Lemmy is going to look more appealing as time goes on.

  • GooberEar@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    If someone like Musk were to take control of Reddit, be prepared. Let’s be real, Spez is not even in the same league as Musk in terms of being unpalatable to Redditors so claiming something like “already has been” is … a choice. But for sure, if someone far worse takes over, there will be an exodus. And frankly, the Fediverse is fully unprepared to handle that, so that’ll be fun.

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      Which is why Musk will keep spez to take the blame, just tweaking the site slightly to not allow it to ban links to X anymore.

    • RamenJunkie@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      When Musk took over Twitter I deleted all my Tweets and never even visited the site again, blocked on parental filters and through NextDNS.

      I had been there since 2006.

      I would definitely do the dame for Reddit if Musk took over, and I have been there since like 2010 and have some million total karma across several accounts (mostly on one).

      I actually did quit for about a year when they killed 3rd party apps.

      • drathvedro@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        Just do it now, why wait.

        Also, don’t forget the following:

        1. Open All, sort by new, click through upvote and downvote buttons randomly.

        2. Sort by hot, open random post, comment something completely wrong and unrelated to the post.

        3. Go to explore, pick random subreddit, sort by top year or all time. Pick random post from the first dozen and repost it back into the same subreddit. Not cross-post, just copy whatever title/image/text/link there are without changing a thing. Bonus points for doing this on subreddits for current events and hitting a frontpage

        4. Do NOT delete the account. The account age and karma will shield you from anti spam/bot protections in case you ever decide to do it again.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      About adding new instances to handle the load:

      There’s four possible legal structures that could be behind a messaging service:

      • political domain (state, city, …)
      • corporate entity (typically for-profit)
      • clubs (typically non-profit)
      • individual humans

      I think it fits the spirit of the Fediverse best to consider the lower two options. A club is a free get-together of humans for some purpose, such as sports club, literature club, you could have a Fediverse club. I highly support this approach, because it is non-profit-oriented, lives off donations, and is rooted by responsible individuals who do something good for the community. Also, individual humans can host smaller instances, but as the instances grow in size, having multiple people behind it to back it up could make things more stable over time.

      • solarpunkandrobots@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        I kind of always knew believing reddit was some kind of pure platform basically required being a stereotypical Californian but its declined so heavily in the last 10 years.

        Its the number of clearly stupid replies you get now that really irritates me, from people who’ve very clearly not read or understood what you’ve said. It used to be a place where the average user seemed to be a PHD looking for cat pictures

        I wrote that and now I’m imagining being required to take an exam to join a subreddit. Stupid idea but it would probably restore that sort of tone.

      • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        Maybe we need a euphemism… like… uhh… “the shadow platform” or something? No wait… “the 'emmy”? “the lemony place”?

        • Mister_Feeny@fedia.io
          1·
          9 days ago

          Hmm, “the lemony place” is close, but I’d really prefer “the lemony party”.

          Or maybe just “lemon party” to simplify it a bit more.

          I’ll go google that just to make sure it’s not taken by something else.

          • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.netEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            Whenever I see this referenced it makes me think of an old man I worked for named Olan. Olan was an asshole. He was a jerk. He was just a miserable old man with no redeeming qualities.

            We did odd jobs for him because he was in a wheelchair and couldn’t do them anymore. One time my brother was cleaning out a disgusting, moldy, vile stench filled chest freezer for him while he screeched at my brother for gagging, and chucking random shit at him for being “a whiny little faggot”

            But the thing that makes me remember him when I hear “lemon stealing whore” is this day a friend visited him while we were there, and the friend asked about some guy who used to work for him

            Friend: whatever happened to Bill?

            Olan: fired him. He stole my battery terminal cleaners*

            Friend: he did?

            Olan: yeah. Died, too. Stung by some bees.

            Friend: that’s a shame

            Olan: he’s cleaning in batteries in hell now

            *Terminal cleaners, if you don’t know, are at most a 10 dollar item

        • 3dmvr@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          9 days ago

          ppl can just say the non lemmy instances, im making a private one called hardlywork.ing, just reccomend any url that isnt lemmy, I think theres moistcatsweat, any like that. They’ll figure out its lemmy once they’re on it

          • 3dmvr@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            Also lemmy isnt lemmy, its technically just one way into the threadiverse with more coming, piefed and kbin may be fine to mention

      • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        The default needs to be nice, most users would get frustrated and give up before discovering a. Or p.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Thanks for that. It’s a good point. There’s no reason we couldn’t run something like Photon as the default, which would be a smoother user experience. Might see what I can do about that.

      • thawed_caveman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        I mean, the downsides of the Fediverse have been discussed at length.

        Here’s a routine occurence: i’m browsing around, opening new tabs and such; then i go to upvote something, and it tells me i’m not logged in. This is how i find out i’ve accidentally left my instance. It’s cooked at that point, i’m not going to post that comment, if i really wanted to i’d have to carefully replace the relevant parts of the URL. This keeps happening in both Lemmy and Mastodon.

        I need to 1. Not fall out of my instance as easily, and 2. if i’ve opened a page outside my instance, i need to be able to open the same page in my instance in one click. Anything else is is annoying to me and a complete deal breaker to most new users.

        I don’t doubt that there’s loads of work done in the backend that i don’t see, but from my point of view as a user, Lemmy still has the same problems it had when i joined two years ago. That’s right, it’s been just about two years, the Reddit API debacle was around April-June of 23, and i haven’t seen glaring problems adressed.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          Yeah, that’s annoying.

          There is a universal link system (example), so someone could write a browser plugin but it demonstrates that this can be done by Lemmy itself and you see this in the links next to usernames and posts where you get the option of two links: local to you (a chain) and canonical (Lemmy pentagram). The problem is, the system would need to identify that the link goes to Lemmy instance and parse it accordingly and there is no standard URL. However, if you held, say, the top 40 instance URLs in an array and ran a quick check when rendering the page it would solve 99% of these problems overnight and you could flesh the link out a bit later on. The extra processing would be minimal.

          edit: I asked @flamingos@feddit.uk (as they know more about the Lemmy code) and they pointed me to this which would resolve many of those issues, but also that using Photo gives you a “remote” and “local” version link at the top of the page to switch you back if you ever wander off instance.

          • thawed_caveman@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            That’s great! Good to see that these issues are being worked on.

            I would have thought that the solution would involve checking the cookies to see which instance the user is logged into?

            • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
              1·
              3 days ago

              That may require a browser plugin but if all links between Lemmy instances were rewritten to point to the version on your own instance, that would solve the problem of suddenly finding yourself off the reservation.

  • Cadenza@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Popular/Unpopular opinion : Lemmy is currently perfectly sized. The amount of altrighters and trolls one may encounter is low enough to make is a healthy network. Depending on the people leaving reddit, it might be a blessing… or a curse.

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Unpopular opinion: they like it there, and aren’t going to switch no matter what happens. We’ll see.

    • shawn1122@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      They’re far too addicted to the algorithmic brain rot to switch of their free will.

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        Tbf there is FAR more content there, and also somehow less authoritarianism and echo chamber effect than here - like we have the modlog but they have modmail and the ability for people to continue their already started conversations on posts after removal from the sub, while here (without even a notification sent to the user) we simply have a message like “Rule 1” (which says nothing at all about why a message might have been removed…?).

        If we want to attract more users, then like Bluesky, we need to do better at meeting the desires that users actually have, rather than like Mastodon simply complain why nobody wants to come here. PieFed, Mbin, and Sublinks are attempting to do that, so there’s hope, but we are still a long ways away yet.

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          8 days ago

          If we want to attract more users, then like Bluesky, we need to do better at meeting the desires that users actually have, rather than like Mastodon simply complain why nobody wants to come here. PieFed, Mbin, and Sublinks are attempting to do that, so there’s hope, but we are still a long ways away yet.

          I disagree.

          It is more important to stay true to yourself, than open the gates to the flooding of new content. That is the only way to satisfy existing users and avoid that the platform loses it’s “core” or soul in the long term. It might be unpopular, but if you prefer the PieFed or Mbin approach, you know, you can always just go there? What’s stopping you? Everybody should try to find the platform that’s best for their personal approach to things, i think.

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            To be fair, I’m typing this to you on Lemmy from myself on PieFed, and have been this whole time.:-)

            If we want to attract more users

            I see that not everyone wants this platform to grow, but I also see many people that do want it to grow.The “if” in my sentence was meant to target the latter group.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        I think, maybe we could meaningfully rebrand Lemmy to Feddit? And change the direction accordingly (away from politics/tankie views, and towards general-purpose, meme content)? Maybe that would be a solid and sound approach to social media.

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        Do you think it will be to Bluesky?

        One day it could be to PieFed, or Sublinks, but everyone banned for Rule 1 from ML knows that it won’t be to “Lemmy”.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          It’ll possibly be something built on the AT protocol. There’s likely a lot of people beavering away behind closed Doors to make “that but on AT”. TikTok and Instagram are the big targets but forums/Reddit have to be in someone’s sights.

          Of course, I see all of them as a half-way house to the Fediverse. The cost of running relays is sufficiently high there may only ever be one or two for any service and down that road enshittification lies. If that happens, then we’ll see a lot more people jump ship again.

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            So AT, but not necessarily to Bluesky itself per se (or rather, not “just” to it), as opposed to ActivityPub?

            I think if people writing open source software e.g. underpinning Mastodon would simply listen to potential users, then people would actually join it. Nobody likes to be ignored - e.g. celebrities who know that there are no guarantees that someone else won’t simply steal their name and impersonate them, which imho is a valid concern that they have. And ofc the onboarding experience leaves much to be desired, especially for people who haven’t created an account yet and just want to see an example of what it might look like if they did (which Bluesky does an EXCELLENT 👌 job at that!).

            Here on Lemmy, that would mean defederating from troll instances like Hexbear - at least for the instances promoted to the “normie” crowd - and reducing the overall heavy tones of authoritian control. e.g. we have a modlog but no modmail, and the modlogs used to say more but now simply say “mod”, which let’s be honest, makes us Reddit 2.0, just now with slightly less spez, yet you know all those users banned from Reddit bc they were so toxic that even Reddit couldn’t handle them? Yeah, they came HERE - join us why don’t you?

            img

            Obviously you can/must spend tens of hours of your life blocking all of this if you don’t want it… oh and also a large portion of the software does not work, e.g. deleted posts don’t say “deleted post” so much as “internal server error, check back later”. (or instead of any of that, they could simply remain on Reddit? hence they do just that)

            • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
              2·
              3 days ago

              So AT, but not necessarily to Bluesky itself per se (or rather, not “just” to it), as opposed to ActivityPub?

              Yeah, there are apps launching that filter BS for images (Instagram) or videos (TikTok) but they are quick and easy to deploy - BS could build those filters in itself.

              The killer services will be standalone ones running on the AT Protocol. They’ll get a tonne of buzz and will see similar numbers of users switching to them from the Big Web but, without safeguards, they will be indistinguishable from the older Big Web services and have the potential to enshittify.

              I think if people writing open source software e.g. underpinning Mastodon would simply listen to potential users, then people would actually join it.

              The problem is, BS has millions of VC capital (including from blockchain bros) and, at some point, they’ll want paying. If the Fediverse had a fraction of that a lot of wrinkles would be ironed out.

              Perhaps dansup’s successful Kickstarter and the rocketing success of his Pixelfed show we can push projects on to bigger things. However, we’ll always lag behind.

              • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                It would help Loops even more if the code was released:-). Although the code is released for PieFed, Lemmy, and Mbin, and that only helps so much there. As you say, it’s hard to compete against millions of dollars worth of investment. And the vast majority of users seem to care only about the usability of the tool, not purist reasons that it uses Arch btw, aka that it’s open source.

        • Cid Vicious@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          9 days ago

          Bluesky has a lot of momentum and no one cares about mastodon. So I do think bluesky will likely remain a fixture. But I don’t think it’s the thing that replaces reddit. It’s the thing that replaces twitter.

        • vonbaronhans@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          9 days ago

          I don’t know what the next thing after Reddit would be, but if anything fediverse wants to be that thing it needs to be prepared in advance of the next exodus.

          That means developers need to work on smoother onboarding, from account creation to in-app guidance to help users find what they’re interested with as little effort as possible. On the backend, we need the ability to handle a huge influx of users. I don’t know shit about either of these things, but it’s what tech startups ALWAYS focus on to build their user base, to my knowledge.

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            PieFed is working on that, e.g. the Categories of Communities and Topics onboarding someone by a wizard asking what their interests are and then subscribing them to those communities, and also hashtag support helping to discover new content across Topic areas. It’s pretty neat!:-) 😎

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        That, and if you need actual information from Reddit rather than just want to find a place to hang out and chat. The people who need certain content must go to wherever that is.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          9 days ago

          Even though I haven’t “used” reddit in well over a year, I still put Reddit at the end of some of my searches. It even comes up as a recommendation on Google.

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            Someone told me to check out the fednews where USA federal workers are discussing so many changes lately with the new administration. Bluesky had like 2-3 posts total, Lemmy had zero, and Reddit was where that entire sub was located.

            So yeah, if you want the content, you go to where the people who are discussing it are. Otherwise you have to do without. Which you can’t always do.