Going by comments in the post, the required login is coming in waves, so not all people may notice immediately.
Still, as Reddit is strong-arming its way across, maybe worth signaling to people there that the fediverse may be used without an account, so long as there’s even one instance that implements logged-out view as the protocol allows it?
I don’t have access to my account any longer, possibly VPN ban, though I never tried to recover it so I can only guess why mine is lost, else I’d post myself.
While I think there’s some merit to the idea of talking about the fediverse on corporate legacy social media platforms, I think the best and most effective thing we can do is put in extra effort to engage with the fediverse itself, making posts and comments, building up new communities, and so on.
Reddit is no doubt getting worse and more closed off all the time. They treat their users like shit, or at least, like a resource to be harvested for profit.
But at the same time, Reddit users will sit around complaining about the platform until the cows come up, but when it comes time to do anything about it (like, for example, go check out the fediverse…) they don’t ever take any action. And this problem isn’t unique to Reddit either, people just love to complain about X on X, complain about Facebook on Facebook, complain about Tiktok on Tiktok, etc. It’s hard to tell how much of that is just performative internet shit vs genuine addiction to their particular algorithm of choice, but in my view it’s a real problem…
In other words, the question is “where we should be spending our energy?”
Should we be spending it on Reddit, trying to convince a bunch of people (who frankly range from ambivalent to straight-up addicted) that Reddit sucks? Or should we spend it here on the fediverse building the communities from the ground up?
Yeah, came to say more or less the same thing. I genuinely believe we’re big enough where we don’t need to tell people we exist. We can spend our time making the fediverse a better place so that anyone coming to look for an alternative to Reddit can look at the fediverse and think “that looks like a cool place”.
I mostly agree, but I don’t think it should be 100%. How did any of us get here? Almost certainly it was someone talking on the legacy platforms. We shouldn’t spend time trying to convince people to join, but some people should spend some time spreading the word that the alternatives exist, and why they’re better. Honestly, I don’t think we want the users that need convincing. We do want the users who see the advantage and leave on their own, but they need to know about it first.
I’d guess there is a balance to be struck.
The only thing that’s confusing to me, is like there is not a pottery group on here but I have no idea how to make one. I tried to figure it out I have no idea how to make an instance or anything.
when you search for a community, make sure you’re searching “All” communities instead of just “Local” communities
this one already exists [email protected]
THANK YOU! I did look but I don’t understand the fediverse at all. The instances are confusing. Like I joined discuss.online but is that the same as lemmy? Idk I think Reddit has so many users because it’s easy and clear to use
Discuss.Online is one of the BEST instances! It has super-high uptime, meaning the admin team is very highly technically proficient. I left other instances due to very long delays causing problems, but I rarely to never experience such things with Discuss.Online.
In case it helps, Lemmy is the name of the software that is being run, which implements the ActivityPub Protocol that makes the Threadiverse (the threaded conversion style subset of the Fediverse, different from the microblog style of Mastodon) happen. Then Discuss.Online (DO) is the name of the “instance” (a server machine, running Linux as the OS). Our primary admin is I believe m_f, since jgrim the owner stepped back a bit to take care of his newborn child.
DO will share content with everyone else on the Threadiverse - not only other instances running Lemmy software but also PieFed, mBin, nodeBB, soon flarum may be added, and more. That’s the beauty of federation: you aren’t limited to just your instance, or even just Lemmy, you will access all of it, at once. I am not sure how your apps/clients handle things but I know that some of them hide the instance names - you can turn them on if you prefer to see them? It helped me get a better feel for the place - e.g. Lemmy.World holds about half of all users on the Threadiverse, and perhaps 90% of the most active communities (but people are trying to change that, to mix things up so that it’s not all in one place like that!!).
I guess you already know that a “community” is like a “subreddit”, which we denote like c/pottery rather than r/pottery, and then add the instance name. That said, the absolute best way to refer to it is with the exclamation point !, then community name, the at symbol @, then the instance name. This will make a link that anyone from any app can follow to navigate directly to the community. Like this: [email protected].
DO would be happy to host a potty community here! See in the sidebar text:
A general purpose instance for discovery, fun, & sharing. It’s a welcoming place for all.
Welcome to discuss.online!
Home for interesting conversation, discovery, and fun. Everyone is welcome!
Guidelines
discuss.online aims to enrich the lives of everyone it touches. Please be kind as you use it.
That said, the other community mentioned, the one on Lemmy.world (LW) seems to be struggling mightily, with only a single person posting to it and zero active moderators (the single mod there hasn’t posted or commented anything in the past 3 years). So you might talk to the single person that is posting, [email protected] (if I had put an at @ symbol in front of their name, it would have tagged them, sending them a notification and making it into a link), and see if they want to collaborate with you, either here on DO or over there on LW. Either way you might make a friend of mutual interest!:-D And/or just start posting in that community and see what happens:-). Others occasionally do that I see, it’s just far more rare. If you did make a community here, expect to have to do similarly: people won’t know right away and you’d be the only one posting for a LONG time, perhaps a year or more. The Threadiverse just does not have a large userbase to support communities, especially outside of tech or politics.
To @[email protected], if you make a community, either the pottery one if you feel like making a second one or any other community, feel free to post about the newly made community to either/both [email protected] and [email protected].
The more people follow a given community, the more it propagates whenever a post is made, and the more it propagates, the higher is the chance of someone feeling like interacting with the community or even following. And making the post to either/both communities helps giving an initial boost, though persistence in keeping posting until it gains traction should still be needed.
Thank you so so much for your reply. It helped me understand a lot better! I already am using discuss! I really appreciate your answer
You are very welcome! 🤗
I joined discuss.online but is that the same as lemmy?
yes that’s a part of Lemmy, that’s all you need
I don’t understand the fediverse at all. The instances are confusing.
It’s kinda like email. Think of it like you’re on Gmail, I’m on Yahoo Mail, and the pottery community is on MSN. We can all talk to each other because we do like
@mangobanana@gmail.com(in reality you’re atdiscuss.online) and@die4ever@yahoo.com(I’m atretrolemmy.com). Usernames start with anlike Twitter, community names start with an!So when you do a “Local” search you only see stuff from “Gmail” like yourself, but usually you want to search “All” not “Local”.
For viewing posts on my feed I prefer “Subscribed”, this can be set as your default in your settings page.
have you tried an app on your phone? they can be a bit simpler to use than the website https://join-lemmy.org/apps
here’s another community that might help [email protected]
I’m using the brave app, and thank you so much! So far I’ve been able to create a question on one of the groups! Yay!
I don’t see your post. I think in Brave you would have to click to expand the Sidebar in order to make a post
for a phone I would better suggest Boost, Connect, or Summit
Yes I’m also using the boost app. I go back and forth depending what device I’m on
You don’t need to create an instance (requires server administration skills), just a community (requires a few clicks). On the top right menu, there should be a create community entry.
I got banned from reddit, and it took me 2 weeks to think to search up “reddit like alternatives.” This is not a problem with disenchantment with Reddit, this a problem with Fediverse visibility.
Would you search up “reddit like alternatives” if you hadn’t been banned? And if someone came on Reddit a few days before you got banned and said to you “hey, this is the Fediverse, come join us”, would you join, or would you say “I have no reason to leave Reddit or to use any other Reddit-like platform”?
I also don’t it’s a “disenchantment” problem. I believe it’s more of a “refusing to change because it takes effort” problem
honestly, in the months leading up to it I may just have. The AI posting ragebait problem was/is getting very untenable over there and it would have been a nice safety valve to come here and gripe about the world without having to dance around corporate boilerplate ass covering “rules” governing what you can and and can’t say. I suppose you’re not without a point though. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.
EDIT: Oops! I accidentally wrote a wall of text!
I knew about AI models generating posts, but I never really thought about how problematic it could get. I don’t know much about Reddit’s rules, mostly because I left the platform before people started complaining of getting banned left and center, but I did hear a lots of people complaining about it here on Lemmy.
I’m sorry if I jumped the gun and started making assumptions about you right away. I have friends that still use X, despite knowing how bad that platform is, and how unhealthy scrolling through a feed on that platform can get, and even despite knowing there are alternatives (one of them tried Bluesky once, but quit it because “it just wasn’t the same thing”). I just assumed you were in a not-so-different situation before getting banned, even though I don’t know anything about you.
It also doesn’t help that I just assumed that everyone had heard about the existence of Reddit alternatives when the Reddit API protests happened. I completely forgot that lots of people came to Reddit after that, or weren’t even using the platform during the protest despite having an account. I forgot that there are probably some people that didn’t notice the protests because of their favourite subreddits being unaffected by it, and that it’s also very likely that there were a ton of people that were affected by it, but knew nothing about why it was happening. And there could be even others that knew about why it was happening, but didn’t know that people were starting to look for alternatives. I just assumed that people who stayed behind on Reddit after the protests chose to stay behind after hearing about platforms like Lemmy because changing platforms was too much work.
Thanks for opening my eyes :)
Despite it all, I don’t see Lemmy as being a platform with a community that is super accessible for every single human in the planet, so I don’t think it’s exclusively an advertisement issue. Not that that’s a problem that needs to be fixed, I just think that you’d have to partly remove the platform’s “soul” if you wanted to make it more accessible for it to grow. As far as I know, Lemmy wasn’t made to “kill” Reddit. It was made to be a place where people can hang out with other people who care about the same topics :)
lemmy world is the top result when searching reddit alternatives. I agree the best thing you can do is to make this a good active community, anyone who is done with reddit will have no trouble finding their way here.
God I hope the fediverse gets bigger than it is now
I don’t want to be mean but Reddit has a fuckload of really niche and weird interests and hobbies that I happen to be in that lemmy just doesn’t have.
Start posting then buddy
Doesn’t even need to be niche. There are no active major sports communities, much less local teams, which is about the only pleasure I get from browsing that place anymore through Redlib instances. Among others, BSky built cachet from sports journalists adopting the platform. Attracting a core of these otherwise apolitical mainstream interests may be necessary to kick start the network effect.
Aside, I would say it’s ironically the more peculiar cultures I’ve hung around that never had Reddit or Discord supplant their surviving forums and chat servers that are doing the best these days in consistent quality engagement. While I think the post and threaded comment format inherited from Digg is adequate for news and current events, I hope slower-paced subs seeking to migrate seriously consider if they’d be better served by a different kind of service too.
God I hope the fediverse gets bigger than it is now
Haven’t checked your post history so saying that generically, but hope must be accompanied by action. So to those that have the same feeling, I invite to look for ways they can help.
There were many art subs that I followed that I don’t have the skill, imagination, or time to create and post on. There were many technical subs that I enjoy reading about but know almost nothing about.
Many people don’t have time or energy to prepare and share things online, or don’t like sharing online, let alone the skill to create the things they would like to read about. There are many types of people in the world with different capacities for different things. Sometimes commenting is the only way some people feel they can participate. Sometimes it’s only voting.
I made this firefox extension that might help with the transition. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-lemmy-reposter/
All files are free and opensource here to do whatever you want with it. https://github.com/jamesey10/reddit2lemmy
I don’t understand how anyone can be an unpaid mod on that site now. Don’t they see articles and headlines about stock prices and shit and wonder why aren’t they getting a cut?
have you seen the mods behaviour they love the power they hold. they were also likely forum mods to, and they are just as bad. ive been on 2 forums, 1 was about the armed services, they dont like any contradiction, calling them rude will cause them to spam you(about why you cant join or whatever). and another dislikes the mentioning of anything that labels a certain groups of people(not in a negative or demeaning way).
I’m on Lemmy for the first time today after discovering it because Reddit was doing this to me today. Good Riddance. Happy I found an alternative.
Welcome :)
Hi! We joined on the same day for the same reason :D
Edit: Nevermind, the little number next to my account name says I’m wrong. Apparently I have trouble reading a calendar.
I’m convinced that at least some of the Aussie subreddits have a lot of “contributions” from lobbyists. As, I quite often see things that don’t seem Australian… Like a lot of weird pro-gun stuff that in Australia we don’t have in our culture.
I’d rather not have them here.
Municipal subreddits and local subreddits are absolutely astroturfed, any hot-button topic would always be flooded by hot shit takes that (before they removed your ability to see post history) would prove to be people running through different city subreddits blasting agitprop
It is actually insane how powerful social media as an unfettered platform is for that kind of manipulation
i see alot of indian subs pop up, when there were none before on the main page. im guessing they became prominent after trump started going after Indian visa holders.
We definitely need the 1.0 release of Lemmy now more than ever… Keep up the good work devs btw!
im never going back to ad supported algorithmic brainwashing. decentralized open source, or nothing for me
I joined Lemmy like a lot of others, when Reddit shut down the API. I soon went back to Reddit but also stayed on Lemmy.
The big problem for me with Lemmy is it’s still way too small to use it the way I use Reddit. I’ve subscribed to a whole bunch of communities equivalent to the subreddits I read and comment on. On Reddit those subreddits have a few hundred people active on a daily basis, whereas on Lemmy they’re lucky to see 1 post and 2 comments a week.
Small communities and real discussions were always what I liked about Reddit, never the big subreddits with millions of users. For now, anyway, Lemmy’s communities are just too small to foster those discussions (on the topics I’m still on Reddit for, anyway; there’s plenty of politics here obviously).
we need a larger userbase, and more niche communities. I try and sub to every new one I see that I’m interested in
While I agree there isn’t a ton of discussion in a lot of communities here, I have had pretty good success just posting the questions myself in communities where relevant even if the community currently has almost no activity. Sure you don’t get 100s of responses but I do feel the response quality is higher here and ultimately that’s the only way to help lemmy grow to be more active in those communities
I’m not really a question poster though, I’m a question answerer. I think most people are like me, which is why tiny communities (but non-zero) don’t have any discussions: there aren’t enough question posters, just a lot of question answerers waiting around like kids at the school dance.
Maybe a good middle ground would be to make posts answering questions others might have but that weren’t asked yet?
Me too! I never went back to Reddit though. I lost my account with rif that was carefully built over years. I still can’t figure out lemmy, fediverse, whatever it’s called. The tech is not something I care about. I want a simple and easy to use interface, like rif. But this is 1000 times better than dodging ads, bots and trolls on an over-capitalized website.
I want a simple and easy to use interface, like rif.
I also used to use RIF. Have you tried Boost for Lemmy? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy&hl=en_US
Reddit is turning into orange Facebook at this point.
No, just no. Just stay off reddit lmao, not trying to be harsh or whatever but it’s a very simple answer.
there will definitely be some users over there that discover the fediverse and join us, there will also be some that won’t. And we don’t want them all to come, ghislane maxwell can stay on reddit forever from her country club prison computer, for example.
So just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing to contribute to the fediverse, either by being a powermod or just a lurker, and as the fediverse grows and adapts it will attract those it should attract.
Going back and contributing to a website owned by literal trump funders just seems like a complete nonstarter to me.
Idk, tell your IRL friends, discord friends whoever, sure, i just don’t think posting on reddit is the answer to doing anything positive for the fediverse.
No, just no. Just stay off reddit lmao, not trying to be harsh or whatever but it’s a very simple answer.
I second that!
It’s a similar situation with Youtube. People keep complaining about the enshittification, yet they keep giving their audience to the Google platform. People could argue “Oh, nah, I use Invidious/yt-dlp/Grayjay/etc, I don’t give Youtube my clicks” and this is a very naive take, because in the end of the day Indivious/yt-dlp/etc still rely on Youtube, and these peple are relying on content maintained by Youtube.
I myself have been boycotting Youtube for two years and counting, and I never looked back.
Yes, Youtube and Reddit have gazillions of content. Yes, we’re often unable to find said content anywhere else. Yes, life can become more hard if we refrain from said content. But while we keep seeking their content (even, and especially, through circumvented manners), they will keep enshittifying because they know they have what the complaining people are ultimately seeking and they know people are seeking it so badly. Once we finally stop, maybe, just maybe, situation would reverse and Youtube and Reddit will be the ones seeking us so badly.
those people are the worst, i see them complaining about youtube on the YT subreddit, and they go on defending it when you point out the pervasiveness of rightwing content, and people like mr beast getting views. i was saying which is it, do you like youtube or you dont. and no i wont be logging in to youtube just to curate my feed, google wants this so they sell this part of your data.
I didn’t even know who Mr beast was until last year That’s how much I don’t watch YouTube
i dint know he was a pos, when the drama hit. the part where had to do a “commercial” video about Lunchly because shit was hititng the fan at the time. everyone likened the video to a jihadist in a cave meeting and the people, other influencers had a gun to thier heads. people were likely critcizing him, but i was saying why are you giving him attention, and i was like comparing him to right wing content, that is forced by youtube. and they started saying"we dont get that if yuo curate a feed, you must be searching out the content" wierd way of defending youtube.
sooner or later they will follow the FB method, require facial recognition, ID scans. and google which is the most common email reddit usually attaches to account started thier more invasive datamining, by requiring QR code scan with your phone to make an account on google.
I’m leaving any platform that tries this without a second thought. Already left discord. Left reddit and joined here with the account requirement (even though I have an account, just hate the principle).
google is allegedly doing it to stop spamming with thier requiring yuor phone to scan qr code, we know they just want your phone details, and that benefits reddits own datamining, fingerprinting too.
i would also suggest piefed over lemmy; not because one is better than the other but because piefed shows other related communities under a thread and might be easier to come over from reddit in terms of discovery.
also it would be nice to have a master list of communities that match the reddit version.
PieFed definitely has better onboarding
im only staying on lemmy because im used to it and established, only something like they go through mass purging somehow, or some of the instance shutdown i will move over.
If they are still on Reddit, then they fucking deserve the enshittification.
I deleted mine. Since there was no “delete all posts” button I used bot that edited all into gibberish. It was funny watching countless private messages from multiple communities begging me not to do it this way. Apparently it makes moderation difficult or something.
It’s wild Reddit doesn’t have a hard deletion of UGC under GDPR rights. If they have a OneTrust portal etc I would love to use it
Thank you for taking the time to salt the earth before leaving. It is important to cause as much headache as possible for the moderators over there while sunsetting an account. I never really contributed anything on reddit so the bridge I burned was via the report button. It felt like hurling turds into a cesspit for someone else to deal with until I got banned. A turd too far.
