Lemmy is outside of that since it isn’t driven by profit.
If the fediverse starts gaining traction, you can bet the mega-corps will use every dirty trick they have to co-opt it or, if that fails, undermine it.
Threads is already expected to be that answer. Mindless instagram folks won’t have a clue.
Threads is only slealing twitter’s user space, which i can totally get behind. Fuck elon musk. Even if it benefits the lizardman.
Yeah I mean I HATE Facebook…. But I hate what musk did to Twitter and crypto more…
Absolutely not in their current formats.
Sign up needs to be simplified enough that your gran could do it and we need way more professional UIs. After those two things, it could happen.
As long as you all stay here, I’m happy.
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?
Lemmy has a long way to go in terms of user experience before it can effectively compete with Reddit. The majority of new accounts in the last weeks have been spite users. That is, they’re here not because they love Lemmy - but because they hate Reddit.
That’s not a bad thing, per say. It doesn’t matter how people get here. It’s more important that they have a good reason to stay.
And the average user doesn’t care if something is federated or centralized. They just want a product that works and is simple to grasp. In my opinion, app developers are going to be the gamechanger Lemmy needs Stuff like Memmy (on the iOS app store today!), Mlem, Liftoff, Thunder are pretty much better than the official Reddit app. And that’s how most people consume content these days. When there’s no enshitification ads or microtransactions - there’s clearly going to be a winning experience.
It’ll take time, but as more Federation communities build - the less Reddit is necessary. As well, it usually takes a long time before people start catching on that the tools they once loved have turned to into bots and spam.
Mastodon is in it’s 7th year, and has like 8 million active users. Twitter had 200 million users by it’s 7th year. On one hand, Mastodon is the biggest Federation app. On the other, Twitter was 25x as large. Of course, Twitter is no longer the relevant “town hall” it once was - and is hemorrhaging users and respect. So who knows. It only takes a few celebrity endorsements to get countless folks switching. Who knows
That is, they’re here not because they love Lemmy - but because they hate Reddit.
Anyone remember the Digg exodus? This was exactly how Reddit got big.
Anyway I do think it’s a little more than just hate, though. I have poked around at Lemmy before but I’m starting to take it more seriously because I actually cannot use Reddit on my phone anymore.
In my opinion we need to make a distinction between social networks and aggregators with forum-like experiences. Reddit is easily replaceable because sharing links is like the easiest thing to do. I started using lemmy and not planning on using reddit again. So far i have abandoned all major social media. Only use whatsapp. The internet is rotten right now, however there are so many amazing things that are not social media that we are yet to discover and for those looking for information not people, the internet still has a lot to open. Social media is a cesspool.
fuck dude I hope not. The best part of Lemmy to me is the fact that it’s not as big as the others, and what Lemmy gives me is that same feeling of freedom websites in the 2000s and early 2010s felt like they had.
I think anyone who was around, and online, before reddit/twitter/Facebook became the consolidated social media behemoths that they are, are willing to learn something new. The before-times were replete with smaller communities where your internet handle was the only real source of continuity (and even then, only if you wanted it to be).
But those whose ONLY experience of online discourse is the big 3? It’s a lot to adjust to. I don’t know if this is what will hit critical mass, but then, maybe that’s setting the wrong goal to begin with. Can the communities connected here be self-sustaining for a time, regardless? Definitely.
My guess this whole time is that investors want to 1) capture the Facebook/boomer/Candy Crush crowd and 2) let anyone (foreign entities) pay to peddle influence whether political or otherwise.
Pump and dump.
Reddit will be circling the drain after the 2024 US election, is my estimation.
I think there’s good chance for Lemmy and mastodon to become mainstream but I don’t they can replace their centralized counterparts. Mainly because I think that the social media in its current form is changing.
While platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok are likely not going anywhere for a while, each time these platforms break the trust of their users the more cracks start to form to the service that leak out users. Some of these users will look for something new, some of these users will look for alternate services, some of these users will create their own services.
Many of these platforms rely on the attention economy, so all it really takes to make these platforms struggle is to divide that attention more and more to competitive platforms and services. This fragmentation has been happening for years now with people dividing their attention between multiple services like reddit, twitter, discord, facebook, tiktok, snapchat and whatnot. Now creating similar service for smaller audience is easier than ever and with A.I tools it’ll probably get even more easier.
Its a bit similar to video games and live services, with competition for players attention getting more fierce by the day.
What I keep wondering about is what if Reddit changes their app to be like Apollo or RiF? Will they get desperate and self aware enough to give people what they want? Is this and other apps doing copy-cat reddit doing this because we want to force change? I wonder which way the future will take this race?
Only if we fix the servers and reduce the bugs.
I don’t think you need to have the largest following to have great value, even lemmy as it is right now feels great. I’ll actually want to dive into comment sections compared to the endless scrolling on reddit.
As long as there’s enough people using a platform for a variety of ideas and experience in topics, I think that’s good enough for me.
I don’t really think that Lemmy or Mastodon will really replace their counterparts. At least not for now. As many have already said, the federation system is too complex for many non-technical people. It would take something like a de facto standard app, that abstracts everything federation related away and make it feel like another centralised solution.
Another point for me is the searchability of federated systems. Say you are searching for a technical problem right now, google will surely bring you to a related subreddit in just seconds. I have yet to see a Lemmy related search result.
I have actually started finding results for things on programming.dev on Google.
It’s less obvious because it doesn’t say lemmy, but I imagine this will be more common as more content is posted here.
Also, the technical issues involving new users is temporary. It may take awhile, but the user experience will gradually get better as time moves on.
I have actually started finding results for things on programming.dev on Google.
That’s good news!
I have actually started finding results for things on programming.dev on Google.
What was your search query, did you specifically call for a lemmy result or was programming.dev organically shown?
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Reddit, in my opinion, has become mainstream due to its ability to be searched via engines such as Google. I think Lemmy would need to have that same level of discoverability if the platform should take off. I’m not sure if doing this risks Google or others threatening the platform via “embrace, extend, and extinguish”, but perhaps Lemmy needs to be accompanied by a decentralized search engine itself that can browse the entire Fediverse. I’m new to the fediverse so I’m not sure if such a software exists, but clearly I think discoverability is paramount for giving new users a reason to see Lemmy and maybe stick around
When I first started using it I did not think so. In the week or so since I’ve sort of wrapped my head around some of it, and now I think it’s certainly possible.
The biggest hangup in my opinion is the very concept. As a normie I get to the login screen and I see that it’s asking for an instance along with a username and password. That’s scary and you’re curious what that even is, so you Google it. And that doesn’t help at all. You’re fed a very technical description that feels like a brick wall of information. It’s intimidating.
Once you are set up on a large instance and logged into a good app, subscribed to some of your niches… Well in my experience at all clicked together pretty quickly. The only thing that’s missing from the Lemmy experience is traffic. I know there are already some pretty big communities and people are starting to say it’s too big or something, but there’s many interests of mine that are booming on Reddit that have a handful or less posts here. Naturally things take time, and I am genuinely starting to believe we’re on the way there with this platform (network of platforms?)
The way I’ve described it to non tech friends and family is “a bunch of different reddits, all with their own subreddits, but the different reddits can all talk to each other even if you only have an account on one. Then if one reddit has stuff your reddit doesn’t want to see, your community (or just the admins) can decide to disconnect from them.” It’s worked well so far.
Yeah that’s a pretty accurate way of putting it ngl. I’m probably stealing this
Yeah, maybe there could be blurb during the sign up section when selecting an instance? That being said, I didn’t know what I was doing when I first signed up for Lemmy and chose Lemmy.world without knowing choosing the largest one didn’t matter.
Email and Usenet used to have the same barrier to entry, you needed someone to host and provide NNTP, POP3 and SMTP servers for you to access them. This was usually your ISP or IT department.
Modern internet users have become so conditioned by FB, Gmail, etc to think that the only way you can access content is though one of these monolithic providers. There are some users who think that FaceBook is the internet (just like Early AOL, MSN and CompuServe users of the 90’s).
I would like to see small ISPs provide federated instances for their subscribers, just like their email servers and the NNTP servers from days of yore. Since most independent ISP churn is triggered by word-of-mouth, it would be a great marketing platform.
