FOSSDLE PieFedHow could we convince Reddit subs to move over to Lemmy?
submitted by ad_on_is
I'm just sick of Reddit.
The communities there seem much more active than the once on lemmy, which is not a surprise.
However, I oftentimes find myself doom scrolling through reddit, just because of some nonsense BS propaganda, ads, etc .., snuck inbetween of the community posts I'm actually interested in.
How can we convince the people over there to move away?
We don't. We just continue to stay here and grow and flourish naturally. I see no need to rush.
Yup, I say it in every thread of this sort I see pop up, you definitionally can't force organic engagement.
It can be frustrating to go from a thriving niche subreddit to a new venue without anyone to populate those niche communities. Outside of ML, FOSS, and Star Trek, most of the niche communities are ghost towns.
I don't think anyone is suggesting convincing AskReddit or /r/memes to migrate. I think they're mostly targeting /r/ObscureInterestYou'veProbablyNeverHeardOf.
I see things like this all the time on the fediverse. There's this sentiment that reddit sucks and it's nothing but bots and shithousery, but for some people they still want that crowd to migrate here.
I think Lemmy needs to let go of the idea of the "good" parts of reddit transferring here and everyone miraculously behaving differently, because it just isn't going to happen. The people left on reddit are there because that's the experience they want. Trying to import them en masse to Lemmy again is just going to bring more irritation and frustration IMO.
I think Lemmy would be better served working to improve and develop the communities they already have through users that are already here. Find ways to make your interests appealing to others. Be active in ways and places you usually wouldn't, and Lemmy will grow up around us organically. None of these social media giants have anything of substance to offer their huge user bases besides the niche communities you guys are missing, and that's why people spend so much time doomscrolling.
What we are missing is that someone on Reddit took the time to get these communities going too. Reddit wasn't an instant success, it took the efforts of the early membership to drive engagement and user growth. Lemmy is obsessed with the idea of short cutting this step to steal members from other networks, and that's silly.
No one is going to leave a well designed botnet social media for a black hole called the fediverse. In order to gain more meaningful membership we must first prove that Lemmy is worth overcoming the barriers to enter and engage with the people that are already here. Once the rest of the internet finds out we're cool, they'll show up.
We simply don't need Reddit users. We need Lemmy users who desire to start communities. Lemmy is Reddit 10 years ago, and that's just fine.
I mean it's not THAT good, but it's sure better than Reddit today.
"Reddit is awful. How do we move that here?"
For me - and i am new - the whole point of lemmy is less people, less content to scroll, and more quality. If lemmy was reddit, i would leave lemmy too
There's nothing wrong with this approach either but I'd remind you and anyone else seeking this experience that Lemmy is infinitely more customizable for this than reddit ever was. The ability to block users, communities, instances, etc can be invaluable. Some instances also don't federate with everyone so it's fairly easy to find a smaller space that isn't so busy if the larger instances are too much.
Lemmy gets a lot of shit, and deservedly so at times, but there are already some very handy tools in the kit for curating your feed to your liking.
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These are big technical issues IMO, especially considering the large amount of tankies on Lemmy. It doesn't help that many tankies have accounts on LW and other "normal" instances.
PieFed, and the Lemmy apps Sync and Connect, can do that. They truly block users from any custom instance of your choice, without having to depend upon an admin (or spin up an instance yourself).
Base Lemmy cannot and a look at the admin practices present on the devs own instance convinces me that it likely never will - it seems simply not a priority for them (and *we* are on *their* platform - or rather *you* are:-).
Nothing is perfect ofc, but it's nice to have choices.
Ill be frank, i still have no idea how it all actually works. I am wrapping my head around this model still. But thanks for the info! :)
I see this a lot too and to me it mimics the 7 stages of grief. It sounds like he just passed anger and is at bargaining.
I think if most of the reddit transplants (myself a transplant) can’t arrive at acceptance, they end up going back.
If federation works the way it's claimed to, then if we migrate even the bad parts of reddit here it should be fine.
Lemmy is turning into an elitist cesspool.
What's the claim about federation that overcomes the bullshit of social media usage?
Toxic people can be blocked by your instance, or you can move to an instance that doesn't tolerate that behavior
Sure! But, in this case Lemmy is literally a federated copypasta of Reddit, like Madtodon is of X.
Therefore, I think Lemmy is already a few steps ahead, due to the existing familiarity how communities/subs are supposed to be used.
So it's not we're starting from scratch... It's just getting rid of the annoyances of Reddit.
Take Mastodon/BlueSky as an example. People are already familiar withbthe concept of how to use it.
This is being overly simplistic IMO. Lemmy is not a direct copy paste of reddit, just the idea is the same. Lemmy is missing many of the tools reddit has come to depend on for things like moderation and community engagement. The idea is the same but the framework is different and that comes with its own challenges.
Lemmy is a good enough platform for now and for future growth. It wasn't a drop in replacement for reddit when the exodus happened and it isn't a drop in replacement now, but it's closer. There are still lots of little things- quality of life improvements, moderation improvements, discovery improvements, etc that need to be tuned or fixed before Lemmy is ready to shoulder millions of active users, but that doesn't mean it isn't worthy of the effort today.
The beautiful part of the fediverse is we're all free to form our own ideas about how it's best grown and supported. If there's something you are passionate about there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from spinning up a community or instance about it and creating the niche communities everyone seems to miss. It all takes time, and individual and group efforts.
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Change your default sort.
But, that's not relevant to communities. You can kill a community by technical means, but technical means cannot create one; it's necessary but not sufficient, and not even the hard part.
Most people are still on fucking FACEBOOK. They are willing to put up with almost unlimited bullshittery for the sake of their sense of community. Building a better mousetrap won't work, and building a vaguely equivalent mousetrap won't even move the needle.
Yes but we're also more mastodon less bluesky. If a bluesky-esque clone of Reddit comes along with better UX and paving over the issues of federation then it will win, the way Bluesky has beaten out Mastodon as the Twit alternate
Most people don't change unless they have to, and rarely even then. You'd have to make it so that they can't visit Reddit anymore.
Even on reddit itself, you can't get people to move from a sick community with hostile moderation to the preferred community. /r/Canada got taken over by /r/metacanada what feels like decades ago, and they turned it into a post modern bigoted classist hellhole, but it still ranks far above the "real" Canadian sub /r/OnGaurdForThee.
Maybe better not to compete with existing communities. Develop some anchor communities on Lemmy that are doing their own thing on topics that aren't well served on Reddit.
We already have the same problem here. Some of our major communities have belligerent mods on problematic instances.
We're not solving that problem, we're just making it easier to hide from it via defederation.
Of course we do. That's my point. It's not a Reddit problem, it's a human problem.
Lemmy needs to mature on a technical basis. The Lemmy service itself is still lacking significantly. But it it progressing.
Outside of technical limitations, focus on communities. A few good ones are better than many mediocre ones.
What technical limitations do you see? I feel like other than multireddits this place is basically equal to reddit.
Just about anything related to moderation tools.
Dealing with the All feed properly.
Users being able to configure default sorting on posts.
etc.
Multi communities.
Hopefully this has been funded, so should happen soon
Where does the believe even originate from, that Redditors are any different than Lemmings? Basically the same people minus the youngest, because they stick with using Reddit. They might or might not migrate eventually.
Make communities here bigger by contributing and spread the word of Reddit alternative. Make search engines find Lemmy content and then it goes on it's own. I guess Bluesky will push the Fediverse, but I wonder how long people will stick to a Twitter esque when they could have Lemmy full text conversations and tree structures?
Advertise one instance instead of just saying "join lemmy"
id go a step further and say you need to draw a sub to a specific community. its hard moving users though when reddit actually attempts to prevent it by banning you for trying.
But wouldn't advertising one instance backfire and lead to huge server loads on that instance?
That’s not a problem you have to worry about right now, it’s more so not enough people are trying out the platform.
Recommending the instance you’re on Lemm.ee is the way to go.
Blaze is doing precisely that - recommending lemm.ee, several initial communities to check out, the Voyager app, etc.
Edit: A major downside to recommending lemm.ee though is that it federates with literally all of the big 3. So someone can walk into e.g. chapotraphouse@hexbear.net without knowing the first thing about what to expect there, followed promptly by leaving Lemmy altogether. Due to lemm.ee's approach of making everything "opt-out" rather than "opt-in" it takes quite a bit of catching up to understand things e.g. what "instances" are and how to block users from them (Pro-Tip: in either base Lemmy or Voyager, you literally cannot do it, though PieFed, Sync, or Connect each offer that capability). It's a bit like having an email account that offers no spam filtering!? Which is fine if that's what people want but doesn't seem geared for "mainstream" Redditors who want to come here "casually".
For those, if PieFed was a bit better developed in its UI it would be perfect. Lemmy.cafe also looks like a great option (Tesseract on dubvee.org too except I think it's only a single admin, and yet quite impressive nonetheless, though toxic people from Reddit would have a terrible & short-lived time there hehe:-P).
As I've been using lemmy.cafe for a while now, I might switch to it as my "curious new joiner" recommendation.
Assuming it is stable (there was some question about that due to its running beta software?), that sounds like a great idea!:-)
Nothing will ever be perfect ofc, and surely there are tons of alt accounts on Lemmy.World and elsewhere, but that seems like it would help ease people more gently into Lemmy, without having to endure as much culture shock as seeing e.g. the anti-Western posts constantly streaming out from the big 3.
Especially for a more "mainstream" audience - e.g. expecting things to "just work" - from Reddit and even more so people who merely search the internet.
And then if people really WANT to see literally everything, there's always lemm.ee that seems legit great for someone who knows that going in.
PieFed seems even more ideal in terms of this functionality but... its UI definitely needs more than a little polish before it's fully mainstream.
I don't know how you have time to do so much to help build this place, but I am enthused to see it nonetheless!:-)
A ban from dubvee is a lemmy participation medal
I've heard that some people don't like him but nobody will tell me why, as in did he do something intentionally, accidentally, or otherwise? Can you send me something to read? (Always whenever I ask, I get no reply - but I'm interested in learning so that I don't spread misinformation?)
I and many others never heard of the instance until we got banned from it 🤣
Oh wow. Can you send me a screenshot? What I'm getting at: is there any possibility that it could have been unintentional?
One suggestion to increase participation on Lemmy of those already here is to encourage people to spend some time just looking at the "all new posts" feed. I look at it a few times per day and was surprised at the number of Lemmy groups that I never knew existed. There are far to many groups here that started out good and just faded away. If it's an interest of yours post there and try to rejuvenate the group. Message the existing moderator if you can be added as a mod for that group.
Just mention lemmy from time to time on other platforms; not to say "please come here", but rather just to let people know that lemmy exists and has interesting stuff on it. People will check it out if they are interested.
They allegedly remove posts/comments about lemmy? And even if they don't, I feel like it could have the opposite effect. People would see those posts just like ads/promotion/spam. Which would give lemmy a bad rep. Unless something big happens, like some big community switching to lemmy, or someone with a big following promotes lemmy, it will hardly see a big spike in user count.
The only way is to passively "advertise" it. Maybe add the link to your lemmy account in your reddits *about you* section, if you are making OC add your lemmy handle there as well...
And the last way, which is most likely the best way to do it, is to post good content on lemmy, keep communities alive. And people will eventually join.
Post in communities that align with your interests. Post in communities for your geographic area, if you're comfortable with that. Comment on posts you see, if you think you can add something of value to the conversation.
That is what I already do. But I feel like there isn't much going on. Tbh, I'm more of a passive than active participant. Never been a "karma whore".
I mostly scroll through the feed and chime into topics where I feel I can contribute to.
Gonna have to change that. There's no such thing as karma here so there's no whoring. Be the change you want to be. I was the only poster in many communities before they started taking off. Lemmy follows the 90-9-1 rule, and you have to be the 1
Well put
Bingo.
That's good too but maybe consider lowering your bar on what it takes to "contribute".
I have left many simple comments that have led to someone chiming in with something insightful that they may not have commented otherwise
Ask and answer their popular questions again in here. Also, a popular search engine should list the thread on Lemmy.
can't. the ones that are still there wouldn't understand how to use lemmy and the fediverse and they'll just bash for the same reasons that bsky users bash mastodon. They want things to "just work" out of the box and are too lazy to figure things out.
Not really the problem, some mods just bury threads about it, you can see an arrogant mod from self-host subreddit in a thread, attempt to plead to move elsewhere: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ (this was a week ago) You can see why some still didn't by the replies, and lack of understanding how to use Lemmy isn't one of them.
“… too lazy to figure things out.” Yup, just like when somebody calls a plumber, or a mechanic or a therapist. Stop being lazy and master something in a field where you have no experience or desire to learn.
You can't be that sick of it if you want even let go of the place.
Send interesting Lemmy links to people you know. That's how they get interested, and check it out. You won't convince many people by extolling the benefits of the Fediverse, you just have to show them that they'll be entertained, and maybe they'll be somewhat more likely to switch if they know it won't enshittify. I'd say you should send links from instances that don't federate with some of the weirder places like Hexbear though, that's likely to turn people off until they realize how the Fediverse works.
One thing that we could use more of that draws people in is posts about relationship issues. Entertaining for almost everyone, and pretty much anyone can create them from their own experience.
Stop using Reddit.
Asking people to do something will never work, telling people how something is better will trigger their curiosity to at least take a look.
Engage with communities here. The politics and tech communities are lively enough, but niche communities are lacking. Give people a reason to come here who aren't politics/tech junkies.
Why bother?
Reddit isn't Lemmy. Lemmy is Lemmy.
Enjoy who's here. Hi. I'm GhiLA.
Don't bother, just make your own communities or magazines and contribute to them regularly.
"If you build it, they will come."
You can tell people about it if you like (especially if it comes up casually in conversation), but if you try to push it too hard you'll drive people away.
If the fediverse grows too quickly, it will also introduce more problems existing systems may not be able to handle.
Lol it's porn.
Not anything else. Provide the better covert porn outlet.
There's porn on here. Lemmynsfw.com is actually the second most populous instance irrc (or top 3?). Just got to convince people to post to it. But then we got the same problem of trying to convince people to do that lol.
What about porn bots?
Don't you need an account to access it?
Which communities? I personally find most of my favorite communities to be better in lemmy than on Reddit, with a few exceptions.
Well there are some video game ones.
Ya I just got to reddit for specific video game ones now basically. Or specific TV shows.
If the community doesn't exist, have you tried creating one?
If it does exist, have you tried posting there?
Believe me or not that's how it starts.
I've thought about it...
Buildapcsales gamedeals boardgamedeals etc. it was nice when they still have Api access because you could track prices.
Anything niche by computer geek standards So, like, anything from normie interests to things that are so niche that you need 30 million MAU to have an active space.
A few niche examples:
/r/generative /r/musicians /r/wildernessbackpacking /r/tropicalweather /r/analogcommunity /r/heavymind
Good luck convincing the non-technical users there to come here. This place is currently great for interests catered to programmers and sysadmins (speaking as one!), but artist and hobby communities are seriously lacking.
If the community doesn't exist, have you tried creating one?
If it does exist, have you tried posting there?
Believe me or not that's how it starts.
I don't want the masses from Reddit to migrate to Lemmy. I want people currently on Lemmy to post and comment. More engagement is what we need. No one is going to move to Lemmy if they see the top posts are hours old with only 100 upvotes and no comments.
If they didn't leave Reddit by now, they like the new Reddit experience.
be the change you want to see. offer alternatives to subs pissed about over moderation, ads and bot activity. some instances still let you create your own communities, like mine https://moist.catsweat.com
Lots of edgelords here like "I don't want the reddit plebs here" as though they weren't happily one of them a couple years ago.
Let them come over. Put the idea of federation to the test. Isn't that one of the major features of federation, if there are a bunch of shitty people you can just defederate or use a different community?\ If federation does what it claims then it'll only be an improvement.
I agree with people saying not to force people here if they don't wanna be (not that we could), but the people saying that folks still on reddit are there because they inherently prefer the reddit application UX is crazy. They prefer the content in reddit. And they have a point.
Folks here are way more insufferable than reddit. Just the other day there was a post being like "why do reddit users hate Lemmy?" And linked a reddit post about it. But the comments on the reddit post were considered, nuanced, and polite; while the comments on the Lemmy post were a bunch of neckbeards crying about how terrible reddit users are.
TLDR y'all need to look in the mirror.
Edit: typo degenerate → defederate
There needs to be less one sided group think, but I’m not sure that’s even possible anymore at this point. Just look at the US and how they voted this year. None of those voters want to be on this super woke platform. The population on here are the minority and just need to get used to it.
What does 'woke' mean?
Constant in your face awareness of social inequalities would be my charitable definition.
Well if that's the definition that doesn't sound so bad. You're saying that you don't like being reminded of the truth too often.
The problem with 'woke' is that it is too vague to be meaningful.
No, I can’t stand everybody being offended about everything.
I'm fine with people being offended as long as it is something legit to be offended about. Sometimes people are offended by legit things and sometimes not. That's why "woke" is to vague to be meaningful. I have to hear the specific thing to know whether I agree/disagree.
I'm honestly not sure I want the majority of reddit users coming to lemmy. Especially as a woman. There's just so much more nastiness on reddit. I get that sometimes the content on Lemmy slows down or gets stale, but that seems like a reasonable price to pay to avoid people with chronic interpersonal problems and no healthy emotional outlet. I think every exchange I've had on Lemmy has at least been respectful and I can't recall ever feeling that way on reddit.
That has not always been my experience, although I can see why you on Lemmy.World would say so (bc it defederates from lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, where most of the hostility across the Fediverse concentrates), but indeed the average interaction here is much more positive than on Reddit (even though the worst, e.g. if you ever comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net, is significantly more negative than Reddit ever was allowed to become by the admins).
Something I've been thinking about is that changes only happen organically, so I think it's good to not be an insistent advocate for a platform X, Y or Z. Instead, I think that perhaps it's better, instead, to simply use the platform the person is more favorable towards whenever possible, and if people then share something worth sharing, it should slowly bring people over. And regarding the annoying part, at most, making a note about technicalities and the type of people in the site could be good if discussions the person is engaged in allows, and if the person didn't burn people's patience by being pedantic.
Why? So moderators can come here and ban you from their communities if you don't agree with their biased bullshit and politics? No thank you
Mods can't ban you from their fediverse community. You could just post from another site. It is why fediverse is superior to reddit.
That's considered ban evasion by a lot of mods
What's your point? Ban "evasion" is a feature of fediverse, not a bug. In the fediverse, you are immune from rando-bans.
Anybody who really does deserve to be banned, will repeat the behaviour that got them banned. So for those people there is no point with ban "evasion".
There are already some communities with the same tooic, but without much interaction, so I was mainly refering to joining existing ones.
However, even if that happens, one can simply go ahead and create a new community with normal mod behavior.
Also report on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Most of them are bots anyway and I really wouldn't want "everyone" to find out about and use lemmy because that would be the downfall of lemmy.
Why does it have to be people from Reddit? Reddit has harbored pedophiles and nazis for its entire existence! There are way better sites to promote it on!
I think how fragmented lemmy is hurts it. I enjoy Mastodon more, because it doesn't matter what server a person uses, you have but a single feed of all the people you follow.
But here on lemmy, every server has its own communities and might even be having the same conversations apart from each other. While reddit is a giant single space for each conversation.
If there was a way to unite feeds so that, for example, /c/gaming gave you posts from every community /c/gaming you are subscribed to or federated with (or /m/gaming for us mbin folks). I think we could really see a proper exodus from reddit as it becomes proper alternative.
and of course, the classic lemmy experience would remain for those that don't want to do that. Much like old.reddit remained strong in the face of the site remake.
EDIT: Maybe what we need instead is multi-reddits. Custom made aggregate feeds made by the user, so you have full control over your aggregated feed. And they don't need to have the same names in that case.
That fragmentation annoyed me too at the beginning, until somenoe tokd me something along the lines.
"It's like different reddit subs with each hsving their own mods and rules"...
So /c/gaming on instance A, and /c/gaming on instance B, would be like /r/gaming and /r/gamingfornoobs.
That's a good point. By each being its own server with own own rules and mods, my idea would make it harder on mods of the communities if people are not even aware of where they are posting.
Does your interface not show the instance with the community name?
I meant that as an extension to my original comment asking for all communities with the same name from different instances to show up in a mixed feed.
That's what usenet does.
Ptecisely, that's how I always saw it. Say /r/games and /r/gaming, ostensibly those should have the same content but each had its own culture (or did at one point, who knows now)
They are all available on every instance. It's not different than having five communities for the same subject on Reddit. It's worse here right now because so few communities have managed to "clear their orbit" yet, but it will get better.
PieFed already has that, in "Categories" of communities. If you select gaming, it combines all the posts from all the communities that are related to gaming. I'm not sure how it works, maybe each instance admin has a list somewhere.
Furthermore, an individual user is subscribed to all of those, so that you can easily remove content from certain communities merely by leaving it. Or join more of them.
Lemmy is starting to fall behind these other alternatives, written in more commonly used languages (than Rust) so allowing contributions from more people, which helps them gain features more quickly.
Edit: and to address the issue of forgetting what community someone is viewing, that's not an issue either: every single post includes the entire community description at the bottom of it, beneath the comments - here's some examples: a post with few comments to have to scroll past, another example showing a YouTube preview (also offers direct piped.video link), here's a non-gaming example of a post I made that includes #hashtags at the bottom. In all of those see the categories up at the top, and in the former two on Beehaw, the special note just below the post about how that instance has different moderation practices than usual, with a direct link to what those are, in the admins' own words.
Overall PieFed lacks some polish compared to Lemmy, especially in replying to comments more deeply embedded in the threaded conversations of larger posts, yet in so many ways it already has surpassed what Lemmy chooses to offer its users, it's fantastic to look at, and even more exciting to think about where it will head next!:-)
I'd not heard of PieFed, that's cool that someone implemented my idea already. I'm on Mbin and not seeing anything like this though.
Thank you! I edit it out of my comment (well, put it in strikethrough). I thought perhaps it might be in the microblog area or something but nope, I don't see it there either. It does combine cross-posts, so perhaps that's what I was incorrectly recalling.
PieFed is really super-neat! Not entirely polished, but not entirely not either, and something to keep an eye on either way. :-)
Please don't. I like not dealing with redditeurs.