Have a look at this post, we had a similar discussion there: https://lemmy.world/post/3074361

Long story short, the platform still needs a bit of work before being able to really move communities. Some examples exist (lemdro.id, piracy, startrek) but those are tech savvy audiences, there would be a lot more friction with more generalist communities

How about we just forget about trying to beat anyone and just get on to using the platform.

Reddit won't die anytime soon.

Lemmy won't become popular anytime soon.

It took Reddit years before it became a major platform known by millions. It will take Lemmy years to gain notoriety among millions. Give it time, enjoy what it so now because in a year, two years or three or four years from now, we'll all be wishing for the good old days when Lemmy just started and we were able to enjoy the simple system it is now.

Not this again...

Lemmy isn't everyones' cup of tea. Reddit, despite the API shenanigans, still does what people want.

People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven't already. They'd sooner go to Discord. Less cognitive load, and their subs already have servers set up. Lemmy has a 5 communities different servers for each sub and most will be inactive, so it's already a losing battle.

Make Lemmy it's own thing, rather than aspiring to be the 2nd head of the Hydra. Organic growth is good, sustainable. Boom and bust wholesale migrations look like failed hostile takeovers.

Honestly, I would rather Lemmy attract its own community naturally rather than it be the place all redditors pipe into. I think most people who have already come from there can agree the culture is not really conductive to quality discussion, and we've started to see some of that leak into Lemmy as well.

Rather than just copy/paste reddit's users and culture, we should try to develop both on their own. Create an environment that users want to spend their time on. Then through word of mouth on other platforms they entice people here. I don't think just being the place redditors flood after every fuckup is healthy for the growth of the platform. As a Mastodon user, I'm kinda glad it isn't the primary platform Twitter refugees are flocking to.

Much the popular posts in lemmy are memes, shitpostings, or politics/technology news which we can easily obtain from other media. The way I see it, lemmy lacks experts, scientists, doctors etc that that can bring interest and credibility to the posts or threads. They can help generate quality contents, what lemmy lacks till now.

Agree with Blaze, they probably remember too when Reddit was in its infancy, it was unappealing to your average netizen, the same as Lemmy is now

Remember that 90% of Reddit is now ex-Tumblr and Facebook people; they would come to lemmy, see it's a bit clunky, and go tell a hundred others on Reddit how bad an experience it was for them

Next thing lemmy has a reputation like Tesla that isn't going to shake off any time soon

No. Most large Reddit communities are toxic, both on the user and mod end. Let Lemmy grow at its own pace without repeating the same mistakes Reddit made.

Stop trying to turn this place into R. We left because it was shit. If you don't like this place, go somewhere else.

Oh boy, it looks like main character syndrome patients have migrated from Reddit...

In all honesty, as much as I want non-profit Reddit alternatives to succeed, I think Lemmy is a tough sell to Redditors. Here's roughly how I think that'd go.

Lemmy user: "You should try Lemmy"

Redditor: "Sure, what's its website?"

Lemmy user: "There are many"

Redditor: "Wait what"

Lemmy user: "You have to pick one"

Redditor: "Why?"

Lemmy user: "See, Lemmy is not a website, but a network of federated instan-"

Redditor: "That sounds complicated. I just want a website like Reddit"

Lemmy user: "But don't you care about how Reddit has treated its mods, app devs and the general community?"

Redditor: "Yeah but all this Lemmy and Kbin stuff is confusing. Can I just use a website without reading up on all this Fediverse stuff?"

Lemmy user: "Okay, just go to Lemmy.world"

Redditor: "It seems to be down"

Lemmy user: "Hmm, maybe try Lemmy.ml?"

Redditor: "This website looks a little... hard to wrap my head around"

Lemmy user: "There are alternative frontends"

Redditor: "What now?"

Lemmy user: "Do you know about Alexandrite?"

Redditor: "Nevermind, I'm out"

If we want to convince a wide range of users to use Lemmy, we have to make using Lemmy a no-brainer for everyone.

I'm trying to contribute by building a new opensource web UI that I hope will provide a better UX for the average Redditor. It's not ready to become a daily driver yet, but I'm hoping to get to a point where it's nice enough that instances will want to host it on their domain. Maybe I'm delusional in thinking this web UI will appeal to users that don't like the current ones. But there's only one way to find out, and that is to build it.

I really don't think Lemmy is polished and issue-free enough for tons of people to move here. It might be in the future but I feel like pushing it would do no good.

I might have a controversial question: but why? Do we really want this mass exodus to the Lemmy community? I think we have a nice little thing here. People will keep coming anyway, slowly, if they really are interested in what this is about

We aren't going to get mods to promote us. That is just silly.

We should buy advertising though, definitely.

IMO the biggest thing Lemmy needs is a better onboarding experience and an official page that recommends mobile apps/alternate front-ends. One of the Lemmy devs said they wanted to overhaul https://join-lemmy.org/ and it's on their list, which is a good first step. Until then I think it's best to wait before trying to capture the average audience and have them leave in confusion.

"Hello we are from the Church of the Fediverse, have you a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour Lemmy? No not the tankies one"

Reddit's decline is greatly exaggerated.

I think something we could do as a community is to make resources that help make understanding things happening here easier, like rapidly updated community guides to the available apps with screen shots showing features.

Really what we need is independent and community development of cool new things that you can't get anywhere else, a real reason to actually come here over all the other similar choices - ideally things that corporate sites would avoid because they're focusing on profit.

One tool I'm going to be working on is having an instance/community that makes it easy for people to work on collaborative design - ideally it'll be a pipeline where idea get refined into design briefs then fact finding tasks split from that and eventually it all boils up into a series of implementation tasks, testing and documentation then finally actually gets turned into an open source product or a piece of creative commons media.

Lemmy and Mastodon require some extra thought processes that most people do not want or can't work through. They want instant, fast and as much of it as possible.

Somehow this has to become so easy to understand and use that even the dimmest bulbs in society will have no trouble using it.

Upside? This will bring more usage and adoption. Downside? This will bring in more trash.

Do we actually care about "beating" Reddit? As long as a friendly & knowledgeable community exists on Lemmy, do we really care about also being the largest?

Two of my reddit using friends have never heard of lemmy until I told them about it a few days ago. Although they are quite invested in the FOSS world.

I am here because I read something about Lemmy on reddit, two or three times. More exposure on reddit would show many people that there is an alternative. It wouldn't convince millions but maybe enough to let some niche communities grow.

Current redditors are a virus. They are nothing like the people who built the site a decade ago. We don't need them here

I think stuff like this needs to happen organically, otherwise you'll have people who hate it, complain about it, and give it a bad rep, hindering its growth

Let them find their way on their own. They'll figure it out. As with the migration of MySpace to Faceboobs to Reddit - so the migration will continue. Let's not spoil the countryside just yet, okay? Lemmy is what reddit used to be but ain't been in a long time.

As far as I'm concerned Reddit=Facebook=Twitter...

Although, it would be nice to see more actual useful communities that don't just latch on to pop politics, news culture, and media trends.

They all already know about Lemmy 🤷‍♀️

I would argue we should wait until the software we're on does not feel like an alpha release. This is not some window of opportunity that will close soon, we have no strong incentive to rush this process.

Your best bet will probably be r/redditalternatives. That community already promotes Lemmy and Squabble, a few others that I'm not remembering.

I've been a reddit user for at least 15 years. I've been a Lemmy user for a few months. Lemmy has a long way to go before it's a "viable Reddit alternative". Right now it's barely usable.

Hmmm. So I think I posted on Reddit maybe a half dozen times ever? I didn't get the appeal. It kinda felt like shouting into a thunderstorm... I'm not sure I "get" Lemmy either, though it feels more like talking in a crowded room than everyone shouting at a cloud. :p More seriously though, I've had a few interesting conversations here, but miss the feel of forums of the 2000's where people just talked about stuff that they were making. Lemmy feels like everyone is striking up a conversation, but still trying to be careful about talking about their own interests because that's "self promotion". :-\ I dunno, maybe I'm looking for something that just doesn't exist anymore.

When are Lemmy posts going to show up on Google searches??