It’s almost exactly a copy of reddit issues but most people that use reddit haven’t heard about it.
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I came here during the Exodus. I just did a search on similar sites to Reddit. Lemmy was at the top. Been here ever since.
Exactly the same with me.
It’s almost exactly a copy of reddit
The magic of reddit isn’t just the structure of the website, it’s the fact that there are so many people posting to diverse niche subjects. Although one structural thing lemmy is really lacking is the wiki and post flare components; those help give experts a reason to make effortful contributions as they do not fade into the ether after a few days.
That said, if reddit was new in 2025 or 2020, I don’t think it would take off as much. It gained popularity in a previous time of the internet and is now coasting off that.
Reddit greatly benefitted from the DIGG implosion (Reasons include issues with power users, censorship, redesigns, etc.) around I want to say 2012 +/-. Similar to how this site benefitted from the Reddit API implosion the other year. For social media applications, success usual comes from a halfway-decent platform + lucky timing. (This is all from memory, so apologies for any inaccuracies and generalizations.)
I’m here because I like the way the upvote/downvote feature works on here better than Reddit. Theoretically you could have equal upvotes and downvotes on a post on Reddit and it would look like there is almost no engagement at all. Here it’s far more honest.
Because in my opinion people are used to reddit, and is the biggest one, baiscally everyone else is there, why changing for a platform where you have evem to choose " an what? An instance?"), with a fraction of the users.
I stopped using reddit after the api rules changes, i quit twiitter as sson as that nazi guy bought it.
The main socials I use are mastodon and lemmy.
How many of my friends are on madtodon? 1 or 2, how many of them are active there? 0. And i think my nbers are even higher than wjat i think they should be because most of my friemds works in the IT
People unfortunately just wants everything quickly, without hassle, and are not prone to change.
A question on reddit? Probably you’ll get an answer in few hours. On lemmy? You are luckynif you’ll get one.
I have a small crafting page, that I’m trying to spread using only mastodon, it’s much harder. These are the reasons I think.
And most people don’t even care about the content of if their timeline is 85% ads and suggested pages.
They will just scroll. Algorithms are shitty, but who cares. Everyone is there…
Amongst stated reasons, “signing up” is more difficult here. Its not as straightforward a process and content isn’t as spoon fed to you as other platforms. The tech literacy needed to get here isn’t high, but as I learned the average tech literacy is abysmal.
About 10ish years ago when I was 14, I helped some people print something. They tried printing something from a computer plugged into the printer, an error popped up saying “printer not connected”. I thought, thr printer must be, yknow disconnected. Some 6 people had gatherd trying to troubleshoot this but were stumped. I pointed out the error message that kept coming up, didn’t click. I followed the cables from the pc to the printer, it was disconnected, I plugged it in and reported back. They where stumped on how I possibly knew what was wrong or how to fix it.
I am not good with technology, but im good enough to know im not good with technology. I have found most people, even those younger or same age tend to not be tech literate.
Finding the application and filling it out for any random federated instance may seem like nothing but it requires an ammount of literacy many Americans dont have.
a less relevant example:
many people in general lack the literacy. my entire school thinks I’m able to hack the pentagon because I accessed the boot menu and installed mint on a school computer for my sanity, because last time I used windows on a school computer, I was going through some tough stuff, so on top of it being clunky I have bad memories linked with it. I did not delete windows or touch system files, but I really, really want to. They all treat me like I could hack government systems, even though I’ve never hacked anything in my life. The average user should be able to access that.
A more relevant example:
fucking everyone at school, staff and otherwise can’t do anything with tech. basic shortcuts? nope (except copy/paste)! indenting in word? nope! using anything other than google as a search engine is seen as suspicious, and no-one can really tech there. most of my school is average in every way, and this is no difference. my english teacher believes that wikipedia still hasn’t added any security to who’s able to edit articles, spoiler: they have (on most articles) such as peer-review and most of them requiring peer-review and account requirements of 500+ approved edits. the list goes on.
“why isn’t the printer printing my 3 page essay done in 30 mins?” It’s out of cyan. really. go change your cyan, mrs. b. “but the essay is b&w (black and white)” the printer won’t work till the cyan is replaced, go tell mrs. b (principal) that the printer is out of cyan. printer says “fuck you, no cyan”
On top of this, don’t assume someone’s tech literate just because they’re in a certain field. It took me seeing first hand at a previous job how the IT techs did their job to realize why we ran into so many issues.
We were having some software installed on every computer which apparently had to be installed via PowerShell. While watching our usual IT tech go through the steps on the machine next to me, I offered to help him get this job done faster by starting it up on my machine then he could run his credentials whenever the prompts came up. He knew I was computer literate since we had talked about tech stuff and about how I was at the time trying to get a job in IT, so he gave me a copy of the .txt file with all the instructions and commands to run.
In the file was an 11 step process written by the director of the IT department explaining how to open PowerShell, copy the command below, and run the command. 3 of the instructions were to highlight the command (between the quotation marks without including the quotation marks), right click the highlighted portion, then click on “Copy”.
The tech didn’t believe that I had actually copied the command when I just did Ctrl+C, so he specifically stopped me to tell me to right click the command. I told him that it was copied already with Ctrl+C, and he told me, “No, it won’t work if you don’t do the right click.”
I also found out later that said IT director didn’t seem to be aware that there were multiple types of USB cables. He was setting something up in my boss’s office and sent someone to ask for “a USB cable.” Said person knew I had a bunch of cables at my desk as part of my work at the time so they relayed the request for “a USB cable.” I asked them, “What kind? USB C to C? A to C? Micro? Mini?” “Idk, they just said ‘a USB cable.’”
I think, “fair enough, my coworker isn’t very tech literate so I’ll just ask the man myself.” I bring over an assortment of cables and walk to the office with my coworker. Director see my coworker with me now next to them and ask me for “a USB cable.” “What kind?” “Just a regular USB cable, if you have one.” I show him my bundle of about 6-10 assorted cables, explain that I have a variety, see that he’s working on a small printer/scanner, and offer him one. “Would a type 3.0 USB A to B cable work?” “What? No, I just need a regular USB cable.” I show him the A to B cable and he responds “oh yeah, that’s what I was saying. A regular USB cable.”
Even Reddit wasn’t “popular” on the levels that it has been for over a decade. It is more about time and people finding it like they did with early Reddit (and Digg before that). New people will come as long as they see active instances and as more helpful (or even funny) posts/comments show up in search results. Kind of like how a lot of questions in search engines will show basically the same questions being asked on Reddit. Also Lemmy is a little bit confusing to new people that aren’t used to how Fediverse/Lemmyverse sites work. Not very hard, but does feel a bit overwhelming since stuff they are used to are super centralized.
For now most instances kind of feel like BBS/forums back in the 90s/00s, but with a Reddit (or similar sites) kind of layout/interaction style. Which I like since I had a lot of great times on old forums. The subs are still small enough to actually see familiar users show up and have better vibes on them. Though it does mean that new/niche subs have the chance of not getting enough people to get going, and have more people join and post new things.
Among other reasons, there’s no marketing budget.
Too bad because this is a really great site
I reckon that is one of the reasons. Lemmy’s (and the entire ActivityPub/Fediverse ecosystem/graph) attracts people with a positive, progressive attitude.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
There was a lot of negative being accepted (and sometimes actively pushed) on some instances, but most other instances defederated from them.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
This is a nice-sounding story that flatters our egos, but unless scientific studies corroborate, that’s all it is.
On top of the myriad of things others have mentioned here, it hasn’t gotten bad enough/inconvenient enough for the average redditor to switch platforms en masse.
The API fiasco moved the needle a little bit, but not by enough. The multiple ban waves moved it even less. Theres still millions of people on reddit and that disincentivizes anyone to make the first move.
My hope is that when they get rid of old.reddit, it will cause another mass migration that could tip the scales a bit more, but I’m not holding my breath. Because now, reddit has hundreds of thousands of bots creating fake engagement that simulates human activity to those unaware of LLM-pattern speech. So that’s another unknown unknown.
Here’s to hoping, though.
This is the main reason I think. Enshittification of Reddit hasn’t fully happened yet so people aren’t looking for an alternative.
Reddit is bigger, more established, and Lemmy is smaller and more unknown. As reddit gets worse Lemmy will get bigger.
yeah and a lot of bots are filtered whereas on larger sites, such as reddit, most of site usage is bots. It’s also very anti-troll and yeah I agree size matters a lot
As long as it stays semi-obscure, the powers that be won’t notice it much so maybe it’s a blessing and not a curse. Reddit didn’t start as a shithole, you know. 😕
The powers that be have had their eyes on us for a few years already. Previously. Previously. Previously.
Yikes. Well, let’s hope we’re low on the list…
It takes time for network effects to build up and I suspect they (the entrenched, the silos) know that
You can fuck a community and it takes years to recover
My latest complaint about Reddit: old reddit (old.reddit.com) is so broken that clicking on your inbox doesn’t make the notifications go away
Endless VC hype cycle. Fuck your users, returns are all that matters
The joining process is too cumbersome and a few things like cross posting across instances are way too complex for people to easily understand.
Like the early internet. It gatekeeps by requiring a certain level of technical know how. I like it, it keeps out a lot of stupid.
I think a “join default lemmy instance” should be an option. Let the people experience the fediverse and have time to pick the instance that best fits them.
The network effect. It’s big enough that small forums get enough posts to stay active which keeps more people using it.
For example Lemmy has a 3d printer forum that has a few posts a week. Reddit has forums not just for 3d printing but for every specific model of printer and each gets a much activity as Lemmy’s generic forum.
If I’m searching for something, Google will show Reddit content but not Lemmy because there isn’t an answer on Lemmy.
I don’t know, but I like it this size. Feels homey. Except for the large communist presence.
👻 spooky scary communists! 👻
there’s a specter haunting the fediverse 😎
The specter of COMMUNISM!
Hey I’m not a communist !
you should really fix that
i’m content being a marxist informed anarchist :)
Where do you depart from Marx?
That’s a good question! I wouldn’t say I depart from marxism insofar as I don’t feel an affinity with more state based communism (stalinism, Leninism, etc). As for marxism the only critique I can think of is how classic marxism lended to be historically and economically deterministic that didn’t account for things like gender and such. Although as time has gone on and my dismay for identity politics has made me feel more economically deterministic than before. I also should say that there’s only so much that I even know what I’m talking about. I’ve taken several courses in critical theory and marxism in undergrad and grad skill and I still only comprehend it on a basic level.
At the end of the day I just really care about being a good caring humble person and aligning myself with anti authoritarian, anticapitalist, communal based values. If you also care about those things it probably doesnt matter what you call yourself, were probably on the same boat :)
One thing I want to point out is that Marxism itself aconowledges the state as a transition between capitalism and communism, that’s not something Marxist-Leninists invented. Further, Marxism also acknowledges the importance of gender, queer liberation, racism, and more. I think you may just have taken a peak into Marxism without going much beyond that, which isn’t really your fault but instead is an opportunity. I made an intro ML reading list you can check out if you want!
thanks! I think i understand and have read enough. I’m probably discrediting how much i know. I’m currently getting my doctorate and a lot of my work involves critical cultural/ political economic theory. The basic division comes in the fact that i don’t feel an affinity with the notion of the vanguard party and want more decentralization and communalism. Which is why i veer towards ‘anarcho-communism’ if you were going to put a label on it.
We like it this way. Please stop pulling this thread.
