- cross-posted to:
- memes@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- memes@slrpnk.net
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We’ll be fiiiiine 🥲 starts hyperventilating
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.
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.
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.
I don’t have much to say, but here’s a reply anyway! Hope it seems a little less quiet in here.
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 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.
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.
Bare bones and information dense are things I like about it, honestly; crammed with popups about cookies and privacy policies and newsletters and adverts is the nominal experience.
I’m not a tech savvy person and I had no problem to adapt to this platform. It’s very similar to Reddit and after 15 minutes playing around I also understood how everything works out. Even the federation concept is pretty easy.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Same here, this feels a bit more like the newsgroup days, except less porn spam.
Ooh, I forgot all about slashdot!
honestly, its best if you continue forgetting about 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.
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.
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.
That’s exactly my point. I know it’s not difficult for the people already here, that’s why we did it.
What other social media platform requires you to answer open-ended questions about “why” you’re joining? I can’t really think of any. It’s an unfamiliar concept to the majority of people.
Combine that with the concept of “federation” that may make many users feel as if they’re signing up for some silo within the community, and it’s a recipe for low adoption.
Like I said, I don’t disagree with the concept or the process. I’m fully aware of the reasons, and I generally agree. I’m just explaining how this will be a major adoption roadblock for the vast majority of users.
I don’t really have a good solution either; I wish I did. I don’t think everyone and their bot needs to flood Lemmy, but I also don’t want people too dissuaded from joining if the sign up process appears arduous, even when it’s not.
There’s many Facebook groups that have you answer some basics questions before letting you join. I’m thinking it’s not as big of a hurdle as you think. One of the positives is that it will weed out those who don’t plan to participate.
I tried one other instance of lemy to join and there were no questions to answer. That server was way too overloaded. It made me think the questions might also be there to slow down the registrations. The servers could then keep up.
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.
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.
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
This has not been my experience so far.
F5
That’s why I’m here 😁
I can’t wait for Lemmy to be my time waster and news grab all in one ❤️
Hell yeah, just got here and am ready boost some engagement! I already like it here, I forgot that being able to see the amount of down votes used to be a thing
*Looks like I’m the 69th comment here, what a start!
One of the things I love about Lemmy is that I’m literally over here in a different instance. I can willingly see other content but I also have this local group I can be close with. It brings me back to the old Internet with the benefits and reach of the new Internet.
Excellent point. A small community, that can easily interact with the larger community. This is what the internet always should have been.
Oooh lawdy there are servers! My time wasting will scale exponentially now 😅
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.
Yep… Bought Sync and Apollo long ago. Moved to Lemmy today. Slowly moving all of my main socials to decentralized/federated platforms because the greedy corpos breaking their own shit.
I would kill for a Sync for Lemmy
Mlem if you have iOS or
Lemmur on Android. There’s many more too (just off the top of my head)Jerboa for Android
Lemmur is actually defunct. The active android app is Jerboa. Available on the play store or F-Droid. !jerboa@lemmy.ml
Ugh. I just don’t understand why Jerboa (name doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue…but that’s neither here nor there)…the biggest frustration (for me) is the wildly different font sizes between looking at the main page and clicking into a discussion. It’s jarring and super annoying.
It’s a known issue that already has a fix that needs to be merged. It’s an unfortunately by product of how the app currently handles images in the comments section.
I’ve been really enjoying wefwef for iOS. Very similar feel to Apollo.
Just came to Lemmy with the wave from sync :p
Surprised at how similar Jerboa looked when I first opened it, but yeah~ going to try and join some communities and hopefully jump ship from reddit completely^^
Or kbin (the one I’m on 😁)
It’s coming. They are working on a new frontend at the moment and then the apps. For now you can install the website as a PWA using chrome or firefox. It makes kbin much better on mobile.
Agreed. I haven’t had any problems using it as a PWA, though I’m still watching for an actual app!
Imagine a Sync for lemmy.
Would love this!
Same. But I wish it was more straightforward. I’m not convinced the average/occasional user will transition to decentralized platforms if it’s a pain to do so.
sign up on my instance was very easy! https://sh.itjust.works
Lemmy is easier to get set up for us folks who aren’t as technical as we used to be. The biggest hurdle for me is for social networks like Twitter or IG where I know people irl who won’t be moving to mastodon probably ever. On Reddit I never made a single friend during the almost 15 years I had an active account.
I didn’t make friends but there were regulars I’d see around, its the smaller communities that feel the best.
Agreed. Those are the ones I’ll miss.
Always harder to take a privacy forward approach but the more people adopt it, hopefully all the more who see and also come over.
Beehaw was super easy. It was literally just your typical sign up process for any website. For me the biggest hurdle initially was just understanding how all of this works, and how they all fit together.
That might be for the better. The more people that get on these things tends to lower the bar and open these communities up to more bad actors.
I’m not sure about that. I would expect motivated bad actors to be determined to overcome technical obstacles. It’s normal, casual people who’ll give up and leave.
Ya the motivated ones will, but the low effort ones won’t which I think will significantly cut down on the overall shittiness.
Longtime Apollo user, just moved to Lemmy. Hoping the blackout brings many more with me, and hoping Lemmy can handle the surge
Glad to have you! Tell the apollo dev we’d be happy to have them make an app for Lemmy!
I created our android app, jerboa, and there’s also an open source one in development for iOS called mlem
Currently using jerboa right now!! Thanks for your work!
No probs!
Also using Jerboa right now. Such a fantastic effort. I am a programmer myself, so I know the effort that goes into it!
Thanks, glad you like it so far.
Another round of thanks for your work on jerboa!
I see your commit history goes back to Jan 2022, if you had to rewrite what would you want to do differently?
(I don’t have any specific plans here, but I’m completely new to this space and interested in anything you’ve learned the hard way.)
e: hold on you’re the og lemmy dev, you ain’t got time for this. I thought it was just the app, whoops, ignore me pls
I don’t think I would change anything… Learning jetpack compose, and signal-based reactivity, has been teaching me how to be a better UI designer, and I’ve been applying its principles to the other apps I develop. Its very opinionated, for performance reasons, whereas a lot of front end frameworks like react can let you do things in 1000 different ways.
I’d been wanting someone else to build a native android app for lemmy for a while by then, but when it became clear no one else was going to, I scraped out time from other lemmy work for a month to build it.
Awesome, I’m dropping that google play store link nonstop over the last day or so. Good luck to you in the coming days!
Your app is going to explode!
Oh shit, you’re how I’m even here right now this easily! Props man.
<3
Thanks for Jerboa! It’s way faster than https://lemmy.ml for me
check out my sidebar over on !ps5@lemmy.ml . I have other helpful links that aren’t ps5 related to help you find communities, navigate instances, and otherwise have a good time over here!
Funny how even the small wave is enough to take down the city 🤣. I hope Lemmy can grow to be my primary time waster. There’ll be downtime and hiccups, but I’m a patient man.
Omg there’s even a downvote counter!
Someone actually downvoted you to “test” that. The reddit mentality is already starting. Lol
There’s no accumulated karma score though. People should be less sensitive about downvotes and I’m hoping it will mitigate low effort karma-seeking content, at least somewhat.
Actually, that raises a point - do upvotes and downvotes here affect post visibility? Much as Reddit has a lot of karma-removed, it was still useful that a lot of the best content was surfaced on the front page. Is Lemmy the same, or does it just put the newest stuff up top?
There are sorts by hot and top, yes. I don’t know the details of voting and/or replies that score comment order.
Thanks. Looking forward to discovering how it all works!
Due to the live updating of vote counts, I just watched someone downvote, then remove their downvote a few times to test it.
Haha I saw that and loved it!
Bleeding edge is bound to cut you a little
Here’s hoping the place will polish up a little more over time.
Yep agreed!
We still need a good mobile app for Lemmy. I tried using the Jebora one, and its scrolling speed is abysmal.
Silver lining, I am looking forward to all the new things getting developed for lemmy and the like when they can’t make things for Reddit anymore. Their loss is our gain.
Praying that Infinity for Reddit moved to Lemmy 🙏
This right here. Infinity is/was my go-to. Fingers crossed!
Amen
That would be a amezing! I do really hope some of the third party apps consider moving to Lemmy
It’s going to be tough for some communities. Some of the Lemmy devs are literally avowed Communists and that is bound to cause friction.
Maybe for you, but I honestly read that, thought it was interesting, and went on with my life.
I need captlizm to feel not bad 😭 what’s a good name for a free market lemmy?
@god
@mrmanager Lemmynade.store ?$41/year 😢
Interesting. I’m using Jerboa right now and while I have a few complaints, scrolling speed isn’t one of them. I wonder if it’s a phone specific issue.
the only shrinking issue I have is, when there are images in the comments - then it flickers all the time
I am having the same issue (Pixel 6) but a propose fix is underway.
Same here, scrolling is fine for me (Pixel 6 Pro in case it matters).
Right now I’m just using the web interface on mobile - selfhosted though so I got to change the theme to dark.
I just use a dark reader extension on the browser.
Dark Reader made Firefox on Android so unbelievably slow for me that I disabled it out of frustration, and have just been blinding myself rather than waiting 10+ seconds for Firefox to load sites that Chrome loaded near instantly.
ehhh I don’t use firefox tho I use Kiwi Browser with dark reader extension. It works very very fast.
I would use firefox but firefox is kinda slow on my phone and I dislike slow.
TIL about Kiwi Browser, thanks for this, I think I could like this a lot. Firefox’s mobile extension support is extremely limited, so this is a breath of fresh air.
The only warning I can give you cuz it bothers some people around me is that it’s centralized and closed source. It’s also not privacy oriented. Other than that I like it more than Firefox in all respects.
It’s more about how there doesn’t seem to be any scrolling inertia like I’m use to with other apps. When I scroll real fast, it should continue scrolling for a few seconds instead of immediately stopping.
The dev from RedReader wants to integrate support for Lemmy.
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I’m using jerboa right now, agreeded. It’s not the worst experience but there’s definitely improvements to be made.
There’s a real opportunity in transitioning existing reddit clients to access Lemmy instead. Keep the user base, change the platform.
Mlem for iOS is a beta still in early development but it’s buttery smooth on my phone. If the dev sees this, I appreciate your work a lot!
Seconding Mlem! I’m still getting used to how this app works, but I like it so far!
Tbh I prefer just good old firefox browser over jerboa. The site is optimized pretty well for mobile
I use the website for mobile, and it works really well
The problem is that even though you and me are ok with not having an app, most people need an app 🤷
This has the same feeling as digg v4 apocalypse that originally brought me to Reddit many moons ago. Now, here we are again… the lemmyverse. I hope this can grow to be a true evolutionary replacement for Reddit.
Absolutely, this definitely feels similar to the Digg exodus. I had created a Reddit account a few months before the Digg incident and it feels like history is about to repeat itself. Reddit did NOT learn from the mistakes of Digg, instead they seem to see it as a playbook they’re dying to replicate. Good riddance then.
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Forget waves then. Reddit gonna slip into the sea like Atlantis
Reddit gonna be Digged
That would be the point of no return for me. Never in a million years will I use the new design. Already deleted all of my content.
Hello i’m from the wave !
which one -)-)
(・_・;) the one of the normal people of course.
The sub with all the waifu plane girls?
Nah, waifu car girls is where it’s at.
Brace yourselves. Porn is coming.
So am I
I saw admin here say ‘not on this instance’ because it was too difficult to moderate.
I think separate instances are actually perfect for porn, there can be an entire instance dedicated entirely to people’s specific tastes - making that their problem and not ours.
Federation at its best! You wanna host and police Hot Teen XXX - go ahead, that’s a rough road.
Would Lemmy.ml defederate from instances like that?
I think that’d be best, basically an entire porn federation completely isolated, we can name it horny jail!
They could, but it will only mean that you’ll need separate account for porn, and most redditors do exactly this.
That’s fair tbh, it may be wise to do that. Even if other instances still allow NSFW or suggestive content in general (such as art, medicine, gore, etc), explicit porn in particular has high legislative expectations.
Legislators don’t even understand the internet - they’re definitely not going to accept that beehaw.org or lemmy.ml loading ifuck.butts content isn’t actually beehaw.org’s responsibility if that’s where the users are registered, where ifuck.butts content is frequently displayed.
I suspect that porn subs may end up federated with each other though, and it just means Lemmy users shouldn’t be horny on main (ie have separate Lemmy acc for this fed and that one). Otherwise they’d struggle to be discoverable and would each require their own login.
(also, funny joke if somebody creates ifuck.butts so my comment becomes a discovery portal for them lol)
(also, funny joke if somebody creates ifuck.butts so my comment becomes a discovery portal for them lol)
unfortunately .butts isn’t a real gTLD
well, unless someone here has ~ 6.5k$ annually (i think) & can get icann on board
Excellent point. Ass fetishist server. Check. Thick fetishist server. Check. I like
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 think partly the problem is that they are trying to join the largest instances… There are many smaller ones but people think they are not as good.
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.
Me too!
thanks for taking in a poor refuge like me
