I find lemmy is more active in smaller communities compared to reddit, where any sub less than 500 subs feels dead. On Lemmy a similar sized community is bustling.
Reddit never removes people from the subscriber list AFAIK. So over time, the subscriber count becomes extremely unrealistic. It might claim there’s 500 people, but if the sub was created years ago, many of those 500 people probably are inactive. And god knows how many bots might subscribe to a sub for some reason or another (bots obviously don’t need to subscribe, but I’m sure many do, since otherwise anti bot measures could notice that they never subscribe to anything). Reddit really should show active subscribers in the past month only.
Lemmy is just so new that if a community has 500 subscribers, that’s probably pretty close to the monthly active figure (though with the exception that quite a lot of people have multiple Lemmy accounts because there’s been constant reasons to switch instances).
Though also, if you see a Reddit sub with only 500 people, you know it’s dead and you should look for a different sub to post in. On Lemmy, 500 isn’t utterly awful and also many front-ends only show numbers for your instance, so a community with 500 subs might be a decently sized community (though who can tell?).
Going back to Reddit is like screwing your ex. It’s a bad idea, you hate yourself for doing it, and the worst thing is you know that even as you’re doing it.
Nah. Once Apollo got the cold shoulder I nuked my account and have not returned. I occasionally read stories about it here out of morbid curiosity and hope I’ll get to watch the Hindenburg going down, but otherwise that’s an ex and I’m not inclined to go back and chat.
The main thing Lemmy offers over Reddit is opportunity.
Reddit is a business. Spez’s hero is Musk. That’s the direction Reddit is heading in and they will (because they have) fucked over anyone who interferes not with the quality of their future content but with their potential profits. They fucked over the curators of their content, they fucked over r/blind and they insulted and lied to them into the bargain.
What we have here then is opportunity. We have an opportunity to build something that isn’t subject to the idea of a profit margin. We’re right at the very start of this process. It was only 3 months ago that the reddit API shitstorm hit and a lot of people ended up using this software. Software which is still pretty barebones but already has a better UI (and in fact various better UI’s) than Reddit. And if you’re finding certain communities or people insufferable - block them and move on.
Reddit has over a decade of content behind it. Lemmy has had 3 months. The way to make the most of this opportunity is to participate. Find the niche communities and post interesting stuff. It doesn’t have to be the best post ever made, just an interesting one that people might engage with. Keep doing that every day and other people will join in. At the moment it feels like we’re all a bunch of people standing on the edge of the pool, wondering how cold the water is and waiting for someone else to jump in first.
Bottom line - do you really like using reddit? No, me neither. So here’s our opportunity to build something better but we have to actually put the hard graft in and create the content. If we do that over a long enough time period, Lemmy will reach a tipping point.
I am just never going back, lemmy has less content of course but the comments on what is here is just a totally different level, reddit just feels dirty and corrupt in comparison,
The only reason I left is removal of third party apps. The more Lemmy users shit on the rest of it the more likely I am to return occasionally on desktop cause it makes me think people here dont want the same things I want, or actually have problems with the things I want.
I check out reddit every few days and tbh lemmy has the same amount of mainstream content. The only difference is that reddit niche subs are more active.
I think the fact that anyone can make the same community on a new instance diminishes niche communities more. If I pick a game on reddit ill find 2 or so instances with lots of use. On lemmy there will be 10 communities all mostly abandoned.
You can feel a difference on reddit though. Quality content and content numbers are greatly reduced from even a month ago.
Add comment