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I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might've been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.

At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.

A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.

With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that's all this platform has to offer. If you're into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.

For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don't see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn't really progressed in a year.

(page 2) 39 comments
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[-] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

What's reddit?

[-] JimSamtanko@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago
[-] Carrolade@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Don't underestimate the power of shitposting.

That said, the Fediverse products are still behind in features, polish and ease-of-use. The mainstream prizes these surface-level things more than any others. It will take years of development still to fully catch up in that regard. So, it's the long-haul.

[-] sunzu@kbin.run 4 points 2 months ago

Mbin is getting there from UX perpesctive imho

[-] cloudless@lemmy.cafe 2 points 2 months ago

I disagree.

  • Mbin's terminology (inherited from Kbin) is annoying. Thread vs post vs magazine, boost vs upvote etc are unconventional and annoying.
  • No default sort option. Every time I want to see new posts, I have to manually select "new"
  • User instance and community instance are hidden
  • Difficult to manage/view subscribed magazines
  • Image upload dialogue is confusing

Lemmy has alternative UI such as Voyager and Photon, they are way ahead of Mbin in terms of look and feel.

What do you like about Mbin's UX?

[-] AVeryCleverName@lemmy.one 4 points 2 months ago

I have a couple of thoughts.

  1. I dont need or want Lemmy to appeal to the mainstream. Frankly, I already get all the mainstream 'culture' I can stand, and frequntly more.

  2. I think it's a mistake to consider Lemmy a one-to-one repacement for Reddit. I hope the fediverse can leverage the whole, y'know, federation thing. I think topic-driven instances that function similarly to the old phpBB boards is a good paradigm. It's not about a monster site that has a board for everything. It's more answering the question, 'What if I could post on gamefaqs from my metal archives account?'

I guess I just think we could do better than trying to out-reddit reddit, when it comes to having a vision for the platform.

Signed, a linux using socialist.

[-] Neon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

No it isnt. It's become exactly as toxic as Reddit! If that isn't a succes, I don't know what is!

[-] Resol@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I'm actually glad I'm not that active on the platform (or any platform for that matter, federated or not), so I can give myself time to breathe in outside air and touch some grass.

And once I am active, it's usually for a couple hours at most, then it's back to being in my coma for a few days.

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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
-130 points (18.8% liked)

Fediverse

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