I’ve seen many comments and posts regarding the API fiasco on Reddit, with the claim that there will be a huge influx of users when that happens. I’m all for it, but I find it hard to believe that the average or even above average user will make the effort to switch.
I think the influx will be on the 1st. People are gonna try to fire up reddit on their fav app, it won’t work, and a good number of them will do something else.
A portion of those will look for alternatives. Most of those people will probably end up here. I don’t think it’s going to be a gigantic number or anything, due to how many “gates” there are to go through, but I’m expecting the biggest single-day increase so far.
And at least the dev of Sync will or has already rolled out an update to explain why the app isn’t working anymore and that Sync for Lemmy is on development.
There’s no better advertisement, really.
I’ll be directing all of my users in Sync to lemmy.world tomorrow.
Wow this is actually the dev of Sync! Guys this is big! Thank you, this will be huge, hope it her dev will follow.
Very exciting! And Sync for Lemmy is even more exciting! Question, do you plan on adding Kbin support in the future? Maybe when their API is released?
He has said he plans to support kbin in the future. But he is working on a MVP minimum viable product right now to get something that works out asap and then start addressing things like kbin support down the road. He just needs time and the support of the community. You can follow the project at !lemmy.world/c/syncforlemmy (hopefully I did that right…)
Some will.
Not sure how big a number that some will be though.
For people that use 3rd party apps, suddenly they won’t work. They’ll try the Reddit app, some won’t be happy when they see how it looks and some of those will look at alternatives.
Quite possibly some users have already heard about something called Lemmy, but haven’t been bothered to leave Reddit. If their app stops working, that might be enough to make them take a look.
There will be a bit of a surge. It won’t suddenly be millions.
It depends. From what I understood, moderation on Reddit will become really hard after this. So the site will go down in user experience on content, worse than it is now. That’s outside of the 3rd party apps like Apollo no longer working but will have a negative impact. It sounded like some mods would just walk away than deal with not having robot spam bots to help, which it is volunteer. That could spur on further churn, again, because quality suffers.
I removed my Reddit apps and don’t plan to go back. Having said that, the tech here is still in its infancy. I see bugs daily, the native app version of this experience is not super adoptable by a mass market yet, but it can all improve with time and more bodies interested here.
Long term, this broad concept of decentralization seems to be populous. I think people don’t understand it yet, when they show up it’s rough, and there’s alternatives. But that will all continue to change in the coming months.
NSFW content (posts, profiles, and subs) will also not be available via the app, so moderators and users won’t be able to see any, which will also make moderation more difficult.
It’s unclear whether the official app will be affected, or whether Reddit has a secret API that will exempt it from those restrictions, similar to how they implement the other functions.
It’s likely that users will also begin moving over in that case, although it’s probably a good idea for Lemmy to have its NSFW tagging done up before then, so there’s not just a massive influx of pornographic material.
Nobody knows the future, but speaking as an instance admin, the ideal scenario would be a continued steady growth and not a huge sudden influx 😅
I think it is great here on Lemmy but tbh, the content is limited. My enjoyment here is partly watching it develop. Im like 1 week in and I can see it growing day by day. I don’t think that is what most eventual users want to experience. They want it all set up with the party in full swing.
I love the conversations here. It’s just normal people talking. No amateur comedians at the top of threads with their crappy jokes. It’s so nice.
I love it here too. I’m finding that im connecting with people, getting into your head reading your words and it’s nice. Watching the whole process is pretty awesome. Definitely not the average users expectations, im sure.
Thank you for your service. Would you be interested in testing my modern UI theme for Lemmy on your instance? It works with Lemmy 0.17 and 0.18.0. You can get the CSS files from the releases page.
Hey! I have had a few questions about themes. At this point, I am asking users to apply non-mainlined themes through userscripts - I am wary of taking on extra responsibilities in maintaining compatibility for additional themes. Sorry about that!
But all themes that get added to the main lemmy-ui repo will always be available out of the box on lemm.ee as well. The repo is open to contributions, so you could have a look at that option if that’s something you’re interested in.
I already made a proposal to improve the default theme, but my issue was closed without any response from the developers. The required changes were small on purpose and should be easy to implement for anyone already familiar with the code. So it seems that UI is not a priority to Lemmy developers. That’s why I had to develop my addon, which I then also turned into a theme. I hope that one day Lemmy instances will start using some kind of modern theme (doesn’t have to be mine), so that my addon is no longer needed.
My theme is just a small amount of styles applied on top of the default litely and darkly themes, which should make maintenance easier. Unlike an addon, a theme doesn’t need to support multiple versions of Lemmy at the same time, so we could simplify it even more. Lemmy 0.18 uses CSS variables now, so that also makes things easier.
Something needs to be done about Lemmy’s outdated UI and I’m not sure if the current approach of developing multiple userscripts and addons is efficient. I understand if you think this might cause too much work for you though.
I already made a proposal to improve the default theme, but my issue was closed without any response from the developers.
You’re misinterpreting what happened there - the issue was not closed to shut it down, it was actually converted into a discussion to make it easier to track: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/discussions/1503
It wasn’t exactly one specific issue that could be fixed, it was a longer discussion with a bunch of branches. For such things, the discussions format is much more usable.
So it seems that UI is not a priority to Lemmy developers.
I just want to point out that there has been a massive amount of UI improvements in 0.18 and 0.18.1 (just take a look at all the changes by @jsit for example: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Ajsit+). In addition, new themes are being created directly for the lemmy-ui repo as well, for example: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1682
I think many are simply not doing anything until they have to. Once their app quits working, they’ll make a change at that time. Of course not everyone uses Mobile. Personally I don’t use mobile much for internet access, mainly desktop browser. In that case I could keep using Reddit same as before, but I don’t want to.
So the question is what portion of Reddit users are on mobile, how many will relent to the Reddit app, how many will quit using Reddit altogether, how many will look for an alternative, and finally how many will land on Lemmy or Kbin. Could be a lot, could be not many. We’ll find out pretty soon here.
For those that do come this way they’ll have a transition phase. There’s a lot that’s different here and takes some getting used to. Also the lack of certain features may result in some angst. There’s bugs too. They fixed some stuff with 0.18.0, but searching for and subscribing to communities is giving me fits now.
Using on Android mobile has been a pleasant experience for me. Just added a shortcut to my home screen. But, I tend to not download an app unless I have to. Years ago when I was on Facebook and Twitter, I always did it that way. I never used their apps.
I am old-ish so I am not sure if that is why when I joined, it was very easy for me to find my way around. I say this because I’ve been on the internet since the '90s and have familiarity with hunting down what I need versus it just being there in an app.
Ironically, when I started on Reddit back in 2012, I quickly found bacon reader and have been using it ever since. It is one of the few apps I do use. And I will not be using Reddit any other way so I am here for the long run.
As much as I’m enjoying Lemmy, I don’t see the vast majority of Reddit users making the switch to anything. Mastodon, Lemmy, and kbin are far too obscure, and most people use Reddit for pino and memes. People just aren’t very technologically inclined and Reddit satisfies the dopamine fix for most regular visitors.
If these means we’ll be able to have intelligent conversations like the old days of Reddit. I’m all for it. I posted more here than in my 9 years in Reddit. Karma destroyed conversations.
Not as many as you would think. I work in a technical field and most people had no idea there was a protest going on. They also didn’t even know of alternative mobile apps. Most didn’t care and just used the official app. There may be a slight bump, but nothing significant.
The only thing we can do is wait and see. It’s only three days from now. My personal belief is that there is definitely going to be an influx of new users, but that number won’t be too big or unmanageable.
There will be an influx. Not- nearly like the influx over the last week or two though.
But, I would expect a small bump.
I imagine there will be a big uptick in the number of new users but it won’t be a huge wave, not initially. Human nature being what it is, users will switch to the official app, mods will try and muddle through with a more limited toolbox and, slowly, the wheels will fall off as people find that the user experience has been degraded, leading to a fairly steady flow of people moving over (and a decent number moving on as Lemmy likely isn’t ready for primetime just yet). I think what will be key is whether the most experienced moderators and most active posters make the jump - without them the site is a hollow shell as it is largely built on their disproportionate contribution. That might speed up Reddit’s downfall.
The best thing we can do is make their landing as soft as possible.
- Make sure there are welcome posts in each instances main communities.
- Keep an eye on Reddit for people asking how to make the move.
- Keep an eye on the relevant communities here for anyone struggling.
- Get equivalents to the subs set up.
- List these on sub.rehab and similar directories.
- Don’t panic! Perhaps this should have gone first.
a guide on how to use Lemmy would also be nice. I’m a former reddit user and I still haven’t figured out how to edit comments or block users.
I’ll look around for a decent guide or two but, in the web interface, click the three vertical dots on the right under the post.
yeah I think the apps just aren’t there yet. I used connect for lemmy and today I’ve installed lemming which has the edit and block functions but looks clunky. can’t have it all I suppose.
They’re coming but the fact that Jerboa is sending out error pop-ups if the instance isn’t running Lemmy 18.0 isn’t going to help.
It won’t be instant, but quite a few 3PA users will find it incredibly difficult (maybe even impossible) to make the switch to the official app; it’s just that bad. Hell, I can’t imagine using Reddit without the crutch Apollo provided.
- Less than you wish for.
- But enough to cause some trouble.
- And Reddit management will deny it, because their messaging is primarily marketing for investors, not an attempt to accurately describe the world.
I dunno, but the fact that I’m browsing a post with 118 comments using a skin that looks a lot like Apollo tells that things are going in a good direction.
I think it depends in part on whether there are some good, short (!) tutorials on how to use Lemmy on Reddit.
People who just want to continue to browse content will be deterred from walls of text with technical details about the Fediverse and how Lemmy works. It should really be a step-by-step instruction… ideally offering a few instances to choose from at the start. So that the few biggest instances don’t break down from the influx and people leave again.
From my experience with unexperienced users, they will drop Lemmy like hot potatoes when they run into the first problem or broken down server.
