The more I understand it, the more I love the concept of it. What really illuminated the concept of the fediverse for me was an illustrated diagram I saw on Lemmy earlier, which made the analogy of being able to email a gmail address even if you have hotmail.

It feels like I'm dreaming about using a weird version of reddit that isn't quite right. But I just keep browsing with the intent of getting used to it.

The layout isn't great, and everytime I load the page it'll load a few random brand new posts at the top after a second and that's annoying.

I want to be able to hide things I've read. If anyone knows how to do this, I'll give you all my LemmyBucks

We need a critical mass on a few subs and somehow help out with the servers so they don’t blow up. If we get those two sorted, we should be okay.

I really like the new style of interactions, even though I do currently miss the hundreds of thousands of funny/dumb comments some posts had (hoping that will happen eventually though)

The only issue that I have is with the hot and active sorting types -- hot gives me a lot of posts that pretty new and active gives me posts that are a day or two old. I wish there was a sort like the hot sort on reddit that shows posts that are ~4-8 hours old

Overall, I'm liking it, but I have some critiques:

1. The apps won't follow hyperlinks to third-party servers. This is not Lemmy's fault; the Universal Links feature of Apple OSes and App Links feature of Android were not made with federation in mind. This will be a tricky problem for them to solve without getting seriously technical.
2. I don't like how external links don't open in new windows/tabs by default, and there appears to be no preference to fix this.
3. There appears to be some bugginess with the web interface and voting where, if I upvote something, the upvote may disappear a second or two later. But if I refresh and re-read the comment, my original upvote stuck.
4. There needs to be more centralization of subs; as of now, there is so much duplication that it's worse than Reddit. Reddit has some forked subs, mainly on ideological grounds or because of mergers, but it's got nothing on Lemmy so far.
5. When reading on the web, my view jumps around a lot. I'm guessing it's loading in new comments as they come in on the server. That's fine, but the abruptness of the whole thing causes me to sometimes lose my place. If it's going to continuously load new comments, I would prefer that they be animated, so at least I can observe the change in motion.
6. While I was typing this, I noticed that the page top reloaded with a different topic. I'm guessing that's a bug.
7. It's good to have rules to prevent conversations from descending into chaos. I just hope that the rules are not interpreted too broadly.

I'm enjoying, not sure if my comments are being submitted yet though..

I still find it a bit confusing to navigate, mostly with finding new communities. I do miss the front page with r/all of Reddit but I hope that will eventually evolve/adapt into something workable. I do wish there was a solid app to use as I do most of my redditing (I suppose I need a new verb) via my phone and mlem is a good start although it crashes constantly for me but I am fully confident that we will see a lot of improvements over the next few weeks.

I do hope that people stay off Reddit and give the fediverse a chance but I am worried that when the blackout is over people will slowly make their way back to Reddit. The fact that u/spez gives no shits about this blackout helps show what a small and petty man he is.

Concept is great, but there's a big usability issue (BE: 0.17.4) that quickly needs fixing. When you browse the main index, new posts just pop up and it messes up whatever you were reading and also closes images.

I signed up yesterday. It is close enough to something like old.reddit where I feel comfortable navigating around. I dont know how else to describe it, but it really feels like the site is populated by people creating content organically, and not just a bunch of bots or marketing accounts instigating engagement. Its refreshing that way

I’m finding the experience on mobile (via the browser) to be pretty usable too.

Bit of a learning curve, but it's fun! Feels like the early Internet!

I like it, I like how it works. I think it could replace Reddit just fine. However I'm not really getting my "fix". On Reddit, I always had fresh content, which I'm not really seeing here. Plus, I was subscribed to a bunch of niche communities that don't exist here.

Using Mastodon for years now, I'm familiar with the structure and liking it. But I'm afraid most of the smaller subreddits that I followed won't migrate here.

Apparently this is an unpopular opinion, but could the users wanting a 1 for 1 Reddit clone just.....go support one of the 1 for 1 Reddit clones? I'm getting really tired already of everybody signing up for a decentralized system that advertises it's lack of a central authority to escape the site due to the actions of it's central authority then immediately complaining there is no central authority.

I understand the culture shock and have been trying to do my part in explaining that Lemmy and Reddit are not the same system, but I'm already seeing a sense of hostility towards the devs along the lines of "Oh it's not like Reddit fuck that well I guess we'll see if the devs bother listening to ThIeR uSeRs and make it Reddit!" and those people can go fuck themselves.

So far Lemmy is snappier than Reddit is in it's current state which is hilarious. There's some QOL stuff we'll need like a proper mobile app (Mlem is making serious progress) but even on iPhone adding the page as a Home Screen shortcut works really well -it even hides the navigation bar and feels like an app. (How come other sites aren't like this?? Is it built to be a web app?)

The communities are gaining traction. I started star_wars and hopefully that can be a friendly place for nerd stuff.

When it comes to growth there are major pros and cons. Right now Reddit's biggest attraction to me is finding historical posts for very specific information. I think we all add Reddit to the end of our google searches for various reasons, not using that feature is a major loss and there's no way to make up for that without years/decades of engagement. However the small community feel is really nice, feels like moving from a big city to a growing small down in the burbs. That's part of the reason I like federated instances because Lemmy can be as big or small as you'd like. The more popular it gets however, the more it attracts low grade content and influencers which is a big turn off for me. Right now is a precious time so don't take it for granted :)

The app I'm using is pretty nice and reminds me of Relay.

But it's clear that most people will not be able to adapt to this without an actual sort of marketing push or hype around it, and with a vast dumbing down of the UX. Right now, explaining any of this to a regular person is going to make them think of crypto or something. That's a negative.

The interface on jerboa is good. Basically legally distinct reddit. The thing is miss most is the content. None of the subs I like are here unfortunately.

I do miss being able to refresh the front page and almost always having new content, but it's caused me to make more of an effort engaging. I hope that people give this platform a chance and that things don't die off.

For me it's just an adjustment. Hopefully this platform will be as popular as Reddit.

It's been...

I have to be honest, this was a bit of a painful (but hopefully fruitful) experience. I had to learn about the Fediverse, figure out which ones to join, decided on Kbin but had to abandon ship as it was too slow as an PWA, ended up in Mastodon but for some reason I could not access other instances, got over here but still had to troubleshoot (and still figuring out) how to join communities. But fuck that - I'm just happy to make my first comment!

I've been on Reddit for 8 years (mostly as a lurker) and am quite saddened with its current state. I hope I get to find my safe space here.

we need RES and a decent iOS app..

Other than the random communist extremists, I like it, but I hope this place doesnt turn into the next Voat as I have a strong feeling it will.

I'm liking it a lot. I think it will get even better once more people show up. It's kind of cool to be part of pioneering this experience, though. I do feel like this is going to grow into something substantial.

Loving it. Yes, it's a little minimal, and there is some jank, but it reminds this old guy of an earlier online experience that you just don't see much of anymore.

It took sometime getting used to, but I am really enjoying this and just waiting to see how many people will stay here.

Just 1 day in and not missing Reddit. I do expect finding the kind of communities I used to visit, but those will come.

It's pretty interesting so far! I'm coming from Reddit Sync and now using Jerboa so it's quite similar but also a lot of things aren't where I expect them 😆

I do web dev and UX so definitely agree with the onboarding process being a little clunky for users.

I had no idea what the fediverse was until Lemmy so getting your head around it can be a bit much at the start. I was lucky to find a local server (instance? Not sure on terminology) so no delay issues.

And for any newbies this link is very helpful: https://browse.feddit.de.

I do miss the size of Reddit at times, but that's likely to drop now anyway with all the buggering around they're doing.

Just migrated my account here. Honestly it's getting a lot bigger here than what I've expected. Always lurked around Reddit, but I wouldn't mind changing my route over here. I'm just happy that everyone gets to experience a free and open source alternative :)