Did you notice that on Lemmy you’re not able to use any alternative apps either?
… I’ll see myself out now.
There are no alternative apps yet. You are witnessing ground floor construction work. So, pick up a hammer and help out
There are at least two alternatives already: lemmur and jerboa. In addition the federation probably makes it practically impossible to block other apps and web frontends be etc. And you can run and use an old web front to your heart’s content.
I think lemur is abandoned, but yeah
If the official Reddit App was like Jerboa, I would use it.
No clutter, no recommended posts, no ads. That’s all I want
But also, with the fediverse structure, there is no way to lock out alternative apps. Functionally, all apps are third party.
Since there is no central server, each instance could decide how they want to handle different clients. So I don’t think it’s possible to ban them globally or charge for api access like reddit is.
Joke appreciated :)
You could make a Lemmy app if you want. Jerboa seems to be what most people are using but Lemmur was available in the past and stopped development partially due to a lack of interest.
Lemmy is still small compared to Reddit
I raised this concern as well. I haven’t seen a lot of mods commit to moving from Reddit to Lemmy, and I think the lack of tools and established apps is a big reason. Reddit will have this problem at the end of the month, but it doesn’t help that Lemmy has this problem now.
Saying “then make your own app” is also not helpful. Not everyone is a developer, or has the extra time to work on one, especially for a free platform.
I am hopeful that enough techy people will join Lemmy and want to invest time into making it better, but even if 1000 users suddenly started working on apps and tools it will still take a while before they are on par with the reddit apps. The best hope is that an API translator for reddit->Lemmy gets working soon and 3rd party reddit apps become Lemmy apps.
