My problem with Lemmy is the lack of activity in niche communities. You're right that there needs to be a critical mass and arguably Lemmy has it, but only for the most mainstream, generic type of content. It doesn't have the mass to sustain any sort of niche, outside of maybe tech related topics because of the way the userbase is slanted.

I find myself going back there often because of that, but I hope that the userbase for generic content enough to sustain and grow, from where more active niche communities can spring up.

To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I'm willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.

Yes, I don't need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.

I follow damn near every community on lemmy that I followed on reddit. I follow 97 communities on lemmy with all communities active and none with 0 posts. I left reddit immediately and haven't looked back. All the news, whether political or tech related, I get from lemmy. I think people just haven't found the right communities. You have to put in some time to find them since you may have 5 or 6 with the same name. But, once you do, you should be good to go.

Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

And it doesn't seem entirely impossible that our Elon Musk fanboy Steve will screw up again.

I won't be surprised to read in the future:

• Reddit Introduces Its Own Version of X's (Formerly Known as Twitter's) Blue Checkmark
• Backlash After Reddit Strikes Exclusive Deal to Provide Trainingsdata to OpenAI
• Reddit Introduces Paid Membership Options for Communities
• Something Money Grabbing Reddit Related

Reddit has always had changes that made people want to leave. Removing CSS was the first that comes to mind. Now that lemmy exists it could be seen as a new platform to jump to every time reddit does something dumb or anti user. I have high hopes for lemmy

Lemmy has enough user activity to fulfill my time-wasting needs.

There doesn't need to be one website that EVERYONE is at. The Web didn't used to be so damn consolidated.

I don't give one shit about "Lemmy vs. Reddit". I care about Lemmy having active communities to engage in, regardless of what is happening on some other website.

"You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down."

This is probably my favorite part of Lemmy. The comment section feels more meaningful, and not a landfill of garbage posts. Additionally, if I make a comment, there is a higher chance that it will be read and responded to, so it feels like I am actually engaging with a community, and not just chucking my thoughts into space and hoping they land on a planet.

Honestly, I don't know if it's the fewer users, the lack of trolls, the newer apps I've been forced to use or the topics that I've been getting into since joining Lemmy. But I have been considerably more active here both commenting and posting, than I ever was on Reddit.

It may have started as a way to do my part for the growth of Lemmy, but it's not been about that for me for some time now.

4. No surveillance capitalism. unlike reddit, lemmy isn't trying to monetize/track you.

5. Freedom/openness. Already, someone can use a third party app to use lemmy. Moving forward, I think, people will come up with new ways to utilize lemmy/activity pub.

Reddit has now checkmark/verified or whatsoever they call like any other centralized social media. Extreme cringe

To me there is no vs. My web browser has tabs and I can have multiple ones open at a time. It is cool to have more things, I don't need to commit to anything like an app or website.

2. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

I definitely think having mobile apps is an essential step. I was looking at alternative platforms such as Raddle.me but using a mobile browser was an extra hurdle (similar to using the official Reddit app) that kept me from regularly checking in.

3. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

I could see this causing issues later. We've already seen issues arise with some instances using the .ml domain or not being updated immediately.

Defederation is another beast all together. Most of an instance might be fine but a few problematic communities could create problems leading to arguments and, as much as I hate the term, drama.

One problem I see:

You can google site:reddit.com whatever But if you google site:lemmy.world whatever then you're losing a significant amount of results. To get good results, you need to know which Lemmy instances is likely to have your answer, and with communities duplicated over different servers, that can be tough.

In the end I find I prefer this federation model, although I'm not sure although I'm a bit concerned about funding it if it scales up to the size of Reddit (same with Mastodon vs twitter).

I hope Lemmy never gets to be the size of Reddit. We'll have some level of Eternal September eventually, but please not at that level. I really hope not. It's overwhelming unless you're in one of the niche subreddits.

There were no phone apps

Jerboa be like:

(I realize I'm posting this with a very real risk of somebody replying "yes," but Jerboa was, in fact, usable on June 12.)

The main difference for me is that I feel like I'm part of a global project, not just a product in some big tech's ecosystem.

The future of Lemmy has nothing to do with R whatsoever.

Infiltration... As I've moved over from reddit the community feels much more open to discussion rather than comment section filled internal jokes.

We just need Lemmy users who are daywalkers to post links into reddit. Or recreate certain communities here, but bringing over the good and not the toxic. Ama, but maybe amapolitics bringing more hyper local awareness to the masses?

Quality over quantity any day

The important catalyst is good third party clients working with Lemmy as Voyager and Sync and people learning about the fediverse.

A huge userbase like reddit's is both a pro and a con. The big advantages include diversity of content (especially niche/hobby stuff), more content, and higher frequency of new content overall.

But it comes with some pretty big disadvantages, too. Moderation is difficult so they are happy to let a small number of "power mods" run everything. Subs that were fun & interesting in the past....after they hit the front page and become popular they go downhill quickly. Divisive USA-centric politics.

And of course the "asshole filter" effect: where the assholes drive away the non-assholes, so the concentration of assholes is always going up.