1y ago

Refugee Redditors as they make the move.

230 comments

Me, who's already been here for a few weeks, trying to just load a post or make a comment right now with the influx of traffic:
- So true!
- Use a non Lemmy.world account and you’ll have more success
  
  how does that work

Image Transcription: Meme
['Let me in' - a two panel image of a man in a suit standing outside a closed metal gate, and shaking it vigorously in the second panel with his head tilted back and his mouth open screaming. The second panel also has small amount of motion blur. There is text at the bottom of both images.]
LEMMY IN.
LEMMY IIIIIIIN!
^{I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!}
- I appreciate the work you're doing to aid in accessibility. I'm not sure using "unkempt hair" is quite right. I would have thought this is natural afro hair. I don't think the hair description adds to the transcription so is probably better to remove.
  
  It's an unkempt afro
  
  To be safe, I removed the hair description altogether. Initially added it because I thought it might've been part of the character's appearance in the skit. Given the rest of the character's appearance, I wasn't sure if it was textured hair or just curly/frizzy hair blowing in the wind with poor image quality, and whether it was an intentional choice for the source material or just his natural hair type.
- You're great for transcribing! To avoid the word unkempt, as that can be offensive, I would transcribe the hair as 'clumpy afro-textured hair'.
  
  I thought it was messy or blowing in the wind tbh, since he didn't look like a kind of person who would have textured hair. Looking further into it, I think I was fooled by the scene's lighting.
- Thank you for doing this, I have good vision, but at the time I found this post the image was missing, so your transcription was the only way of getting the context of the conversion

I'm in this picture and I'm actually ok with it.
- Me too

Me, who didn't join one of the huge instances, instead hosting his own instance: "Why is everyone complaining? Lol."
- This is the 3rd time I've seen someone mention they run their own instance. The other two specifically mentioned how it was for just them, and I'm wondering what the benefit is going that extra mile for just yourself. Is it worth it? Or is it simply a case of "because I fucking can?" 🤔
  
  You don't need to worry about being defederated unless the instance is whitelist only (or you're an ass).
  
  I run an open instance for everyone. The name (FOSSware) suggests that it's for people interested in FOSS (free and open source software) only, but in the description, I specifically mentioned that it's an open instance for everyone, just like with lemmy.world and other popular instances.
  I'm running this instance, because I love technology and I'm hosting a lot of stuff for my family, friends and I, as well as some public facing things already. It's a hobby.
  Another reason why I'm doing it is that I just want to give back to the community, as I strongly believe that decentralized tech is the future. We were proven time and time again that centralized approaches, where only one entity is in control, is really bad for the userbase.
  
  I am part of a team that runs an instance for financial discussion, specifically related to direct registration of securities.
  For us, the benefit is additional control over the resiliency and transparency of the server and moderation style.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
- The wretched refuse of Reddit's scheming shore

Me trying to login in to every instance except the one where I signed up.
- “Oh yeah I think I get it now”
  continues to mess up
  
  i made a misteak once.
- I've registered on at least two, maybe three instances because I could never move from one to the other. I think i may have it working now.
- Holy shit im in this boat. My mobile experience has been rough. No idea what I did or if any of it was right. Jerboa, Readtthat, logins, confusion. I'm getting the hang of it on PC and on Lemmy.world. But, fuck ig I know if Lemmy.world's "all" is the true all?
  
  But, fuck ig I know if Lemmy.world’s “all” is the true all?
  There is no true "All". Every instance pulls in content from communities that at least one user on that instance has subscribed to.
  You can use the Lemmy Explorer to go find communities that nobody on your instance has found yet.
  
  Do you use a regular browser or app for lemmy? It took me a day or two, but its finally all starting to make sense within my Connect for Lemmy app.

Now we need lemmy.in
- I dream of a world with a nsfw community on lemm.ee/c/smash
  
  Or maybe lemm.ee/c/datpeepee
  
  Becky said my tail was big.
- I picked up "lemmyc.com" (lemmesee.com & lemmesea.com) for the same reason.

Hopefully, the momentum of people transferring to lemmy stays. I've had conversations with other Redditors who recognized the importance of third party apps but went ahead and downloaded the official app anyway.
- That's insane. I downloaded boost because I hated the official app. Since I heard the news about the API I never even once considered downloading the official app again. After all, you're exactly doing what sp*z wants you to do.
  
  Tell me about it. Just goes to show that certain people aren't willing to compromise on what they perceive as their home.
  
  Lemmy also has a really great app environment. Boost for Lemmy is apparently already on the way, as well as both Sync, Slide, and a bunch of new apps too!
- How can anyone use the official app after using a 3PA for years? The official app is laggy and bloated...
  
  Addicted to the ecosystem
  
  I honestly don't know. It baffles me. Maybe it's convenient but their decisions completely invalidates the blackout and just confirms spez's words that this will all blow over.
- I tried the official app soon after it's initial release and didn't like it. Tried again the other day and it was even worse than I remember. It was ugly and slow scrolling on my phone. I deleted it right away. I don't mind using the reddit desktop site, if I go back for my niche communities until they make it to the Fediverse, but I'm no longer using reddit on mobile if I can't use my favorite 3rd-party app. Reddit even made it's mobile website annoying to use, trying push people to its app. I absolutely hate when sites do that.

Let's do this thing.
- Lol, this exactly. I tried to make an account 3 different times, each on a different server, couldn't get sign-up to submit till the third time. I was one of too many trying. Better problem than nobody being here!

I am honestly curious how long it will take for lemmy to get its first million users. May we win or not. but still nice to see a chance and grow
- If you trust the totals at https://the-federation.info/platform/73 -- then we're already past 2M users.
  But if you look at "Active this month", then it is only 60k users. Lemmy counts activity differently than Reddit. Active means: made a comment or post, whereas Reddit counts any user you had the post in their feed as active.
  So this month there's about 2M users, 2M comments, 600k posts, but only 60k of those users generated all of the content.
  The only rule on Reddit was: 90% of the users were non-participating lurkers. It seems this might be accurate here too, or at least approximately.
  
  There's also a lot of bots. There's like 20 servers with 70k "users" and 10 or less active users (making posts & comments). Doing the math, that should reduce the total by 1.4m. 600,000 real users is still pretty great though.
- Win?
  
  I think in this scenario “winning” would be replacing reddit as the primary link aggregator and online forum. But even if that does happen eventually, it’ll be slow and gradual

Me cuz I suck with computers and couldn’t figure out how to make an account. It kept failing and one wanted me to write an essay on why I should be considered. Im a casual reddit users I didn’t want to write an essay. Finally signed up with lemmy.world and I know its slow cuz a lot of people are on it but at least it worked lol.
- I filled out the essay and didn't make the cut :( then I started to understand some more about this stuff and found lemmy.world
- That's me before the blackout, now settled on sh.itjust.works because shit just work

Is me! Dig it so far!
- You Dugg it
  I Reddited it
  Now we lem it.
  
  I keep following the refugees. I guess I really am a lemming

Oh god I finally was able to log in, 2 days after I thought I failed to make an account because none of the emails went through.
I wish there was some sort of way that I could send CPU power or bandwidth, tor style, to these new decentralized platforms. I totally get that they're having growing pains, and I also get that part of the tradeoff of decentralization is "well, who pays the hosting bills then?"
I'd love to put a percentage of my bandwidth and home server (or even AWS instance) CPU resources towards running an encrypted Lemmy.world instance. I don't want to just run my own barren, empty server like what the Federated system would let me do; I don't feel like that would actually have any benefit to making a reddit-replacement since why would anyone use my instance? No, I specifically want to dedicate resources to helping the popular instances, be able to run.
- Holy crap these upvote numbers are something new. Thanks spez 😅
- To be fair you're on the most popular instance, the nice thing about federated stuff is you can join a smaller instance that's not overloaded, and still have access the same content.
  I wish they did a better job of explaining that on the lemmy site haha
  
  But wouldn't accessing content on the other instance be just as slow? How would making your own instance just for sign in be beneficial?
  
  I wish they did, too. I thought it was different content for each instance.
- Take the money that you would've spend on AWS and donate it to lemmy.world. That would be the best solution IMO.

I was told there would be a refuge omelet bar!
- The omelet bar is a lie
  
  At least it wasn't the cake.

I have a feeling that the user of lemmy gonna be called lemmyin (lemmy in) just like how reddit and their users are redditor
Lemmyin this train. We're leaving reddit!!!!
- I think "lemmings" or "lemons" are going to be the final winners of that race.
  
  I love being a lemon
  
  🍋!
  
  Lemmonist?
- I just wish I knew how to make a top level comment on Jerboa
  
  The same way you made this comment? The same button is on the main post at the top
- Lemmyngs
- I like Fedditor because Lemmy is a reddit-esque link aggregator on the Fediverse.
- Lemur

I had my wife sign up yesterday as a daily reddit user and average tech skills. Based on that experience, I really don't think lemmy is going to go mainstream in its current form.
- I agree. Had the same thought. Right now I think the influx will be tech savvy users fleeing reddit and have no big problems understanding Lemmy.
  However, there will be (I hope!) a larger influx of 'normal' users wanting to check Lemmy out (my theory is that all the content creators are ending up here and the lurkers will start to follow content in the end) will have a hard time. Why bother them with instances or how you pick communities, how the fediverse works? Just allow people to sign-up, no forcing to choose server, one account only, deal with that login/create account when you end up on different servers, etc. Just make the initial access a smooth pane of glass. Later they can deep-dive in the tech if the so choose to. Just stop throwing tech into peoples faces, it really is as simple as that. Like someone else stated, if I drive a car I should not have knowledge about my engine, model/type of crankshaft, timing of the belt, etc. I have a garage for that sort of thing and I will not be bothered with details (unless I ask the mechanic of course).
  I said this before and it seems that the 'core' or 'old skool' Lemmy users have issues with that, you should have to know the tech if you want to join.
  I hope this will not be a typical open source/low level attitude of admins and tech savvy people where people are just lost in that tech maze. Whatever you need to run in the background, do whatever, just give me an alternative to reddit. This is not me speaking but I fear the average emigrating reddit user will want this simpleness. And why not give it to them, why force people to understand fediverse?
  
  People follow the path of least resistance and right now signing up to reddit is still that. Give a link to 1 of 10 or so general lemmy instances at the home page, let people sign up and explore. Offer a few links to some deeper understanding stuff for those who want it.
  The couple of people I've tried to get to migrate get hit with what they feel is a wall of text trying to understand what the fediverse is, and they're just straight up not interested in investing any time in this when they can still just easily log into reddit and be on their* way.
- It's basically the same premise. Link aggregator with a forum attached, where upvoted content rises to the top. She doesn't need to know how instances work in order to use it in the same way that she doesn't need to be a mechanic in order to drive her car.
  
  To an extent yes but when you follow a link to a different instance and try to log in with your account you can't. You have to get to that instance in the correct way to interact with it from what I understand.
- Agreed, a lot of what makes it cool for some, makes others uncomfortable, a client that abstracts a lot of the distributed nature of the service away would be more attractive to some.

New from Reddit today. This is my first comment. Hello Lemmy!

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I imagine Lemm.ee is bursting at the seams by now

I don't speak on behalf of everyone, but we prefer the term r/efugees

That was literally was me as I tried to make an account for 36 hours

stumbles in from reddit and throws up racist memes all over the floor

You earned my first upvote, or whatever it's called here. Bravo!
- i think it's called the same

This works a lot better than I thought it would lol

I feel exposed.
- Same... :D

How long has Lemmy actually been around? I only even heard about it because of the Reddit shit, and I had been actively looking for a replacement for almost 2 years.
- Initial release: May 5, 2019.
  Better late than never!
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software)
  
  and here I thought lemmy was brand-new
  
  Atleast there is more content in the fediverse now!

This was the perfect post!!

I FINALLY managed to make an account after 4 days of lurking limbo! Hi guys!

Me trying to figure out which damn app I can use that won't crash.
- Love how varied and even a little contradictory all the responses are.
  Probably isn't very helpful.
  I use Connect and Liftoff. Connect feels a bit more refined but prefer Liftoff's comment styling.
- Connect for lemmy going strong on my Samsung s6, love the AMOLED theme, UI feels similar to infinity from which I migrated
  
  Using connect from RIF and pretty smooth.
  Issue isn't so much the viewer / interface. Easy enough to adapt or as others have mentioned looks like there is a flood of options coming. The real issue is content. Lemmy is a vertible desert. Most posts on Lemmy are about Lemmy. We need sub migration or this bombs. Instead of reddit mods posting pictures of John Oliver and telling themselves they are revolutionaries, they need to pack the hell up and encourage user base to move here. Can you imagine the smug grin on Spez's face when people are channeling their creative energy to post hand painted John Oliver artwork and Spez memes to his servers? He could give two shits if all of reddit was AI Spez nudes if traffic is up. Leaving and NOT CRAWLING BACK is the only thing truly impactful. If you're reading this you are least starting to solve the problem.
- Android? Jerboa has been working flawlessly on my pixel 5.
  Will be checking out Boost for Lemmy too once whenever that gets released
- Sync is making a client for Lemmy. I used sync for Reddit for 10 years and it was the best.
- I switched to Liftoff after Jerboa had issues working on lemmy.world for a bit. Loving Liftoff! Little difficult to find in the app store, so search by name.
- I've been using Thunder, very sleek app for android and ios

Lemmein!!

After 16+ years on Reddit, I deleted my comments and posts and then my account. Did the same with Twitter. A little sad but also liberating.

Enjoying Lemmy so far! Hoping the communities fill out a bit. Need my communities for IASIP and Walking Dead 🥺
- Yeah, I'm still torn between the old subs and lemmy. Most communities aren't active or created here yet.
  
  I miss r/SquaredCircle so much. I think I've found everything else here though.
- I find it interesting.
  Hoping the constant timeouts get resolved. I imagine more users will create server problems though.
  I don't think any Lemmy host is making money.

It's me!

LMAO

😂😂😂

Yup. Need to fix the itch. Using wefwef to imitate Apollo App

My biggest problem so far is that reddit.com is entered automatically by muscle memory. I need to rewire my brain, or redirect reddit.com to lemmy.world in the router.
- You can edit your hosts file so that if you type in reddit.com it just provides lemmy.world's IP address and connects to that instead.
  
  You can also do this to some websites on your coworkers computers with hilarious results
- Maybe block it on your router?

Made an account on sh.itjust.works now and the performance is so much better. Federation is so awesome.

lolol def feel a little homeless
- Do you have some change?

I'm a degenerate gambler from Reddit. Now I'm a degenerate gambler on Lemmy.

The memes are already better than reddit’s daily meme reposts

I am refugee no idea what’s going on yet but it feels right.

theres hope

theres hope

Hey guys! This is my very first comment ever on the Fediverse. I'm still not 100% sure how this all works. My tech-savvy brother tried explaining it to me, and I think it's like a collection of sites, each with their own collection of subs, all connected through one account, so you have the ability to cross-platforms seamlessly. I'm so happy to finally hop on this lemmingrush like everyone else! :) Hi everyone!

So a few months in I can see now lemmy is a great alternative to reddit, but most people are still on reddit and u/spez was right. The uproar is gone by and everybody just lives with a shitty reddit app now and api is now paid.