5d ago

Europeans asking for a reddit alternative

www.reddit.com /r/BuyFromEU/comments/1pglkyl/is_there_a_european_alternative_to_reddit_this/

Fedibridge @lemmy.dbzer0.com

r/buyfromeu asking for a reddit alternative

www.reddit.com /r/BuyFromEU/comments/1pglkyl/is_there_a_european_alternative_to_reddit_this/

61 22

80 comments

Actually just got here based on that post. Knew about the fediverse before, but was hesitant to take the plunge
- Once you populate your homepage with the right communities (and block all the furries/tankies) you'll love it here
  
  Or add additional furries because they’re mostly just silly little guys.
  
  Just block the fascists and you're good to go, tbh. The tankies are a very small community here.
  Furries are pretty wholesome -- whether they and queer people are there, I use as a miner's canary to see if a place has a welcoming and chill atmosphere.
  
  Thanks, working my way through that now
- Yeah, me too. I was getting tired of the Reddit bubble I have been pushed in to for a while now. This here is such a refreshment...
  
  Welcome!
  Bob Dylan once proclaimed that who is not busy being born is busy dying. You'll probably find us busy being born over here, but I consider that to be a good thing. We're very happy to have you here helping us out with it. :)
  
  Welcome! Most of us came over during the Reddit API fiasco a couple years ago. It's a lot nicer here. You'll notice the difference the more you post or comment. It's not like screaming into the void, like you get on Reddit.
- My best newbie tip is to use https://lemmyverse.net/ to find new communities.
  Just set your home instance (in your case lemmy.world) with the house icon and all links will refer you to the right place for you.
  Discoverimg new stuff isn't always straight forward, but lemmyverse.net makes it a little easier.
  Then there are communities for promoting other new communities as well.
  Have fun, amd welcome!
  
  Brand new to Piefed here - i'm clueless about what you're suggesting here. Why is there no piefed-app, and why do i need to use another service to make Piefed useful?
  I feel like everytime there's a european alternative to anything, it's always unnecesarily complex and extremely unintuitive..
  
  Thank you for the suggestion, will definitely check that out!
  
  Highly recommend lemmy. Yes, it doesn’t have all the communities that Reddit has and engagement isn’t as high, but its general content is overall good and it doesn’t feel littered with bots and spam like Reddit. It’s also much easier to access than it was when it first came out and the available clients are light years better than the garbage Reddit app.
- We're glad you're safe now!
  
  Thank you, happy to be here!
- Welcome, I've been here two years and it's been great. At first you might miss some content but that's just your dopamine receptors resetting from the slot machine effect of reddit.
  The "algorithms" here are simple and honest and all the Russian/Chinese bots are on lemmy.ml. Be careful though, you might end up switching to Linux if you stay here (which I recommend).
- Outstanding choice.
  Just keep in mind, the instances are all made up, you can see everything from everywhere and if you don't like limits or administration on one instance, you can always move to another.
- Welcome!
  This place is not quite as active as Reddit, simply by virtue of the userbase being a lot smaller. But I've quite enjoyed the past three years I've been on this platform.
  My first recommendation would be to subscribe to some communities (equivalent to subreddits) you are interested in.
  The main communities are mostly covered, but if they are particularly niche they might either be rather quiet or simply don't exist yet. At that point the only real way is to get them going is to contribute yourself.
  Also, small piece of potentially unsolicited advice:
  
  Enjoy your stay :)
  
  Ah alright, thanks for the heads-up! :)
- Welcome!
  It takes a bit of fiddling and customization to get your blocklists and filters set up, but that’s true to a lesser degree for Reddit anyways. There’s tons of people that should be willing to point you in the right directions, though, should you have questions.

For all redditors and elsewhere who have come to PieFed or Lemmy, welcome! Don't forget to contribute to the devs every now and then.
Lemmy/PieFed works like if you had multiple reddits ("instances") talking to each other, and also to other non-reddits that are linked, like Friendica, Mastodon (this is "federation").
What Instance to Pick?
If you wanna find a good instance, my recommendation is: don't go for the biggest one. Pick a mid-sized or smaller one, or find one yourself. This is a great guide on Github giving some pointers, including a "idc, just give me some instances" at the top.
If you still wanna pick yourself but there's a bit too much, I recommend going for the instances with 20-1000 people. The smallest are either self-hosted or probably just friends/classrooms, and if it's too big, might get issues with hosting costs.
Apps
For Lemmy interfaces/apps, see here. I personally like Voyager, Mlem, and Thunder, but a lot of them are great. There's even an old reddit-like look if you want. Here's a list for the PieFed ones.
Pro-tip: Block Some Stuff
Don't be scared! Unlike with Reddit, the block options are a bit better. The following is a list of keywords I've put up to block. It's pretty useful so far.
- Also, if you keep arguing with the same user, don't be afraid to block them.
  
  Blocking is very powerful on Lemmy and Piefed.
- Very nice comment

Came here directly from this reddit post. Totally new here - is Piefed only a browser-based alternative? Why is there no Piefed-app ? The only thing i can find is "Blorp for Lemmy and Piefed... sounds weird.
- Post of apps that support Piefed:
  https://piefed.social/post/1258559
- Welcome!
  I know Piefed is supported by Interstellar, Summit, and Thunder, and probably others that I forgot
  I believe Boost also supports Piefed but I haven't checked ( it does per @mrsilkworm@piefed.social )
  You can browse https://www.lemmyapps.com/ and see if the apps listed there also support Piefed:
  Connect seems to be able to browse but not interact on Piefed
  Blorp is a legitimate app listed in there
  Photon is a webapp that seems to supports Piefed
  
  It does. Source: using boost rn
- The content is the same between lemmy and piefed, but they have some different features, such as support for surveys and moderation tools.
  Welcome and enjoy the content
  
  So, I have Lemmy now and just made an account on PieFed. I don´t want to use multiple platforms. What would you suggest? Can I synch them?
- Can confirm Summit supports Piefed and it seems pretty slick.
- One small thing to be aware of is that app support is a little more recent in PieFed than in Lemmy, so while the apps work well (I had good experiences with Voyager), some nice PieFed features that exist in the browser might be missing from the apps (for now).
  The apps are still great, but it makes me personally prefer it as a web app for now. :)
- Blorp dev here. Sorry for the silly name, but I assure you I’ve spend hundreds of hours making Blorp the best app I possibly can. It’s totally free, fully open source, and it doesn't log any of our data. I would love for you to give my app a try!
- Interstellar and Boost (i use both apps on Piefed)

"The sweetspot is using both at the moment" - the sweetspot is siphoning knowledge from shitty platform into the fediverse
- Honestly I haven’t touched Reddit since the API exodus. I just went without whatever wasn’t over here.
  
  Same. I now see Reddit as I do Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram or whatever. If it's linked somewhere or someone sends me something, I'll look at it. But I'm not installing their apps or creating accounts to engage.
- You could say Lemmy has curated content
  
  Lemmy has cured content, smoked content, also simmered and brothed content, all types of flavory nutritious content

Honestly, even as an American (from California - a rare state of sanity in this damn country), I've been moving to de-google and move away from stuff like reddit for months now at this point. Especially since user data requests by our federal government (and likely other world governments) are an open secret that these companies can't really refuse.
Glad to see y'all on the same path :)
- Yeah, YouTube and Google Earth are my main holdouts. I use PeerTube and OSM but there are still gaps
  
  I deleted my google account and moved all of my youtube activity onto Grayjay (since it doesn't require any account and any saved "subscriptions" are stored on your device locally), maybe that could be an option for you? They even have a desktop client now :)

The tankie stuff turns out to still remain a hard sell, who could've imagined... (block lemmyml if you can, if you can't, switch platforms and then block .ml)
One unfortunate limitation of the fediverse is that blocking undesired categories of content is harder than on reddit: when you block a subreddit, it doesn't exist on 50 other instances. None of the fediverse stuff handles that gracefully, the "subreddit" approach was just not a good choice for this kind of thing.
- You can set up keywords on piefed to filter out.
- I'd rather block fascists. That's the real hard sell, tbh, and fortunately Lemmy does not really have them so far.
  
  Tankies are facists. More I see of them more I realize they are non US MAGA. Both leaning towards being ultranationalists with love for cult of personality leaders, authoritarian governments, and one party.
  Only real difference is healthcare, but the shared love of preferring to trust in what they hope is a benevolent dictator to tell them what to do and get rid of their enemies is a common goal. Neither seems to actually want a government that fears the people that can easily replace leaders they dislike or abuse their power.
- Unfortunately blocking an instance still leaves the commenters from that instance visible. That could be technically fixed of course by adding a new type of blocking.
  
  Piefed blocks those users too.

Lemmy has one significant problem that platforms like Reddit and Mastodon don't, and I don't see that problem easily going away.
The companies who use raw data as a source of their wealth steal everything that isn't bolted down. Platforms like Reddit and Twitter realized this, and put their content and APIs behind restrictive paywalls.
Lemmy and Mastodon content is free for anyone to hoard and add to their pile.
I guess technically you might be able to create some kind of "firewalls" (distinct from network firewalls) that heuristically kill AI harvesters, but it will be a perpetual battle.
- Can you elaborate why that is a problem for Lemmy?
- Is this actually a bigger issue for Lemmy / Mastodon users than on other platforms? In case of commercial social media, the data is sold, here it's freely available. In both cases my data is potentially used by third parties. This might not be perfect, but I see very little alternatives rather than not publishing any data in the first place. Which would somehow contradict the idea of social media, wouldn't it?
  
  Which would somehow contradict the idea of social media, wouldn’t it?
  No. Nothing about the concept of social media dictates that all data must be available for everybody.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

80 comments

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.