Same. I like a forum-like style. I still think Twitter is a "shout to the void" and same to Mastodon. I like the... slower? Yeah slower, more thought out, and more interactive of this style. Like everything kinda has a purpose to exist.
And it was accompanied with their character limit. It is not enough to elaborate on anything, its only use is to shout out anything that you got mad about without thinking.
I have been trying to comment instead of just lurking. Its against my natural tendencies, but I want to see this place live, so I thought I would be the change I want to see in the world.
Yeah as a lurker on Reddit (I use libreddit) I really wanna see some change for the better, Fediverses' seem to be the future, we just need to get the general masses aware of its presence :)
My concern is lemmy in general is too complicated a concept for the average user just wanting to browse. I've already encountered 2 users on reddit recently who might have stopped because of this complexity. One said he/she felt like lemmy makes its users answer queries before being able to join a sub, and one just couldn't get why there has to be different instances and was turned off because he/she couldn't quite understand how it all works.
I'm not sure I understand everything completely myself, but I'm willing to try. I don't think a lot of people do, tbh.
Edit: I'm aware why lenny is like this (generally) and I am definitely not criticizing it. Just mentioning some points as to why it may be hard for other people to follow us here.
Lemmy will have to learn to hide the sausage-maker if they want laymen to enjoy their sausage. That is to say they'll have to make a way for the everyman to interact without the barrier to entry.
Though, no one says Lemmy has to become a AAA social media site
I agree, this concept of decentralization is not really widespread. I consider myself informed in topics of open source and privacy, but I also needed to get used to how e.g. searching for communities work. It is definitely not as convenient as reddit, where you have a search bar and can seek out any community, here you need to browse several nodes to find the communities you are looking for. It would be nice if Lemmy caught the interest of many and things like this could be worked out.
Yeah for sure, usually if it doesn't "just work" or if its not convenient or they just "don't want to" then it'll be hard to convince anyone, getting all my family to move from standard SMS to signal was hard, there was no real barriers yet it was still too inconvenient to switch, even with all the benefits it offers. The two biggest issues I've seen so far is the "sub-lemmys" or just communities that exist, multiple similar communities can co-exist and have separate users, which isn't good for growth. The second issue, and by far the most worrying currently, is performance and stability with the instances that currently exist. Already we're seeing the main lemmy.ml instance being brought down to its knees with all the new users. If reddit doesn't reverse their API decision by the 12th (which at this point seems unlikely considering all the backlash already with no response) then I can't imagine how bad it would be to see even a 10th of current active reddit users trying to join at once. Its an ticking time bomb with a very quick expiration date if its not addressed quickly. I do have hope however, although my programming experience is somewhat limited a threw a few bucks on the opencollective, which I suggest everyone do if you wanna contribute in some way and you believe in the idea of a more open free internet, circa the late 90s.
Honestly Lemmy is much better than I thought it would be. My main problem is the lack of some niche communities that are on Reddit. For example as a GW2 player I get all my news about game updates & store discounts etc from the GW2 subreddit, but I don't see Lemmy taking that over anytime soon, if ever. Maybe I'll need to use a Reddit scraper for that, if I want to completely abandon the platform.
What I dislike about Reddit is the system of incentivizing karma farming. This leads to unhealthy posting behaviors that always bugged me. So far to me it seems Lemmy does not have that, so it's a huge win.
Refugee here too. Took me a minute to figure it all out, but the learning curve isn't quite as steep as all the FUD tech articles made it out to be. I love the potential the fediverse has
I tried Mastodon and I just couldn't do it. But I don't use Twitter either. I've been using Lemmy/BeeHaw for 10 minutes and it already seems like a drop-in, minimal learning curve to reddit. this looks super promising!
Agreed. I always felt like I had to add five different disclaimers to my comments to avoid bad faith arguments and angry responses. Wasn’t a fun experience at all and often lead to me just deleting comments.
I may have been a little... overzealous when I wrote my beehaw application but I echo this point when I submitted
My last comment on reddit was 6 years ago. I was afraid of what it and the internet at large was becoming. Afraid to be a human online because the trolls and the dox and the swats. The mission statements in the side bar, the long and insightful posts that hope to bridge new people to the culture of beehaw that speak of being nice and compassionate, of working together to build a community of varied interests and peoples let me dare to dream that there exists a place where I can be a human on the internet again.
It's going to take a lot of deconditioning to not be a lurker!
Yes! I’ve really been missing message boards lately. I didn’t think I’d get to feel that joy again, and here we are! Just gotta keep the momentum going.
I wish it didn't take a system/site/service imploding to get people to try something new.
MySpace got silly, enter FB.
Twitter gets Musked, Mastodon finally takes off after years of not.
Reddit nukes their own service,
Etc.
Not that bad projects shouldn't die off, but it's always a reactionary move for the masses, rather than a proactive "let's try this new thing because it might be better".
I think Reddit is an outlier in the sense that until now it has been a good service with fairly minor flaws.
FB is totally garbage and had been that for many years now and yet people are not seeking alternatives, maybe because that kind of social media is not that interesting anymore to the types that would care.
It's definitely been going downhill but by choosing good subreddits and using a 3rd party app that strips out all the new "features" it was still usable. Now it won't be usable.
I've recently returned to Facebook after many years away from it specifically for some local outdoors groups (lots of good posts there about local trail conditions, good training routes, what stores have/offer X, etc). I keep the blinders on and avoid the main News Feed, and it's been fine. It might be just me, but the idea of having super localized communities on Facebook makes more sense compared to somewhere else like Reddit.
Many people won't rock the boat (or even think og doing it) if the current thing is sufficient. Luckly, it seems that, with time, all monitized, centralized platforms inevitably fail.
Same! I was a longtime Reddit user and I’m still learning the ropes here but am getting vibes of my Reddit subs as they felt 10-15 years ago. I hope we continue to grow in healthy ways here
Exactly! I’m really glad I found kbin first. I was along time Reddit user and this community is giving me vibes of what my Reddit subs felt like 10-15 years ago. I hope we grow in a healthy way here!
Yes! I’m realizing how much I took that for granted when social media came on the scene. Not anymore. I’m not letting this version of the internet die out if we have the chance to bring that energy back.
Man I use to be a mad lurker too, I'd occasionally repost a 30K upvote banger, but other than that I'd always second guess myself when I write a comment, go "nah" and then return back to lurking
This is where I’m at too. Reddit is my last non-Fediverse social media account, and I already had some reservations about keeping it. I don’t think I’m ready to delete it just yet, unlike FB/Twitter/Instagram.
I'm excited to see the concept of federation gaining traction. I can't describe how disappointed I was when Jabber/XMPP failed, IRC faded from relevance, and Facebook/Twitter became the way to talk to people. Now, seeing everyone here and on Mastodon, I'm finally feeling a bit hopeful again.
@argv_minus_one@MrsEaves Honestly I am so glad something like the fediverse exists. This is so much more in parallel with how I try to live my life than some top-down centralized system.
Come to think of it, I’m surprised I didn’t learn my lesson with centralization when AIM died. I just accepted it as a natural part of the tech lifecycle and found a different centralized service. But seeing the decisions and actions of these companies over the past few years - platforms I trusted - hit differently, and hit even harder when I went to look for forums and RSS and realized my backup options were dying. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, or pretty close to being gone. It definitely makes me want to support federation and indie web efforts - it’s much closer in spirit to the web I grew up with.
I definitely have this feeling too. I’m finding that memes and other picture-based posts are a little easier for me to start with because they do some of the talking for me.
Haha same! I've already commented here more than what I have on reddit in the past 5 years at least. And I'm not even forcing myself to comment. It just feels authentic. I feel that my voice won't be lost in the void of the internet. I agree with @Disgusted_Tadpole. Last time I had this feeling was on orkut back in the 2000s. Exciting times! :)
I’m a lurker by nature but I’ve been making an effort to interact more (both online and offline lol.) I hope we can develop some interesting, accepting, and not circlejerky communities here :)
I love it when the communities are smaller but I do hope they get bigger too, maybe I won't lurk this time and be more involved but as long as the content is good I don't mind lurking again haha
End of the month is gonna be D-Day when people need to make a decision. I'm pretty confident that a large majority will suck it up and switch to the official app, but that still leaves huge numbers of people that will be migrating. I hope Lemmy is ready for the real wave, this is all just precursor shit.
All that is a long-winded way of saying this is about to get a lot bigger.