There was a brief period where the internet was shockingly stable. However, 'creative destruction' and churn is inevitable as the whole world continues to desire a better internet. If reddit cannot productively use this to come out with a better product and commitment to its community, hence destroy the bad within itself, it should fall apart in favor of new services.
I spent a decade+ actively on reddit, and I truly loved its hobby & local communities during that time. I deleted my account last week; I don't believe they'll change. Life is too short to spend it on things you don't love anymore.
While it's far from over, the Facebook-Twitter-Reddit consensus does seem a lot shakier right now. I'm excited to see what the more fractured/federated social space of tomorrow will look like but I also feel like we'll come to miss some of the more contentious features of the current megaplatforms (e.g. centralized moderation).
Seeing things change is honestly really exciting - I didn't realize how stale things had started to seem. Fragmenting into a bunch of smaller communities honestly seems kind of ideal.
> There was a brief period where the internet was shockingly stable. However, 'creative destruction' and churn is inevitable as the whole world continues to desire a better internet.
It's not at all evident the world actually desires a better internet.
Even without corporate involvement, it's extremely obvious that a subreddit's size is inversely proportionate to the quality of its content and discourse (with perhaps extremely rare exceptions)
In other words, when the "normies" start flooding something, the value of that takes a nosedive, because experts don't want to fight another battle on top of the battle of producing good content (which is hard enough by itself).
> I spent a decade+ actively on reddit
I've spent roughly ~5-6 active years, but then the combination of censorship and nosedive in quality of discourse that started ~2015, made me lose all interest in actively participating.
What are the current solutions for discoverability in Lemmy? Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still hard to be the definitive community when the namespace isn’t as restricted any more. Maybe that’s better?
Much like any true decentralized system, there can be as many star trek communities as there are trekkies. But this is not a technical problem, it's a social problem: when wanting to discuss, they will naturally converge towards the same space(s). If there are multiple, that's not a problem, just like it's not a problem to have multiple linux distributions. Each space will have its rules, its technical background. You can be part of both.
This situation can't be solved with technical tools, only with a human consensus. That's as good as it gets.
I don’t see this approach as a viable one, but time will tell. I never subscribed to the Startrek subreddit, but having it on an isolated website instead of been agglomerated on a solution like Reddit will have an engagement decrease, especially when people who subscribed to the sub still participates in other subreddits.
https://startrek.website is the third Google result for "star trek lemmy". "Star trek discussion board" shows many other discussion boards, so discoverability seems fine to me.
> Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still hard to be the definitive community when the namespace isn’t as restricted any more. Maybe that’s better?
I don't think that's much different than reddit itself tbh. So many subreddits splinter into "Foo"/"TrueFoo"/"TrollFoo"/"Foojerk" etc as it is, as groups have fights and run off. Often the original "Foo" is dead, with no tombstone marker to the real active subreddit. Lemmy and kbin will involve a lot of the same, with just different instances with their own "Foo" instead of "xxFooXX".
HN being endlessly contrarian is really weird sometimes. You are in real-time witnessing the rebirth of community hosted and run forums. The thing HN has been lamenting the death of forever.
This isn't some "migrate from walled garden A to walled garden B", this is the community setting up new-age phpBB except it's federated and interoperates with any and all ActivityPub.
You can subscribe to /r/startrek from your Twitter account. You can add people on Twitter and blogs to your Reddit feed. If this ends up not succeeding I wouldn't gloat because this is the endgame us tech nerds have asked for forever.
Just to be endlessly contrarian: "HN" has always loved reddit. Even during the protests, there was a lot of talk about how wonderful reddit is. If this sort of thing becomes more widespread, their karma points might be seriously devalued!
I hope that it will work. I loved the forum days---there was a real sense of community there that does not exist on Reddit except for some very small subs.
Tangentially related, is there any way for me as an end user to make Lemmy look more like old compact layout reddit instead of a clone of the new reddit layout with all the wasted whitespace?
Edit: Currently, on my 1900x1200 monitor I can see ALMOST 6 posts on the default landing page.
On the one hand, I have had lots of good constructive talks with people there over the years.
On the other hand, I don't want to follow those mods over to lemmy. Over the last few years they have gotten heavy handed with the temp-bans for anyone that doesn't fall in line with their excessively positive views of Trek. Which has not only resulted in some quality conversation being completely removed from the sub, but started to make the sub feel like a shill for CBS/Paramount.
Lemmy's frontend uses the React-like InfernoJS library that claims to be faster than React however I really doubt it's frontend rendering that is the bottleneck here.
The frontend reacts to a click quite fast but there's still a spinner for a lot of actions. The API goes over a websocket, request-response delay seems to be about 300-400ms for me so it's not super snappy, but not jira hell either.
If your entire market fit is on providing a platform for communities that are inherently platform agnostic, then you're probably wise to keep those communities as happy as possible. Reddit ultimately does nothing unique, it's a bulletin board link aggregator.
Hadn't heard of Lemmy. This seems pretty good. Reddit might actually be in trouble if other subreddits follow suit. Someone should make a dedicated lemmy site (or other site) that acts as a directory for "subreddits" to each lemmy site so it's easier to browse. An equivalent "frontpage" would be cool too if that was possible to setup somehow (seems like it should be with fediverse)
I know that Star Trek reddit community ≠ Star Trek wiki community, but I imagine there's a considerable overlap of users, and I would love to see the Star Trek wiki moved from Fandom to an independent wiki as well.
based on the reactions in r/gaming when they opened back up they either have to to do this or admit they are giving up and the entire protest was meaningless:
Churn in social media is probably good. Places get big, overly commercialized and stale, people's desire for socializing stays constant, so they'll constantly move and create new spaces. Changes and transitions suck, but finding a new place and seeing it grow is also great.
Pretty soon r/startrek will have its mods replaced, and most of the community will stay there, with some of the recent immigrants even migrating back because the community is bigger.
There simply isn't a good enough open alternative to reddit at the moment from most users perspectives.
And for those of us with no interest in following the mods, can /r/Startrek be opened again? If the old mods moved platforms, there’s no need to keep this private.
this is so sad. i understand the protest, but it feels like burning books. is all that prior information gone? or is the protest temporary way to get the community migrated away but content will be restored for historical purposes?
Not to be a jerk about it, but this is why you shouldn't have stored the books in a warehouse owned by a company that could lock the doors at any time. This is the opposite of why the 'net was invented.
If a link you click on a Google search result is dead, chance that the Internet Archive has it. Just put the dead link in the wayback machine and find out.
I’m a happy camper at Lemmy now — https://lemmy.world. It’s already getting a diverse set of communities. I’ve joined around 10 now, ranging from Formula 1 to Photography to a niche one on Stable Diffusion. Here’s hoping it’ll handle growth pains. I find it pretty simple to use and get started with. Easier than Mastodon because here, the community is waiting for you unlike at Mastodon where you are expected to somehow find good people to follow. It’s also far more welcoming to a growing community than a stale feed at Mastodon because the tempo in a forum is lower and more forgiving.
I love how you can simply subscribe to communities in other instances!
There are some weird issues though. Sorting by Activity is like old skool forum activity where posts are pushed to the top even if they just receive new comments, which has some topics remain on top for days.
And sort by Hot which is more like Reddit is apparently bugged right now and freezes too often.
I recommend sort by “Todays top” until at least Lemmy 0.18.
Account management is the big gap here and (IMO) one of the main reasons that stops a mass migration to lemmy.
I think what's needed is a decoupled account management solution that roams across all (federated) lemmy instances. You need to be able to log in once and interact everywhere (instead of manually copying URLs from one instance into another just to load the community).
Even if you're just a lurker, you want to bookmark, save, and maybe upvote / downvote. If you're an active contributor (even if the UX issues are fixed) you'd put all your trust into whoever manages the instance where you originally signed up from (startrek.website) to keep it around (and to protect your data). For me, that's a blocker. Sure, I'll create throwaway accounts to shitpost but that's not "building community" (think 4chan instead of reddit).
Big loss, I would google stuff like: "Why is there only one Negus in deep space 9?" and more often than not it was a Reddit thread someone submitted 8 years ago with in depth knowledge.
This is huge, hopefully more communities migrate away from Reddit. That platform got way too big for it's britches. Just don't move to Discord, Discord is terrible.
The major problem Reddit has and will always have is "power moderators". Losers with nothing else to do but become janitors and impose their will on very large forums. Imposing their politics, their culture, their sensibilities on 100+ subreddits.
I remember there was one site that had regular moderator elections and cycles baked into it's system. Whatever the solution is, it ain't Reddit.
How exactly does lemmy work with federation? (I'm assuming lemmy outwardly presents itself as esentaially reddit.)
I 'host' a community on my lemmy instance? People can submit 'stories' for my community if it's problematic I can essentially refuse that story? If someone comments on one of those stories, do I as a community admin/owner can remove that comment? If there is a shithead user who's account belongs to another lemmy instance I assume I can ban them from interacting with any content hosted in my community, same with another lemmy server out there if there is a whole server of shitheads?
> You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
The phrasing of the paragraph implies, to me, that putting [email protected] in search on my instance is an alternative to signing up and logging in.
I tried on my social.librem.one search, nothing found. Is that me misunderstanding how it works? A missing feature on librem.one? Something else?
If that's not an alternative to signing up and I have to create a new account on every new Lemmy thing, there's just no way this platform is ever replacing Reddit.
No, the members of /r/startrek are vowing to not use Reddit anymore. /r/startrek will be considered abandoned and given to anyone who asks for it. Reddit will take it away from these mods and I don't blame them.
Maybe nobody will use it, but some people probably will, people who don't give a shit about stupid Internet wars and just want to read about and discuss things Star Trek.
...which, believe it or not, is most people. Mod wars are uninteresting to the 90% who don't even make accounts.
I came in here to say exactly this. The mods don't own the subreddit. Reddit isn't just going to go "well, guess we can't have a Startrek sub with the most obvious name for one because the mods of /r/startrek don't want to use reddit anymore."
The reinstated reddit sub will very quickly overtake the Lemmy sub in activity. Many of the posters who went to Lemmy will slowly migrate back to reddit. The mods will have lost their "power" over a very popular subreddit with nothing to show for it.
That's how the mod wars end. Many mods will voluntarily end the boycott once it becomes clear that there thousands of people who will happily take their place.
Maybe Reddit throws them a bone by allowing an exception for Apollo and a few other popular third party clients so the mods can save face (or maybe not).
[+] [-] trostaft|2 years ago|reply
I spent a decade+ actively on reddit, and I truly loved its hobby & local communities during that time. I deleted my account last week; I don't believe they'll change. Life is too short to spend it on things you don't love anymore.
[+] [-] herculity275|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empyrrhicist|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antisthenes|2 years ago|reply
It's not at all evident the world actually desires a better internet.
Even without corporate involvement, it's extremely obvious that a subreddit's size is inversely proportionate to the quality of its content and discourse (with perhaps extremely rare exceptions)
In other words, when the "normies" start flooding something, the value of that takes a nosedive, because experts don't want to fight another battle on top of the battle of producing good content (which is hard enough by itself).
> I spent a decade+ actively on reddit
I've spent roughly ~5-6 active years, but then the combination of censorship and nosedive in quality of discourse that started ~2015, made me lose all interest in actively participating.
[+] [-] slowmovintarget|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graypegg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakoo|2 years ago|reply
Much like any true decentralized system, there can be as many star trek communities as there are trekkies. But this is not a technical problem, it's a social problem: when wanting to discuss, they will naturally converge towards the same space(s). If there are multiple, that's not a problem, just like it's not a problem to have multiple linux distributions. Each space will have its rules, its technical background. You can be part of both.
This situation can't be solved with technical tools, only with a human consensus. That's as good as it gets.
[+] [-] davidcollantes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seszett|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Namahanna|2 years ago|reply
https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1
[+] [-] joecot|2 years ago|reply
I don't think that's much different than reddit itself tbh. So many subreddits splinter into "Foo"/"TrueFoo"/"TrollFoo"/"Foojerk" etc as it is, as groups have fights and run off. Often the original "Foo" is dead, with no tombstone marker to the real active subreddit. Lemmy and kbin will involve a lot of the same, with just different instances with their own "Foo" instead of "xxFooXX".
[+] [-] btw0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|2 years ago|reply
This isn't some "migrate from walled garden A to walled garden B", this is the community setting up new-age phpBB except it's federated and interoperates with any and all ActivityPub.
You can subscribe to /r/startrek from your Twitter account. You can add people on Twitter and blogs to your Reddit feed. If this ends up not succeeding I wouldn't gloat because this is the endgame us tech nerds have asked for forever.
[+] [-] flomo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remram|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wise0wl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] q1w2|2 years ago|reply
This just isn't going to fly. I have literally hundreds of subscribed subs on Reddit - I'm not going to a different site for each.
[+] [-] alyandon|2 years ago|reply
Edit: Currently, on my 1900x1200 monitor I can see ALMOST 6 posts on the default landing page.
[+] [-] gingerrr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asciimov|2 years ago|reply
On the one hand, I have had lots of good constructive talks with people there over the years.
On the other hand, I don't want to follow those mods over to lemmy. Over the last few years they have gotten heavy handed with the temp-bans for anyone that doesn't fall in line with their excessively positive views of Trek. Which has not only resulted in some quality conversation being completely removed from the sub, but started to make the sub feel like a shill for CBS/Paramount.
[+] [-] fsflover|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hospitalJail|2 years ago|reply
WOW! It was incredibly responsive. What the heck? That was so weird, there was no delay in clicking.
I didn't even realize this was a thing until it was so fast that I came here to talk about it.
Not going to speculate, just impressed.
[+] [-] 0xDEF|2 years ago|reply
https://actix.rs/
https://diesel.rs/
Lemmy's frontend uses the React-like InfernoJS library that claims to be faster than React however I really doubt it's frontend rendering that is the bottleneck here.
[+] [-] the8472|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a2tech|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldstrangers|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f0e4c2f7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsflover|2 years ago|reply
You mean this? https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1
[+] [-] neurostimulant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcchambers|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|2 years ago|reply
https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/149cq9f/reddit_were...
[+] [-] martythemaniak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PrimeMcFly|2 years ago|reply
There simply isn't a good enough open alternative to reddit at the moment from most users perspectives.
[+] [-] stcroixx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modzu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrm4|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waboremo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neurostimulant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|2 years ago|reply
It's writing a new chapter in your internet story.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BasedAnon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jug|2 years ago|reply
I love how you can simply subscribe to communities in other instances!
There are some weird issues though. Sorting by Activity is like old skool forum activity where posts are pushed to the top even if they just receive new comments, which has some topics remain on top for days.
And sort by Hot which is more like Reddit is apparently bugged right now and freezes too often.
I recommend sort by “Todays top” until at least Lemmy 0.18.
[+] [-] gigel82|2 years ago|reply
I think what's needed is a decoupled account management solution that roams across all (federated) lemmy instances. You need to be able to log in once and interact everywhere (instead of manually copying URLs from one instance into another just to load the community).
Even if you're just a lurker, you want to bookmark, save, and maybe upvote / downvote. If you're an active contributor (even if the UX issues are fixed) you'd put all your trust into whoever manages the instance where you originally signed up from (startrek.website) to keep it around (and to protect your data). For me, that's a blocker. Sure, I'll create throwaway accounts to shitpost but that's not "building community" (think 4chan instead of reddit).
[+] [-] sergiotapia|2 years ago|reply
This is huge, hopefully more communities migrate away from Reddit. That platform got way too big for it's britches. Just don't move to Discord, Discord is terrible.
The major problem Reddit has and will always have is "power moderators". Losers with nothing else to do but become janitors and impose their will on very large forums. Imposing their politics, their culture, their sensibilities on 100+ subreddits.
I remember there was one site that had regular moderator elections and cycles baked into it's system. Whatever the solution is, it ain't Reddit.
[+] [-] sleepybrett|2 years ago|reply
I 'host' a community on my lemmy instance? People can submit 'stories' for my community if it's problematic I can essentially refuse that story? If someone comments on one of those stories, do I as a community admin/owner can remove that comment? If there is a shithead user who's account belongs to another lemmy instance I assume I can ban them from interacting with any content hosted in my community, same with another lemmy server out there if there is a whole server of shitheads?
[+] [-] kgwxd|2 years ago|reply
> You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
The phrasing of the paragraph implies, to me, that putting [email protected] in search on my instance is an alternative to signing up and logging in.
I tried on my social.librem.one search, nothing found. Is that me misunderstanding how it works? A missing feature on librem.one? Something else?
If that's not an alternative to signing up and I have to create a new account on every new Lemmy thing, there's just no way this platform is ever replacing Reddit.
[+] [-] Zetice|2 years ago|reply
Maybe nobody will use it, but some people probably will, people who don't give a shit about stupid Internet wars and just want to read about and discuss things Star Trek.
...which, believe it or not, is most people. Mod wars are uninteresting to the 90% who don't even make accounts.
[+] [-] nerdix|2 years ago|reply
The reinstated reddit sub will very quickly overtake the Lemmy sub in activity. Many of the posters who went to Lemmy will slowly migrate back to reddit. The mods will have lost their "power" over a very popular subreddit with nothing to show for it.
That's how the mod wars end. Many mods will voluntarily end the boycott once it becomes clear that there thousands of people who will happily take their place.
Maybe Reddit throws them a bone by allowing an exception for Apollo and a few other popular third party clients so the mods can save face (or maybe not).
[+] [-] DevAntoine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahahahahah|2 years ago|reply
Oh, I don't see evidence of that. At best this looks like the *mods* of /r/startrek are making that vow.