I’m very new to Lemmy, I’m trying to see how it all works and what happens here. But honestly I feel like it might be a little too decentralized? Like, I know it’s the point but I feel like this doesn’t make for the best experience. Communities can be on any particular instance, and you can have repeats of communities for the same things. This feels overcomplicated, but I understand why it’s that way.
Also, how many people are actually doing a full switch from Reddit? I personally don’t intend on leaving Reddit, I’m just leaving temporarily, but not for any specific amount of time. I think that’s what most people will do, or I guess I hope so, because Lemmy still has a long way to go before it gets good enough to make a competition, especially considering the drawbacks I said before, and I don’t want us to lose all those communities that went black indefinetly, even if I supported the decision.
The point of the blackout was to protest, expecting an end to it all, although many are already wishing for an end for Reddit altogether from what I can see.
Idk, I still hope Reddit doesn’t die tbh, I hope they listen to reason and backtrack a bit, or we find a way to bypass the restrictions somehow, I think I saw a revanced patch to many Sync work iirc, so maybe there’s hope still.
Reddit has its fair share of “repeat” subreddits. This isn’t unique to a decentralised platform.
Personally, I think Spez is counting on users to think the way you do — make a big fuss, protest by leaving for 48 hours, and coming right back even if nothing has changed. Reddit has no reason to backtrack if they can just wait for the storm to blow over and everyone returns to business as usual after two or three days lol.
It isn’t unique to it, but it makes it waaay worse. And in Reddit it was mostly a problem of originally different subreddits eventually losing it’s original meaning and getting diluted into just “funny stuff” or “interesting stuff”
And yes, I know they’re counting on us thinking that way, and I do feel conflicted about that. But, for better or worse, Reddit is an important part of many people’s lives, and an invaluable resource of information. Losing that would be a big loss for many people, and it will take a long while for Lemmy to catch up, if it ever does.
If this protest goes for long enough though, maybe they’ll concede. That’s the plan anyway. The options aren’t only “return in two days” and “never return”, there has to be a middle ground that will make them listen to us.
One thing to note is that while it is true that you can create duplicate communities in different instances, eventually one is going to be more successful than the others, and will end up being the one community everybody goes to.
I mean yeah, they just really have to make a seamless way to see other instance’s communities. From what I understand they have to be searched manually, at least for the first time, or use a separate site to search for them. And in Reddit a huge way to find new subs was with crossposts (which idk if they exist here) and recommendations you got on your feed (which many people hated, even if I think they were useful, if not we’ll implemented) so it’s not as simple
A separate site for community searching, if anyone’s curious is https://browse.feddit.de/
That only works if they’re actually discoverable when you search for them, so you can pick the correct one. On reddit if you search for a specific thing, you get a list of all possible subreddits in one go. On lemmy… it really depends on the instance you’re on, and if anyone else on your instance has discovered the other communities yet. You never know if the search results are complete. Even https://browse.feddit.de is not always showing all the communities I noticed.
And even now I have to keep rechecking communities/interests I have already subscribed too because new duplicates get made all the time with new instances showing up.
I’m not sure if this is different on other Lemmy instances, but on Lemmy.ca I just need to click on “Communities” at the top, which brings up a list of all the communities. Then I can click either Local (Default) or All, which will bring up the community list for just my host or all Lemmy instances. I can also search as well for communities within that page.
In any meaningful way, I am done with reddit. I have been a daily user for 12+ years. It’s very clear that reddit is headed toward a future of catering to the lowest common denominator. They’ve lost their way and the site is continuing to head down a bad path with the IPO. Their leadership is already showing they can’t handle a negotiation between 3rd parties, I’m sure the creep crawl toward monetization will continue down focusing this lowest common denominator and remove all differentiation from their service.
Reddit has three uses - cultivated communities, niche information and scrolling.
I was very happy to find real connection and community here on lemmy over the last couple weeks. I read a thread earlier that was discussing reddit really has become a pretty unfriendly, transactional place over the years and I realized that resonated with me.
I’ll still have to surface interact with reddit via google searches for niche and specific information.
As for scrolling, it feels like Reddit is really only focusing on this as their future which feels really shortsighted. There are a dozen services and websites to scroll on from social media to news sites to honestly replacements like lemmy.
Overall, reddit is just one service and I am sort of grateful for this new opportunity to find a place online to connect and make a community. I don’t want lemmy to be “new reddit,” I want it to become its own thing. I’ll miss what reddit was but it hasn’t been truly good in a long time.
For me it’s also been 12 years and I feel the same way. I’m not exactly sad to see it go, in fact, I’m sort of happy they gave most of their users the momentum to move to something new. Using Lemmy wouldn’t be fun if was just empty, but I’m really happy how it’s all working out right now.
