• FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    1. Not enough people.

    2. People here are way bigger smug assholes than even Reddit.

    3. Sense of invulnerability and mod neglegence just because Lemmy is defederated. People naively think that makes it invulnerable to similar issues as Reddit (like toxicity/hivemind/bad modding.)

    Back in 2023 I joined Lemmy because Reddit got rid of 3rd party apps. At first I was extremely impressed with the content here. While the community was small, meme channels were hilarious and had fantastic content. Same with the nsfw communities. However, now all the communities are filled with AI slop, political ragebait posting, onlyfans subsciption bait posts, and various other trash. So as far as I’m concerned Lemmy seems to be circling the drain. I can’t in good faith tell anyone I know to switch to Lemmy. If a friend were to ask me “hey man, how’s Lemmy?” My honest answer would be that it kinda fucking sucks.

    • Proudly Green@feddit.uk
      0·
      24 days ago

      People here are way bigger smug assholes than even Reddit.

      Yep, and I am legit shocked about that. I still have a burner reddit account that I go to, and honestly, as much crap as reddit gets, I see way more assholes and ban-happy people here. On reddit someone gets mad at you or your opinion, and they just block you.

      Here, a lot of posters who dislike ya will refuse to block you. Instead they’ll follow you and downpost every single post you make. I never had stalkers like that on Reddit.

      Like you, I was an early fan. And even tried to talk my gf into getting on Lemmy. The other day, she finally decided to, and I talked her out of it and told her to just stick with Reddit. lol

  • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    The people on Lemmy are mostly weird obsessive leftists who have little interest in talking about anything else and disagree with each other for having nearly identical views in the grand scheme of things. I still like Lemmy but it can get tiring talking about anything especially if you mention something that people have decided is evil like AI.

  • ProfThadBach@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    I may not understand how all this works but the very first page is mostly stuff that is 24 hours old or older. Maybe I am sorting it wrong or something but looking for the latest news is not easy. There should be a way from things that are older than 24 hours to fall off the front page. Also something like reddit enhancement suite would be nice.

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    Not just Lemmy, but all Fediverse frontends: it’s confusing and cumbersome. I’ve been here for 2 years and I still find that it’s very much lacking in the “user experience” department. I have add-ons and scripts to ‘patch’ things that ought not to need patching. I don’t know if it’s possible for this to happen given the nature of Fedi, but it should be the case that a new user would find it works more or less the same as non-Fedi software and not have to juggle instances and type hideous and long URLs into the search bar. Instance names and stuff like that should be available to people who want to see them, but by default there’s little reason to frighten new users with it. Make it be under-the-hood type stuff. One follow button that works for your home instance regardless of where you are on the Fediverse would be a nice start.

    Also, privacy needs to be handled better. Again, not sure if that’s possible because of the nature of Fedi, but Lemmy should make users feel more secure than reddit or Twitter, not less. Like, it’s bizarre that reddit protects my privacy more than Lemmy does, given that reddit doesn’t really protect my privacy much at all.

    • steeznson@lemmy.world
      0·
      26 days ago

      Arguably, lemmy is going to be more private than reddit because your data are being queried, refined, quantified and categorised by reddit to be sold off to the highest bidder. If a different actor is just scraping activitypub they need to do all of that themselves.

      More generally, I’m not sure if we should ever think about something posted online as being private. You can post form data that is secured to your bank or whatever but they are analysing all of that data on their side. Similarly the large email providers are aware of the contents of all your emails.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
        0·
        25 days ago

        Arguably, lemmy is going to be more private than reddit because your data are being queried, refined, quantified and categorised by reddit to be sold off to the highest bidder. If a different actor is just scraping activitypub they need to do all of that themselves.

        I don’t think there’s any “arguably” that Lemmy is more private, it’s a completely open platform. Sure Reddit is a closed platform that can sell data to whoever, but Fediverse data is freely accessible to anyone who just has a bit of technical know-how to set up an instance, after which they can query, refine, quantify, and categorize it all they want. If there’s profit to be made with that data, someone will do it. I am assuming that our info is already being collected by both private interests and governments.

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    As everyone has pointed out, people and content. Its good in some ways since not every post is drowned out with one thousand replies nobody will ever see, but at the same time, you’re not getting much of anything at all sometimes. Not even very niche ones either. Even groups that represent entire states has limited info or replies still. If it can grow to that size and see some more unique and local content more I think even that would be a much better place for it to be.

    • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      25 days ago

      To be frank, in many cases communities were simply picked up by the wrong people who proceeded to not actively feed it with content. So they simply die.

    • JakoJakoJako13@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      Yeah this is my issue with it. I can find all the arts, Linux, and political stuff just fine. Sports, music, and places communities are seriously lacking. They exist, but are a shell of what you’d hope they’d be. Engagement is so low, it’s not worth bothering. The sports and music communities being so small and sparse is a real bummer.

      • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        25 days ago

        This is more to do with most Lemmy users being shut-in nerds not inclined to sports tbh.

  • squaresinger@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    Issues that would be solved by time/gaining more users

    • Not nearly enough people to cover all the niche interest communities that Reddit does. At Reddit you find an expert on almost any topic to help you with your problems and you’ll find information on pretty much anything. Lemmy isn’t there yet.
    • Not nearly enough history. A lot of content is still good and informative after many years. Lemmy doesn’t have a library of old-but-still-relevant content to search.

    Issues independent of user count

    • Search sucks. Reddit’s search does too, but reddit is easily searchable via Google. Lemmy isn’t.
    • Onboarding is difficult, because you have to choose an instance, which is hugely important, but a newcomer has no idea what makes/is a good community to join

    Issues that get worse with more users

    • Lemmy scales terribly. Every larger instance needs to retain a copy of pretty much all other content out there, and each comment/like/delete/update/… needs to be propagated to every other major instance out there. Adding more instances thus increases complexity and cost instead of decreasing it. Running a major lemmy instance is already prohibitively expensive now, with just about 50k daily active users. If Lemmy was to scale to Reddit numbers (500mio daily active users, roughly 10 000x the number of users), everything would just break down.
    • Moderation work scales just as terribly. Not only does an admin need to make sure the communities on their instance are moderated, but they also need to moderate all other communities on all other instances.
    • Related to the last point, there’s some legal issues as well if an admin doesn’t moderate all other instances. Since content is copied from other instances to your instance, illegal content (e.g. illegal pornography, copyrighted works, …) are also copied to your own server without your active participation. That makes it legally mandatory to moderate all other communities.
    • Legal pitfalls in general. If lemmy becomes sizeable enough, all sorts of laws in regards to social media platforms will apply. That’s one thing if the social media platform is run by a huge corporation with a legal department, but it’s an entirely different story for a tiny group of non-profit idealists running the social media platform.
      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
        0·
        25 days ago

        That’s honestly not very helpful.

        • It’s not exactly at a place where someone joins lemmy. Most people likely join via downloading an app, and if they are lucky that app links them to join-lemmy.org, and more often than not, it doesn’t link them anywhere and just asks them to either select an instance from a dropdown without further information or it asks them to enter an instance name from memory.
        • The advice is very questionable and not really helpful without context.
        • Lemmy.world is too big

        There are Lemmy-reasons for why that’s a problem, but in any other context, the biggest is the best. And even in regards to lemmy, bigger instances have a higher chance to remain, to be decently moderated and to be decently stable. Before joining Lemmy.world, I was on Feddit.de, and we all know how that ended. And even before they vanished without a warning or an explanation, Feddit.de servers were always outdated, slow and unreliable, and moderation was arbitrary at best and non-existent at worst.

        Lemmy.world is stable and works just as expected.

        That’s a somewhat decent reasoning, though not immediately understandable as a new user. And not relevant anymore because Lemm.ee will shutdown within a week or so from now.

        • sh.itjust.works names contains “shit”, which can deter users

        Thanks, I’m adult enough to know whether I’m offended by the word “shit”.

        lemmy.ca is Canadian-centric feddit.org, is German-centric, but technically English speaking too programming.dev is topic-centric blahaj is queer-focused infosec.pub is topic-centric aussie.zone is country-centric midwest.social is region-centric

        None of that really matters thanks to federation.

        dbzer0 federates hexbear

        Like Lemm.ee, apart from the fact that it still exists

        beehaw is way outdated

        That’s some relevant reasoning.

        sopuli.xyz (neutral name

        See also:

        discuss.tchncs.de has a difficult name

        Sopuli.xyz isn’t any easier than discuss.tchnics.de, and jet discuss.tchnics.de was excluded for the name only.

        While down in the comments it says

        Sopuli doesn’t support gifs

        Which is a really hard reason to avoid that instance, much more so than “has a difficult name”. That’s got much more practical implications.

        But what’s left regardless is: Even that link that is supposed to make instance selection easier isn’t exactly easy to understand for a newcomer.

        Relevant XKCD:

  • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    Lemmy was architected by people whose philosophical intentions are out of alignment with the software they cloned.

    That system was designed to invite as many idiots as possible, to bait as much engagement as possible, with virtually no controls on quality or intelligence.

    Well congratulations Lemmy, you’ve made the next Reddit. There’s no reason to be here, it’s just a pile of morons for the most part.

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    We need more users, to do that we need more advertising.

    I was waiting to leave reddit for like a year before i found out about lemmy.

    There’s no way the twitter clone Bluesky should have absorbed the fleeing reddit users instead of this space that functions just like reddit.

    • Proudly Green@feddit.uk
      0·
      24 days ago

      I know that Reddit doesn’t outright ban Lemmy talk, but on my reddit profile, I updated it with Lemmy username link. I got banned from reddit a couple of hours later. No reason given. And I hadn’t made any recent posts. Ban reason was “violating rules.” lol

      • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
        0·
        24 days ago

        I had accounts banned for no reason after recommending lemmy to people, or makikg a username with lemmy in it.

        Pretty sure they have a filter setup that automatically bans you.

  • hexonxonx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    Trying to be a Reddit clone.

    Reddit was shit to begin with. It was a dumbed down forum site for people who found sites like Plastic or Kuro5hin too intimidating or complicated(!).

    Slashdot-style upvoting would instantly solve a lot of “Reddit”-type problems, because instead of just good/bad, or like/dislike, the reason for the vote is noted, such as “insightful”, “funny”, etc., and you can then filter and sort comments much easier. Just filtering out “funny” comments saved soooooooo much time.

    Another thing: Why don’t creators of threads have the option to admin their own threads? It’s their thread! It wouldn’t be appropriate for discussion threads (for obvious reasons), but for interpersonal posts and questions, it makes perfect sense for the creator to be able to have control over what appears in the thread to keep it on topic and the trolls at bay. It’s pretty rare to see a post where someone asks a question that doesn’t quickly devolve into an offtopic mess, and the creator is usually attacked for trying to bring it back on topic. This has made Reddit useless for question-answering (and besides, the most upvoted answer is almost always wrong.)

    Is the purpose of these forums to enable authentic conversation, or just to farm content regardless of quality (to be sold to AI companies, presumably)?

    • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      26 days ago

      Another thing: Why don’t creators of threads have the option to admin their own threads? It’s their thread! It wouldn’t be appropriate for discussion threads (for obvious reasons), but for interpersonal posts and questions, it makes perfect sense for the creator to be able to have control over what appears in the thread to keep it on topic and the trolls at bay. It’s pretty rare to see a post where someone asks a question that doesn’t quickly devolve into an offtopic mess, and the creator is usually attacked for trying to bring it back on topic. This has made Reddit useless for question-answering (and besides, the most upvoted answer is almost always wrong.)

      This would probably quickly devolve into OP removing any comments they disagree with

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
    0·
    26 days ago

    Number of users. Takes a lot of users to keep all the small niche communities alive.

    Political skew. You don’t benefit from being in an echo chamber. It will also drive away people you don’t agree with politically but do enjoy the same niche hobbies. Not sure about you but I’m much more interested in my hobbies than politics.

  • intelisense@lemm.ee
    0·
    26 days ago

    Duplicate communities posting the same content over and over again.

    Communities are tied to an instance. How many communities will die because lemm.ee is shutting down? There is a slightly mad rush to migrate communities already.

    Lemmy should have used usent style naming for communities.

  • ter_maxima@jlai.lu
    0·
    26 days ago

    Not enough people for even slightly niche communities. Wanna talk about smash brothers ? 732 people, only 2 posts in the last month.

    This is why people still use reddit on the side.