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It's no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it's still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could substantially increase the amount of people who discover the fediverse. What's more, I don't think this is would be a hard sell considering many mods are already pissed off with Reddit due to their API changes. I believe that this is the time to act, so this is a call to arms, to help grow the fediverse into the future of social media!

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[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 219 points 1 year ago

Have a look at this post, we had a similar discussion there: https://lemmy.world/post/3074361

Long story short, the platform still needs a bit of work before being able to really move communities. Some examples exist (lemdro.id, piracy, startrek) but those are tech savvy audiences, there would be a lot more friction with more generalist communities

[-] Merwyn@sh.itjust.works 104 points 1 year ago

I fully agree with you. And I want to emphasize that the main issue is that if you start advertising Lemmy like OP suggest before it's "fully ready" to give the best experience to this people, they will decide now that lemmy is not for them and after that it's very difficult to make they try again and change their mind.

[-] Hazzard@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago

Exactly the mistake threads just made, trying to capitalize on twitter's rate limiting fiasco. The "general public" is extremely fickle, and Reddit will give us more opportunities.

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[-] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Server issues and quits need to be addressed, and mobile apps Ned to be polished. If the UX isn’t at least on par with Reddit, then it will only hurt to advertise now to the general public.

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[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 130 points 1 year ago

How about we just forget about trying to beat anyone and just get on to using the platform.

Reddit won't die anytime soon.

Lemmy won't become popular anytime soon.

It took Reddit years before it became a major platform known by millions. It will take Lemmy years to gain notoriety among millions. Give it time, enjoy what it so now because in a year, two years or three or four years from now, we'll all be wishing for the good old days when Lemmy just started and we were able to enjoy the simple system it is now.

[-] Lunarsight@sopuli.xyz 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reddit really did benefit from the fall of Digg though - this was about just shy of 20 years ago? Digg was where Reddit is now, thoroughly upsetting its user base with wholesale changes to the content of the site that nobody liked, and Reddit capitalized on that, and stole Digg's thunder.

I think Lemmy can potentially do the same. For a second, it looked like Squabbles/Squabblr was going to be the winner, but the last I checked, they imploded after some controversy.

(I came here from Reddit, incidentally - the user interface is very intuitive.)

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[-] noodle@feddit.uk 88 points 1 year ago

Not this again...

Lemmy isn't everyones' cup of tea. Reddit, despite the API shenanigans, still does what people want.

People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven't already. They'd sooner go to Discord. Less cognitive load, and their subs already have servers set up. Lemmy has a 5 communities different servers for each sub and most will be inactive, so it's already a losing battle.

Make Lemmy it's own thing, rather than aspiring to be the 2nd head of the Hydra. Organic growth is good, sustainable. Boom and bust wholesale migrations look like failed hostile takeovers.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven't already.

I think you're underestimating Reddit's ability to continue degrading the Reddit experience with their ham-fisted attempts to maximize revenue.

[-] noodle@feddit.uk 25 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree with that. Reddit will keep burning bridges with it's oldest users. old.reddit will be the next on the chopping block and that will be the death knell for desktop Reddit for a sizable number of people.

But I think you're underestimating the average modern Redditor's reluctance to jump ship. 3rd party apps were not even something they knew existed. Most never used reddit before the redesign. They already used the app. You cant miss what you never had.

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[-] Corgana@startrek.website 19 points 1 year ago

I think you're grossly overestimating the ability of FOSS to reach "regular" people. 99.9% of Redditors haven't even heard of Lemmy. There are assuredly very many people using Reddit who would be very happy to switch to something better.

You're not wrong with any of your points, I'm just saying there's no reason to discourage a "get the word out" campaign. People can make their own choices, but only after they know what the options are.

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[-] Jmii@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I think the problem was Lemmy didn't have the apps in place ready to take advantage of reddits API deadline. Loads of people come to Lemmy but it wasn't up to scratch yet. So they went back to what they already knew.

Now big apps like sync are on board. If they give lemmy another go I reckon they will stay this time.

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[-] boyi@lemmy.sdf.org 70 points 1 year ago

Much the popular posts in lemmy are memes, shitpostings, or politics/technology news which we can easily obtain from other media. The way I see it, lemmy lacks experts, scientists, doctors etc that that can bring interest and credibility to the posts or threads. They can help generate quality contents, what lemmy lacks till now.

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[-] z00s@lemmy.world 69 points 1 year ago

Stop trying to turn this place into R. We left because it was shit. If you don't like this place, go somewhere else.

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[-] Roundcat@lemmy.ca 69 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I would rather Lemmy attract its own community naturally rather than it be the place all redditors pipe into. I think most people who have already come from there can agree the culture is not really conductive to quality discussion, and we've started to see some of that leak into Lemmy as well.

Rather than just copy/paste reddit's users and culture, we should try to develop both on their own. Create an environment that users want to spend their time on. Then through word of mouth on other platforms they entice people here. I don't think just being the place redditors flood after every fuckup is healthy for the growth of the platform. As a Mastodon user, I'm kinda glad it isn't the primary platform Twitter refugees are flocking to.

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[-] 098qwelkjzxc@feddit.uk 57 points 1 year ago

Oh boy, it looks like main character syndrome patients have migrated from Reddit...

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[-] FrostySpectacles@lemmy.ml 56 points 1 year ago

In all honesty, as much as I want non-profit Reddit alternatives to succeed, I think Lemmy is a tough sell to Redditors. Here's roughly how I think that'd go.


Lemmy user: "You should try Lemmy"

Redditor: "Sure, what's its website?"

Lemmy user: "There are many"

Redditor: "Wait what"

Lemmy user: "You have to pick one"

Redditor: "Why?"

Lemmy user: "See, Lemmy is not a website, but a network of federated instan-"

Redditor: "That sounds complicated. I just want a website like Reddit"

Lemmy user: "But don't you care about how Reddit has treated its mods, app devs and the general community?"

Redditor: "Yeah but all this Lemmy and Kbin stuff is confusing. Can I just use a website without reading up on all this Fediverse stuff?"

Lemmy user: "Okay, just go to Lemmy.world"

Redditor: "It seems to be down"

Lemmy user: "Hmm, maybe try Lemmy.ml?"

Redditor: "This website looks a little... hard to wrap my head around"

Lemmy user: "There are alternative frontends"

Redditor: "What now?"

Lemmy user: "Do you know about Alexandrite?"

Redditor: "Nevermind, I'm out"


If we want to convince a wide range of users to use Lemmy, we have to make using Lemmy a no-brainer for everyone.

I'm trying to contribute by building a new opensource web UI that I hope will provide a better UX for the average Redditor. It's not ready to become a daily driver yet, but I'm hoping to get to a point where it's nice enough that instances will want to host it on their domain. Maybe I'm delusional in thinking this web UI will appeal to users that don't like the current ones. But there's only one way to find out, and that is to build it.

[-] Aabbcc@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

Lemmy user: "You should try Lemmy"

Redditor: "Sure, what's its website?"

Lemmy user: "there are many, here's a list, just pick one, you can always use a different one later"

Redditor: "ok cool I'm glad you explained it in a simple way that is easy for me to understand I will use lemmy exclusively now"

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[-] StarkillerX42@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

Nice strawman.

Lemming: You should try Lemmy, it's a way to have reddit style content, but without a company controlling it.

Redditor: Wow cool, Fuck Spez. Where do I join?

Lemming: it doesn't matter, every domain that participates has the same content, here's a list of places to choose from.

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[-] lemmyng@beehaw.org 54 points 1 year ago

No. Most large Reddit communities are toxic, both on the user and mod end. Let Lemmy grow at its own pace without repeating the same mistakes Reddit made.

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[-] vankappa@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

I might have a controversial question: but why? Do we really want this mass exodus to the Lemmy community? I think we have a nice little thing here. People will keep coming anyway, slowly, if they really are interested in what this is about

[-] ribboo@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

It’s a nice little thing, but there so much to miss compared to Reddit. Sure, we have memes, technology and news. But there is very little other discussion going on, even for big things like food, sports, finance and relationships (picked some on the top of my mind). Huge communities on Reddit. Barely anything here.

Overall Lemmy is very much a disappointment when it comes to “niche” communities, if you can even call those large subjects that. But it’s even worse for smaller subjects.

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[-] AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz 47 points 1 year ago

I really don't think Lemmy is polished and issue-free enough for tons of people to move here. It might be in the future but I feel like pushing it would do no good.

[-] yiliu@informis.land 26 points 1 year ago

Yeah, let it grow organically. Like other open-source projects, it's unlikely to shrink, and it'll gain profile and draw users from Reddit etc over time--faster when Reddit drops the ball, which it'll do more often as it scrambles to extract more profit from a shrinking user base.

There's no reason to rush it. That'll just cause growing pains and give Lemmy a bad reputation.

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[-] Olympus@feddit.uk 42 points 1 year ago

"Hello we are from the Church of the Fediverse, have you a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour Lemmy? No not the tankies one"

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[-] figaro@lemdro.id 42 points 1 year ago

We aren't going to get mods to promote us. That is just silly.

We should buy advertising though, definitely.

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[-] simple@lemm.ee 40 points 1 year ago

IMO the biggest thing Lemmy needs is a better onboarding experience and an official page that recommends mobile apps/alternate front-ends. One of the Lemmy devs said they wanted to overhaul https://join-lemmy.org/ and it's on their list, which is a good first step. Until then I think it's best to wait before trying to capture the average audience and have them leave in confusion.

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[-] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

Current redditors are a virus. They are nothing like the people who built the site a decade ago. We don't need them here

[-] justastranger@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago

Lmao elitism like this will just turn Lemmy into a radioactive, insular circlejerk cesspool

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[-] gabe@literature.cafe 28 points 1 year ago

I messaged r/comicbooks mods after they were briefly banned by reddit offering them a place on my instance if they ever wanted to shift their community away from reddit. They threatened to permanently ban me for spam LMAO

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[-] Kinglink@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

Reddit's decline is greatly exaggerated.

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[-] JerkyChew@lemmy.one 31 points 1 year ago

I've been a reddit user for at least 15 years. I've been a Lemmy user for a few months. Lemmy has a long way to go before it's a "viable Reddit alternative". Right now it's barely usable.

[-] Ransack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 year ago

You find it unusable? How so?

[-] Krachsterben@feddit.de 32 points 1 year ago

Any topics outside of memes, IT and politics are nearly non-existent.

This place is heavily skewed towards a specific niche of mostly males that are chronically online

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[-] ram@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 year ago

They all already know about Lemmy 🤷‍♀️

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[-] ShooBoo@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

Lemmy and Mastodon require some extra thought processes that most people do not want or can't work through. They want instant, fast and as much of it as possible.

Somehow this has to become so easy to understand and use that even the dimmest bulbs in society will have no trouble using it.

Upside? This will bring more usage and adoption. Downside? This will bring in more trash.

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[-] HowMany@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

Let them find their way on their own. They'll figure it out. As with the migration of MySpace to Faceboobs to Reddit - so the migration will continue. Let's not spoil the countryside just yet, okay? Lemmy is what reddit used to be but ain't been in a long time.

[-] glasgitarrewelt@feddit.de 22 points 1 year ago

Two of my reddit using friends have never heard of lemmy until I told them about it a few days ago. Although they are quite invested in the FOSS world.

I am here because I read something about Lemmy on reddit, two or three times. More exposure on reddit would show many people that there is an alternative. It wouldn't convince millions but maybe enough to let some niche communities grow.

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[-] miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

I think stuff like this needs to happen organically, otherwise you'll have people who hate it, complain about it, and give it a bad rep, hindering its growth

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[-] vd1n@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

As far as I'm concerned Reddit=Facebook=Twitter...

Although, it would be nice to see more actual useful communities that don't just latch on to pop politics, news culture, and media trends.

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Your best bet will probably be r/redditalternatives. That community already promotes Lemmy and Squabble, a few others that I'm not remembering.

[-] Candelestine@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I would argue we should wait until the software we're on does not feel like an alpha release. This is not some window of opportunity that will close soon, we have no strong incentive to rush this process.

[-] decadentrebel@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

When are Lemmy posts going to show up on Google searches??

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[-] jayrodtheoldbod@midwest.social 17 points 1 year ago

I'm really not interested in this being a Reddit clone. Several of the subreddits I wanted to be rid of have already popped up, here, while the better side of Reddit isn't really showing up, especially since Reddit re-opened and purged pesky mods so they could all get back to their scrolling.

Oh, yes lawd, that's what I need. I need fucking antiwork to shit up the place with their misery vibe while 196 goes skipping back to Reddit and takes all the fun times with her. Sign me up.

I wanted to become involved with a completely different community, with different mores, a different feel, and its own vibe. Fuck Reddit. I left that place looong before the blackout thing, I got tired of its toxic culture that sucked the life out of me after a few minutes.

Now that's starting to leak into Lemmy and I'm frankly eyeing the door.

If you liked Reddit, you need to go back there. I didn't like Reddit. I don't want to go back there. I don't want there to come here, either.

The joy of the Fediverse is that growth is nice but we don't NEED growth. A lot of you can't understand that. You can't understand that the platform will NOT fail if it doesn't get the kind of exponential, runaway growth that you associate with social media success. We do not actually need to hit TikTok numbers, ever. We need steady, slow user growth from people wanting something different, that's what. If the Fediverse becomes the Linux of social media, fine.

So no. No to this idea. Let Reddit stay on Reddit, thank you.

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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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