1y ago

Fediverse won't replace Reddit as long as Lemmy is the main platform being promoted

Think about things from the point of view of someone who has never used Reddit or the fediverse, but you've heard about them both from recent news articles and want to see what they are about.

Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.

Lemmy:- You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister... Your second result might be join-lemmy.org, which you're smart enough to realise it's probably more likely what the news is about.

You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code...

There is very little chance you're going to investigate further.

If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
A) Lemmy needs to improve its initial impression and Search engine optimization
B) We should be promoting a different platform with a better initial first impression.

I'd recommend kbin personally as it gives the same sort of experience as Reddit from the initial interaction.

198 comments

kbin is newer and less polished. But yeah I personally recommend kbin over lemmy for exactly the reasons you posted.
- Also, the Kbin dev expressly stated he isn't ready for a massive migration, and the current influx has caused him no end of stress. We want to keep him around and not drive him insane.
  
  I would argue we also don't want to be in a place where we rely on any one individual. Thankfully @ernest seems to understand that as well.
- Less polished, but the browsing experience is better and more customizable than any Lemmy instance I've been on so far.
- Kbin doesn't have the ability to sort comments by top. To me, that is the #1 most important feature, and not having it when it's easy to do shows some real ignorance. The reason I come to these sites is to see the best comments on news of the day.
  
  Top sorting is already available on the testnet. It will be further improved over time.
  https://lab2.kbin.pub/
  
  Well good news, friend! Here is the kbin source code. Since it's so easy to do I look forward to seeing your pull request sometime today 😀
  
  @PlagueShip
  @Fizzee @abff08f4813c
  It’s new, it takes time… Reddit wasn’t Reddit at first, either
  
  "..shows some real ignorance"?
  Brother, acting like a douche to people who are working and paying for you to be here shows some real arrogance. You're not a customer here. There's no ad revenue, no data collection, no money. If you want it so bad then do it yourself. Beauty of the fediverse is you can go make your own instance that does what you want it to do.
  
  Ignorance? Seriously?
  
  To each their own but sometimes it's nice to just scroll through comments and see the varied replies instead of just fed the top/earliest on some posts. Imo it increases user engagement.
  
  @plagueship Just so you know, the main dev @ernest replied to your concern
  
  @BestOf might be of interest. The community sifts through the junk to share the most insightful comments.
  
  There is a bar at the top of the feed where you can switch how your feed is shown.
  
  Rome wasn't built in a day
  
  That's pretty lame friend
- Assuming we coalesce around Kbin, 5-6 years down the road when Kbin is a lot more polished and has a significant user-base,h ow do we prevent a repeat of Reddit?
  It’s inherent in human nature to coalesce, to form a community, which ultimately creates a centralized hub that is ripe for control by a few people.
  
  Federation already solves this, mostly. If kbin.social disappeared, other places like kbin.cafe and kbin.lol would have copies of the magazines, so content wouldn't be lost. And the community could regroup under a new magazine.
  The only issue is magazine portability - right now there doesn't seem to be a way to annoint an instance to be the new owner of a magazine that's hosted by the kbin.social instance. But maybe that technical problem will be solved in within the next five years.
- my first non-reddit hit is kbin.pub which is probably worse than join-lemmy
  
  Maybe kbin.pub should have a banner at top like "Got here by mistake? Maybe you just want to join an instance? Try ..." with .. being picked at random on each page load. Or we could have a featured kbin instance of the month or something...

I recommend kbin just because some of the people behind Lemmy are vocal far left wing. I want to support more moderates in the world.
- What's the moderate position between "trans people should not be allowed to exist in society" and "trans rights are human rights"? You have to understand every time you or anyone else says some shit like this you're basically crying that people are taking a position instead of just watching the right wing try to ruin peoples lives.
  The supreme court literally ruled to allow businesses to discriminate against people based on sexuality yesterday.
  
  This. While things are new, and nothing has taken the place of "service that everyone uses", LGBTQA+ people are going to avoid the unsafe places which is going to push discussions further and further right. A "moderate" position that treats the bigots the same as people who just want to live and feel safe isn't moderate at all.
  
  I firmly believe everyone has the right to live freely and to find their own path, provided they don't harm others. Hate speech and violence have no place in our society, and I wholeheartedly stand with the trans community in advocating for their protection.
  Nonetheless, here's a viewpoint I have that I know is not accepted, but I'll share it anyway. I believe the compulsion of speech, particularly insisting that all of society adapt their language to accommodate individual identities, is a terrible approach. The notion of forced speech is problematic to me, and worries me greatly.
  That said, I believe it's important to work towards a society that respects every person, but without mandating how we perceive them. Life's journey is all about confronting adversity, and part of this involves learning to navigate the world as it is, not necessarily as we'd like it to be. Instead of dictating specific definitions, it might be more beneficial to cultivate a culture of empathy, understanding, and open dialogue around these issues. This perspective is unpopular and contentious, but it is a conversation that we should be willing to engage in.
  Anyways that's what I see as the moderate take, and it's what I believe. I had to tiptoe pretty hard there and I'm sure what I said still comes across as hate speech to some but I don't feel it is. It's just my opinion. I wish there was a place I could express it and have an open debate with people about it. We can't eliminate half of society, and we're going to have to learn how to empathize with people we disagree with in order to actually see where they are coming from.
  
  Trans rights are human rights because trans rights are rights to bodily autonomy.
  If you think bodily autonomy is a human right, then you think trans rights are human rights.
  If you don't think bodily autonomy is a human right, then I guess have fun licking boots.
  
  The problem is that nobody (or at least very few people of actual influence) are legitimately saying that trans people shouldn't get to exist. I have yet to see any politician, for example, express such a belief.
  
  I mean, you don't have to be a tankie that defends North Korea or the uighur genocides, to respect those values? Which is the main problem with Lemmy devs and main instances.
  
  What rights do trans people not have?
  The Supreme Court ruled to give businesses the choice to turn down customers. I thought you guys were all about choice?
- It worries me that you get a bunch of downvotes for this. People are way too accepting of political biases if they're in the direction they prefer.
  
  Because it implies that basic, milquetoast progressive values are "far left".
  
  I think part of it is that leftists (myself included) don't like being lumped in with tankies. I didn't downvote though.
  The lead devs of lemmy are tankies, basically meaning authoritarian communists of the genocide-apologist variety. They also run the lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml instances.
  This is also why I signed up on kbin instead of on lemmy. The other lemmy instances are fine, but I don't want to contribute to the influence of the lemmy devs any more than necessary. Hopefully they try to pull something stupid and get forked off the project.
  
  Oh don't even get me started on the downvote brigades from angry leftists around here. Don't you dare hold a moderate opinion around them, or they call you a nazi and tell you to go back to 4chan. You can read my post history. All I've ever expressed is the same sentiment expressed here, and I've been met with nothing but absolute vitriol.
- agree. Part of why I liked reddit was that I could customize my feed to ignore political diatribe (left and right) and just read the feeds that interest me. Lemmy is so infested with leftists that it spills over into every part of their community
  
  One is the instances is owned by people who praise Stalin. Lemmy.world is not. And the code is open source so Lemmy is not really owned by anyone. All you have to do is switch instances.
  
  Well of course it is, do you want to emulate reddit or not?
- You're being downvoted because people don't understand you're not talking about "far left" like some Trumper. You mean literal tankies, which absolutely yes some of the Lemmy Devs are as well as Lemmy.ml. It's also a reason I selected Kbin.
- While I'm quite left wing, I have huge problems with them (as well as the main dev) being authoritarian, genocide-defending tankies. That praise China, Russia and DPRK. It's maddening.
- What is your definition of moderates? As I see it a moderate in Europe is vastly different to a moderate in the USA.
  I think it is hard to figure out what you understand as moderate without seeing knowing about what you political opinions are.
- Turns out people who work on open source in their free time to make the internet a better place for all are usually left wing, while the righties try to make money and fail.
- And lemmy has a commie problem too.
- I came to kbin hoping for exactly that, a moderate platform, and these upvote-downvote patterns are extremely concerning.
  
  This you?
- Then pick a server that’s not run by “the people behind Lemmy”. Solved.
- That's like saying you don't recommend Linux because you disagree with Linus Torvalds. Using Lemmy or Linux does not advance any particular political agenda. And for the record, I like kbin.
  You know what does potentially advance a communist agenda? Buying a phone made in China. Which phones do you recommend?
  
  Now you've got me wondering what Linus Torvalds thinks. The only opinion of his I know is that sound file that used to do the rounds "Hello this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux".

Reddit is almost 20 years old now?
Do you expect Lemmy and Kbin to be an immediate replacement or an replacement at all?
- Agreed. I am very confused by most of these types of comments. “Why isn’t this newer thing with a smaller user base as robust and efficient as a 20yr old platform?” Things take time. Not to mention it SHOULD also take time, since these instances would not be able to hold the amount of users Reddit has. I’m sure many people complained about Reddit when they jumped from Digg.
- I dont, but i understand people expecting kbin or Lemmy to be replacements bc people have said that theyre replacements for Reddit and to move there. And tbh kbin is not bad (havent used Lemmy much)

I'm on kbin now because I have no idea what I'm doing.
- based, me too
- I figured out how to join lemmy by joining kbin, now I'm on both! The Jerboa app is better than anything I could find for kbin, so I joined lemmy.world and have a nicer interface.

3 of the top 4 results for me are fediverse related when searching for "lemmy".
I don't think its the signing up, its the lack of centralization/community. reddit was a singularity, the community is protesting en-masse because they felt they were all part of the same thing.
to me, the fediverse is a segmented.. oddly connected group of overlapping communities. it lacks cohesion.
- The Fediverse is just the world wide social web. It lacks cohesion just the same way that the regular web does.
  That's going to limit its appeal for the people who see the internet as 3 cellphone apps. But that's also ok. It doesn't need to be for them.
  
  If kbin/lemmy/the fediverse are to be something the average reddit user wants to migrate to, then a lot of ground has to be covered still. There is no "reddit migration" possible or remotely likely without significant change, as much as I want the fediverse to succeed and as cool as I find it
- It's also a hell of a lot clunkier. For all the talk of federation, it can be a total pain in the ass to view content on a non-native instance. Edits not loading, boosts/upvotes not taking, some posts just not showing up at all...
- I tried signing up on various instances of lemmy for 2 weeks prior to the shut down. it failed over and over, kbin was recommended if I didn't have any particular reason for choosing lemmy instead. I'm grateful. I hope we don't kill Ernest though.
- This is a great take on the whole thing. Well said. But maybe the lack of centralization is why is seems so much more welcoming and friendly. Or maybe it’s just new and small. I almost never posted on Reddit in 6 years, but here I feel more part of the conversation because it isn’t one big overwhelming behemoth that I get lost in. Instead of a little fish in a big pond it feels more like a regular fish in a bunch of puddles.
- Agreed, and honestly this is why I don't think these federated platforms will ever truly get to a large scale. The amount of disconnection on a service that is meant for connecting people together. Unless its changed, the fediverse will be only for the group of people who are quite comfortable with technology (beyond just downloading an app and creating an account). The complexity needs to be hidden.

From my own experience as a user, it doesn’t matter whether you choose kbin or Lemmy in terms of what content you see. However, yes the look and feel for new users is much better with kbin (especially on iOS). Lemmy has some amazing front ends in development though that will eclipse kbin very soon. It’s just a matter of time.
- I disagree, with lemmy there seems to be no activity in my subfeed and I dont understand how to add more "subreddits", with kbin I just go to "magazines" and subscribe to the ones I want

Until search engines and LLM companies start crawling the fediverse, this will continue to be a niche of the internet, albeit perhaps large one at that.

It doesn't need to replace Reddit.
And it won't, for many reasons. The biggest being that people don't like change.
But it can give, and has given, people a place to go who are ready to be done with Reddit. People who are ready for something new, not just "Reddit, but with a different name".
Until Reddit's website disappears, Reddit will march on. Those of us here are just those who can no longer tolerate feeding that beast.
- Lemmy devs have also said they aren't interested in replacing reddit

You're absolutely right that we have a bit of a terminology issue here, but one slightly advanced and techy thing to understand about the fediverse is that the fediverse itself is the "platform":
Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, Calckey, etc., are software projects or processes that are running on some server somewhere, and ActivityPub is the protocol (kind of like a language) that all these processes use (to varying degrees) to speak with each other. As users, we interact with a specific server or service (like beehaw.org or kbin.social) that is running that software and sharing info with other servers through a protocol.
This is totally different to Reddit or Twitter, which are both the names of the service AND (probably, but we don't now) the software that the service is running behind the scenes. Naturally that makes it a bit easier to talk about, because we don't have any access to or knowledge about the software or protocols that they use, and we can just talk about the services.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that Kbin and Lemmy are replacements for Reddit (the software) while servers like kbin.social or beehaw.org are replacements for Reddit.com (the service), except they also talk to each other somewhat seamlessly. I'm logged into the server "kbin.social", which runs a software called "Kbin", which communicates over a protocol called "ActivityPub" to a bunch of users who are on other servers running other software.
In other words, Google searching for "Lemmy" isn't exactly a good metric, not only because Reddit is one of the biggest websites around and Google knows this, but also because "Lemmy" isn't the actual name of the service that we are using right now, just the software. If you tell someone to go over to a specific server (like beehaw.org, kbin.social, etc.) then they'll have a much easier time finding something that they can actually use.
Most of us are guilty of kind of glossing over all this stuff to keep things simple and easy to understand, but there are some layers of nuance to the fediverse here that make this a little bit more complicated than you're making it out to be imo.
- Everything you’ve said is correct, however, there is an issue that the “this all just the fediverse” doesn’t address: when I’m looking for niche info about something, I usually add either “reddit” or “site:reddit.com” to the end of a web search, but with the fediverse, it’s kinda hard to replicate that. Adding “lemmy” or “kbin” to the web search wouldn’t exactly yield every possible result on the threadiverse since not every threadiverse instance uses those words in neither the URL nor the website itself. How would you handle that specific issue?
  
  I don't know, and I think that's a fair point...
  Of course, part of the reason that Reddit is so easy to find on Google is because it's already a huge and established website with lots of traffic. It's never easy for a new site to compete with established players in terms of search engine results, and I think the bulk of that problem lies with the search engine providers themselves.

Fediverse really needs onboarding pages that hides some of the wires.
Join Lemmy for example should highlight the content and UI, and a big "Join the Lemmy Fediverse" button. Click the button and it asks 3 questions and send you directly to account creation for an active instance matching your answers.
Frankly instance choice should be something people think about after they've been involved for a while, at least until we have a few multi-million active user instances to choose from

If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
We don't want the fediverse to replace reddit. Specially in term of popularity. What made reddit collapse in quality is the amount of people on the platform. The 3rd party app thing was only a trigger for many people. Many others have seen the quality of the content of reddit nosedive with time. The festival of memes and one liners has been described again and again. We didn't have this during those few weeks here. We will have it if the platform becomes too popular. How could it be otherwise? How can you picture a popular platform without the popular content? The platform filtering through some hurdles is a good thing.
Even now you can already see the bad behavior of redditor being reflected in the content. And it's only starting.
People have to come out of interest. Otherwise your platform will be filled with 1-click meme posters, and that's probably not what you want.

I do like a lot of things about Kbin, and visually it's much better than unmodified Lemmy in a browser, but it also has its own share of problems, not least with intuitiveness. I don't understand why communities are called Magazines, and the terminology of "Favorite", "Reduce" and "Boost" are very confusing to me. Trying to make a new thread might lead you down a microblogging path instead since "Post" sounds more like a new thread than "Article" to a newcomer.
There also seems to be much slower sync between Kbin and various Lemmy instances compared to intra-sync between lemmy instances themselves. Kbin also doesn't have an API (yet?), but a more tech savvy individual than me will have to say how big of a deal that is.
Both Sync and Boost have large and loyal userbases and will probably attract plenty of users to Lemmy, and good Third Party Apps might help with first impressions and onboarding for new users.
Ultimately though, content is king. I liked Kbin better when I first made my accounts, but then we had a Race Week in Formula 1 and the community here was dead while discussions were happening on Lemmy, and since the sync was slow so I ended up over there.

I don't care if it replaces reddit. I care that it remains free of corporate control.

If the devs coming from the 3rd party apps killed by Reddit can integrate like they say they're going to then it'll REALLY help with all this. Just have to wait and see.

I don't want the fediverse to replace reddit. I just want a place to post and share stuff without corpo baggage.

All the android apps don't have support for kbin, I'm assuming its same for iOS. So kbin probably won't go anywhere really until that changes...

Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.
I don't think this is the path most people take to becoming new Reddit users.
I think most people end up using new social media sites because they get linked to content already on a given site that they like. This could be from friends sharing links, or through Google results from the site.

You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code...
Not sure what universe you are from but in my reality that's just bullshit. What you said is there but right next to the "set up a server" button is a "join a server button". And right above the scary code pictures is another "join a server button".

Lemmy and kbin are still very much in their infancy while Reddit has been around for nearly 20 years. There's definitely going to be growing pains since it's still so new and for right now at least most people that are going to join are people that are leaving Reddit so it's probably going to remain a fairly niche thing at least in the short term.
Secondly, I don't think they have to necessarily replace Reddit and they both could go on and do their own things. Honestly, even during my time on Reddit I found the smaller communities were better than large or default communities IMO. I just find that smaller communities have better engagement where ones that are too big your post or comment will end up getting buried.
Even if Lemmy or kbin don't overtake Reddit, I think there's still a place for them.

You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code...
More or less exactly what happened with me. Bounced off of Lemmy 4-5 times trying to decide on an instance and when this and Squabbles was recommended it seemed more intuitive.
Another option would be a lemmy instance becomes dominant and that hits the top SEO spot. Then most people use that to browse until they want to sign up and then either choose that or look around for others.

I choose kbin over Lemmy because most Lemmy instances don’t work for me. I made accounts on Lemmy.world, beehaw, and here. Kbin is the only one I can log in on all of my devices. The Lemmy instances only work on my Mac, when I try to log in on my iPhone or windows machine the login just spins.
So this is my home now

I agree woth all your points except for one
You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister...
I see no problem here. RIP Lemmy, fucking legend

I am fine with that. Fediverse is good as it is without all the reddit simpletons.

The thing that worries me about kbin is that everything is located on one single instance. You guys are building a lot of centralization over there which might lead to a Reddit 2.0 scandal at some point
posted from Lemmy
- There are other active instances: https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list
  But things are not as evenly spread as among lemmy instances (yet), and a lot of Reddit migration advice points to kbin.social as the main onboarding space.

User experience is an extremely important part of on going growth. I feel like even with the migration under the circumstances, the onboarding and learning curve for new users is very difficult on kbin or lemmy vs reddit or other mainstream socials.
This may seem trivial to motivated users to go through the setup and learning required but for further migration and adoption the UX definitely needs significant improvement. I haven't seen or heard much being said on this subject regarding the fediverse in a serious way.
Products that are already simple to understand and use, spend time refining and reducing friction for growth and retention. I know these products are in their early stages but while the fediverse has its pros, I am concerned that the rate of improvement of UX for the fediverse will be very slow. But I am hopeful that people will keep pushing to make it better.
- for YEARS I refused to use the site which should not be named because I hated the UI. RIF is literally the only reason I explored outside the group I joined for.

Me, reading this through lemmy (feddit): hmmm yes
But for real, I see what you mean with the first impression at join-lemmy.

I tried Lemmy yesterday but today, probably thanks to the influx of new users, it's been extremely slow to the point of unusability. So now I'm trying out kbin which seems to be running faster (although still slower than old.reddit). Ignoring those issues, I can't decide yet which I like more.
I'm also still kinda confused about all the Federation stuff. So supposedly you should be able to interact with kbin hosted stuff on lemmy and vice versa and I can indeed see posts from lemmy on kbin's "front page" but what if I happen to come across something directly on the lemmy.world website (or any other Fediverse instance for that matter, where I don't even have an account), is there an easy way to access it from kbin.social?
I feel like the decentralized nature of Fediverse is at the same time its strength but at the same time makes it harder for users to switch.

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