As Reddit’s enshittification reaches new heights their attempts to suppress attention for alternatives, like federated Lemmy, has the opposite effect as this Hacker News discussion shows.

  • thoro
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    1 year ago

    Reading criticisms of Lemmy from Reddit and other platforms like HackerNews reminds me of reading criticisms of Reddit from Digg back in 2007-2010, except they’re more based on architecture instead of “it looks ugly”.

    Now there are things that will turn away users. There’s obviously a strong leftist culture here, there are less users so less content, and obviously federation is a stumbling block for many people.

    But I really think that’s ok similar to what people are saying in that Hacker News thread. I wouldn’t want all of Reddit to come over, and I think it’s better for the culture and growth here to get a self selected trickle/stream of users instead of a deluge.

    I don’t think Lemmy will necessarily have the same issues as Mastodon because Twitter/Mastodon requires you to know people or know accounts to follow to be useful. Lemmy just requires communities you’re interested in and a critical mass of users to drive posting and engagement. We’re already seeing greater activity as more users arrive

    • smallcirclesOP
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      1 year ago

      That second comment by goplayoutside says it well: “Maybe the modest technical hurdles are a feature, not a bug.”

      I think it is a feature, and the same is true for Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole, imho.

      • Kichae@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I also see it as a feature. If instances have a natural active user cap, then server-based communities can’t get so big as to outpace moderation. And admins have the ability to moderate local users’ behaviour on off-site sublemmies by enforcing their own codes of conduct.

        The internet used to be small, but expansive. It became big, but concentrated.

        I liked the former. I know many people like the latter. Those people are welcome to their corporate slums.

        • cavemeat@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I liked the former. I know many people like the latter. Those people are welcome to their corporate slums.

          You’ve worded it well. I think the technical nature of it is to its benefit, and many server may not want to make the signup process easier, for the reasons you mentioned.

      • smartwater0897@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Very much so. It shares the load, both from a technical point of view but also from moderation and maintenance point of view.

        It’s actually pretty great, all of this.

      • wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        While it keeps the willfully ignorant out, it can also keep people with learning disabilities out. Accessibility should always be worked on. That being said, Lemmy is certainly easy to access, Even more so than Mastodon IMHO because Mastodon you have to know people whereas lemmy all you have to do is sign up for a community

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Problem: organizations pushing a political or commercial agenda will train their agents to overcome modest technical hurdles. Spammers, in particular, will go to extreme lengths to overcome technical hurdles, including hiring people to solve CAPTCHAs.

        • comfy
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          1 year ago

          Agreed, I remember being shocked about a decade ago learning that there were services run in developing countries where you pay about $1 for 1000 CATPCHA solves for your spam bot to pass along and a person solving it.

    • Ignacio@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      There’s obviously a strong leftist culture here

      That depends on what instance you create an user on. For example, Lemmygrad.ml and Lemmy.ml are not the same thing, despite both belonging to Lemmy. The issues I see are having a tankie culture, and not having more points of view.

      There are less users so less content

      That’s something we can help with, although it’s not so easy. I mean, the users that are already here, we can create more content and interact more with each other, so eventually more users will come. It can be boring and tiring, but it’s not impossible.

      Federation is a stumbling block for many people

      That’s something absolutely new for the vast majority of people. I felt myself confused the first time I joined the fediverse too. But after some time, I felt myself less confused. Some clarifications, tutorials and support can do the real trick.

    • backpackn
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      1 year ago

      What will the next social media trend be? Seems like the centralized options are done for (FB, TW, Reddit), but they’re not being replaced by any single solutions. Tiktok took mainly genZ. Professionals have been wanting a twitter replacement to move to since musk and have yet to figure it out (bluesky, tribel, post social, takes, mastodon, etc has no apparent frontrunner). Political apps segmented some off like parler and the right stuff. Decentralized and foss apps have all kinds of solutions but won’t likely ever attract a huge crowd. So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?

      • fuzzzerd
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        1 year ago

        So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?

        God, I hope so.

      • Kichae@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, but none of the Twitter people were using hashtags, and a lot of them where hyper-fixated on finding their Twitter mutuals. They were just trying pretend Mastodon was a drop-in replacement for Twitter.

        They didn’t want to create their own space in the new place, and they didn’t want to integrate with those who were already there. They just kind of wanted to ignore the fact that anything was happening, while still, I guess, engaging in slacktivism.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      It’s not like there’s not a strong leftist culture on reddit either so I don’t really see that as a problem unique to Lemmy. If Lemmy can provide a centralized-like decentralized platform, I think it can succeed.

      • thoro
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        1 year ago

        There isn’t at all. Reddit is liberal at the very best and even then it’s mostly Obama liberal, which is center right outside the most conservative parts of the world.

        The leftist communities are much smaller, easily ignored, and often ridiculed in the mainstream subreddits. The gaming spaces complain about “wokeness” and criticisms of female representations among others. Thinly veiled racism and explicit transphobia abounds.

        In contrast, Lemmy is full of anarchists, communists, socialists, and other anti capitalist. It has been and remains a dominantly leftist community.

    • upperleft@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The strong leftist culture is a plus. I know I’m not going to get flooded with nazi shit like so many of the prior iterations of the reddit exodus (e.g. voat).

      • nephs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Only one section of the political spectrum has consistently been combating nazifascist initiatives throughout history, including present history.

        And that’s not liberals.

    • Showervagina
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      1 year ago

      UX is whatever. Would like to see more decentralization of large hosts to avoid it inevitably being 1 or 2 big lemmy hosts with everything.

      Also cross federation logins. I was so confused why my logins weren’t working on other servers.

    • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The most disturbing thing I’ve seen is the evidence that Lemmy.ml is controlled by a genocide-supporting red fascist/third positionists. If that’s true, its a massive issue and makes the platform hard to trust.

      Very open to learning that this isn’t true, if it isn’t.