Lemmy is a failed Reddit alternative

I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might've been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months.

At first Lemmy was exciting because it was so active. There were so many new users who were enthusiastic about turning this platform into a genuine alternative. There was a communal effort to create and interact with content, and for awhile it worked. Lemmy was truly interesting during the summer of last year. However, this stream of dedicated users started to slowly decline.

A lot of people hoped that if they were active, they would attract and retain more users to this place to the point where the community would foster interest specific communities like Reddit, but that never happened. After a few months, a lot of users lost interest and went back to Reddit where the userbase is so massive that there is an active community for just about anything.

With this reverse exodus back to Reddit, Lemmy ended up with the same groups that were active on it before hand: political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters. To be fair, all these groups are larger now than they were a year ago, but that's all this platform has to offer. If you're into any of these things and primarly these things then Lemmy can be a good alternative to Reddit, but for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.

For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days. The only content that will gain any traction here are tech news, political propaganda, and maybe some memes. I don't see this changing any time soon. Even if Reddit implodes, I still think Lemmy will remain a niche platform. I think this evident by the fact that this platform hasn't really progressed in a year.

Carrolade ,

Don't underestimate the power of shitposting.

That said, the Fediverse products are still behind in features, polish and ease-of-use. The mainstream prizes these surface-level things more than any others. It will take years of development still to fully catch up in that regard. So, it's the long-haul.

sunzu ,

Mbin is getting there from UX perpesctive imho

cloudless ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

I disagree.

  • Mbin's terminology (inherited from Kbin) is annoying. Thread vs post vs magazine, boost vs upvote etc are unconventional and annoying.
  • No default sort option. Every time I want to see new posts, I have to manually select "new"
  • User instance and community instance are hidden
  • Difficult to manage/view subscribed magazines
  • Image upload dialogue is confusing

Lemmy has alternative UI such as Voyager and Photon, they are way ahead of Mbin in terms of look and feel.

What do you like about Mbin's UX?

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I'm actually glad I'm not that active on the platform (or any platform for that matter, federated or not), so I can give myself time to breathe in outside air and touch some grass.

And once I am active, it's usually for a couple hours at most, then it's back to being in my coma for a few days.

Johanno ,

Well well well.

This is a weird way to see it.

You have definitely less people here than on reddit. And the kind of people that even consider leaving reddit because of the reason we left and then chosen lemmy are usually mostly tech nerds. Other people don't care and stay at reddit or twitter or go to the Facebook clone threads.

Your goal here should be information, fun and entertainment.

I personally also read reddit aside to lemmy, but I first go to lemmy and then to reddit. Yes reddit is bigger and has a more active community but it is mostly toxic and ads infested. Without revanced I couldn't stand it.

Gorilladrums21 OP ,

The area where Reddit shines is the big communities for non political topics. Here there isn't an active community, let alone a large one, for any topic that isn't politics, tech, or memes. There's nothing here that appeals to average people like sports, gaming, science, cooking, gardening, etc. I thought this would change, at least a little, over the course of a year, but that didn't really happen. As toxic and ad infested as Reddit is, I don't see Lemmy becoming a mainstream alternative to it.

rimu ,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

Sports - https://piefed.social/topic/sports-fitness
Gaming - https://piefed.social/topic/gaming
Science - https://piefed.social/topic/science
Cooking - https://piefed.social/topic/food
Gardening - https://lemmy.world/c/gardening

It is understandable that you didn't find those communities, discoverability is a real issue with Lemmy. I have tried to solve this by curating communities into groups of Topics - https://piefed.social/topics

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