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?

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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).

      • Salvo@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        100%, and their advertisers don’t either, however do their users have a place in the Fediverse?

        • R51@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Of course, if they can figure out how to get past the sign in spinner buahahahaha

  • VirtualDriver895@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      I like how in your point of view it appears (please correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth or misrepresenting your position) that the platform getting better would be nice but it’s actually not that relevant compared to the fact that other platforms are getting worse and will likely continue to do so as they prioritize shareholders over users.

      It’s like a reverse marathon where you win by not running backwards as fast as everyone else. A leisurely stroll forwards is like moving at super speed.

    • jwmgregory@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What makes you so confident users won’t by and large accept the charges and boot from large social media platforms? Debatably piracy and a home media server have a lot of the same pros as Lemmy and the Fediverse. For the most part, however, people tend to cough up the 10-25 dollars for a streaming service. It’s not because of any practical reasons, at least directly. The true decider is cultural and societal attitudes towards the platforms providing a service. People practically don’t pirate because of the learning curve, but realistically don’t pirate because of their preconceived notions surrounding the practice. Maybe they think it’s wrong. Maybe they think it’s too hard. Maybe it just feels like too much work to set up. Maybe the communities feel too insular. Whatever the reason, it’s fundamentally because of some idea or feeling they have surrounding the medium. Who’s to say these big tech companies won’t successfully execute their goal, and push a larger cultural shift to make the idea of subscription social media more appealing to the average user than the idea of a clunky service using ActivityPub. Maybe the narrative of these spaces being too techbro-y gets pushed, and they garner a similar reputation in the public eye that piracy communities have. It could be seen just like streaming services and piracy. The public could be convinced of the value of familiarity and convenience. Has great work been done to fight against this corpo push lately? Absolutely. But don’t look at these “blatant missteps” that places like reddit and twitter have experienced as of late as omens of an imminent downfall of centralized, capitalist social media. Rather, look at it as a warning sign. A warning sign that heralds the first in a long, deliberate line of many who will follow in those footsteps, gradually pushing the Overton Window surrounding these prices towards their goal. Today Reddit and Twitter are the bad guys so that tomorrow Meta and others can make the same moves, with the added benefit of “it’s just not our choice, we must make these changes to remain viable in the current market.” In the eyes of many, not all, but the majority; this is an absolution. They will be able to succeed. They know this, that’s why they’re doing it and it’s happening now. The Fediverse and a free net will not survive unless the battle can be won in the public consciousness. We must overcome the significant hurdles between federated software design and mass adoption. We must take a direct, meaningful, and effective course of action to directly fight against this, it will not passively be won.

      EDIT: Typo; missing word “Rather, look at it [as] a warning sign.”

  • pinwurm@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

    • njtrafficsignshopper@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • Caminsky@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Rottcodd@lemmy.ninja
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • dub@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yea that’s a good point. I want it to be popular enough to have a good time and business to thrive but I don’t need it to have all the users from previous places. A smaller, more involved community is good for me

      • Sheltac@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes please. First thing I had to do on new Reddit accounts was always unsubscribe from the giant, bot-infested communities.

      • theragu40@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What is crazy is that I feel like Lemmy is already approaching that fun size, you know? There’s a steady flow of content and comments. But it’s not full of shit yet.

        Personally I would love to see it grow by enough that some of my favorite types of communities (specially state-specific and sports team specific) can thrive. But I am really not interested in Lemmy becoming big enough to rival centralized alternative platforms like reddit. Being that large brings far too much baggage along for the ride.

        • dub@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I definitely feel that it is almost there. Most enthusiat forums are filled with millions of users, but a couple thousand max. Dedicated users and some casual users would be best for this place to get to where it needs to be

    • MercuryUprising@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because of quarterly profits. We have to hit those KPIs!

      But, yeah. Honestly, I’m fucking done with mass appeal websites. You know what else is mass appeal? Reality television and pop music. Let the idiots have TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, that should be enough for them.

    • CrackaJack@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes, I learned not to advertise to anyone about a great thing. Idiots would flood and troll leading to decline. But you’d still want some diversity of opinions and not create an echo chamber.

  • Yote.zip@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • dogebread@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • kurosawaa@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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          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.

      • DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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

        • rockhandle@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • danielton@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • DMmeYourNudes@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • danielton@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

                • astraeus@programming.dev
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                  1 year 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.

        • jrbaconcheese@vlemmy.net
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • jrbaconcheese@vlemmy.net
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              1 year ago

              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.

            • insomniac@vlemmy.net
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              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.

              • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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                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.

              • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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                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.

      • rumbleran@suppo.fi
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Kaliax@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Even a healthy competitor, niche, or mainstream would be so nice. Lemmy already hits with some solid weight imo.

    • Kit Sorens@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.

      • MrTulip@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • glockenspiel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • CHINESEBOTTROLL@sh.itjust.works
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          People use “capitalism” in different ways. The person you responded to probably meant it as “free marked system”, which Lemmy absolutely fits into. Often “capitalism” is used to mean “profit seeking system”, which Lemmy doesn’t fit into.

          Both of these uses are common.

  • Captain_Shakespeare@reddthat.com
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    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.

    • MileyCyrus@lemmy.world
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      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.

  • Tyr3al@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

    • astral_avocado@lemmynsfw.com
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      If Lemmy gets big enough, google will work on any customized scraping of the fediverse they need to add in, because it’ll be in their best interest. They might already be able to since Lemmy isn’t private for non-logged in users.

      • FrameXX@discuss.tchncs.de
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        In fact as a user of one different forum I was able to witness search engines logging in as bots for better access. I know this sounds made-up, but the forum was made with/powered by Xenforo. Btw XDA forums and lot of other forums are also made with xenforo. It’s possible that xenforo has a built-in support for search indexing bots, but I don’t reaľly know if that’s the case.

  • Sparky678348@lemm.ee
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    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?)

    • ckrius@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      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.

    • itsJoelleScott@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • Salvo@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • TALD@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • cjsolx@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Personally, I don’t even want Lemmy/kbin to become Reddit 2.0.

      Reddit from 10 years ago is the goal for me. Reddit has become far, far too bloated for its own good, and that line was crossed a long time ago IMO. Let’s just enjoy what we have. Let all the normies stay on Reddit, the people I wanna vibe with are here already.

      • DMmeYourNudes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The problem is that nitch communities won’t get populated unless a lot of people join. The league of legends sub is the largest video game sub on Reddit, and here it’s barely active at all.

      • Magiwarriorx@lemmy.world
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        I want it to be Reddit 2.0 in the sense that I can find active communities for specific or niche interests. Before July 1, the smallest subs that I participated in to have similar communities here were ones that had ~400k subscribers on Reddit.

        The value of Reddit was never in the 1M+ communities, any content there was usually present elsewhere, and the discussions rapidly became dumpster fires. It was in the smaller dedicated subs for topics that might not have another human-centric discussion forum.

    • twistedtxb@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I agree. A vast majority of the userbase don’t mind the countless ads on Reddit or Twitter, on even FB. I think people are leaving FB because it’s not cool anymore, not because the UE has gotten worse.

      I’m just glad that there now are smaller, more tailored for my preferences alternatives like Lemmy

    • reverie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes I think about Hacker News, which isn’t technically sophisticated nor does it have a massive userbase (a little less than 1 million registered accounts).

      It manages to have a steady stream of content and an active commenting base

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    1 year ago

    I think that Lemmy has the opportunity to replace Reddit, time will tell how far this can really go. Just weeks ago, posts on here were only getting hundreds of upvotes. However, now I’m seeing multiple posts hit thousands a day on lemmy.world. There are many improvements to make until then, some UI, and UX improvements. I know that many people still have trouble understanding the concepts of federation so until those can be resolved I still think that it’s not going to reach that level of accessibility. I think we all know how Reddit failed here and lost many users.

    • Radio_717@lemmy.world
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      I don’t know if I want it to get as big as reddit is today. I went to Reddit from Digg and I think the sweet spot of people was around 2014-15 right before all the bots and corporate shills showed up. When they started advertising is when it really started going to shit.

      If Lemmy ever gets too big I’ll prolly leave for something smaller again.

      • Nachorella@vlemmy.net
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        1 year ago

        Part of the fun of Lemmy is it can be as big or small as you like. Just find a smaller instance that blocks any of the big places if that ends up happening.

      • cullvox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I see where you’re coming from, I don’t like advertising and in order for Lemmy to really get as big as Reddit it would probably need a more robust monetization model eventually. I don’t care to pay for good services as long as they are useful and don’t steal my data. However since it didn’t start like that it’s never going to work out, many people won’t go for that.

        • Radio_717@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t mind paying for it either even ads are fine as long as they aren’t as bad as they were on the Reddit App.

          Lenny is pretty good so far. Glad theres an alternative.

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    1 year ago

    My position differs currently for Mastodon and Lemmy.

    In the case of Lemmy, I’m not yet 100% sure. Lemmy’s strength may also prove to be a weakness I feel in terms of it replacing Reddit, in that the decentralised nature naturally creates a dispersion of the audience. While anyone on Reddit could create a community, having them in one place really funnelled people into logically named communities. On the other hand while subscribing to a number of communities for Lemmy, it’s not that infrequent to come across the same or similar community on multiple instances and then needing to work out where you want to go. On one hand it’s probably good to have the varying perspectives and culture this will bring, but I think it’ll also make it hard for users looking for that definitive place to go. It’s very much early days though and perhaps many of those communities will naturally assemble in mass on various instances once the dust settles.

    We’ll see how that plays out I guess, and right now my Reddit use is at maybe 10-20% what it was and I’m really looking to invest my time here. I think with time that both Lemmy updates an 3rd party clients will make working across instances more transparent and in turn broaden appeal.

    I’m more bullish for Mastodon in the short term. The reason for that is my usage concerns me looking to follow an individual rather than locate a community of individuals. Since people will have one account, there’s less impact caused by decentralisation as my interactions with a person I follow is very much 1:1 (unless for some reason they chose to create and maintain multiple accounts). If I want to follow Apple’s account, they’ll presumably have a single one versus there maybe being 6 viable Apple communities across Lemmy instances. I find my use of Mastodon in terms of user experience is much closer and familiar to Twitter than currently Lemmy is to Reddit. Additionally, once it’s enabled for ActivityPub, I think Meta having Threads throws significant support around that particular ecosystem, and brings it to the masses. Can’t imagine we’ll see a billion dollar company spin up a Reddit alternative that is Activity Pub integrated to give Lemmy that same boost, unfortunately.

    To be clear I’m very supportive of both Lemmy and Mastodon and want both to succeed. I do think reddit being centralised has some benefits but, especially for people not looking to invest heavily in browsing across instances, and that it’s to be seen how Lemmy will evolve as it grows and if casual users will be able to sign up and easily find the communities and information they are after. The 1:1 person interaction for Mastodon I think simplifies things and Thread potentially will result in a massive boost for Mastodon. It’s early days for Lemmy and I can’t imagine in Jan or Feb that the majority of us here had even heard of it, let alone considered leaving Reddit. It’ll only continue to grow and I’m excited to watch it do so.

  • liontigerwings@lemmy.world
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    Mastodon has a bigger hill to climb because twitter depends on known personalities. Joe nobody has never been focus of twitter. On reddit, nobody cares who the OP is. It’s all about the content shared on the platform which by it’s very nature is going to be from outside sources. Reddit eventually got its own original content, but at it’s core it’s a link aggregator with a nice commenting system.

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    1 year ago

    Don’t think so, specially since they will be now working hard to kill it. How you ask me?

    • For sure they will try to attack major instances with DDOS attacks, spam bots, etc. I mean, they do to each other all the time, Meta releases threads and now Twitter is flooded with porn spam accounts for example.
    • There will be for sure some news in major media saying that Lemmy is a hotspot for pedophiles to gather, which will taint its image permanently. This being said, these kind of people will for sure try to use Lemmy for those purposes so specially admins need to be ready for it.
    • They may try to “integrate” Lemmy instances into their services like Threads is already doing into Mastodon. By doing that they will try to kill its usage since people will be able to interact with it from their apps while giving them all their personal info and watching a shitload of ads.
  • lebouffon88@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is my first comment! :)

    I really think that lemmy can be as popular as Reddit. I just downloaded an app called connect for lemmy on my android and the experience is just the same as Reddit. One good app (like Sync for Reddit, Apollo, etc.) might be what is needed.

    • Zoot@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Not my first comment, but very long (11years) lurker, and I must say, Connect has both replaced the spot of RIF as well as the void in my brain.

      • eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net
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        1 year ago

        I’m a bad fediverser and still have my Reddit and Twitter apps installed, but only until Rubén’s Boost stops working. Then I’ll be stuck choosing between Connect and Boost when Rubén releases his Lemmy client

        • Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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          Same here. I’m on Reddit until Boost stops working.

          Seems I’ll be stuck on Twitter for a while, though, as most of the people I follow on Twitter haven’t moved over to Mastodon or at least started posting to both.

        • Mesa@programming.dev
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          Just this morning I was debating if I should go ahead and start using Connect and then switch to Boost when it releases, or instead to just wait and continue using my browser until Boost.

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            For me, at least, I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into a single client just because I know what the experience is like from his Reddit client. I’m willing to try whichever clients are out there until I find something I’m fully happy with.

      • lebouffon88@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. :)

        I have been a Reddit user for longer than 10 years I think. And I check Reddit with my phone daily. I admit, that without Reddit there is a void to be filled and connect for lemmy does exactly just that. :D.

        I really see no reason that lemmy can’t be as big a Reddit, given enough time and exposure.