I get there are still users but it feel empty at times compared “other” platforms.
Why isint lemmy more popular?
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This right here encapsulates exactly what my biggest complaint with this platform is. A news post about a controversial topic in a completely unrelated community. I’m literally on my knees, guys. I just want to talk about drawing fantasy maps and developing conlangs. Worst part is that worldbuilding/conworlding is a perfectly acceptable way to articulate your worldview, and you might even get people to listen to you if you’re creative about it, but nah that’s not blunt enough.
And yeah, it could have been posted in error, but given what I previously described about [email protected], it very well may be on purpose.
Whaaaaaat? It has a far better signal to noise ratio than those ‘other’ platforms. As long as you’re into Star Trek memes and Linux.
I’m into Star Trek, and all set to switch to Linux this weekend!
Do it! I made the plunge and have zero regrets. Everything works, it’s fun, and I get to annoyingly pester friends, family, and strangers about the benefits of open source software!
Thank you. My only real concern point now is running Adobe stuff in a VM. Other than that I think I’m good to go.
How’d it go? Also, what sort of Adobe stuff are you running? I do hobby photography, and unfortunately lightroom is still by far the best option imo. But there are still some decent alternatives that run on Linux. I edited some engagement pics in Darktable in a pinch once because all I had with me was my laptop running Arch. It worked out pretty well.
Install has gone fine.
Having trouble getting OpenRGB working. Might just have to turn off lights in BIOS for now.And I’m also a hobby photog. Lightroom and Photoshop. I’ve tried Darktable and GIMP on Windows before. As much as I complain about Adobe, they’re still miles ahead of the OSS alternatives.
or ecology!
…or have ADHD
…or are furries (though, they are surprisingly rare here)
Also if you’re into beans, jeans, or stroganoff then Lemmy is the bee’s knees.
the linux content isn’t even that great on Lemmy
more just cheer leading; in a good way
network effect. There’s fewer people here so there’s fewer people here.
That said, I like it just how it is and would caution anyone against wishing for more users.
Don’t focus on getting more users. Focus on making the content here the best it can be.
It’s inevitable that the quality of the experience here will change with more users. Whether it’s a net positive or negative remains to be seen.
To be sure, these are the “good old days” of lemmy.
As long as corporations and states can’t get a foothold with their bribery, dark algorithms, and bots it should remain fairly decent.
federation is supposed to help. we will have to see, when it gets to it.
I don’t know a single person that knows it exists other than a few that ive tried to get interested. I have told a few friends that use reddit but they just don’t get it.
I started lemmy a few months ago, stopped using reddit completely a few weeks ago and I don’t miss it other than all the dog posts…more people need to post pics of their doggos on here !!!
Everyone to whom I mention lemmy - even some of those to whom I have before - responds by asking about a musician of whom I’d never heard before I started having these conversations.
To be fair, telling people it was founded by Motorhead fans is a better selling point than that it was started by Marxist leninists.
Try monnett, people posto sooooo many dogs there
Because there’s still a handful of basic stuff that still hasn’t gotten sorted out yet for some reason.
Like if I wanted to share your post with my friends, I’ll send them this link: https://piefed.ca/c/nostupidquestions/p/377144/why-isint-lemmy-more-popular. If they’re using a mobile app, then it might be fine. But if they’re on desktop and want to comment or vote here but aren’t already on my instance, they need to go back to their home instance, search up this community, and then search for this post. Why isn’t there some sort of native way where I can just click on a button and have it open up in my home instance? Or even better: integrate something like threadiverse.link into Lemmy/PieFed so it immediately redirects me to my home instance’s version on this post.
And before someone suggests using a different front-end or using a browser script, I appreciate you trying to help but my issue is why this isn’t even natively part of Lemmy. And I’m not even sure if it’s in the pipelines for V1.0.
Another issue is that there are still posts that don’t federate properly. And it’s not because an instance was defederated. What posts I see on this account might never be visible from a separate account. What is even more frustrating is that sometimes, I can’t even force my instance to fetch the post. I’ll give it the direct link and it still can’t find the post on my instance.
As long as these basic issues remain unresolved, Lemmy will not become popular. A site can’t be popular if I can’t even share a post to my friends properly. Or if I can’t even see the post, then I wouldn’t be able to share it with anyone!
Edit: added clarification
Cos we’re all losers and no one wants to sit at our table
Because we haven’t any friends in irl, that’s why we are doomed to scroll here without friends too.
That’s interesting. I never saw it that way, before. Now I kind of see it.
I always sat at the “loser” table at lunch, in school.
I changed schools many times and they - multiple different “loser” tables - welcomed me.
It’s also just where all the most interesting people were sitting, so I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Maybe they were just more free to be their real selves together, because no one was trying to prove they fit some official cliche.
Anyway, I would be proud to once again be a member of a loser table.
Reddit has been around for 20 years and Lemmy not near as long. Reddit didn’t really hit it big until Digg screwed the pooch driving away users around 2010. I don’t see Lemmy hitting Reddit number probably ever, but reddit is one of the highest trafficked sites on the web. Lemmy is steadily growing, but I think to many non users, federation and instances is a confusing prospect, so they never try. As it grows, I would imagine it will get easier or at least clearer for the layman and the velocity of growth will increase due to that and a larger user base as a whole.
Also the client situation is confusing to normies. Search for Lemmy on the spyware cancer store and you’ll see what I mean.
Pixelfed and Mastodon have already figured that out.
People tend to overexplain, just point people to an instance link and that’s it
reddit was niche until the 2016 elections. that’s when it really started exploding and you started hearing abotu it in the mainstream media and boomers had heard of it.
only way lemmy will grow, if reddit is continously banning people, or enshittfying some major thing, that prevents a certain community to not be viable. reddit noticed of thier large purges were getting rid of too many people at once, they now do alot of background banning instead.
federation and instances is a confusing prospect
Which is why we shouldn’t frontload people with that stuff. They don’t need to understand decentralization from the start, let them familiarize themselves with the fediverse first before throwing that at them. Just recommend a default instance, maybe change which every few posts if centralization is a concern. They’ll pick up the idea of instances as they interact with the fediverse.
People stay on mainstream corporate platforms no matter how badly they enshittify because that’s where everyone else is. They don’t want to jump ship unless everyone else will jump ship with them, and so nobody makes the first move.
Lemmy isn’t more popular because Lemmy isn’t more popular. Lemmy wants to be an alternative to Reddit, but the best thing Reddit had going for it was all the niche communities for fandoms, hobbies, and other interests. That’s something that just can’t exist here, because if you take a niche thing and multiply it by a niche platform, I’ll bet that I might very well be the only person on this platform who is into some of my hyperfixations. So people who want to talk about topics that have no community here, leave and go back to bigger platforms.
I’m still here to try and push for a better future, but I honestly don’t know how we can grow this place to the kind of critical mass it would take to really get the ball rolling.
You need to game the system.
Create OC here then post that to other social media sites.
That directs people here. Without that Fediverse will take a lot longer to grow.
reddit has all the drama too, like r/art, or another sub people will visit those subs, and "drama about youtubers and livestreamers. also the politics/news is probably the largest communities.
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Because people still use Reddit for some reason.
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Because it is fragmented and hard to understand how it works for average person.
- reddit has more larger and niche communties that arnt found anywhere else in such large numbers.
the only useful communties outside of reddit tend towards things like medical questions and drug usage forums. also spam/bot for income too on many SC.
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It’s a nightmare to even sign up.
Nothing else to it.
People will move en-masse to new platforms if the switch is easy. Nothing easy about using this platform.
Obv the people here are techy enough to surmount the initial hurdles, but don’t kid yourself, the average person doesn’t know a damned thing. Using tech and understanding tech are two vastly different skills. And you actually need to understand tech to even get started here.
Nightmare? It’s so easy to make a world account
“Nightmare”
Provide an email account, answer a logic-based question. Yes, “nightmare” indeed. /s
nightmare
I love a bit of hyperbole as much as the next bloke, but come on…
Because Reddit exists.
Reddit itself didn’t truly take off to massive scale until some other players were out of the way. It was the underdog for a long time.
not advertised, not run by a for profit company
It’s somewhat difficult to navigate at first and most users find the most popular platforms and don’t have a reason to move on, simple as that. Ease of access and, unfortunately, advertising would lead to Lemmy being more popular. But who would fund the advertising?
most users find the most popular platforms and don’t have a reason to move on
This is definitely a good point. Is even visible here, with not just Mbin but also Piefed still barely having users compared to Lemmy.
Guerilla marketing?
Wheatpaste posters or something.
Everything new starts in the underground.
Many reasons add up. PieFed is a bit better and evolving fast. In my opinion, it is primarily the scale and scope of niche content, and the toxic opinions of many towards genuine people.
A few of the big strikes have been the lack of moderator transparency, and occasional poor moderation. Tribalistic bandwagon behavior, unmitigated negativity by a few individuals, and astroturfing. The inability to block another user from actually seeing and interacting with posts. This place is not privacy oriented. The feed is unmanaged and the effort needed to block and filter the fluff is beyond the curation expectations of many.
These are all good points
Same reason Mastodon isn’t as popular as Twitter… a lot of people really don’t understand the concept of federation, or why it’s important in order to maintain a robust and healthy discussion. They’re fine with dictatorship as long as it aligns with their sensibilities.
Also, the concept of “one website, one app” is infinitely easier to comprehend than “many instances, many apps, still one protocol”.
