I apologize in advance as I’m one of the many reddit refugees seeking alternatives. I can’t believe how fast reddit is unraveling and you’d think with u/spez’s recent AMA he would try to placate the community instead of inciting the situation even further. Anyway, Lemmy’s pretty cool so far.
Don’t apologize. All refugees are welcome here. Although… there is one small thing you could do to help. Maybe make an account on a less crowded instance? Too many people see “dev-run” and think “main instance”. We do need to spread out a bit to make this sustainable.
I’m new here, too. How do I switch instances from the mobile app?
You just add another account under the arrow on the top left side. Then you can switch between the accounts on different instances if you like. But I prefer having one account only on a small instance.
Sorry to use you as tech support, but in what app? I tried jerboa and couldn’t log in at all.
Why couldn’t you log in? Yes Jerboa.
I couldn’t find the login button. Every button I touched just told me to login first.
Yeah it’s a common problem and I had it too. There was many threads about it. It’s pretty much hidden.
Anyway, if you click on the top left hamburger menu in the app, there is a tiny arrow there at the top right. Click it. :)
It’s open source I think its gonna get a lot more development just from Redditors
They have people astroturfing hard right now arguing that reddit is not wrong for anything they are doing
Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy
ICQ -> IRC -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy
NNTP -> Slashdot & Fark -> Reddit -> Lemmy.
Everything old is new again.
ahh yeah forgot about slashdot and fark
I can still hear the UH OH!
Funnily I remember joining both Digg and Lemmy shortly before Digg’s implosion. It’s really bittersweet cause there’s so many smaller subreddits like r/SS13 and multitudes of show subreddits that collect fans to chat with that I wish I could take with to the fediverse reddit-likes.
*Digg and reddit
This seems like as good a thread as any to make my first post in as a Lemmy user. I’ve been on Reddit since '09, and was on slashdot back in the 90’s. I really am hoping that these new, federated services take off. Onboarding still seems like the biggest hurdle.
After onboarding the interface is kind of rough to figure out. Mostly because the mobile web version isn’t that great, and jerboa also isn’t that great, and they’re different enough that switching back and forth gets you confused. With reddit’s problems, I imagine we’ll see some more client apps and ui improvements show up in the next couple months with the added attention, and that’ll be the end of that. Honestly, I thought it’d be rougher. I do wish I got more replies to my comments though, so i’m trying to make a point to post a bit more than I ordinarily would.
The desktop web interface seems pretty similar to old reddit/rif so I haven’t had that much difficulty with browsing. The fact that I’ll be losing my niche subs is the hardest part of moving entirely to Lemmy though.
I’m finding a lot of my favorites are appearing on the Fediverse, popping up hour by hour. Sometimes just searching by the sub name is enough to find them, let alone searching by the subject.
Agreed. I’m quite the nerd, so i’m holding out hope some of my favorite subs will move over.
If that’s really a problem, why not start the communities here yourselves? Literally nothing and no one is stopping you.
Lack of time, autism, and anxiety. Not exactly good traits for starting and maintaining a community. And to be honest, interacting at my own pace is OK, but feeling like I had to would be way too socially taxing.
It’s really not for everyone. I’m not cut out for that. I’m the kind of person who comes along with a weirdly detailed answer to an incredibly niche question. It takes all kinds to have a vibrant community.
Absolutely agree. I first tried Lemmy on my phone and found it really difficult to like. As soon as I logged on from my iPad it all “just worked”. Hopefully some of the apps under development will solve that problem.
I don’t have much to say, but here’s a reply anyway! Hope it seems a little less quiet in here.
Woo hoo, me too. Was there for the rise and fall of each (and Digg). Also - I think its up to us to go back and encourage users from all our niche communities to come on board to these other places. I know a lot of them won’t at least not right away. But we can encourage it.
I was also on slashdot back in the 90s. Still am too.
Someone just reminded me of Slashdot yesterday and my account is still active, and the posts are still pretty good. Why did I ever leave?
I agree.
I love the idea of a decentralized network like this, but I can’t help but feel like it lacks some level of transparency to how it works?
After being around here for a bit I get the idea of federation and all that, but its incredibly overwhelming when trying to create an account (Hell I still don’t know if I created my Mastodon or Lemmy accounts in the right place)
I can’t help but feel like it lacks some level of transparency to how it works?
I agree, which is actually kinda funny since it’s open source. The documentation helps some, but it’s a LOT of reading to do, and it still leaves a new user like me with questions- and I’m a software developer, with more technical knowledge than most. I have a feeling that someone without that technical background would find this VERY confusing to understand at a fundamental level.
The big question that I still have, that should be readily apparent but isn’t: if I subscribe to a community that’s hosted on another instance, can I still post/like/comment there? I just tested it- you can. I notice now that the guide says:
Lemmy will then fetch the community from its original instance, and allow you to interact with it.
I think they could make it a lot clearer for a casual user if they reworded the “following communities” section to name it something like “joining communities,” and re-worded the first paragraph to something like this:
After logging in to your new account, its time to follow communities that you are interested in. For this you can click on the communities link at the top of the page (on mobile, you need to click the menu icon on the top right first). You will see a list of communities which can be filtered by subscribed, local or all. Local communities are those which are hosted on the same site where you are signed in, while all also contains federated communities from other instances. You can also find more communities by going to the Lemmy Community Browser. You can join communities from any instance, regardless of which instance you created your account in, and once you’ve joined you can like, comment, and post in those communities.
Just jumped over from Reddit and if I hadn’t read the comment about sh.itjust.works I probably would have no idea how to get started with Lemmy. Hopefully with more publicity there will be a more streamlined signup process a la new mobile apps or certain servers trending when you search for it.
Didn’t see some of my old communities from Reddit on here yet but I guess it’s time to make them!
Also - does anyone have any good alternatives to Youtube on the Fediverse? Is Odysee popular?
does anyone have any good alternatives to Youtube on the Fediverse?
Peertube would be the most popular. It works the same as Lemmy that there isn’t just one single server/instance that hosts all the videos. A popular one is tilvids.com but there are others
I’m unique in this, but I firmly believe video creators should just make torrents, and post links to them from whatever site / forum they choose.
Torrents have already solved the big static data problem, we only need a place (like here), where people can post links.
I believe Peertube has support for webtorrent streaming so viewers upload the video to other viewers as well.
Ya, but unfortunately only a tiny minority of seeders use webtorrents, and peertube still has to store every video locally. Because of that, peertube instances find that they can’t last long, because of the huge disk space required.
I was just thinking about this. The content creators already have the original quality copy stored on their machines.
Yep, and they could share those high res versions too.
tilvids doesn’t federate for some reason, it’s annoying, they have the best vids. it’s like they want to force people to use their site
Hmm, that is annoying. Hopefully it’s not deliberate.
I only saw a link to that peertube instance earlier and had a tricky time discovering other instances. Although, I admittedly didn’t spend too long trying.
Similar story, but I still poke at /. - it’s still going! The most refreshing thing about using Lemmy to me is not having ads everywhere, I used a pihole and other browser extensions but you still have to deal with the inline ads mimicking user posts on reddit.
What did you find complicated about the onboarding?
Having to write a cover letter explaining why I’m a good fit for the instance.
It’s not a difficult ask, but it’s going to turn a vast majority of potential users away from the service.
I understand the need for it, but a typical user is going to be confused by:
- Having to “sell” yourselves to some unknown individual, or group of individuals
- Choosing an “instance”, when most users have never heard of such a thing, and don’t understand how a federated system operates
- For the above: Understanding different instances and which one allows cross-instance posting
- Simplicity. None of this is “simple” in terms of making a new account for a social media platform. This is unlike any mainstream platform out there.
Again, I understand the need for all this. But your average user, which Lemmy desperately needs more of if it wants to become the safe haven for Reddit refugees, is going to be incredibly frustrated and dissuaded by the whole process.
I’m pretty sure this is just a “human test” to make it harder for people to register a lot of accounts or to programmatically register them.
All I put in my “cover letter” was “reddit refugee” and I got accepted on lemmy.ml, lemmy.one and beehaw.org, 2/3 with no email verification either. I don’t think that it’s hard to sign up here, it might just be unfamiliar to some people, who will hopefully grasp the simple concepts quickly.
Its an issue, but Its at least barebones and information dense. Feels like going back 20 years on internet design, with some new things. Its old school and a bit of whiplash even for me. Some younger users are going to have a task getting around at first.
Not that I would say change it, just an observation and barrier to entry.
I am with you, part of the Reddit exodus after about a decade. First post too, and I hope this place turns out to be my next all in one stop for interesting stuff. Since its up to us, users, to make it happen I’m going to be optimistic.
Same here, this feels a bit more like the newsgroup days, except less porn spam.
Yeah, the front page was a little intimidating and it took a little time for my to get the account confirmation email. But otherwise, this space feels and acts very similar to old.reddit and some customization (like night mode) … which is a good thing!
Ooh, I forgot all about slashdot!
honestly, its best if you continue forgetting about it.
I sure hope Lemmy has good crowd control… as a reddit refugee myself
Gotta get in early and snatch up one of those good names like…CosmicSploogeDrizzle
It’s the best name in the whole Milky Way Galaxy
So, hoping there is no API policy change in Andromeda?
Fingers crossed🤞
thanks for taking in a poor refuge like me
already nuked everything on my account, once 1st comes around gonna delete it
Yeah, I’m already doing Thanos snap on mine. Gonna miss reddit.
I’m part of the problem. How’s it going guys?
Well kbin.social and beehaw.org have both gotten the hug of death over the last 25 minutes so that’s fun haha. Might have to hop over to a smaller instance to spread the load out
Its fitting for Reddit to give multiple hugs of death as it ends brings back fond memories of crushed servers
I don’t really know how this system works but if I’m on one instance looking at stuff on another does that help at all? Is stuff cached to help spread out the load?
Yeah, like I’m on sh.itjust.works and subscribed to this community, so when people make posts on !memes@lemmy.ml those get synced and cached on sh.itjust.works, so whenever people on this server scroll through memes it puts load on sh.itjust.works instead of on lemmy.ml.
That’s the impression I got from the devs and admins here, but I’m not certain my impressions are correct or what kind of impact external users posting to beehaw communities impacts beehaw’s instance
Our current coding work should help, but ya it’s not been an easy time for us server admins, when reddit fucks up so bad that half the site tries to join the fediverse.
Thank you for your hard work, and sorry for being part of the reddit hoarde 😂
But seriously, thank you 👍
Its no probs! Just glad we made something that people are getting some use out of.
I’m part of your woes, so sorry, but at the same time don’t stress! I’m good with server instability. I do tech professionally, with contracts. You ain’t signed no contracts so feel free to tell us to fuck off so you can sleep and relax.
Things are about to get spicy
Oh no. Our non-centralized website system will get more users. Aaah.
Yeah I’m part of the problem too, I use a 3rd party app and I’m bailing out of reddit when it dies.
But hopefully things on this and other servers will stabilize over the next few weeks.
We’ll be fiiiiine 🥲 starts hyperventilating
I’m looking forward to lemmy becoming my primary time waster 😁
Given there is no algorithmic recipe to hook you, I’d wager Lemmy is far better for everyone’s mental well-being. You’ll ultimately squander less of your time mindlessly scrolling.
This has not been my experience so far.
F5
That’s what I love about Fedi in general. The algorithms are either fully gone, or are almost entirely working in favor of the users rather than against them.
Late-stage social media is to have the platforms themselves socialized. You love to see it
That’s why I’m here 😁
So far I’m looking forward to surfing this wave. Sad to see Reddit burn, but at least there are alternatives.
Maybe it makes sense to add a donation link in the header/footer of the site? More money for servers is always good 🤔
Also part of the problem, but so far the experience is being great.
Quality over quantity on most posts here on Lemmy, really liking it.
