I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it’s “dogshit” and “not going anywhere” get systematically upvoted.
Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like “yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org” 🤦♂️
It’s frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that “Lemmy is not ready yet” and that there’s “no viable alternative to Reddit”.
This and the overwhelming number of comments being “against the mod protests” just prompts me to question whether there isn’t some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.
To be viable, alternatives don’t need to function exactly like reddit. I think what you’re referring to (aside from the icons not loading, which is a symptom of temporary server growing pains) is mostly discomfort with a new thing functioning slightly differently. Once you spend a couple of days using lemmy, the decentralized nature of it starts feeling much less foreign and is actually kinda cool for lots of reasons. Being on different servers doesn’t mean we can’t still come together; the fediverse enables us to come together to an extent that is unheard of with proprietary sites like reddit.
I hope you can give yourself some time to acclimate, I think you’ll really start enjoying it here!
Don’t feed the troll please