Why Does Nobody Use Lemmy?
This is not going to be a blogpost about "Why do people still use Reddit instead of everyone moving to Lemmy?". I noticed that even with Mastodon users, who already understand and like the advantages of decentralized platforms, the usage of Lemmy is extremely small, and more people use Reddit. Most of them haven't even heard of Lemmy. To be fair, the Reddit usage also seems to be fairly low.
like this
nullspace
in reply to squirrel • • •undree
in reply to nullspace • • •nullspace
in reply to undree • • •Naming something after a famous person means you're starting off on the back foot in terms of SEO and brand clarity.
Digg worked well because it came out of an era where adding a second G was enough to sound techy, but it also played into the dig/bury aspect of voting. Reddit works because the name is "read it" while also being a unique string you couldn't mistake for anything else. Both have a lot going for them that Lemmy just doesn't.
eneff
in reply to nullspace • • •nullspace
in reply to eneff • • •That's what your post reads like to me.
eneff
in reply to nullspace • • •That's what your post reads like to me.
nullspace
in reply to eneff • • •Ten Thousand
xkcdatro_city
in reply to squirrel • • •"nobody", nearly 50k people.
Asking people on mastodon if they use lemmy also doesn't make much sense to me. I don't use mastodon because it's not threaded, people on mastodon probably don't use lemmy for a similar reason. I'm not sure how many people use both threaded and unthreaded platforms, but it feels to me like the two layouts attract different people.
AmyAye
in reply to atro_city • • •cinoreus
in reply to AmyAye • • •AmyAye
in reply to cinoreus • • •César Hinojo Hinojo
in reply to squirrel • •Fediverse reshared this.
lambalicious
in reply to squirrel • • •Crozekiel
in reply to lambalicious • • •It's named after a famous musician that was active for like 30+ years. Half the results when you search "Lemmy" are him, not the platform. Oh, and he had an unfortunate collection of Nazi memorabilia - he claimed it wasn't because he liked the nazis just that he liked the look of their shit...
FOSS often ends up with bad names unfortunately. People never know what is going to become big when they start a project and they might get a giggle out of the name when it's a small project. By the time the project becomes big enough that the name might actually start being a problem, it is also known by that name and changing it could significantly impact how many people keep using it. Unfortunately, a name change is often a touchy subject for any project.
lambalicious
in reply to Crozekiel • • •Crozekiel
in reply to lambalicious • • •Coca-Cola literally contained drugs when it was invented... The name wasn't in conflict, it was extremely descriptive. I feel like that analogy only works if we find out that Lemmy was originally created for the sole purpose of discussing Motorhead.
Like, you asked where these posts complaining about names of Lemmy (and other FOSS projects) comes from and the above is the explanation. Just because you disagree doesn't mean all the people that do agree are a psyop or bots, lol.
percent
in reply to squirrel • • •If I had to guess: the culture here seems unusual, and unwelcoming — sometimes even hostile — to diverse opinions (i.e. people who aren't similarly unusual).
I haven't met many people IRL who would fit in here. For some visitors, that's okay (I don't fit in here, myself), but I think most people would just move along and forget that Lemmy exists.
Being federated, Lemmy is technically capable of being more diverse. It's a bit ironic that it still ended up being like this.
Also, some images don't load. I just ignore those, but still people might be put off by broken UX
pomp
in reply to percent • • •percent
in reply to pomp • • •retromustache
in reply to squirrel • • •rumba
in reply to retromustache • • •Part of the problem is there's a lot less to it than it feels like there is. The analogies we use to teach to non-tech people don't quite match up.
It's simply a structured way to log in and send messages back and forth.
You can use it to stitch together forums, link shares, social media, video sharing, or image sharing sites.
But we really don't bind things together all that tightly. At best you can follow someone on pixelfed or mastodon. Since there's truly no minimum wiring, a lot of services don't even really fully communicate with each other. So we end up mostly with mastodon <-> mastodon links and lemmy->piefed<-lemmy links.
TubularTittyFrog
in reply to rumba • • •activitypub is a protocol. like email.
instances are just what provider you want to use, gmail, hotmail, outlook, etc.
and the 'platform' lemmy, piefed, mastroton, pixelfed, is just the aesthetics
freudian_slop
in reply to TubularTittyFrog • • •Unlike like email the fediverse servers defederating / blocking each other more.
dogmail can send to birdmail but not to catmail.
lambalicious
in reply to freudian_slop • • •Google does a lot of "defederating" (for lack of a better term), it's one of the reasons why setting up and hosting your own email is one of the nightmare sections of selfhosting communities.
PixeIOrange
in reply to squirrel • • •im_fine_sandy
in reply to PixeIOrange • • •I say this in all of these threads: more users does not mean a better experience.
Instead, focus on making our communities the best they can be.
lambalicious
in reply to im_fine_sandy • • •It does when your current amount of users is functionally equivalent to, like, "2".
Toasticus
in reply to squirrel • • •So, saying 'nobody uses X' is a bit of a stretch considering that whenever it's said, there's proof to the contrary that people use said thing. People use lemmy at times, but the problem is as it has been pointed out before many times, is that lemmy is still too niche and small when compared to larger platforms.
One of the big reasons I can think of is, is that Lemmy just doesn't have the span of community as someplace like Reddit does. You're not going to find a Darts lemmy instance, you're not going to find a MentalHealth lemmy instance or anything. On Reddit, there's hundreds of micro-communities that cover a range of interests that anybody can join and talk about.
Lemmy only seems to focus on just a handful of things; Politics, Memes, Games, Piracy, Linux, News, Technology and Asking Questions. That's great and all but, just about anyone has these in spades. Not everyone wants to cycle through those things on a daily basis, they'll want something more. But it's going to turn people off from Lemmy immediately when they migrate from Reddit.
Yeah sure, we can te
... Show more...So, saying 'nobody uses X' is a bit of a stretch considering that whenever it's said, there's proof to the contrary that people use said thing. People use lemmy at times, but the problem is as it has been pointed out before many times, is that lemmy is still too niche and small when compared to larger platforms.
One of the big reasons I can think of is, is that Lemmy just doesn't have the span of community as someplace like Reddit does. You're not going to find a Darts lemmy instance, you're not going to find a MentalHealth lemmy instance or anything. On Reddit, there's hundreds of micro-communities that cover a range of interests that anybody can join and talk about.
Lemmy only seems to focus on just a handful of things; Politics, Memes, Games, Piracy, Linux, News, Technology and Asking Questions. That's great and all but, just about anyone has these in spades. Not everyone wants to cycle through those things on a daily basis, they'll want something more. But it's going to turn people off from Lemmy immediately when they migrate from Reddit.
Yeah sure, we can tell them to make an instance to cover that niche itch, but once it's built, it can be months to even years before it gets attention. And nobody wants to spend time just running around like an annoying salesman to get people to join said instance just to feel better about converting someone else over from one side to the other.
Another reason is that - moderation can be ass. Yeah, some moderators on Lemmy have the mentality and maturity of an edgy 15-year old who spends too much time online for their own good. And we can all see it in plain sight on the modlog so I don't even need to explain.
stopforgettingit
in reply to squirrel • • •TubularTittyFrog
in reply to stopforgettingit • • •on reddit it would be 6000.
30K users is small potatoes. even niche subreddits have userbases larger than that.
stopforgettingit
in reply to TubularTittyFrog • • •Shindo66
in reply to stopforgettingit • • •Lady Butterfly she/her
in reply to Shindo66 • • •BreakingBigfoot
in reply to squirrel • • •