this post was submitted on 02 May 2023
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Asklemmy

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[โ€“] jherazob@beehaw.org 20 points 2 years ago

I came here a couple weeks ago precisely because of the recent upcoming Reddit API changes. They have kept breaking the trust of us users for many years and we have just rolled with it and adapted, but at this point i just don't want to be part of it anymore. So, now i have a huge Reddit-shaped hole in my internet life, currently checking what will fill it. Lemmy holds promise to fill it, although there isn't remotely enough users/communities on it yet to fully fill it, and i've yet to get used to it. We'll see, hope it works for me.

[โ€“] luckystarr@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago

I use it because it's the best shot we have to build a real alternative to Reddit. It feels a bit like Reddit at 2008 or so.

But I have the feeling that I might just stay for the community.

[โ€“] rhymepurple@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I want to see more FOSS/FLOSS projects succeed. One of Lemmy's biggest obstacles is its lack of users so I joined to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.

Hopefully Reddit's changes provides similar benefits for Lemmy that Elon's Twitter changes did for Mastodon. I'm not sure if Lemmy will ever reach the size of Reddit (or even Mastodon), but it honestly doesn't need to if the community is engaged enough.

[โ€“] Lost_Wanderer@beehaw.org 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As you say, size isn't end-all-be-all. It's the engagement. There's plenty of old-school forums online that thrive with around 100-200 members. Lemmy probably has double that in active monthly users spread across the 4-5 big instances. It already feels bigger than VOAT ever got. And, at least this instance (beehaw.org), seem to be way better modded and ran.

[โ€“] sexy_peach@feddit.de 8 points 2 years ago

I agree that beehaw is rad, but the last few months were very quiet on lemmy. Too quiet for my taste. Since the recent reddit thing there was a big influx of new users and also new ideas and whatnot.

[โ€“] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Both? I started using it because it's on the fediverse, and I keep using it because it's on the fediverse and it isn't reddit

[โ€“] nhobb@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah both for me too. Reddit is good, but federated makes sense.

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Huh โ€ฆ hi Ada! Blahaj.zone has a Lemmy too?! Cool! Is it in any way integrated with your calckey instance? What got your hosting both a lemmy and calckey instance?

[โ€“] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, we have a lemmy too! Basically, I tried to join some lemmy instances, but had to wait too long for account approval, so we decided to spin up our own instance. There's no integration at the moment, aside from those included in default federation.

Same admins though :)

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Nice! Very glad to see!

[โ€“] DudePluto@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Gonna be honest I don't really understand the Fediverse yet but I'm here cuz it feels cool and reddit kind of annoys me these days

[โ€“] butter@lemmy.jamestrey.com 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Same here. I know Lemmy should, in some way, connect to Mastodon, which is getting bigger

[โ€“] sexy_peach@feddit.de 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

mastodon, lemmy and a few other softwares can speak activityPub, a standard, just like e-mail is one. You can follow a user, read their posts etc. Lemmy uses this differently than mastodon, where on lemmy there is an emphasis on the groups feature (which is shown on lemmy through the reddit like communities), while mastodon focuses on users and their posts. It's not yet 100% compatible in all ways, but it's getting there. For example you can follow a lemmy community from a mastodon server and you'll see that community as a groups that boosts all the posts and comments that are made. Something like that ^^

I don't even understand it 100% anymore, it's getting more complicate the more things are built. But I think in the future it will get easier and each software (lemmy, mastodon, etc) will focus on something and then have a set feature set of what they can do with other servers.

[โ€“] deweydecibel@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

That's what I'm feeling as a new user looking for a reddit alternative. This whole thing shows a lot of promise, but it feels very complicated and not especially intuitive. That's ok, though, nothing wrong with complex, it just going to take some getting used to.

[โ€“] Cappyjax@mastodon.social 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@koncertejo

Both!

I like that #lemmy is federated (like this mastodon account I'm commenting from) and that it's a #reddit alternative.

[โ€“] butter@lemmy.jamestrey.com 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate on how you came across this post? I'm having a hard time understanding the federation.

Are you following asklemmy@lemmy.ml?

[โ€“] Cappyjax@mastodon.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@butter
I just recently learned you could cross-post. I don't have a lemmy account so I just copy/pasted the URL from lemmy to mastodon's search so I can comment/upvote. looks like you can follow specific lemmy communities tho! Search for asklemmy@lemmy.ml on your mastodon instance and click the "+" to follow.

[โ€“] butter@lemmy.jamestrey.com 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's amazing. I can't wait to be able to follow mastodon from Lemmy. Afaik, you can't yet

[โ€“] markrprior@ohai.social 1 points 2 years ago

@butter you can follow lemmy from mastodon. Interacting seems more challenging.

[โ€“] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago

Because of Reddit, but I'm very excited to see the fediverse grow such that Reddit is the last network I have to leave

[โ€“] arthur@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago

The fediverse is the future of the web. Reddit has been a massively important part of the modern web experience, but it looks like their pursuit of profits will begin to diminish It's usefulness. Lemmy is slowly filling that void for me. Hopefully it continues to grow and fill that void for others too.

[โ€“] yogthos@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lemmy being an open source project has been the main reason for me, Fediverse support is a bonus. I think that social platforms fundamentally need to be open and publicly owned. I wrote about this in more detail here https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/

[โ€“] sub_ubi@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[โ€“] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago
[โ€“] TWeaK@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

I use it because I miss what reddit used to be. Now, all the moderators talk about subs as their "projects".

[โ€“] Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

I still browse reddit without an account for informative material and niches but my activity is all dedicated to lemmy, mainly for its open source and non commercial nature.

[โ€“] rysiek@szmer.info 8 points 2 years ago

Mainly because of fedi. Had been using fedi for years, never had a Reddit account.

[โ€“] alex@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago

Finding out about Lemmy was this amazing extension of the Fediverse that could improve (and maybe eventually replace, but I'm not there yet) Reddit, which I've used for 10+ years and really love.

[โ€“] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

I am not a fan of micro-blogging style social media. I find sites like reddit and lemmy a lot more useful for me.

I think the answer to your question is maybe both? Lemmy is attractive both because of its reddit-like features and its fediverse features. But maybe more reddit than fediverse

[โ€“] ed@battleangels.net 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@koncertejo@lemmy.ml @asklemmy@lemmy.ml I use it because I prefer shared spaces to posting solo.on the Fedi. Reddits just slowly moving through the cycle locking things down bit by bit, not interested in contributing there.

[โ€“] ThePJN@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 years ago

Iโ€™d agree with both. The generally calmer and ad free experience here makes it a good Reddit alternative. It being federated opens things up better as well.

[โ€“] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 years ago

Sort of both, my brother runs a plemora instance so I knew about the fediverse, and Reddit's recent move to try to cut out 3rd party apps prompted me to give lemmy a try. The only reason I used Reddit was because of how functional the 3rd party apps were.

[โ€“] nickapos@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I am already in fediverse, just discovered Lemmy after Reddit decided to charge for api access making my use of third party client difficult. I find this approach really annoying so here I am.

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

Not sure I understand the question to be honest.

I use it because it is federated and open source software. But also because I like and support this kind of platform, especially in contrast to the weirdly microblogging focused set of fediverse platforms, where in my opinion microblogging is actually the worst form of social media.

[โ€“] Kajika@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

I came here because reddit community is really bad (upvoting bad stuff) and mods aren't helping. Still reading posts there. Here I feel comfortable voicing my opinion and I love the FOSS part of it (and I love infernoJS too).

I can see some uses for reddit for professional related topic, I once publish a blog post that got me traction and clients. I never used reddit for small/personnal/political talks because of this too.

I have never been in social networks (no twitter/facebook/mastodon/etc), I don't see yet the pros of the fediverse.

[โ€“] possiblylinux127@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I came here because it feels right

I do like how diverse reddit is though. I think Lemmycouldd benefit from stronger free speech safeguards

[โ€“] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 years ago

There are instances that offer that. And there are instances that prioritise protection of vulnerable minorities over free speech. The advantage of federation

[โ€“] DestroyMegacorps@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

I use lemmy since the admins here allow magnet links

[โ€“] audricd@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

A bit of both.

[โ€“] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In short: Came for the Reddit, stayed for the Fediverse.

Reddit was down for several hours a month or so ago, then the new site was back up much faster than old.reddit.com and apps. That clued me in to the fact they appear ready to shut down the API even before any announcement, so I made a Lemmy account then and there. So right now is the transition period for me between the announcement and when free Reddit JSON API access gets cut off.

Before I joined Lemmy I heard about Mastodon, looked through Peertube a bit in passing. But those generally aren't my kind of social networking style.

[โ€“] finickydesert@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Both, I was interested in the Fediverse, made this account as a just in case. Then Reddit started to become like digg, pulling the API thing, forcing me to use the app and not the webpage when I was on my phone. The final straw was the realization that they might pull a twitter.

Currently, I'm checking if I can find similar lemmies (I hope that's the correct word for a Subreddit equivalent) to what I was subscribed to.

[โ€“] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You can always make them if you can't find them!

[โ€“] finickydesert@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I plan to, I already tested it out and created one. Though, it's going to be interesting because if it's too long, I might have to create an instance instead.

[โ€“] dreamLogic 2 points 2 years ago

What is this thing called Reddit?

[โ€“] Krusty@feddit.it 1 points 2 years ago

Just for the fediverse

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