I think with the influx from reddit, which gathers a lot of technical users (which I think are also among the first users to migrate), I can see lemmy getting a lot more contributors in the coming days/weeks.
Among the features I’d love to see happen, some would also address your concerns about the lack of centralization :
Community federation : this would make it possible to “fuse” communities from different instances. The admin of a community would be able to add other communities as “subcommunities” and all posts from subcommunities would show up in the “main community’s” feed. If the relationship is reciprocal, the two communities would “sync” with each other in some kind of way.
“multicommunities” : users would be able to create and share lists of communities that span multiple instances
“How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.”
No one has ever said the Fediverse will be as easily accessible as Reddit, I think it’s pretty much impossible because of the lack of centralization. But in my opinion, this just doesn’t matter. The only solution would be, as you said, would be some form of central management. It is impossible to have a platform which both fixes the issues Reddit has experienced indefinitely AND has central management. Any social platform which cedes some kind of control, or even just legitimacy, to a centralized source (regardless of how the implementation starts out), will eventually turn into another Reddit. (Assuming the growth is there).
From my point of view the only downside to how Lemmy operates vs. Reddit is the slight learning curve of understanding Federation. Once you understand the concept, your concerns about the platform “fizzling out” would be moot. If you understand Federation, how is it confusing that your different sports communities are in different instances? Each community is distinct in its values, rules, and moderators, they get to choose where to exist, and the alternative would be impossible without granting control to a single meta-instance.
“but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.”
I couldn’t disagree more, and this is one of my main gripes with Mastodon. Over reliance on a flagship instance only serves to shoehorn people into Lemmy without actually understanding how the platform works. Take the top three English-speaking mastodon instances:
mastodon.online was created by Mastodon as a secondary official instance, next to the original mastodon.social. When the Twitter influx happened, the vast majority of users signed up for mastodon.social because it was the “flagship instance”. Not as many user’s would have chosen mastodon.social if they actually understood how Federation worked, instead of just blindly signing up for the flagship instance.
Also, about communities about the same topic possible being fragmented across multiple instances is a pro of Lemmy, as long as we foster a culture of combining communities together who agree, while retaining the option to split off to another instance.
TLDR; Understanding how Federation works > Pandering to new users with a flagship instance
I think this occurs because people haven’t gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/[email protected] . This link will load the community from your instance.
Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it's subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the "all communities" feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are "federated". But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)
So, as a normal user. Who's just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn't joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it's the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?
All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of “Orientalism”. Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.
Everything from beehaw.org is nice. Even stuff on lemmy.ml is okay as long you don’t bring up politics. Stay away from news or politics subs on this instance. And I hope we will get bigger communities on other servers than lemmy.ml or beehaw.org.
The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It's true that they won't show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it's on at least once, but you don't need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
Welcome all to Mildly Infuriating! I'm aware many of us are reddit refugees. Lemmy.world seems to be the best instance that complies with my morals and principles....
As the lemmy.ml admins expect a heavy load on their servers in the coming days, I’ve decided to run my own lemmy instance to be the dedicated forum for /r/piracy failover....
I just saw an email from Buy Me a Coffee. Not just one. I went in, and I'm truly shocked. Thank you all for the support; I would like to thank each and every one of you individually someday. Honestly, I don't know what to say. The account balance is $350, which will definitely allow me to develop kbin faster or at least not...
Lemmy also has an issue of being developed and flagship instances ran by unironic Tankies. People are a lot slower to clue in on Tankies than Neo-Nazis because for some reason denying genocides as a hoax and Western propaganda works for Tankies in a way that denial of the Holocaust as a hoax and Jewish propaganda doesn't work for Nazis. It's funny because if the devs were Nazis nobody would touch Lemmy with a 20 foot pole. People are a lot more ignorant of Tankies and there is a big excuse of "So what? Just make your own Lemmy instance if it bothers you isn't that the point of Federation?" that wouldn't exist if the devs were Neo-Nazis rather than Tankies.
As long as they can closely control the narrative and keep the .ml (Marxist-Leninist) instances as the larger/flagship communities they'll hold sway over their part of their part of the Fediverse and can surround themselves with people who are as radical as they are or open to being radicalized. Those who control the trunk control the branches.
I don't know anything about ernest and I consider that a good thing because that means they don't already have a bad reputation as a political extremist. Which made Kbin the easy choice to make between the two federation alternatives to Reddit.
I can understand your reasoning, but would your stance be different if you didn't know the political spectrum/ideology of the devs when joining lemmy or something else?
Just because you don't see something doesn't mean that it isn't there.
Have you vetted every single mod, admin, developer of every online community you joined to see if they are up to your political standards?
We are now on Kbin and can communicate with lemmy instances. Does that make one supportive of the ideology of the developers of lemmy?
I know the developers are working hard and I'm sure they'll be coming with Mlem updates. I hope to see a notification centre being added, as well as the posts being collapsed instead of full-length. Do you wish for an Apollo type of design, or similar?...
I’d love to see a Dark Mode personally, but also a way to see what’s on the homepage of a instance. I like to check that (kind of like r/all) to get news or things outside my main subscribed community’s
Hallo miteinander, eigentlich sollte es ja gut funktionieren im Fediverse auf andere instances zuzugreifen. Ich hab einfach keine lust mehr auf Reddit und deshalb würde ich lieber hier unterwegs sein. Ich habe mir kbin.social als Startpunkt ausgesucht weil ich gutes gehört habe aber irgendwie schaffe ich es nicht wirklich auf andere Communities zuzugreifen. Ich habe jetzt de_EDV rausgesucht um zu testen ob ich überhaupt mit anderen interagieren kann. Würde es sich lohnen mir lieber einen feddit.de Account zu machen ind Ann man diesen Post überhaupt sehen?
I've noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like 'cats' will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list....
I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?...
I think Lemmy desperately needs to integrate two things:
The ability to search for communities across instances inside of Lemmy (I’m aware of the search option outside of Lemmy, but that’s less than ideal)
The ability to easily search within posts A) in all local communities, B) in all subscribed communities, and C) across all communities in the whole Fediverse. Yes, I’m aware that C) is a huge ask. But I think it’s vital to the success of Lemmy.
The first point is CRUCIAL for setting up your own “scrolling page/account” for, since the instances are only very vague directions, at least while the site is still growing. And in a similiar vein, the second point with B) would be better than manually blocking communities I genuinely have no interest whatsoever in, like fountain pens (unless I don’t know how to operate this site yet).
In fact, C) feels unnecessary because of that right now, since I already see many new communities just in my instance alone. Though it WOULD add things to browse since there isn’t as much happening here, yet…
Echoing many things that other users are saying already:
Signing up/choosing a home instance is confusing. I don’t think it’s very confusing conceptually, but it is confusing from a UX/UI perspective. Subscribing to outside communities was the toughest part, I had to find them through a different instance using a search engine, then manually paste the community-specific URL into my home instance search, wait several seconds, then click into the community home page and finally click “subscribe.”
Not something a casual user is going to want or even figure out to do. I trust that many of these growing pains will be fixed in the coming weeks/months. I just hope that it’s not all a flash in the pan and then fizzles out totally.
Once using it though, I like the general feel of it. Better themes and some cleaner UI choices and it will be really nice imo. People are friendly so far and that’s worth a ton right there.
just so this doesn't overwhelm our front page too much, i think now's a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let's try to keep what's happening in this thread instead of across 10....
Possibly. I’m not sure how true it is that the fediverse necessarily leads to more efficient computing needs per user. I’d bet it’s the opposite.
But, as you perhaps allude to, there are other factors. For those who only want niche smaller communities, they can enjoy a more stripped down experience without needing speedy and beefy servers. Similarly, the platforms here are probably slimmer and not bloated with features that are trying to engage and monetise.
The major factor, IMO, is ownership. Admins literally own their servers. And should have a much closer and codependent relationship with the users in their servers, except in the case of large instances which become different beasts. Additionally, users have much more choice and mobility on the fediverse. All of which means admins/moderators and users have more at stake in their relationship. More ownership over their platform/instance. And therefore actually have a reason to donate and contribute and help out.
How is Lemmy supposed to replace Reddit?
I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit....
current lemmy status (lemmy.world)
People need to realize you can use alternatives
[Meta] - Cross Community Moderation & Community Announcement
Welcome all to Mildly Infuriating! I'm aware many of us are reddit refugees. Lemmy.world seems to be the best instance that complies with my morals and principles....
New official /r/piracy fallback community (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
As the lemmy.ml admins expect a heavy load on their servers in the coming days, I’ve decided to run my own lemmy instance to be the dedicated forum for /r/piracy failover....
What's a community you've discovered or created on Lemmy that you'd love to see grow?
Please format it like this: !community, example: !technology...
Thank you so much for your support! 😍 (kbin.social)
I just saw an email from Buy Me a Coffee. Not just one. I went in, and I'm truly shocked. Thank you all for the support; I would like to thank each and every one of you individually someday. Honestly, I don't know what to say. The account balance is $350, which will definitely allow me to develop kbin faster or at least not...
iOS users - what features do you want to see on Mlem?
I know the developers are working hard and I'm sure they'll be coming with Mlem updates. I hope to see a notification centre being added, as well as the posts being collapsed instead of full-length. Do you wish for an Apollo type of design, or similar?...
Lemmy.world starting guide
(I’m creating a starting guide post here. Have patience, it will take some time…)...
Is there a way to create Super Communities?
I've noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like 'cats' will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list....
For everyone new to Lemmy, how are you finding the experience?
I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?...
a megathread for developments on Reddit and with third-party Reddit apps
just so this doesn't overwhelm our front page too much, i think now's a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let's try to keep what's happening in this thread instead of across 10....