How do you feel about the massive influx of users?
It makes me hopeful for the future. Enthusiasts priming the pump for people embracing a more sustainable and less exploitative business model to organize the Internet. Instead of putting all the information on a big centralized locked down platform we share the load and costs between instances.
I love what is happening now, it is pretty much the biggest display of resistance against big tech I’ve ever seen in my life by a long shot. I’ve seen most of the internet gradually decay to a shadow of its former self so this is a return to form and a switch to a better model in the long run.
People are finally adopting the Fediverse and if the adoption rates keep up we might start going mainstream with all the advantages and disadvantages, but it will be alright since Lemmy is both federated and FLOSS. Lemmy is a Rust-based, AGPLv3 platform and that means it will be protected against corruption in the foreseable future, I hope.
EDIT: Over 30% of Reddit already went dark!
It’s close to 50 % now. You can watch the realtime stream here - https://reddark.untone.uk/
Is it of all Reddit or just of the subs listed as participating?
Subs listed I believe
That’s what I thought too
That tracker only covers the ones that go private though! There’s a bunch that are going restricted so they can automate posts that will still show in r/all and other feeds. That way reddit’s algorithm doesn’t just pull up other subs and effectively hide that a protest is occurring.
I like it, but I am part of the massive influx of users so I am admittedly biased.
Me too… But it’s great TBH!
Tried Lemmy a couple months ago and tbh it felt dead, love this new influx just hope new communities keep popping up
Same here !
12 years Reddit refugee here:
So far the concept is VERY promising but it still does all feel a bit wonky. Signing up was a headache and took me hours, sign in still sometimes work sometimes not… A huge of development will be required to get lemmy where it needs to be to really compete with Reddit, but so far, I’m very hopeful and happy!
It’s a bit wonky but so was reddit. I expect it to improve quickly with it’s sudden interest.
It is also very hard to subscribe to other server’s community (or subreddit equivalent).
E.g.: i had account from beehaw, if i want to subscribe a channel from lemmy.world i need to see the list of community from lemmy.world comminity list, but I cannot subscribe from there because i dont have lemmy.worlda account. So i need to back to beehaw and search it again in community search bar.
In jerboa android, I didnt even see a way to search new community
Would be nice if there is a way to subscribe other server easily
I went through https://browse.feddit.de and subscribed to a bunch of communities that matched what I had on Reddit.
Yeah, just found that out the hard way myself. I got to lemmy.world and suddenly was no longer logged in etc… That is something that def needs improvement.
Agreed. There’s a similar issue on Mastodon that’s been confusing people for years and still hasn’t been addressed, let’s hope Lemmy prioritizes it a bit more!
From the community page https://beehaw.org/communities you can click all, and search for communities everywhere. Except for instances beehaw blocks.
In Jerboa, there is an icon on the bottom that takes you to the search function. I’ve been able to “join” communities from other instances using it
At least for me downloading their app jeroba makes the experience much nicer. Haven’t had the issues I had on the website though it’s a bit taxed because of the influx of users. Expected.
Is Jerboa android only? Didn’t see in the app store
Yes, there’s an apple one but not sure if it’s official. Mlem or something.
Afaik Mlem is iphone’s lemmy client
Yeah, android only. For iOS, there’s Mlem.
I’ll give that a try, I need an app
Right? I can’t wait to see how it improves as time on. I didn’t have any real problems with joining on my end, though. When you signed up, was it the approval process on your instance, or just confusing? If it was the approval process, that’s probably specific to lemmy.ca.
I first tried signing up on lemmy.ml, that was impossible. Various hours of trying just got me the “click the signup button and it starts rotating and… nothing”
Then I went to lemmy.ca, there signup worked, but sign in at times gives the same “button rotating” thing and then nothing. Try again, and it works.
Its a minor issue, but a very visible one that I would say should be fixed ASAP because its the first thing new people see and you don’t want the first experience to be tiresome.
The infinitely rotating button happens if their email settings are invalid- just discovered that on my instance. I have mine set to open but require email validation and everything seems to happen instantly, but if they require admin verification it may be bugging out and not telling you.
It’s because there is some approval process involved I think to avoid bot/troll accounts. I join lemmy.ca cause I live in Canada. :D
That’s fine that they have an approval process, but then the user interaction should be different. IT should immediately say that my request is under review and they’ll get back to me asap or something, instead of a “this process is frozen” indication
Think of it like moving to a new house rather than picking up your house and moving it to a new neighborhood. The excitement comes from the differences even if you miss the other place.
I just moved to a different instance and logged in there, browsing ml subs.
May I ask why signing up took hours? I didn’t even need to confirm anything via email, so I took me like 10 seconds.
I used sh.itjust.works though, I think it’s meant to, well, just work. Maybe the process on other instances is more complicated?
I signed up via beehaw and the sign up page said the request has to be manually approved.
As (another) reddit refugee, in order to compete with reddit, Lemmy needs to invest in its mobile apps, and make other servers easier to access.
I’m finding the mobile experience in the browser pretty reasonable.
Well unlike reddit the official app is great for lemmy.
There’s an official app?
I only know of Jerboa (for Android), but I don’t think that’s an “official” app
There’s a git repo for something called remmel(?) which I think is an iPhone client. But without someone publishing it to the App Store, no one will use it.
It kinda is. It’s made by one of the devs
I use jeroba but it’s android. There’s also lemmur but it won’t load for me on that and jeroba is the"official"one.
I tried lemmur on fdroid but I think it’s dead. Hasn’t received updates in months and will not load anything.
You mean the Android app? Unfortunately I can’t even login with Mlem on iOS.
Agreed. Website needs some improvement as well
Hope people have patience and stick with it. I have no interest in going back to reddit.
I hope that lemmy makes it but I don’t think that it will be easy because:
- registering is far from straight forward. Before figuring out how to do it and which is the name of the app you need, lots of users will give up
- I don’t think that lemmy can scale well
I agree with the scalability issues. Instance owners are going to run up against whatever they can afford to pay. If a given instance grows to a point where the hardware required to run it would be too expensive, then the admin has a choice: Donations, payment, and/or sponsorship.
All have their pros and cons.
Assuming “Lemmy” becomes popular (there’s a ton of barriers preventing this so far). there’s inevitably going to be consolidation between whoever can afford to support the largest instances.
Also, I think the most confusing part about the whole “fediverse” is that each instance is the entire “platform” of whatever it’s trying to be.
This IMO creates massive fragmentation and a ton of confusion. Which one is the “authoritative” instance? Oh there’s none? Oh…well…Hmm.
I’m sort of starting to think of it like this:
Reddit (or whatever fediverse whatever) is like a single shopping mall and the stores are subreddits. Each store needs a unique name.
Lemmy is like a bunch of shopping malls with each shopping mall having its own set of stores.
Stores within a single shopping mall must have a unique name, but can use the same name as a store in another mall. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find two Foot Lockers in the same mall, but you’re likely to find them in pretty much every mall you visit in the USA at least.
That’s a good analogy.
Whilst I’m somewhat sad to be here (Reddit has eaten up a significant portion of my time over the past 10+ years), I’m happy to be learning new things and exploring a new way of doing things.
I honestly thought this would reduce my screen time as Reddit is on the top of the list. But here I am at Lemmy lol.
I’m super excited for the potential this has. Happy to be here and hoping to help build a great online community with you all!
As a newbie, I hope the software can catch up to the needs quickly.
God, site is so SLOW. They need to bring new servers, maybe charge extra for each api call? IDK
That guy Christian probably developed some of the code. I heard from spez that’s his code is super inefficient.
This spez guy sounds trustworthy. He should do an AMA to answer questions about the code.
I’ve been hoping for a shift to decentralized social platforms for ages, so I really hope that’s the direction things are heading.
As cool as this decentralized approach to social platforms is, I have a hard time really seeing it going mainstream. There’s too many barriers to entry (both physical and conceptual) for the average user
I think honestly Lemmy just needs more mobile clients. Jerboa is ok, but third party clients are needed here like they are/were with reddit
It’d be nice if Sync, RiF and others supported Lemmy.
I’d pay good money for “Relay for Lemmy”, assuming that the momentum sticks.
Relay for Reddit turns into Leray for Lemmy…
Lmao, I’m just being nuts.
RiF is Fun->Lemmy is Funseems like an easy transition
Give it a few months. More apps will show up.
Every time I hear ding, I start laughing. 😁
I’m happy for users to join the federated alternative!
