I hate to sound negative, but right now growth in the fediverse (especially Reddit clones like Kbin and Lemmy) are being driven by people who no longer want to use Reddit. But over the past few weeks, most discussions are still circle-jerking about how bad Reddit is and how glad people are to be on Lemmy. You can only beat a horse for so long before you need other content posted on here to keep most people engaged.
Yeah but normies are what make platforms thrive. I fear Lemmy may just become an anti-Reddit circlejerk but then die out due to lack of content.
FYI, as great as Mastodon and the fediverse are, there are issues that prevent their mainstream adoption:
https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/06/12/why-did-the-twittermigration-fail/
While I understand that most of Beehaw’s administrators are not programmers, I think it would be helpful if you reached out to the developers and ask that the Lemmy software offer greater levels of configuration when it comes to the UI. Making a vague post about “issues” on your own forum ensure that whatever issues you have will never be heard by the developers.
The issue with revolutions is that while they tend to get rid of old elites, they create a new class of elites out of the top revolutionaries and the cycle just starts over again. Many communist revolutions were supposed to create these theoretically “equal” societies, but they just insert in a new ruling class.
I think the real issue is that the protest coordinators were not able to succinctly explain why they had to protest to begin with. Charging third party app developers for API access is an esoteric topic. Most people don’t even know what an API is. Most people don’t use third party apps. Most people also don’t care.
IDK I also see plenty of posts supporting keeping subs closed too. I doubt a lot of people have left the site for good. But those voices are generally outnumbered by people who don’t understand what’s going on or don’t care about the protest.
Don’t get me wrong… Lemmy is fine, but I am finding that most of the active posts here are about the protest on Reddit… plus a few discussions on current news and gaming… but little else. I am still spending most of my time on Reddit.
On many subreddits that have polls, it seems like a majority favor keeping their subs open. It seems like the userbase is generally ambivalent or even hostile towards the protest at large.
Yeah I don’t have a strong opinion about whole API access controversy but it does spark a greater debate about how we let centralized services like Reddit subsume the Internet forum culture of old. Of course, Reddit in many ways is a superior product to the decentralized forums of old (you only need one account to post) but at the same time, this whole protest has proven especially damaging to people who rely heavily on Reddit as a resource for support (like the mental health subreddits, the chronic disease ones, etc.).
My sister is 30 and doesn’t have a driver’s license. But she does live in a city with solid public transit.
Agree. I don’t plan to leave Reddit but it’s good to look at the alternatives that are available out there.
Why not use both? Doesn’t have to be either/or. You don’t have to be super ideological, use platforms when they suit your purpose. I’m sure Lemmy will grow with time.
An indefinite shutdown would not work - the moderators of the subs who perform them will be kicked out and be replaced by people who want to keep the subs in operation. Plus, it’s a disservice to people who do use Reddit as a resource for work or otherwise. I think a 48 hour protest is reasonable, but beyond that, there’s not a whole lot you can do.
Well on the Lemmy subreddit, some people are already complaining about moderation issues here, and how you can’t block federated servers you don’t want to see individually - that is up to the federated server itself. Honestly, while Lemmy seems cool, I can see issues arising as it scales, especially with regards to moderation.
Beehaw seems to be fine, but some users have explained that they take issue with Lemmy.ml’s moderation - chiefly from the main developer who created this platform to begin with. And that’s troubling too. For example, on Lemmy.ml, any talk about Russia or China (or anything similar) is banned. You can’t safely talk about the war in Ukraine here without getting banned from the main federated server.
I mean upvotes are related to how old a post is.
Anyways I don’t expect places like Lemmy to fix the ills of social media - eventually running something like this will cost their owners too much money and something will have to give. Also moderation has always been an issue, even with the message boards of old.
Yeah exactly. I think what we need is decentralization and a move back to smaller hobbyist message boards - the costs of running such communities is more sustainable for individual owners and they are not so big that their owners would look to sell them out.
My only issue with Lemmy is that it’s not a true Reddit replacement, especially when places keep defederating from one another. Like I spend far less time here on Beehaw because it’s defederated from some of the major instances - I understand the administrators’ concerns about moderation but over time a lot of the activity will center itself around the most active instances (i.e., users may come from a diversity of instances) but only interact with content on Lemmy.world.