13 ms·

Lemmy now has over 2M users across 915 instances

323 points by impissedoff1 3y ago

boboche 3y ago
For those who are wondering just like I did… Lemmy is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software)
- jmiskovic 3y ago
  Those are not really useful for getting the feel of federated communities. Check out the lemmy browser & search around for your hobbies and interests: [0] https://browse.feddit.de/ https://browse.feddit.de/
Narishma 3y ago
And how many of those are bots?
- tnecniv 3y ago
  I’m sure it’s an integer
  - fsociety 3y ago
    Surely some of the users technically fall in the category of half-human half-robot.
codetrotter 3y ago
My instance had 5 users after a few days, two of which were my own. Then one day later there were over 600 users registered on my instance. All of those 600+ new users were spam bot accounts. Lemmy is sorely lacking the tools for dealing with that kind of thing. So in order to avoid that the spam accounts that were created could cause problems for other instances, I temporarily shut down my instance until there are tools that I can use to deal with the spam accounts. https://zapad.nstr.no/ https://zapad.nstr.no/ I wonder how many of the 2M users mentioned in the OP story are real persons, and how many are spam accounts.
- guidedlight 3y ago
  How do you know they are spam bots? What defines a bot from a casual lurker?
  - deely3 3y ago
    Why downvotes? It could be that instance was mentioned somewhere else as easy to register so users just appear somehow organically. OP doesnt mentioned that users behave like bots so this question is logical.
  - yonatan8070 3y ago
    When 600 of them show up overnight for no apparent reason
    - gremlinsinc 3y ago
      there is an apparent reason, because Reddit is imploding. they gotta go somewhere.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    They all follow a very obvious consistent pattern in their usernames and email addresses.
- notatoad 3y ago
  I don't really have any reason to doubt you, because I am not involved in admining any Lemmy isntance. But on the other hand, in my casual use of Lemmy.world I have yet to encounter any spam at all. So either the mods there are really incredible, or the spam problem isnt so bad
  - andrewstuart2 3y ago
    Or the spam bots aren't posting but upvoting or being sold as upvote farms.
    - 3y ago
BarryMilo 3y ago
Awesome! As long as no one I know has to run an instance, looks like a great time to jump ship.
hubraumhugo 3y ago
The site is crashing for me, isn't this a bit symbolic for the state of Lemmy?
clemensnk 3y ago
There's another interoperable 'threadiverse' platform called kbin where development really is taking off right now. Project page: https://kbin.pub https://kbin.pub Main instance: https://kbin.social https://kbin.social Code: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core Its lead developer is Ernest from Poland and it's implemented in good old php.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
  >it's implemented in good old php. This doesn't bode well from a security perspective.
saberience 3y ago
Lenny has a major issue (which I think is a fatal flaw) which is that as soon as you go to the site you have to choose a server (of which there are hundreds) and you have no idea which to pick and then you don’t bother and leave the site. No casual user is ever going to leave Reddit for Lemmy. Even for myself I’m probably not going to use Lemmy because it seems stupid to have to join multiple “Lemmys” and make multiple accounts, this isn’t a good user experience. People are supposed to have separate accounts for every Lemmy? All the communities are disparate and separated? It makes no sense to me at all.
- PUSH_AX 3y ago
  I’m a technical user and the hoops and quirks in eco system put me off. The solution I’ve been left with is just to quit entirely. I’ve also ditched other social media while I’m at it. My life is better.
  - rjh29 3y ago
    It's technically trivial to join lemmy. It would be more accurate to say you're not motivated enough. Which is fine, lemme has a lot of issues and it needs users who are invested at this point.
    - PUSH_AX 3y ago
      Op made the distinction that non technical users are put off, my position was that it doesn’t matter, I’m technical and I still don’t want to. The user experience and understanding the proposition are barriers to entry, of course the vast majority of people could sit down and “get it” after not long.. I’m at a point where if it’s not a website and it’s trying to be something more, I just really don’t care.
- asicsp 3y ago
  I joined https://programming.dev/ https://programming.dev/ and I can subscribe to both local and other instances (assuming they talk to each other).
- 3y ago
LittleShaman 3y ago
FediDB.org has more conservative numbers, ~300k total users, ~100k active users: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse It's because of attempts at excluding spam accounts: https://fedidb.org/site/news https://fedidb.org/site/news The author's mastodon has some posts on this: https://mastodon.social/@dansup https://mastodon.social/@dansup I'm on lemmy.world and personally not seen any spam though.
goolz 3y ago
While it has a long way to go I am very hopeful for the fediverse. Got the Memmy app via Test Flight and got signed up to lemmy.world in like 2 minutes. Was a lot simpler than I realized and honestly I am giddy with excitement. So long and thanks for all the memes. Also, bravo to that dev. Seriously, v0.0.2 and you are killing it mate. You should be proud.
- vanilla_nut 3y ago
  I'm astonished that the Memmy app is this good after just a week or two of development. Very curious how the dev will monetise eventually; as far as I know, they don't have significant overhead costs beyond an Apple developer account and their own dev work. Ought to end up somewhere like Apollo.
txn 3y ago
With the recent surge in discussion around Lemmy, I decided to spin up an instance and give it a go. It seems to have a lot trouble syncing up with other instances making for a very disjointed experience. For example, I commented on one post, which added that community to my instance, but then my instance never did sync up with any new comments from that post so I just thought there was no activity on it until I went to the original instance and saw all the new comments. To be fair, it could be on me and my configuration. I'm not really sure, but it makes it difficult to keep track of moving discussions and will probably drive me away from it eventually.
- toyg 3y ago
  Most people are not meant to run an instance.
not_your_vase 3y ago
Coming up in 3 weeks on HN: Why did Lemmy migration fail? (65 comments) (dead) I'm leaving Lemmy (0 comments) The social website without users and content (128 comments) Yeah, I'm snarky. All of Bluesky's, Lemmy's, Mastodon's (etc) only appeal seem to be that they are not BigCorp, but without any of the benefits (and content) of the existing platforms. They flare up quickly before users go back to their origin. Hard to see how Lemmy is different at this time.
- haunter 3y ago
  I hope it will be different with Lemmy (it won’t) but on Mastodon I see very specific type of users, mostly activists and hackers. There are no normies at all. No Kpop stans. No football fans. No gamers arguing which console is the best etc. I follow /r/soccer which has not just the userbase but people posting goals in _real time_ a lot of times even before happened on your regular broadcast. There is no replacement for that.
  - guerrilla 3y ago
    You're probsnly stuck in a buble. Maybe you just don't know how to find other people. Discovery is a problem. Follow hashtags. There are a ton of serious scientists and other academics. https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
- LittleShaman 3y ago
  That isn't at all true for Mastodon. Despite a very significant drop a while after the influx from twitter, looking at a few different sources it has twice as many monthly active users now (~600k before influx to hovering around ~1.2M for a few months now after the slump.)
techwizrd 3y ago
I'm excited by the idea, but I'm honestly pretty confused by Lemmy & Kbin. Reddit accounts and subreddits give an incentive to protect the account and "build up a history". My Reddit account is 13+ years old, and I don't want to sign up on the "wrong instance" of Lemmy/Kbin. 1. Will apps like Liftoff, Boost for Lemmy, and Sync for Lemmy support Kbin instance accounts? Should I be signing up for Lemmy instead if I want a familiar mobile app? 2. If I register a Kbin account, can I register with the same username on a different "home instance"? Can you login (not federate) to a different instance with a Lemmy/Kbin account? e.g., if I sign up for an account on kbin.social, can I login to lemmy.world with the account since most apps currently only support Kbin instances? 3. What happens if your home instance goes down temporarily? What happens if it goes down permanently? What if there is drama and suddenly many instances stop federating with your home instance? What if my instance stops federating with an instance I participate in? Do you need to start over somewhere else? 4. Are there multi-reddits to combine the same topic from multiple instances? What happens if multiple instances each have their own version of a community? 5. How do you moderate a community on Lemmy/Kbin? How do you deal with spam? 6. How do I link to or save a post? How do I search? I want to sign up, contribute, and give the best chance of it taking off. But I don't understand the future implications of which instance I sign up on.
- wraptile 3y ago
  > centive to protect the account and "build up a history". My Reddit account is 13+ years old, and I don't want to sign up on the "wrong instance" of Lemmy/Kbin. This is scary. With that much public information all of your accounts are surely pwned and you'll be a prime target for AI based scam attacks. It's probably enough data to build an AI profile that'll be more real than real YOU to other people and all it takes is couple of API calls/scrapes of your reddit account. No one should ever have a personal reddit account that is older than a year.
  - Shank 3y ago
    > With that much public information all of your accounts are surely pwned and you'll be a prime target for AI based scam attacks. It's probably enough data to build an AI profile that'll be more real than real YOU to other people and all it takes is couple of API calls/scrapes of your reddit account. What? So? How does the age of the account imply that they’ve stored anything remotely useful/identifiable? People have different standards for privacy and different needs and desires for identity. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean that you should push people in a direction baselessly.
pndy 3y ago
From my PoV so far it looks that subs which decided to join lemmy or fediverse did not become active in same way as on reddit. I'd guess that these communities are rather a 'rogue' spin-off of subreddits created by people who didn't like mods and how they ruled subs. It's also possible that only more tech-aware enthusiasts moved over while those who mainly provided content and activity didn't bother themselves with "alternatives" and exodus. They decided to stay (or don't do anything) and join the blackouts or whatever else these protests took form. Overall, I'm not surprised with what happen to reddit or even twitter. This crawling enshittification driven in most cases by the greed and power lust; I've seen this happen many times in the Polish part of the Internet and it looks like it's an inevitable stage in platform's life.
int_ 3y ago
Lemmy.one wants a written answers and pre-approval. Garbage.
b3orn 3y ago
Why is HN so negative about Lemmy?
- the_lucifer 3y ago
  Because it, like Mastodon, is a usability nightmare and literally nothing is being done to address it. All criticism falls on deaf ears and the community is hell bent on pushing their flawed vision through
  - guerrilla 3y ago
    Right, like e-mail. That other thing that never took off. I'd love to have been here to read about uts launch.
    - damvigilante 3y ago
      Literally just made his point. Every single person keeps repeating it’s like email, as if email is a fantastic place to go get your news and interact with others.
      - guerrilla 3y ago
        It's not like e-mail. It already fixes the things you're complaining about, while the things OP was complaining about will be fixed eventually. The point of bringing up e-mail is that a) federation does work and b) that usability is not a hindrance by itself.
      - etler 3y ago
        But that's not email's use case at all. It's not being compared to email because they serve the same function otherwise there'd be no need for Lemmy. It's being compared as a distributed and open protocol, and where the comparison is important is in adoption, and email proves out that an open distributed system can achieve not only strong, but universal adoption. We pulled it off in the 80s on ridiculously weak hardware and snail pace internet, I'm sure it can be done again.
Patrickmi 3y ago
It’s great, but imho activitypub is kinda of a flawed protocol it won’t THE ever changing thing but actually the first step, creating an account anywhere from one different host defeats the purpose why social media is very unique and why hardly are there duplicates of the same kind of niche, secondly activitypub is a heirloom of confusion I do wonder how get information faster or at an equal speed of r/technology, third whose gonna take responsibility? Is it jack?, or the server, when something become part of the lifestyle they’ll always be someone to blame trust me even tho I do not like musk or mark I still use Facebook and Twitter, Reddit is here to stay no matter how we hate Steve people will still use it
nologic01 3y ago
People question the user numbers yet ignore the rising number of instances which is non-trivial and hard to fake. The usual bots dont (yet) set up new instances. Its not that easy and it costs real money. It wasnt quite clear how serious the reddit event but it seems now more than a blip. Many subs still silent or disable comments because they cant moderate without the tools. The fediverse platforms and overall design have still some way to go but those inroads are vital validation and testing at scale. Remember these are still tiny teams with very limited funding. When the history of social platforms is written they will be hailed as heroes and visionaries long after the lazy comments on HN are forgotten.
JSavageOne 3y ago
The problem with these Reddit alternatives is that just like 99% of Reddit, they're a complete waste of time. There's nothing of substance, no real community, and no value add to anyone's life. I just opened lemmy.world and I don't see anything of substance, just posts talking about Lemmy and how Reddit is dead. For me personally to use any of these sites, it has to at a minimum be a place where one can learn and have stimulating conversation. Reddit was like that in 2008, and it stopped being that way when memes, marketers, and political correctness took over. HN is the only site of this style that I regularly frequent because the quality is relatively high. Without keeping a high quality bar, I don't see why anyone would care to use any of these sites unless there's enough of a differentiating factor, and I don't think fediverse is an attractive enough of a feature to attract any serious users long-term. I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then. I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? Doubtful without at a minimum getting the ball rolling seeding it with content, and marketing is not my forte or interest. But in any case I hope we'll see more competitors trying to build a "better" Reddit than attempt to replicate the cespool that is Reddit (outside a few high quality niche subreddits), that persists not due to any superiority but simply just from network effects at this point. We don't need more of the same, we can do better. [1] https://zsync.xyz https://zsync.xyz
- Ukv 3y ago
  > I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then. It's probably reasonably expected to get a surge of new sign-ups when a competitor does something controversial, then drop back down to a more natural rate (but hopefully still higher than pre-surge). I don't think this on its own indicates failure. > I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? At the risk of being snarky myself, I'd claim the mission is a failure right from user #1: https://i.imgur.com/57BhkkJ.png https://i.imgur.com/57BhkkJ.png - the quality standard of ad-hominem soapboxing is already near rock bottom.
  - JSavageOne 3y ago
konart 3y ago
/r/Firefox migrated to https://fedia.io/m/firefox https://fedia.io/m/firefox (Kbin based)
pauby 3y ago
A lot of people whine about Lemmy and federation. They can't see how it works? What happens if the server closes down? Which instance do I choose. All of this is answered with some reading. If picking a server and understanding how it works is too much effort for you, then don't use it. You have had to put effort into understanding every single service you use. Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin and other federated services are no different. If it's too much, stay with Twitter or Reddit. It's okay.
bloqs 3y ago
What is really interesting to me is Sync for reddit (arguably the best of the Android 3rd party reddit offerings) is back in 2 weeks with Sync for Lemmy. If he can use his UI skills to give the level of quality that Sync offered, packaged with Reddit users in mind, I think this will absolutely solve this.
- etler 3y ago
  I imagine most of the ui code is fully reusable. The fact it's even possible to port it so quickly I think practically confirms it. Most of the changes are probably just on the API side. The biggest impact of Reddit attacking the 3rd party apps will be that they just sent almost all the best app developers on their platform to their direct competitors.
ruffsl 3y ago
I just wanted to suggest including some more helpful links. Graphical search indexes for finding and joining an instances aligning with your interests: - https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/ - https://browse.feddit.de/ https://browse.feddit.de/ An index of subreddit migrations, both official and unofficial community spinoffs to subscribe to: - https://sub.rehab/ https://sub.rehab/ - https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities A list of alternative clients for mobile, desktop, and web browsers: - https://lemmy.world/post/465785 https://lemmy.world/post/465785 - https://programming.dev/post/135335 https://programming.dev/post/135335
- vanilla_nut 3y ago
  And don't forget that Lemmy and Kbin federate, so you should also check Kbin for 'magazines' (their term for subreddit) that interest you.
Buttons840 3y ago
It's hard not to feel helpless when it comes to dominant sites (monopolies), like Reddit or YouTube. There doesn't seem to be any real alternatives. I'd encourage people not to give up hope. You don't have to give up using Reddit and YouTube, but instead you should find other sites that match your values and give them preferential treatment. I signed up for a Lemmy instance. I took 10 minutes and logged into it on all my devices and removed all the quick links to Reddit. During my 10 minutes of discipline I made it as easy as possible to use alternatives during my times of low-discipline. I did whatever I could to redirect my "I'm bored, I'm going to click on something for entertainment" energy towards Lemmy instead of Reddit. Basically, just make sure you put alternatives first on your list and Reddit and YouTube come last. I wont visit Reddit for entertainment unless I've first read through a bunch of posts on Lemmy. If a specific search directs me to Reddit, so be it, but I wont post there for fun; not unless I have to, not unless I've tried the alternatives first. Remember how easy it is to type another URL into your address bar.
merdaverse 3y ago
I have no idea what I am supposed to see on this link. It is completely unreadable, with green text overlapping each other and green icons and no zoom. But I suppose that the UX is a good indication of the overall Lemmy experience.
impissedoff1 3y ago
Basic Guide https://imgur.io/a/uyoYySY https://imgur.io/a/uyoYySY

323 points by impissedoff1 3y ago

For those who are wondering just like I did… Lemmy is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software)

jmiskovic 3y ago
Those are not really useful for getting the feel of federated communities. Check out the lemmy browser & search around for your hobbies and interests: [0] https://browse.feddit.de/ https://browse.feddit.de/

Narishma 3y ago

And how many of those are bots?

tnecniv 3y ago
I’m sure it’s an integer
- fsociety 3y ago
  Surely some of the users technically fall in the category of half-human half-robot.

codetrotter 3y ago

My instance had 5 users after a few days, two of which were my own. Then one day later there were over 600 users registered on my instance. All of those 600+ new users were spam bot accounts. Lemmy is sorely lacking the tools for dealing with that kind of thing. So in order to avoid that the spam accounts that were created could cause problems for other instances, I temporarily shut down my instance until there are tools that I can use to deal with the spam accounts. https://zapad.nstr.no/ https://zapad.nstr.no/ I wonder how many of the 2M users mentioned in the OP story are real persons, and how many are spam accounts.

guidedlight 3y ago
How do you know they are spam bots? What defines a bot from a casual lurker?
- deely3 3y ago
  Why downvotes? It could be that instance was mentioned somewhere else as easy to register so users just appear somehow organically. OP doesnt mentioned that users behave like bots so this question is logical.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  When 600 of them show up overnight for no apparent reason
  - gremlinsinc 3y ago
    there is an apparent reason, because Reddit is imploding. they gotta go somewhere.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  They all follow a very obvious consistent pattern in their usernames and email addresses.
notatoad 3y ago
I don't really have any reason to doubt you, because I am not involved in admining any Lemmy isntance. But on the other hand, in my casual use of Lemmy.world I have yet to encounter any spam at all. So either the mods there are really incredible, or the spam problem isnt so bad
- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  Or the spam bots aren't posting but upvoting or being sold as upvote farms.
  - 3y ago

BarryMilo 3y ago

Awesome! As long as no one I know has to run an instance, looks like a great time to jump ship.

hubraumhugo 3y ago

The site is crashing for me, isn't this a bit symbolic for the state of Lemmy?

clemensnk 3y ago

There's another interoperable 'threadiverse' platform called kbin where development really is taking off right now. Project page: https://kbin.pub https://kbin.pub Main instance: https://kbin.social https://kbin.social Code: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core Its lead developer is Ernest from Poland and it's implemented in good old php.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
>it's implemented in good old php. This doesn't bode well from a security perspective.

saberience 3y ago

Lenny has a major issue (which I think is a fatal flaw) which is that as soon as you go to the site you have to choose a server (of which there are hundreds) and you have no idea which to pick and then you don’t bother and leave the site. No casual user is ever going to leave Reddit for Lemmy. Even for myself I’m probably not going to use Lemmy because it seems stupid to have to join multiple “Lemmys” and make multiple accounts, this isn’t a good user experience. People are supposed to have separate accounts for every Lemmy? All the communities are disparate and separated? It makes no sense to me at all.

PUSH_AX 3y ago
I’m a technical user and the hoops and quirks in eco system put me off. The solution I’ve been left with is just to quit entirely. I’ve also ditched other social media while I’m at it. My life is better.
- rjh29 3y ago
  It's technically trivial to join lemmy. It would be more accurate to say you're not motivated enough. Which is fine, lemme has a lot of issues and it needs users who are invested at this point.
  - PUSH_AX 3y ago
    Op made the distinction that non technical users are put off, my position was that it doesn’t matter, I’m technical and I still don’t want to. The user experience and understanding the proposition are barriers to entry, of course the vast majority of people could sit down and “get it” after not long.. I’m at a point where if it’s not a website and it’s trying to be something more, I just really don’t care.
asicsp 3y ago
I joined https://programming.dev/ https://programming.dev/ and I can subscribe to both local and other instances (assuming they talk to each other).
3y ago

LittleShaman 3y ago

FediDB.org has more conservative numbers, ~300k total users, ~100k active users: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse It's because of attempts at excluding spam accounts: https://fedidb.org/site/news https://fedidb.org/site/news The author's mastodon has some posts on this: https://mastodon.social/@dansup https://mastodon.social/@dansup I'm on lemmy.world and personally not seen any spam though.

goolz 3y ago

While it has a long way to go I am very hopeful for the fediverse. Got the Memmy app via Test Flight and got signed up to lemmy.world in like 2 minutes. Was a lot simpler than I realized and honestly I am giddy with excitement. So long and thanks for all the memes. Also, bravo to that dev. Seriously, v0.0.2 and you are killing it mate. You should be proud.

vanilla_nut 3y ago
I'm astonished that the Memmy app is this good after just a week or two of development. Very curious how the dev will monetise eventually; as far as I know, they don't have significant overhead costs beyond an Apple developer account and their own dev work. Ought to end up somewhere like Apollo.

txn 3y ago

With the recent surge in discussion around Lemmy, I decided to spin up an instance and give it a go. It seems to have a lot trouble syncing up with other instances making for a very disjointed experience. For example, I commented on one post, which added that community to my instance, but then my instance never did sync up with any new comments from that post so I just thought there was no activity on it until I went to the original instance and saw all the new comments. To be fair, it could be on me and my configuration. I'm not really sure, but it makes it difficult to keep track of moving discussions and will probably drive me away from it eventually.

toyg 3y ago
Most people are not meant to run an instance.

not_your_vase 3y ago

Coming up in 3 weeks on HN: Why did Lemmy migration fail? (65 comments) (dead) I'm leaving Lemmy (0 comments) The social website without users and content (128 comments) Yeah, I'm snarky. All of Bluesky's, Lemmy's, Mastodon's (etc) only appeal seem to be that they are not BigCorp, but without any of the benefits (and content) of the existing platforms. They flare up quickly before users go back to their origin. Hard to see how Lemmy is different at this time.

haunter 3y ago
I hope it will be different with Lemmy (it won’t) but on Mastodon I see very specific type of users, mostly activists and hackers. There are no normies at all. No Kpop stans. No football fans. No gamers arguing which console is the best etc. I follow /r/soccer which has not just the userbase but people posting goals in _real time_ a lot of times even before happened on your regular broadcast. There is no replacement for that.
- guerrilla 3y ago
  You're probsnly stuck in a buble. Maybe you just don't know how to find other people. Discovery is a problem. Follow hashtags. There are a ton of serious scientists and other academics. https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
LittleShaman 3y ago
That isn't at all true for Mastodon. Despite a very significant drop a while after the influx from twitter, looking at a few different sources it has twice as many monthly active users now (~600k before influx to hovering around ~1.2M for a few months now after the slump.)

techwizrd 3y ago

I'm excited by the idea, but I'm honestly pretty confused by Lemmy & Kbin. Reddit accounts and subreddits give an incentive to protect the account and "build up a history". My Reddit account is 13+ years old, and I don't want to sign up on the "wrong instance" of Lemmy/Kbin. 1. Will apps like Liftoff, Boost for Lemmy, and Sync for Lemmy support Kbin instance accounts? Should I be signing up for Lemmy instead if I want a familiar mobile app? 2. If I register a Kbin account, can I register with the same username on a different "home instance"? Can you login (not federate) to a different instance with a Lemmy/Kbin account? e.g., if I sign up for an account on kbin.social, can I login to lemmy.world with the account since most apps currently only support Kbin instances? 3. What happens if your home instance goes down temporarily? What happens if it goes down permanently? What if there is drama and suddenly many instances stop federating with your home instance? What if my instance stops federating with an instance I participate in? Do you need to start over somewhere else? 4. Are there multi-reddits to combine the same topic from multiple instances? What happens if multiple instances each have their own version of a community? 5. How do you moderate a community on Lemmy/Kbin? How do you deal with spam? 6. How do I link to or save a post? How do I search? I want to sign up, contribute, and give the best chance of it taking off. But I don't understand the future implications of which instance I sign up on.

wraptile 3y ago
> centive to protect the account and "build up a history". My Reddit account is 13+ years old, and I don't want to sign up on the "wrong instance" of Lemmy/Kbin. This is scary. With that much public information all of your accounts are surely pwned and you'll be a prime target for AI based scam attacks. It's probably enough data to build an AI profile that'll be more real than real YOU to other people and all it takes is couple of API calls/scrapes of your reddit account. No one should ever have a personal reddit account that is older than a year.
- Shank 3y ago
  > With that much public information all of your accounts are surely pwned and you'll be a prime target for AI based scam attacks. It's probably enough data to build an AI profile that'll be more real than real YOU to other people and all it takes is couple of API calls/scrapes of your reddit account. What? So? How does the age of the account imply that they’ve stored anything remotely useful/identifiable? People have different standards for privacy and different needs and desires for identity. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean that you should push people in a direction baselessly.

pndy 3y ago

From my PoV so far it looks that subs which decided to join lemmy or fediverse did not become active in same way as on reddit. I'd guess that these communities are rather a 'rogue' spin-off of subreddits created by people who didn't like mods and how they ruled subs. It's also possible that only more tech-aware enthusiasts moved over while those who mainly provided content and activity didn't bother themselves with "alternatives" and exodus. They decided to stay (or don't do anything) and join the blackouts or whatever else these protests took form. Overall, I'm not surprised with what happen to reddit or even twitter. This crawling enshittification driven in most cases by the greed and power lust; I've seen this happen many times in the Polish part of the Internet and it looks like it's an inevitable stage in platform's life.

int_ 3y ago

Lemmy.one wants a written answers and pre-approval. Garbage.

b3orn 3y ago

Why is HN so negative about Lemmy?

the_lucifer 3y ago
Because it, like Mastodon, is a usability nightmare and literally nothing is being done to address it. All criticism falls on deaf ears and the community is hell bent on pushing their flawed vision through
- guerrilla 3y ago
  Right, like e-mail. That other thing that never took off. I'd love to have been here to read about uts launch.
  - damvigilante 3y ago
    Literally just made his point. Every single person keeps repeating it’s like email, as if email is a fantastic place to go get your news and interact with others.
    - guerrilla 3y ago
      It's not like e-mail. It already fixes the things you're complaining about, while the things OP was complaining about will be fixed eventually. The point of bringing up e-mail is that a) federation does work and b) that usability is not a hindrance by itself.
    - etler 3y ago
      But that's not email's use case at all. It's not being compared to email because they serve the same function otherwise there'd be no need for Lemmy. It's being compared as a distributed and open protocol, and where the comparison is important is in adoption, and email proves out that an open distributed system can achieve not only strong, but universal adoption. We pulled it off in the 80s on ridiculously weak hardware and snail pace internet, I'm sure it can be done again.

Patrickmi 3y ago

It’s great, but imho activitypub is kinda of a flawed protocol it won’t THE ever changing thing but actually the first step, creating an account anywhere from one different host defeats the purpose why social media is very unique and why hardly are there duplicates of the same kind of niche, secondly activitypub is a heirloom of confusion I do wonder how get information faster or at an equal speed of r/technology, third whose gonna take responsibility? Is it jack?, or the server, when something become part of the lifestyle they’ll always be someone to blame trust me even tho I do not like musk or mark I still use Facebook and Twitter, Reddit is here to stay no matter how we hate Steve people will still use it

nologic01 3y ago

People question the user numbers yet ignore the rising number of instances which is non-trivial and hard to fake. The usual bots dont (yet) set up new instances. Its not that easy and it costs real money. It wasnt quite clear how serious the reddit event but it seems now more than a blip. Many subs still silent or disable comments because they cant moderate without the tools. The fediverse platforms and overall design have still some way to go but those inroads are vital validation and testing at scale. Remember these are still tiny teams with very limited funding. When the history of social platforms is written they will be hailed as heroes and visionaries long after the lazy comments on HN are forgotten.

JSavageOne 3y ago

The problem with these Reddit alternatives is that just like 99% of Reddit, they're a complete waste of time. There's nothing of substance, no real community, and no value add to anyone's life. I just opened lemmy.world and I don't see anything of substance, just posts talking about Lemmy and how Reddit is dead. For me personally to use any of these sites, it has to at a minimum be a place where one can learn and have stimulating conversation. Reddit was like that in 2008, and it stopped being that way when memes, marketers, and political correctness took over. HN is the only site of this style that I regularly frequent because the quality is relatively high. Without keeping a high quality bar, I don't see why anyone would care to use any of these sites unless there's enough of a differentiating factor, and I don't think fediverse is an attractive enough of a feature to attract any serious users long-term. I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then. I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? Doubtful without at a minimum getting the ball rolling seeding it with content, and marketing is not my forte or interest. But in any case I hope we'll see more competitors trying to build a "better" Reddit than attempt to replicate the cespool that is Reddit (outside a few high quality niche subreddits), that persists not due to any superiority but simply just from network effects at this point. We don't need more of the same, we can do better. [1] https://zsync.xyz https://zsync.xyz

Ukv 3y ago
> I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then. It's probably reasonably expected to get a surge of new sign-ups when a competitor does something controversial, then drop back down to a more natural rate (but hopefully still higher than pre-surge). I don't think this on its own indicates failure. > I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? At the risk of being snarky myself, I'd claim the mission is a failure right from user #1: https://i.imgur.com/57BhkkJ.png https://i.imgur.com/57BhkkJ.png - the quality standard of ad-hominem soapboxing is already near rock bottom.
- JSavageOne 3y ago

konart 3y ago

/r/Firefox migrated to https://fedia.io/m/firefox https://fedia.io/m/firefox (Kbin based)

pauby 3y ago

A lot of people whine about Lemmy and federation. They can't see how it works? What happens if the server closes down? Which instance do I choose. All of this is answered with some reading. If picking a server and understanding how it works is too much effort for you, then don't use it. You have had to put effort into understanding every single service you use. Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin and other federated services are no different. If it's too much, stay with Twitter or Reddit. It's okay.

bloqs 3y ago

What is really interesting to me is Sync for reddit (arguably the best of the Android 3rd party reddit offerings) is back in 2 weeks with Sync for Lemmy. If he can use his UI skills to give the level of quality that Sync offered, packaged with Reddit users in mind, I think this will absolutely solve this.

etler 3y ago
I imagine most of the ui code is fully reusable. The fact it's even possible to port it so quickly I think practically confirms it. Most of the changes are probably just on the API side. The biggest impact of Reddit attacking the 3rd party apps will be that they just sent almost all the best app developers on their platform to their direct competitors.

ruffsl 3y ago

I just wanted to suggest including some more helpful links. Graphical search indexes for finding and joining an instances aligning with your interests: - https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/ - https://browse.feddit.de/ https://browse.feddit.de/ An index of subreddit migrations, both official and unofficial community spinoffs to subscribe to: - https://sub.rehab/ https://sub.rehab/ - https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities A list of alternative clients for mobile, desktop, and web browsers: - https://lemmy.world/post/465785 https://lemmy.world/post/465785 - https://programming.dev/post/135335 https://programming.dev/post/135335

vanilla_nut 3y ago
And don't forget that Lemmy and Kbin federate, so you should also check Kbin for 'magazines' (their term for subreddit) that interest you.

Buttons840 3y ago

It's hard not to feel helpless when it comes to dominant sites (monopolies), like Reddit or YouTube. There doesn't seem to be any real alternatives. I'd encourage people not to give up hope. You don't have to give up using Reddit and YouTube, but instead you should find other sites that match your values and give them preferential treatment. I signed up for a Lemmy instance. I took 10 minutes and logged into it on all my devices and removed all the quick links to Reddit. During my 10 minutes of discipline I made it as easy as possible to use alternatives during my times of low-discipline. I did whatever I could to redirect my "I'm bored, I'm going to click on something for entertainment" energy towards Lemmy instead of Reddit. Basically, just make sure you put alternatives first on your list and Reddit and YouTube come last. I wont visit Reddit for entertainment unless I've first read through a bunch of posts on Lemmy. If a specific search directs me to Reddit, so be it, but I wont post there for fun; not unless I have to, not unless I've tried the alternatives first. Remember how easy it is to type another URL into your address bar.

merdaverse 3y ago

I have no idea what I am supposed to see on this link. It is completely unreadable, with green text overlapping each other and green icons and no zoom. But I suppose that the UX is a good indication of the overall Lemmy experience.

impissedoff1 3y ago

Basic Guide https://imgur.io/a/uyoYySY https://imgur.io/a/uyoYySY