I recently stumbled upon Lemmy from SimpleX github. This is my first interaction.

Why Lemmy? It seems to be an alternative to Reddit, but what sets it apart? I’ve explored, participated and built nodes in Nostr, which positions itself as a Twitter alternative, so I’m curious about what makes Lemmy unique and what it needs to succeed?

Who Lemmy? Like Nostr, the community here seems to define the platform. Without algorithms to shape the narrative, the vibe is driven by its users—radicals, dreamers, and wayfarers. Is that a fair read? Who else calls Lemmy home?

How Lemmy? What’s the vision here? How does Lemmy aim to change the social media landscape? Decentralization is intriguing, but what’s the endgame? Escape from algorithms is exciting but from what I see raw and unfilters humans have chaotic thoughts.

Where Lemmy? Where’s the Lemmy Lobby? When folks onboard where do they go to connect? The communities Ive checked seem to have a variation of really old posts and infrequent posts. Are we that early or is this platform suffering from slow growth?

What’s your perspective on the success of decentralized social media?

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Lemmy, and the Fediverse in general, is an open source social media made by people that have evolved past the corporate overlords.

    The user base might be smaller than big social media sites, but the users tend to be more intelligent, far fewer bots, and no advertisements.

    That’s my take on it so far, I’ve been here over a year now.

    • Ziglin@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Importantly (at least to me) the Lemmy source code is licenced under the AGPL which means any modified server code must be provided by the server owner. Also I’m not sure if this was clear but anybody can spin up an instance and there is nobody who controls all of them.

    • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
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      4 days ago

      I’d love to add something original to this post, but you’ve pretty much covered it.

      To your point about corporate overlords: many of us loved Reddit until we realized it was a cesspool (for any number of reasons) and moved on, and it’s almost a shameful thing to admit we ever liked Reddit at this point.

      To put it more simply: we just love federation and we love the format. We could always jump ship to Mastodon or any other federated platform, but long form discussion is what I believe drives adoption of Lemmy in particular the most.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Oh a lot of us knew it was a cesspool, at least, it has corners that are in it, it’s no 4chan. What brought the majority here was the CEO lying multiple times about why they were closing public APIs off to third party app makers instead of just telling the truth (we need money to stay in business or make money and we want to control what you see). And obligatory, fuck spez.

      • ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        What is shameful about loving Reddit? Honestly asking.

        Biggest red flags I saw was non-FOSS, beginning of enshitification, overall cringe and mean user base.

        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          4 days ago

          What is shameful about loving Reddit? Honestly asking.

          For me: it engages in the same discourse shaping that legacy media employs to manufacture consent to please their investors.

          The most savvy media literate people have difficulty deciphering the unspoken truths from social media, including reddit, so there’s very little likelihood that the average person won’t be affected and your circumstances determine your views, so you too will be affected by someone like reddit’s manufactured discourse no matter how much you try.

        • Ziglin@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Seems like more than enough to me.

          I’m not saying that others would be shameful of someone liking that but I personally would be ashamed of myself liking it.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      4 days ago

      Also it’s a lot less likely to enshitify since there’s no corporate overloads nor investors to please

  • lime!@feddit.nu
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    4 days ago

    you seem to be under the impression that lemmy wants to be big. i can’t speak for the creators, but the vibe among users (except on .world) seems to be that not growing is preferable. changing the social media landscape? why? let people use what they want. why would there need to be an endgame?

    like slashdot, digg, and reddit, lemmy is a link aggregator. the community is not the point, it is an emergent feature.

    • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      like slashdot, digg, and reddit, lemmy is a link aggregator. the community is not the point, it is an emergent feature.

      Not sure I agree with this bit. I’m absolutely on board with everything before this…but if community wasn’t the point, why have comments, profiles, direct messaging? Pretty sure community is the point.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    This is freedom. Stuff here is scraped like everywhere on the public internet, but no one is watching your dwell times and farming your every move, or experimenting on you to achieve targeted viewer retention statistics. The demographic here seems in flux at the moment. Reddit was like that too though. This is usually good book reading season for most social media and here is no exception. Lots of closed minded people and negativity pop up in my feed, but you can’t fix stupid and that is everywhere.

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    It’s a decentralised FOSS reddit alternative built by and for communists. Your “lobby” is lemm.ee, because that’s the instance you joined. If you want to see different communities you’ll need to join a different instance with different federation.

  • CornflakeDog@pawb.social
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    4 days ago

    Why Lemmy? I like the memes :3

    Who Lemmy? Me! And all of you!

    How Lemmy? On my mobile phone ☝️🤓

    Where Lemmy? See “How Lemmy” for more details

      • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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        4 days ago
        • a. it allows access to the ‘microblog’ side of the fediverse… the ‘twitter-like’ stuff. such as mastodon and universodon… so you can follow people and they can follow you. this is not possible using lemmy
        • b. it doesnt look like someone forgot the css
        • c. doesnt need an app on mobile. works great from mobile browsers.
        • Ziglin@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          My reply to B would be to use a different client but I agree that the default isn’t too good looking on most instances.

            • Ziglin@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              I would say it is just an example implementation and doesn’t need to be great. I think most of the effort should be focused towards server functionality not the client.

  • f2sfljLhdtTZ@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    It seems that there are no search filters. That’s making me stay away. In Reddit you can search and specify results to be from specific subreddits.

    Here, where multiple instances can have similar topic groups i cannot search within them. That’s keeping me from engaging.

    Search is key.