Submitted 3 days ago by Grumpy404@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
I get there are still users but it feel empty at times compared “other” platforms.
Why isint lemmy more popular?
Because Reddit exists.
Reddit itself didn’t truly take off to massive scale until some other players were out of the way. It was the underdog for a long time.
It’s a nightmare to even sign up.
Nothing else to it.
People will move en-masse to new platforms if the switch is easy. Nothing easy about using this platform.
Obv the people here are techy enough to surmount the initial hurdles, but don’t kid yourself, the average person doesn’t know a damned thing. Using tech and understanding tech are two vastly different skills. And you actually need to understand tech to even get started here.
Nightmare? It’s so easy to make a world account
“Nightmare”
Provide an email account, answer a logic-based question. Yes, “nightmare” indeed.
network effect. There’s fewer people here so there’s fewer people here.
That said, I like it just how it is and would caution anyone against wishing for more users.
Don’t focus on getting more users. Focus on making the content here the best it can be.
It’s inevitable that the quality of the experience here will change with more users. Whether it’s a net positive or negative remains to be seen.
To be sure, these are the “good old days” of lemmy.
As long as corporations and states can’t get a foothold with their bribery, dark algorithms, and bots it should remain fairly decent.
federation is supposed to help. we will have to see, when it gets to it.
Same reason star trek and Linux isn’t more popular. It’s for nerds
star wars however is a digested version of trek, it just alot more drama and less “sci-fi” feel to it.
Because people still use Reddit for some reason.
Because it is fragmented and hard to understand how it works for average person.
I don’t know a single person that knows it exists other than a few that ive tried to get interested. I have told a few friends that use reddit but they just don’t get it.
I started lemmy a few months ago, stopped using reddit completely a few weeks ago and I don’t miss it other than all the dog posts…more people need to post pics of their doggos on here !!!
Try monnett, people posto sooooo many dogs there
Everyone to whom I mention lemmy - even some of those to whom I have before - responds by asking about a musician of whom I’d never heard before I started having these conversations.
To be fair, telling people it was founded by Motorhead fans is a better selling point than that it was started by Marxist leninists.
counterpoint, lemmy is popular enough
I’m okay with habing a lot less people in lemmy if it means there less nazis and less toxicity
not advertised, not run by a for profit company
Comfort mainly. There is a small barrier for entry here, and the vast majority can’t hurdle it.
I’m with you and wish lemmy was the default, but it takes time.
Because there’s still a handful of basic stuff that still hasn’t gotten sorted out yet for some reason.
Like if I wanted to share your post with my friends, I’ll send them this link: https://piefed.ca/c/nostupidquestions/p/377144/why-isint-lemmy-more-popular. If they’re using a mobile app, then it might be fine. But if they’re on desktop and want to comment or vote here but aren’t already on my instance, they need to go back to their home instance, search up this community, and then search for this post. Why isn’t there some sort of native way where I can just click on a button and have it open up in my home instance? Or even better: integrate something like threadiverse.link into Lemmy/PieFed so it immediately redirects me to my home instance’s version on this post.
And before someone suggests using a different front-end or using a browser script, I appreciate you trying to help but my issue is why this isn’t even natively part of Lemmy. And I’m not even sure if it’s in the pipelines for V1.0.
Another issue is that there are still posts that don’t federate properly. And it’s not because an instance was defederated. What posts I see on this account might be different from what I see on a separate account. What is even more frustrating is that sometimes, I can’t even force my instance to fetch the post. I’ll give it the direct link and it still can’t find the post on my instance.
As long as these basic issues remain unresolved, Lemmy will not become popular. A site can’t be popular if I can’t even share a post to my friends properly. Or if I can’t even see the post, then I wouldn’t be able to share it with anyone!
People aren’t here for Lemmy in particular. They’re here to avoid the others. If all you want is content, you’ll just go to Reddit. If you are here, it’s because you recognized something of the awfulness in corporate reddit but liked the format. Lemmy is Reddit for people who pay attention and care.
Network effect. Reddit has more users and more discussion, drawing in more people and discussion. I’m not worried because enshittification and bots will run it into the ground
The verification aspect of signing up for an instance. People say they’ll leave Reddit but still go back to it. I was one of those until I remembered how they murdered my boy Apollo.
People stay on mainstream corporate platforms no matter how badly they enshittify because that's where everyone else is. They don't want to jump ship unless everyone else will jump ship with them, and so nobody makes the first move.
Lemmy isn't more popular because Lemmy isn't more popular. Lemmy wants to be an alternative to Reddit, but the best thing Reddit had going for it was all the niche communities for fandoms, hobbies, and other interests. That's something that just can't exist here, because if you take a niche thing and multiply it by a niche platform, I'll bet that I might very well be the only person on this platform who is into some of my hyperfixations. So people who want to talk about topics that have no community here, leave and go back to bigger platforms.
I'm still here to try and push for a better future, but I honestly don't know how we can grow this place to the kind of critical mass it would take to really get the ball rolling.
You need to game the system.
Create OC here then post that to other social media sites.
That directs people here. Without that Fediverse will take a lot longer to grow.
reddit has all the drama too,
Reddit has been around for 20 years and Lemmy not near as long. Reddit didn’t really hit it big until Digg screwed the pooch driving away users around 2010. I don’t see Lemmy hitting Reddit number probably ever, but reddit is one of the highest trafficked sites on the web. Lemmy is steadily growing, but I think to many non users, federation and instances is a confusing prospect, so they never try. As it grows, I would imagine it will get easier or at least clearer for the layman and the velocity of growth will increase due to that and a larger user base as a whole.
Also the client situation is confusing to normies. Search for Lemmy on the spyware cancer store and you’ll see what I mean.
Pixelfed and Mastodon have already figured that out.
only way lemmy will grow, if reddit is continously banning people, or enshittfying some major thing, that prevents a certain community to not be viable. reddit noticed of thier large purges were getting rid of too many people at once, they now do alot of background banning instead.
reddit was niche until the 2016 elections. that’s when it really started exploding and you started hearing abotu it in the mainstream media and boomers had heard of it.
federation and instances is a confusing prospect
Which is why we shouldn't frontload people with that stuff. They don't need to understand decentralization from the start, let them familiarize themselves with the fediverse first before throwing that at them. Just recommend a default instance, maybe change which every few posts if centralization is a concern. They'll pick up the idea of instances as they interact with the fediverse.
People tend to overexplain, just point people to an instance link and that’s it
I’d say because it’s still new and the content is very nerd heavy as you have probably seen from all the Linux posts. Also, most user’s here come from the reddit exodus after the removal of third party apps.
One other thing is that when you link content from Lemmy you can just link the image directly instead of sending a link to Lemmy with a login screen. The adoption rate from people linking will be a lot lower since Lemmy is not sacrificing quality to increase numbers.
Either way, I like the size and it suits me, I can “finish” my Lemmy for the day in a reasonable amount of time and I get my fix of Linux news, memes and shitposts so it’s just a win for me.
Popular platforms have big expensive algorithms that monitor user behavior and present content they’re most likely to interact with when they’re most likely to interact with it. Participation in those platforms isn’t a deliberate act anymore.
this is the correct answer
roughly 2 million people gave lemmy a try and 1.95 million walked away
Honestly this. Everyone is always “on”. Everything HAS to be about politics, and if one syllable you utter isn’t cursing Donald Trump and his descendants unto the thousandth generation you’re labelled a fascist. I mean for heaven’s sake I don’t like him, I didn’t vote for him, and I’m counting the days until his term is over, but no that’s apparently not enough.
if there is anything i’ve learned, online or not. miserable people hate anyone who isn’t as miserable as they are and will harass and insult you for not being miserable just like them.
for example, i like my job. this makes a lot of people immediately hostile to me when they find out because they hate their job.
Why do Reddit and Twitter users not have a similar problem with all the fascist shit going on over there? If extremism would be the problem on Lemmy, why isn’t it a problem on Reddit or Twitter?
Twitter does have that problem. It’s had that problem for years. That’s why I’m not on Twitter. That doesn’t cancel out the craziness on here though.
because most lemmy users are extreme leftists who think everyone is a fascist. i am a facist according to lemmy.
I can agree with you, the initial experience can be daunting for new users especially since majority of communities are of political nature. This experience honestly is why i think most people now reside in such communities - as that’s the experience with me.
In addition, I can agree with extremist stances being prominent on here. Eco-fascism is one of those that I found common even when I was only part of the “basic” communities.
This is a really good question, and I suppose the answer is the same as to why Mastodon is not more popular.
I think it is a combination of several factors:
Lemmy currently feels a lot like reddit used to in the beginning, when posts came from real people who just wanted to share ideas about things they cared about. I’d rather keep it as is than see it grow into the bloated bot farm of garbage and advertising that reddit has become.
somewhat. early reddit was a lot more mainstream. it was mostly a link aggregator in its early days and subreddits were not really a thing until later.
Lack of marketing.
It’s somewhat difficult to navigate at first and most users find the most popular platforms and don’t have a reason to move on, simple as that. Ease of access and, unfortunately, advertising would lead to Lemmy being more popular. But who would fund the advertising?
most users find the most popular platforms and don't have a reason to move on
This is definitely a good point. Is even visible here, with not just Mbin but also Piefed still barely having users compared to Lemmy.
Guerilla marketing?
Wheatpaste posters or something.
For an online service to get popular, it has to be either a new, really interesting thing with a lot of advertisement, have the support of some big celebrities (usually through advertisement too), or literally pay people to come en masse to artificially make it popular, so that more people comes organically (so, basically, a large advertisement budget). It also have to be easy because most people can’t read more than a few lines of explanations on why things are different.
No lemmy instance have none of the pre-requisites, and the accessibility is not really there for the general public, due to various things. My main gripe is that federation and local moderation means you’ll have to create multiple account to access content from certain groups of servers, which is a lot to ask to people that can’t be asked to make even one account, but there are other minor things too. The sheer choice of instances and client, seen as an advantage by some, is simply a bothersome annoyance to people used to large platforms doing all the work of deciding what’s good and bad for them.
most of them are still addicted to reddit thats why, when you have all under one house, its hard to beat, and thier communities there is still large and eclipses lemmy.
It’s not necessarily a matter of moving. People who are into those niche subjects will gladly add more. I’m into guitars, and that’s the only thing I really miss about Reddit. If I was in all the Reddit guitar subs, and found out about Lemmy guitar forums (which practically don’t exist), I wouldn’t switch to Lemmy, I’d just start browsing Lemmy’s forums, too.
Start with Cats. Lemmy has a real lack of Cat material. Cats are like Artists in a run down neighborhood. Once the artists arrive, everybody knows the neighborhood will change over the next few years. Cats are like that in the Internet. Lemmy needs cats to attract more eyeballs.
The UI
🤔
Same reason Mastodon isn’t as popular as Twitter… a lot of people really don’t understand the concept of federation, or why it’s important in order to maintain a robust and healthy discussion. They’re fine with dictatorship as long as it aligns with their sensibilities.
Also, the concept of “one website, one app” is infinitely easier to comprehend than “many instances, many apps, still one protocol”.
no startup/angel/vc/pe funds to burn in advertising to capture the market.
Having to choose a server before you know what that means or the differences between the slightly different versions of federated networks makes it more confusing.
Yes, “it doesn’t matter which server you choose,” because you can see the posts from anywhere, in theory. Except, it also kind of does matter. Places defederate from each other. If you pick a smaller instance, it may suddenly just go down and then you’re back at the start again.
Honestly, I’ve made… 5? 6? different versions of me on different instances. Kbin went down, didn’t get into Mastodon, lemm.ee went down, didn’t like Mbin as much as Kbin, tried fedia.io sort of liked it, ended up largely on piefed.social, but also like being on sopuli.xyz because it’s defederated from less and has more global content.
It’s confusing and niche. I honestly really love it even when I kind of hate it. I end up ahead of the curve in a lot of tech news because of the hardcore enthusiasts on here.
I have two accounts that went dark. The main mastodon website with the list of all instances really needs to filter by popularity and longevity so people can make an informed choice!
Except, it also kind of does matter.
This is absolutely correct, and is also another reason why Lemmy hasn’t taken off. For people like you and I, it seems like we don’t really mind making alts. But for the average Joe, this could be a tedious thing. And if the average Joe isn’t able to figure out the Fediverse, then this platform will struggle becoming popular.
This could be avoided, though. You could just join an instance that rarely defederates from others. But first, you’d need to figure out which instance has the fewest defederations (how do you even figure this out if you’ve just started to poke your head into the Fediverse??). And when you do figure it out, you join that instance and all will be good. That instance might become the most popular in the entire Fediverse.
That is until the admins go on a power trip and start saying to other instances: “If your instance doesn’t do X, Y, and Z, then we, the LARGEST instance of the Fediverse, will defederate from you!”
Once again, you and I would just say “Fuck it, we’re going to another instance”. And what if we find another instance that rarely defederates, but it has other problems such as frequent connectivity issues? Or maybe the admin’s a dick? We could keep searching, but we might never be able to find one that’s as good as the first one.
But most importantly, would the average Joe also do the same as us and move to another instance? Chances are, they might not and will stay. Just look at Reddit after the API drama. Despite being spat in the face by Reddit, the majority of the people stayed. But I don’t blame them because the Fediverse is confusing and has many unresolved issues.
TLDR: If the average Joe doesn’t get the Fediverse, the Fediverse will not grow.
because at the moment Reddit is now mainstream, and reactionaries are taking over (FU spez). Therefore much of the far left and anarchists deemed “violent” by spez have moved to Lemmy and Bluesky and made it their safe space for mostly politically-charged topics, topics that spez or fucking Muskhead would kill off.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Whaaaaaat? It has a far better signal to noise ratio than those ‘other’ platforms. As long as you’re into Star Trek memes and Linux.
Steve@communick.news 3 days ago
I’m into Star Trek, and all set to switch to Linux this weekend!
tedd_deireadh@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Do it! I made the plunge and have zero regrets. Everything works, it’s fun, and I get to annoyingly pester friends, family, and strangers about the benefits of open source software!
Nemo@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
or ecology!
…or have ADHD
jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 day ago
the linux content is even that great on Lemmy
more just cheer leading; in a good way
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
or communism