So, I see r/NZ is back. That’s it? What an anemic protest. I guess I’m honestly surprised more people don’t care. I expected the protest to go on longer, but I guess I overestimated how much the average user cared about this.
Unfortunately, I think it probably means we won’t see a lot of growth in Lemmy now. Shame.
Lemmy is not ready for primetime yet. There is no way that 400 million reddit users can move here, when the biggest servers struggle with tens of thousands, and the total users active on Lemmy in the last month is around 30,000 (up from 1,000 a couple of weeks ago).
Not to mention that Lemmy is really not general-population-ready. Explaining it is a bit of a mouthful, but manageable. What’s not manageable for most users is things like:
- Most people have no idea how to start. The join-lemmy site just points you at a massive list of instances and hopes you know what you’re doing
- if you’re reading a post on another instance and someone links to a community, the link won’t work and you’ll have to copy/paste the URL into your own instance.
- Hot/Active don’t work because of a bug in refreshing them
- The post you’re reading can suddenly change, especially if you have two tabs open with different posts
- If you want to subscribe to a community but no one on your instance has searched for it before, the search will show “No results” - but then suddenly have results if you wait 10 seconds (or sometimes never show it until you refresh)
- Posts just appear at the top of the list, and worse, pop up as a notification. Great when there were only 1000 users but now the All page just gets notification after notification and the feed keeps moving
- The right combination of events means that a community can just disappear
- The search form doesn’t let you change between Subscribed/Local/All unless you search for something first
- Moderation is still a problem. One of the big instances is wholesale blocking dozens of instances, including some big ones, because they can’t handle the moderation. When it comes to moderation, I suspect most of the big instances are just…not.
This is just off the top of my head. Lemmy is great because we are building a new community, but the polish will come with time. We need to slowly and organically grow the community (lemmy.nz as well as the “Lemmyverse”), so issues can be worked out. Luckily places like this tend to attract a more technical audience as they are more willing to put up with bugs, and because Lemmy is open source many of these people can help write code for bug fixes and new features. The number of people helping has gone up significantly in just the last two weeks.
So what I’m getting at is if people are unhappy with the actions of the reddit board, they are (probably) welcome here. But we do not need a significant number of new users overnight - that’s only going to end in disappointment for everyone involved.
Very well explained! Thank you for this post. Yes, Lemmy isn’t ready yet as Reddit replacement for all Reddit users. It’s cool to be part of it and to see I’m not the only one struggling with it works :) . Everyone is more friendly as well, and I’ve already been appointed moderator for the stopdrinking community. The sd reddit is very popular and I hope we can build something here as well. Sorry, not sure how to link to it haha.
It’s possibly worse for me, because for every issue I have to try to work out if it’s a Lemmy thing or something wrong with the way I’ve set it up (there have been many of those issues, but as far as I know all the current bugs are Lemmy issues).
I’ve already been appointed moderator for the stopdrinking community.
Definitely keep in mind the bug about instances disappearing when an user from an instance is appointed mod of a community on a different instance and then they try to edit the community! (I think this only applies to Lemmy version 0.17.4 but this is the latest and most instances are on this now because of a security issue in the previous version).
I really appreciate all your hard work here! You’ve been replying to support issues very quickly and adequately.
I won’t edit the community then, thanks for the heads up. I think it’s not even possible, the other moderator wasn’t able to edit the sidebar info, only the creator could do it, but wasn’t responding anymore.
It will get better over time I’m sure.
I really appreciate all your hard work here! You’ve been replying to support issues very quickly and adequately.
Thanks! I’m just doing my best :)
I think it’s not even possible, the other moderator wasn’t able to edit the sidebar info, only the creator could do it, but wasn’t responding anymore.
Hmm I’ve created the communities, and have assigned mods and they are able to edit the sidebar. I haven’t done anything special. Maybe because they are the first mod they get the access?
Thank you for this write up, very well said.
This isn’t the end of reddit’s enshittification process. They’re just getting started.
I can see it happening in stages, much like Twitter’s inexorable decline. Seeing that Steve Huffman said in an interview recently that he admired what Elon Musk was doing, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst for redditors yet.
Not really bothered what happens over there now. I’m no longer invested in their community. Yeah I’ll be poking my head back in over there occasionally I think, but lemmy is scratching my itch for scrolling and doing it in a way that seems less harmful to my spare time and mental health.
My reddit protest consisted of:
- deleting all 10+ years of content and comments I’ve contributed over there
- making an account here and supporting an alternative service
I’ve already opened a google link to something on reddit only to find it was deleted by the user. So I think the withdrawal of content is going to have a lasting impact.
If you used Power Delete Suite, please double check your comments/posts are really gone. There have been multiple reports that Reddit brings back deleted posts/comments.
Quite a few of mine came back suddenly when I checked them. I’ve since overwritten and deleted everything again.
It’s important to overwrite them, otherwise they are just flagged as deleted but easy for admins to undelete.
Yeah you’re right. Power Delete Suite can do that, but I don’t think it does it by default. But I think I’ve seen reports that even when editing, posts are brought back to live.
Most likely it’s just an issue with the software or API. Perhaps it hits a rate limit and ignores some requests.
I doubt admins are restoring individual posts that they like. It doesn’t seem to make sense.
I’m not too sure. They are forcing subreddits to re-open, and in the past they have edited comments in favor of reddit.
Reddit content is very valuable, when I Google for opinions, I always add “reddit” to the query.
Many people who reported the issue say that their profiles initially showed up as empty, but were restored a couple of hours later.
It would be interesting to have a proper test of this. There are numerous reasons this could happen. The first thing I’d look at is if this has happened in the past or if it’s a new issue. People have been clearing their accounts for years, so if people have had this issue before it’s a sign of an issue with the process. If not, reddit may be doing something odd.
Not from NZ, but I recently put together some thoughts on how Reddit dies based on how other social networks historically die here.
The tl;dr is that expecting reddit or any subreddit over a certain population to keel over and die and have everyone move to Lemmy was most likely never going to happen, because it has never happened before.
Just enjoy the Fediverse for what it is :)
This is fair. A social media site (or any media for that matter) doesn’t need to be used by a majority of people for it to be good. As long as there’s enough people to provide a steady stream of activity, it’s doing good. That being said, would be cool to see Lemmy become popular enough properly function as a Reddit replacement.
Unfortunately, I think it probably means we won’t see a lot of growth in Lemmy now. Shame.
There could be another big bump when 3rd party apps shut down at the end of the month. If everything’s going strong here at that point, we’ll probably get a fair bit of growth.
Definitely another booster in growth. Many. Many people use 3rd party apps.
Including me. If I hadn’t left during the blackout, I would’ve when they kill the app I used to use.
Without an app that users are already comfortable with, if Lemmy/Kbin is already on their radar, it’s not a giant leap to think that if they have to acclimate to a new app, that they would choose to do so with Lemmy/Kbin/Fediverse
Yup, I’ve still got sync installed, but I’m not going to install the reddit app, I’m settling in on a home instance of kbin and am pretty happy so far, so don’t think I’ll be back to reddit for my daily fix
Going by what happened with Twitter -> Mastodon, there were multiple waves. After each wave, things died down a bit as some people who had joined lost interest. But each successive wave brought more people than the last.
I expect we might see something like that here. There are still events to come, e.g. the 3rd party apps shutting down, Reddit supposedly rolling out new mod tools, mods realising they can no longer easily moderate their subreddit, Reddit making further changes like shutting down the old UI, etc. These will all bring refugees, and hopefully Lemmy will be in a better state when they come.
Perhaps a better method would have been “we are locking down our subreddit indefinitely, and moving to <insert lemmy/kbin instance>”. There’s only so long a blackout can last before it becomes too annoying for the average person trying to access information, especially when the rest of the internet is a sea of spammy seo articles. Locking it down with an actual alternative would put a better dent in Reddit activity long-term imo.
I did hear accounts were banned for suggesting alternatives, however. So there is that.
An alternative location for community during blackout is definitely what was missing this time. Mods need to set up and flag the alternative location in fediverse or otherwise) so users and content posters know where to go. This will also place the only real pressure that Reddit will feel - existential threat of a viable alternative ala Digg exodus.
There are two subs I’ve seen where the mods we’re contacted by the reddit admins and told to reopen or be replaced.
Many more subreddits have been approached I believe. E.g. one mod from /r/piracy got a message from the Reddit admins, any moderator who wanted to re-open should reply. He only read it one hour later and he was already de-modded and the subreddit was reopened.
Also /r/antiwork has been forced to reopen. And that community is against corporate greed, but they still caved in.
It’s so crazy that /r/antiwork mods got forced back to work or faced getting fired?! If that doesn’t drive /r/antiwork to look elsewhere what will?? I posted a comment about signing up to Lemmy and searching for !antiwork@lemmy.ml as an alternative that doesn’t involve their coporate overlords cracking the whip! Others have posted simliar.
there is also !workreform@lemmy.world I believe. I personally prefer that to antiwork (which suggests getting rid of work entirely).
Good to know!
From what I’ve read/seen elsewhere, the reddit admins would have just replaced all the mods and reopened it anyway, so it’s not a huge surprise to see it open. I don’t think I’ll miss it.
I’m enjoying the “everyday” content here on lemmy.nz so far - it’s taken a bit to get a feel for, but for the main reason I hung out a /r/nz (breaking news, current events) it seems to hit the spot. Cheers all for that!
What I’m really missing on Lemmy in general however is that niche content - hobbys I’m interested in, bands I listen to etc. The Reddit communities for them were generally strong and active, but so far missing from Lemmy. Hopefully that changes with time, as I have no desire to go back to Reddit.
Check out the community search at https://browse.feddit.de, or the one at https://lemmyverse.net/communities
Unfortunately there is currently no way for an account on one Lemmy instance to create a community on another instance, but if it already exists, go post some content!
Most of the more “general” instances allow users to create their own communities, so there are lots of mostly empty ones floating around waiting for users. You’re a user!
Sweet, cheers for those links
Does one have to sign up on all those forums individually or is there a single sign on arrangement?
Lemmy is federated. Check out the video in the pinned FAQ post for a bit of an overview.
But the long story short is that you access those communities through lemmy.nz, and people on those communities can access our communities through their own site.
Unfortunately it can be a bit convoluted at the moment. Lemmy is young and not well polished. Probably the easiest way is to click the link to go to a community (which will be a link to their website), then copy the URL into the search on lemmy.nz
If you’re having trouble, you won’t be alone, but you can ask on !support@lemmy.nz for help. Or just reply to me, I’m happy to help, but might take a little longer to respond.
I haven’t really disconnected from r/nz yet and I guess I’m hanging out at both, just looking out for what interests me. What would shift me this way more permanently is if more content and engagement pops up here to keep me more occupied, and/or if the moderation of r/nz drops to levels so bad (as has been threatened by the mods) that I can’t bear it any longer.
I mean, I know that Lemmy is here now whereas I didn’t before, so I’ll probably keep coming back even if I drift away at times. I also like the more independent and federated model that avoids one single commercial entity being in control. It’s much more like how the internet used to work in the olden days, before a small number of mega-corps sought to pull everyone into their very restrictive dumbed down siloed universes for the purpose of selling users as a product.
Be careful what you wish for, do we really want the horde of whiners that populate r/newzealand to show up here?
I think you will see more growth once the third party apps are shut down. After that spike you’ll probably see a steady rise as people get banned or harassed or whatever.
The mods will come up with all kinds of excuses, but with every instance I’ve seen of mods backing down, it’s been the same thing: They miss the power.
That’s so weird because as a mod it’s mostly just unpaid boring work, with the occasional dozen-pages-of-penises thrown in. I’m really enjoying the break tbh.
