2y ago

Is Lemmy THE reddit alternative for you? Are you thinking about moving somewhere else?

502 comments

I think the answers you will get from users who are on lemmy will tend to be positive 😁
- Our voluntary survey shows that 95% of people who participated in it don't mind participating in surveys.
  
  I don't know sir or madam; my wife will suggest food she doesn't want for dinner.
  
  The other 5% were furious
- I guess yes, it can be kind of biased indeed ^^ but interesting to hear your opinions anyway
- while it's a nice echo chamber, its still and echo chamber lol
  
  Yah unfortunately it feels like its even more of one than reddit is/was
  But I still plan on sticking it out here since reddit was kinda an addiction of mine that I'm glad to have broken

Like it so far, not looking for anything else.
- I think it's an excellent reddit replacement and it gets better every time i check. More and more people posting. I am also using Mastodon. I am all for the fediverse tbh. I don't want my data to be collected by one large corporation anymore.
- I won't let something as important as my favorite communities to fall in corporate greed.

I don't know where else to go.
The best thing about reddit for me was an endless stream of information and news propped up by user discussion. I rarely just scrolled endlessly through posts; I loved delving into comments on posts which didn't even interest me at face value to see what I could learn from niche communities.
It was, hands down, the best, most information dense landscape I've ever seen and frankly I feel a little lost without it. I hope that some day, some where I can find something similar.

Unless something happens, I'm sticking with Lemmy. As for interface and everything, I liked kbin more initially, but I feel like Lemmy development is moving much faster, plus all the third-party development at the moment. As I've said in the past, I'm going where the people are. And right now, that's mostly Lemmy - and since it can federate with kbin, picking between the two is kind of a moot point ...at least for now.
- Since you have more experience with it, could you elaborate on what the real difference between kbin and lemmy is in your opinion? I keep hearing that kbin can interact with Lemmy and Mastadon, so it sounds like its just "better", but I feel like thats gotta be a very oversimplified understanding.
  
  Mastodon can interact with Lemmy as well as far as posting and commenting. On a basic level, kbin offers microblogging (your Mastodon-style posting) and a more sleek interface. The visual polish is a little better on kbin, in my opinion. Right now, I'd say the biggest thing is that kbin development is slower, so new feature rollouts are slower than Lemmy at the moment as Ernest works to make sure everything is stable as kbin grows. The API might be available now for third-party development of apps, but for a few weeks there, it wasn't, whereas that started almost immediately on Lemmy with API availability. But with Artemis for kbin in beta, it sounds like that might have changed. Otherwise, though different, Lemmy and kbin are both based on ActivityPub, hence why you can interact interchangeably with communities, users, voting, and so on. And maybe worth mentioning, kbin allowed community creation earlier than a lot of Lemmy instances, though that did change quickly.
  I think it just depends on what you're looking for - a polished experience with interesting features (kbin) or more cutting-edge feature rollouts and updates more frequently (Lemmy). Of course, I don't know what the future holds for either platform, so that might change if Ernest gets more of a team on board.
- Basically same experience. Kbin seems interesting, and I’m in the Artemis beta which helps with browsing there. But Lemmy is just advancing at a way faster pace.

Well, true. I may have gotten here though Reddit. But now I'm taken aback by what's happening here.
I mean, the whole thing is open, FOSS developed, decentralized, being everywhere and at the same time nowhere? Call me crazy, but this in itself is awesome!
On top of that, I was greeted here by a community of communities where people are kind, helpful, full of beautiful and interesting insights.
So why would I be thinking of going somewhere else? I've posted more comments here in the past weeks than in the last ten years on Reddit. And I've done that because I'm genuinely excited with this setting.
So no, I'm not joining the herd moving to greener pastures. This field is green enough for me.

Once I got Memmy it was done. It’s everything I wanted without all the extra bullshit.
- Memmy only exists for ios right? I have android and i use jerboa. It's great, but sometimes a bit buggy
  
  There's a bunch of Lemmy apps for android kike Liftoff, Connect, Summit, Lemming, Thunder, and Jerboa itself. Sync for Lemmy and Boost for Lemmy are on their way too.
  
  I don’t know if it would be as appealing coming from Android, but I’m an Apollo refugee and I’m enjoying wefwef because it indulges my muscle memory. It’s a progressive web app you can try out without needing to install anything.
  
  In theory Memmy should work on Android since it’s written in React Native.
- Memmy is as good as Apollo I’m sure if it.
  
  It has the potential, sure. But you can’t really compare an app that got years of development to one that was developed in such a short time as Memmy.

This is my permanent go to. Community already seems great and I hope it gains more traction. The main difference with the change from Reddit is I've gone from lurker to trying to be more engaged and posting.

So far it replaced my casual Reddit browsing when I'm bored. But when I want to look at some specific stuff I still need to go to reddit but it's just to get some information and not really to engage with the community.

It's no longer just a Reddit alternative for me. Lemmy is Lemmy, and I like it. I'm still waiting for the 3rd party apps of Kbin though.

I really like it. The community is also really cool. More like a small town feel than a huge city like reddit. I hope I don't have to move anytime soon.
- Welcome to what Reddit used to be
  
  Between this and Mastodon - which feels like the best parts of early Twitter (way before Musk ever was in the picture) - I feel like I've turned back the clock about 15-20 years in the best way possible.
  Now if only this made me 15-20 years younger...

It feels like reddit from ten years ago, and has the critical mass to make it interesting to open and browse. I think it's a success.
I only use reddit now on revanced rif to visit a couple of communities that are too small to be worth replicating here yet
- Yeah I agree. Seeing all the Linux and programing humor on the All page reminds me of my early Reddit days. I'm hoping some of the niche subreddits I loved pop up
- Same. Honestly I didn’t like it much til today. Today was the first time I actually scrolled through and found a lot of content I liked. I’m just trying to figure out which app to use now which is kind of fun because I miss having 3rd party apps…
  
  On Android I like Jerboa and Liftoff. 👀 Just my random suggestions.
  
  I'm enjoying Connect, it's very similar to rif which I've used for a long time.

So far I like it and therefore do not look around for alternatives.
I only hope that it will not remain with the first wave of Reddit migrants but will continue in the coming months and years. Currently, it is still very quiet for my taste, but this is also completely normal.
The only thing that worries me a little is the distribution of the communities.
I don't think it's a good idea to have the same community (Like a Subreddit) on different servers. This provides for an unnecessary segmentation of the already not large userbase.
So instead of having one big community for a Topic we have many small ones. This is especially a problem at the beginning, when the userbase is still small.
I'm curious to see how this develops over time. Whether the popular communities will agree on one main instance, or whether apps will reduce the problem to the extent that communities with the same names are combined. It will be exciting to see in any case.
- Up until just 2 days ago, searching Lemmy on the iOS App Store returned no results. Now there’s Memmy and more apps on the way. That will make a huge difference for casual users who hear about Lemmy but wouldn’t bother trying to figure it out before jumping in. I can’t predict what will cause more waves, but a steady stream of new users seems likely.
  People have been really vocal about their desire to group communities. Whether that happens on the communities’ end or on the user’s end via apps (like Multi-Reddits), or both, I’m confident it’ll happen eventually. I feel like either of those are a better solution than encouraging communities to consolidate, personally. Embrace the beauty and quirks of decentralization.
  It’s exciting to see all the growth and improvements happening so quickly. The sky’s the limit for Lemmy.
  
  My goodness you are so right, upon seeing your comment, I checked and there it is. Installed it in an instant. Why wasn’t this announced is beyond me. But I’m glad there’s finally an app for iOS
- I am honestly not sure why it seems to bug people so much to have multiple communities, but I’ve seen this brought up a bunch.
  It existed on Reddit too, they just weren’t the exact names so it wasn’t as obvious.
  If there are two communities for the topic you’re interested in, join them both! There’s no reason not to.
  
  I think you have to look at it from the point of view of people who are less technically skilled. The hurdle of Lemmy versus Reddit is greater anyway because the structure is more unfamiliar and complex.
  And as a "new" platform you also have a chicken-and-egg situation that you have to overcome.
  Imagine you don't know Reddit and someone sends you a link to a subreddit for a topic that interests you. You see many members and a lively exchange. This makes it interesting and you subscribe/follow it and in the best case participate.
  Now imagine someone sends you a link to a Lemmy community for a topic that interests you. Since the userbase is already much smaller, there will be much less going on there. If you now also splitting things up, it will look even less alive than its really is. And that makes it less attractive for most people and they leave.
  If you had one big community instead of many smaller ones for a topic, the chance of faster growth would be higher.
  As I said, always from the perspective of someone who is not clear about the concept and may not see that there is actually a much larger number of users for the topic.
  I can understand why you like the concept, I'm not saying it's bad in principle. But in my option the most important thing for Lemmy is to quickly become attractive for a large number of people.
  And since most users would rather join an already alive platform than build something from scratch, the last thing you want is to make things look smaller/less alive than they are.
- Interesting indeed. I already saw some of this coming up over android@lemmy.world which has been locked in order to send their userbase to another instance. So yeah, interesting indeed.
  edit: grammar
  
  That link also takes me to my phones email
- I also miss the change to list all post under a community (e.g. "technology") regardless of where it is. I have multiple accounts, which works as a safety insurance against slow severs. However, I find it a pain being unable to group similar communities under the same umbrella. Hope such functionality is implemented at some point.
- Its just a matter of time for the apps to start having a feature to link together communities with the same name for easy subscribe/block.
  
  There was a dev who said they were working on this but the app was still in early acces. I think the app was Nemmy

yes :3

1:1 complete replacement - been very happy with Lemmy and Fediverse so far

Only if this place moves on from complaining about reddit and posts content. No one finds the "my ex was crazy" phase endearing.

In my opinion, the only viable way to go for social networks like this is to be decentralized and run by the people. Anyone who is jumping on one of the corporate run Reddit alternatives is just delaying the deadline a bit. Eventually, Profit motives will turn those to shit as well. To me, federated services are the future.
Also, because it’s slightly harder to use than normal sites, the boomer nazis haven’t overrun Lemmy yet, so currently it just feels really great.
- Also, because it’s slightly harder to use than normal sites, the boomer nazis haven’t overrun Lemmy yet, so currently it just feels really great.
  😂 This is so true... Being liberal I always second guess myself and I don't want this to be an echo chamber, I want my beliefs and ideas to be challenged, but Conservatives aren't arguing policy nuance... They are fucking trying to exterminate people and elect a sociopath...
  So what do we do... I hope we get diverse discussion on here, while keeping the Nazis away.
  
  Agreed. I always look at it like this: Politics should be determining the best way to implement and expand human rights, not debate whether we should have them at all.
  
  So what do we do... I hope we get diverse discussion on here, while keeping the Nazis away.
  There's still alt-right people on Lemmy, they're just isolated on exploding.heads due to most other instances defederating from them
  
  Dude idk. I love challenging view points for basic things but the challenging view points I've seen here are sketching me out way more than reddit ever did. And I'm just stumbling on them trying to find new communities or from front page. And they aren't Nazis type things either. Sympathy for other governments. Ignoring or outright forbidding criticism of other governments.
  I think it is one thing to disagree and discuss aspects of laws and society and how to fix problems etc but so far I don't see that here. I still see a same divide it's just more world focused now and not "are you racist or willing to tolerate racists because reasons " that has been most of US politics on reddit for years now (and imo rightfully so)
  Basically be wary of what you see right now. I'm a liberal too and don't mind challenging my beliefs and often re-evaluate them but here... so far all that has lead me to is being more alarmed because it feels more innocuous and if I was just a little bit less aware of certain things I could feel myself slipping into it. Oh and they present themselves as liberal.
  As for American politics sure. I haven't seen any nazis yet and haven't yet. I think ive heard plenty enough from the other side over the last 10 years though I would love to hear something new but haven't yet. Sorry for the ramble.
  
  A lemmen a day keeps the nazis away
  
  It's not pretty on either end of the spectrum.
- Absolutely, I not some anarchist type who hates corporations out of principle but at this point the enshittification of platforms by large corporations has basically proven to be a natural law of the internet.
  I'm somewhat in doubt though whether a decentralized platform run by its users can really keep up with all ongoing developments. Let's say bots become a problem what about bot detection and banning or what about legal regulatory changes? That being said, reddit devs appear utterly incompetent and somehow they manage. Perhaps in the long run some non-profit organization, something like the Wikimedia Foundation is necessary, at least for individual parts of the network.
  Maybe someone with more insights into these topics can share their opinion.

Im cautiously optimistic about Lemmy. Short / mid term I’ll be here as it provides probably 90+% of what I was getting out of Reddit. I’m not sure long term how it will work out but so far I have no reason to leave.
I’ve also noticed I just don’t interact with any of it like I used to with Reddit. I used to spend a lot of time just doom scrolling on Reddit. Now I get the highlights of the news, check the sports sun for updates, and then I’m back to the real world. I like that.

Lemmy is the only decent alternative I've seen, besides the other ActivityPub federators. There was literally nothing else besides Mastadon (I had heard of this before and considered it) and kbin (only know about this since I joined lemmy.) Lemmy had the right combination of features, and a cuter name, so it won the most of us (I believe that's a big part of the reason.)
Every other alternative to the big social media is too niche, and often dominated by a particular world view or specific community grievance. Lemmy picked up a broad sample of users that reddit just suddenly and indiscriminately cut off without a moment for second thoughts. We're not a monoculture the only thing we have in common is we used alternative apps for reddit and we were too stubborn to move to the official app. That gives us a lot of diversity in the community and an edge on passionate eccentricity.
- reddit has redditors
  lemmy has... lemmings?
  
  undefined
  
  Lemlings Lemmyheads Lemmynauts Lemmysiders Lemmyzens (Lemmy + Citizens) Lemmylinks Lemmystars Lemmyfolk Lemmylinos DecentLems (Decentralized Lemmys)

So far this seems like the one. I primarily browsed Reddit using Sync, and Lemmy is where Sync has decided to go.
If there's a really compelling app for Kbin, however, I might give that a try at some point.
- I still don’t really understand the difference in Lemmy and Kbin.
  
  Kbin is host for both Lemmy + Mastadon (a federated twitter replacement) where you interact over both with the same login/username.
  
  I don't know either, but as long as federation works between them, it makes no difference to me. I follow communities on both from one Friendica account. If I decide to self host one day, I'll choose one based on the software stack.
  This, to me, is the marvelous power of federation.

As someone who was lurking on Reddit every day, probably not to be honest. I know a lot of people are enjoying the smaller community, but to me it just feels... empty. The bigger instances are fine, but I was never interested in the popular subreddits like r/funny or r/memes. I used reddit for things like specific games, communities that are noticeably dead on Lemmy.
I'm using Lemmy more like an intermediary step between reddit and just quitting altogether.

No doubts about it. With the decentralization it truly just feels like being on forums again. Just needs more content for nicher topics but that's slowly growing, i'm happy here away from the larger internet.

I'd say it is for me, I feel like I'm invested in Lemmy's potential for growth, and it being based on ActivityPub makes it the one I want to stick with in comparison to some of the others.
People seem really pleasant here which is a nice change from Reddit, it certainly feels like there are less trolls (for now at least).
Lemmy is getting better day by day, 0.18.1 seems to be fantastic and has smoothed out a lot of the rough edges that I was seeing, and not to mention we're getting quite a circle of various apps for both Android and iOS, along with some alternative web-based frontends as well!

I'm here to stay. The more I get used to how it works, the more impressed I am with how much better the core concept is and how much that concept influences the quality of the stuff I see.
- Honestly, yeah - to me it feels like Reddit, but better at Reddit's core values.
  Anonymity -> flexible screen names, usernames per instance, no karma, privacy focused community
  Community -> smaller, focused instances coming together like broader subreddits with their own rules and ethos
  Diversity -> decentralized federated content has the potential to be even more broad
  Discussion focus -> sort by active rocks
  No incentive for enshittification or vector for monolithic control/collapse it's decentralized, and even if one server goes full monetized no one else has to, you can move instances without losing access to the broader ecosystem.
  I also feel like there will be less (but not zero) incentive for bots/repost accounts, "karma farming", trolling, and astroturfing generally with the simple removal of that damn karma system.
  So I'm here to stay and I'm bugging my partner to join also - their main hobby already has an instance of it's own, and I feel like they could really shake things up over there!

I've been wanting to move to lemmy for a while it just wasn't active enough so I stayed on reddit. Fuck reddit and fuck proprietary software

As long as content keeps showing up on my feed I've got no reason to go anywhere else.

Right now it is. It's still a bit empty compared to Reddit, but I see it's slowly getting traction.

I'm happy with Lemmy, except I'm honestly getting tired of the somewhat elitist attitude and fear/anger towards anything that isn't in the fediverse. I noticed it when I left Twitter for Mastodon too, and it's kind of getting old.
I'm not saying some of what's being said isn't justified, it's just not what I feel like seeing every time I open the app/site.

I'm undecided at the moment.
I'm now mostly past the muscle memory of instantly opening Reddit any time I'm not actively busy.
Lemmy isn't ready to fill the hole that has left. But honestly as it stands I'm not sure that I want to fill that hole. It would probably be better for my mental health, concentration, social life and many other things if I could successfully leverage this moment to become a whole lot less of an online person.

Yes. With the added bonus of decentralization.

Until something better comes along, lemmy.world is the place.
wefwef (now Voyager), the Memmy app (iOS), and the "old.reddit" view (https://mlmym.org/lemmy.world/) make it REALLY easy to use Lemmy.

Lemmy is my new home.
It scratches the itch that needs scratches.

There's a somewhere else?!
- Some like squabbles.io. There was another startup I don't recall that had a pretty slick interface...
  But they're corporate. Lemmy isn't.
- I actually like Tildes. It’s much much smaller though. For if I like it more than Lemmy? I don’t think so.
  The discussion there seems to be much more in depth, which is very nice. But I’ll stick to Lemmy for my “junk food” scrolling and go to Tildes when I want more nuance about something.

It already seems significantly better than reddit has been lately. I was just mentioning to a friend how it felt like 2010 reddit did.
The community is good, it scratches the same itch, think I'm here for a while.

Absolutely. It isn't all that much different than reddit once you get used to it.

It took me a while to curate a list of interesting subreddits. I am doing the same thing with lemmy and since kbin is also part of the fediverse I don’t see the point of having a kbin account on top of lemmy+mastodon. I’m spending some time discovering what is around lemmy and all its instances so it will be unlikely that I’ll move somewhere else, unless lemmy collapses somehow

So far, so good.

Seems fine now, just needs more people/content, and to settle down.
Some people were hesitant as they heard the creator of this place was some crazy Stalinist; what happened to that?

I actually prefer this over reddit. Currently, I’ve yet to come across any infighting or holier than thou types and it’s nice. People on here are more real and don’t seem like keyboard warriors who think they know everything with no real world experience. I’m sure they are here, but I haven’t come across any yet.
- Just like Reddit used to be a while ago
  
  I was a late comer to Reddit really. Only had my account for a little over a year. I rarely went looking for subs to join unless I saw something that piqued my interest there. Here not only am I finding more relatable content to my likes, although I’m still looking for some of my fav sub refugees to start some of the subs I followed here, I have also started my own community here for something I am passionate about.
- Yeah, the hostility in conversations for innocuous things that was prevailing Reddit seems to be minimal here.
  I went back today and posted about how it’s not so bad here, and holy fuck did I get attacked. Although, I think like two people from all that liked what they saw. So it was worth it.
  
  People don’t like change.

I’m here until the next inevitable decay due to corporate or self greed ruins this place too. The counter has officially begun.
Still better than any alternative at this point.

I'm trying, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to discover new content.
The default view just shows the same three or four communities on lemmy.world. if I change to show stuff from all, it just shows some three or four global communities instead.
Lots of memes from Memes@Lemmy.ml but basically nothing else.
Where am I supposed to discover communities?
- Try looking by new and scrolling quite far.
  Let's be honest though, there isn't much content here and so many communities have barely any posts or comments.
  Reddit used to be the same.
  Let's create something great together.
- Yeah that seems to be an issue with Lemmy's algorithms. On Reddit, I was always discovering new communities. Feeds were balanced such that small communities and large communities had a similar amount of representation on my front page. Here, it just seems to be a numbers game. The communities with the most posts "win" and flood out all the smaller communities. So spamming a large quantity of posts will make your community rise to the top, no matter the quality of posts.
  For context, I do greatly enjoy meme communities...But I do share your frustration that I effectively only see meme communities because they flood out every other community from sheer volume.
  Sorting by "new" does help a little bit, like other users suggested, but still not that much.
  It would be interesting to see if Lemmy devs one day alter the algorithms on how content is viewed on the main page. A more balanced feed of communities despite size disparities (like Reddit does) would be a great addition imo.
  
  Am I the only one who never uses r/All on Reddit? I'm subbed to a lot of subreddits, but I like to scroll through all the posts, so I visit each individual subreddit that I'm subbed to seperately. I only started using All here on Lemmy due to the lack of content.
- It depends on your app, but you can switch to viewing All to see everything from the places your instance is federated with. It sounds like you might be looking at your subscribed communities only.
  Also, you can check out lists like browse.feddit.de to find new stuff to subscribe to!
- Filter to ALL and Top 6/12 hours.
- https://lemmy.world/communities

My current replacements for reddit are:
A kbin account for serious-posting
This Lemmy account for the shitposting (and for communities on lemmy.ml which blanket bans all kbin instances)
Tildes.net for the extra-serious-posting
(Eventually) an RSS reader
Libreddit and a redirector extension for search results
I personally prefer to keep my shitposting from my serious-posting and I also wanted to see what kbin was like, so it kinda worked out well enough (aside from .ml)

At this point I like Lemmy more than I've ever liked Reddit. I tried Raddle too and it was fine but I prefer Lemmy.

Moving somewhere else? Where?
The only other options are back to Reddit, or somewhere else in the Fediverse. There aren't other options.
- Tildes, Discord, Slack, old-school fora... there are other options.
  
  But they're very different types of platforms that offer a completely different experience

The only problem right now is content. We still have a small userbase. Discussions have been good, tho, and time will bring more people.
- Personally, I'm already content with the current stream of, well, content on Lemmy right now, at least for doomscrolling.
  There's a lack of niche communities right now of course, but I made one that I missed, and I'm sure other people will do the same as the user base increases.
  Make any communities you miss guys!

I am not sure what other alternatives there are? I'm receptive to anything good. Right now this looks like it has promise, so I'll go for the ride.

This is fine.

Tbh i wasn't really sure at first. But now that I've built up a pretty good collection of subscriptions to various communities id say I'm totally on board. So far I've been very impressed so I'd like to stay.

Reddit used to be able to do two things. 1. Allow me to express myself and 2. Entertain. They really stopped entertaining me a long while ago. They also didn't engage me enough for me to want to express myself. I already had a foot out the door.
Point 1 is filled with Hacker News, Lemmy and tildes. They are all similar but different. With lemmy... you kind of take your shoes off and relax (respectfully). With HN and Tildes: you are the best version of yourself.
Point 2 is taken up by TikTok. I use TikTok on an older dedicated secondary tablet with a fake gmail account, no contacts. The tablet only does TikTok and nothing else in order to alleviate privacy issues, etc.
HN, Lemmy, tildes and TikTok provide an experience that far surpasses that of reddit.

I think I'm seeing things settle down and seeing more actual content now. It was mostly posts about Reddit to start with.

Lemmy is the future!

Yes.
I'm not going back to Reddit.
I spend all that time on Lemmy now.

Hate using it in browser, but Memmy app is awesome, so for me it’s “mobile only” as of now. We need a proper desktop client
- It has a PWA, use that to get the "app" feeling.
  
  I guess I’ll have to learn what PWA is as well as improve my understanding of how Fediverse works. 😅 It’s all very new to me
- Have you tried http://mlmym.org on desktop? It’s like old.reddit
- Can I ask why? I've felt the browser experience is significantly better than any app I've tried so far. At least for lemmy.world it is.
  
  It feels like using new reddit’s UI, while I got used to Reddit Enhancement Suite addon, which enhances old reddit’s UI.

It's difficult to replace Reddit considering it was/is this combination of multiple communities wrapped in a neat little bow. But lacking an ease of access on mobile and blatant disregard for 3rd party apps is what has caused my own browsing on the site to drop considerably during my free time.
Hopefully as time goes on and with 3rd party apps under development, Lemmy can begin competing with Reddit since this is a genuinely fun site.

I'm home.

I plan on staying here. It offers everything I expect from reddit: enough people in the topics that I bother looking into, a handful of silly or shitty memes, and posts (hopefully) remaining visible for a number of years.
Not everything I wanted moved to the fediverse, but I'm not going to check back on reddit

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