this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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I really want to like lemmy, but it's difficult. I'm new to all this fediverse thingy, and I might just have old habits and perceptions how things should work but... I keep seeing the same posts more than once, iOS experience is not that good really, sometimes I see dead posts from 2 years ago for some reason, despite having subscribed to like 30 communities there aren't that many new posts to read.

Part of it probably that subreddits had millions of people so a lot of posts every minute, but it still feels underwhelming.

It's not as doomscrolly. Maybe I should find something else to waste my time on haha

What is your experience with lemmy? Maybe I just do things wrong. Let me know

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[–] milkytoast@beehaw.org 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i mean so far, I'm enjoying it. sure, the community isn't as large, but that's mostly a good thing. on reddit, if i made a post, it would be like a 25% chance to get hundreds of comments, and a 75% chance to get none. here, I've gotten a few, high quality responses on every question post I've made. i do miss the "auto hide read posts" feature, but maybe that'll get added some day

[–] adj16@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (7 children)

You can hide read posts here! In the web app settings for your profile:

[–] adriator@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there a way to stop the endless loading of posts on the website? Because every time I try to click a post, it moves down because a new post loaded, and this happens every ten seconds, constantly.

[–] CosmicSploogeDrizzle@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a bug that wasnt an issue when the community was smaller. Last I heard they will replace it with a refresh icon that pops up at the top when new posts are available.

[–] Quartz@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh thank God is a bug, I really thought it was a feature of the site.

[–] instamat@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thank jeebus. I was getting all fussy thinking it was a me/my phone/my browser problem.

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[–] adj16@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I’ve heard that one is just a bug. Hopefully they’re working on it. Mlem (the iOS app) seems to have it handled, but it does crash a lot, and it’s frustrating to lose your scroll progress. I think we just have to wait it out in these early days 😵‍💫

[–] atp2112@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also don't seem to have that problem with Jerboa.

[–] TheMinions@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I believe it’s specifically an issue with the web client. The apps don’t seem to have that problem.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

This is good to hear. Hopefully they can work out their aggregation on the main page too.

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[–] Illegal_Seafood@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is incredibly helpful! Thank you so much!

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[–] B4tid0@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Oh dude! MASSIVE THANKS!

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[–] briongloid@aussie.zone 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fediverse currently reminds me of Reddit from 10 years ago in frequency of content. There is something nice about not being in the rat race, less toxicity.

[–] milkytoast@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

yeah it's nice knowing that someone is gonna see my comment instead of it getting lost amongst hundreds. feels a lot more like a community that way

[–] briongloid@aussie.zone 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's amazing how many Reddit comments just aren't seen, no wonder so many people end up lurking.

I had 150k+ karma and most of my comments would go unnoticed.

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[–] orbit@beehaw.org 41 points 1 year ago (19 children)

The reality is that there was/is no reddit alternative and right now we're all in this transitory phase where we're all looking for a new home. We'll all just have to wait for the dust to settle. Lemmy isn't perfect but is improving and additionally other alternatives like kbin and tildes are in the works.

To your larger point, much of what you're feeling is the abrupt break in habits. I've been using the gap to develop more positives ones, and it's been great.

[–] Oslypsis@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

A thought came to my mind when reading your comment.

Instead of finding a new home, let's make lemmy our new home. Let's try to populate lemmy more, get its activity up, and post more than we would've on reddit (since we have less users, we would need more posts per user), so it can stand a chance at being a reddit competitor.

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[–] pistachio@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The default sorting is by "active" which to me doesn't show a lot of new content (from the last hours). Switching to hot improves the experience a lot.

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[–] statlerwaldorf@vlemmy.net 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I remember HATING Reddit after the great Digg migration. The information was presented in a different way and the discussions seemed to be the focus rather than the linked content. It took a while to get used to it and I'm feeling a bit of the same here. There are a ton of similarities that are already here, so it's not as jarring and things are improving every day.

I feel like I'm interacting more here than I did on Reddit for a long time. By the time anything showed up on my feed over there, it was 1 day old, had 5000 comments, and had devolved into memes.

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[–] CleanDefinition@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example. Lemmy should prevent this, community names should be unique, it should have an index of all the Lemmy Fediverse where instances can lookup if a community exists instead of waiting for a user to import that community to his instance. Something similar to what BTC does with the decentralized ledger.

[–] Ghast@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Having 'no single source of truth' is part of the joy.

If you're not happy with /r/cars moderators banning everyone who drives a Skoda, then you're out of luck. Here in federation land, you can just go to a different lemmy.something/c/cars place.

Of course you can still follow and interact with all the /c/cars communities from any Lemmy instance (and interact a little from Mastodon).

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[–] dogmuffins@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example.

I agree, to an extent. You're right in that if you were part of the vibrant community of /r/piracy then it's miserable to see it shatter here on lemmy. That said, this only applies if you're expecting lemmy to be a 1 for 1 reddit replacement. For this type of community to remain cohesive, /r/piracy would have had to spin up their own instance and in /r/piracy direct everyone to lemmy.piracyinstance.whatever.

You can't really "fix" this in a central way because even if you did, it would be trivial to create an instance that would allow duplicate community names. Also, I can see a lot of use cases for lemmy which do not intend to be federated.

That said, it's not necessarily as big a problem as it appears, if you just accept that this is how the fediverse works. There's no single source of control, so of course people can create 147 different /c/piracy communities if they wish to. Once you accept that, then it's not really that difficult to subscribe to all the /c/piracy communities you can find.

The problem itself could be diminished by a few new features which I feel certain will emerge in the future:

  • linked communities, where one communities content is syndicated to another. So if you post in !selfhosted@lemmy.world then you also post in !selfhosted@lemmy.ml. This would work differently to cross-posting, all comments would be reflected on both instances.
  • grouped communities, where you can subscribe to a group of /c/selfhosted communities with one click, so you see them all in your feed.
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[–] dracul104@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I'm spending less time staring at my phone and more time picking up a book or something, all the better for me. I've found myself engaging more and doomscrolling less though, so the time feels more well spent even though I'm spending less time then I would have on reddit.

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[–] legion@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

It's not going to replace Reddit overnight. Those communities have to be built here. If people stick around, it will happen.

[–] zeerooth@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What I'd recommend in your case is sorting the posts by "hot" instead of "active" which is the default setting. Posts get up the active sorting whenever somebody comments on them or upvotes (I think?), even if they are very old, whereas hot should only show you new and currently popular posts. You'll still see the post that you've already seen and a setting for that is clearly missing, but it should still be an improvement.

[–] FartSmarter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I think having active as the default sorting is not a good idea. It can be confusing to new users

[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I find it exciting. Very reminiscent of the Digg exodus. Sure, it can be a little frustrating at times. But reddit was going downhill for me long before the API stupidity. Lemmy feels like returning home in a way.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Honestly man, as much as I 100% agree on the UI difficulties, it's like a breath of fresh air. There's good music posted, people posted books and I looked and really wanted to read them. It's more human. There's this tiny little handful of content here, but it's not all same-y and in-joke-y and weird.

I'm not trying to hate on reddit, I still go to reddit for news because of more or less what you're talking about (the weird sorting in the newsfeed here and the lack of certain content). But what I like about here is that there are nerdy people, there's real content, there's not this weird hivemind and endless dopamine content. The great stuff about reddit was always the in-depth storytelling and unique content, to me, not just the gratification aspect of everything working right and new content popping up. I'm happy with Lemmy despite the hiccups because it seems like it's getting back to that.

[–] Kuma@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know if this answers your question about same posts, but here is info about the sorting algorithm:

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

I also see same posts (I am looking at you two toilets in a bathroom) a lot but I think it is just lemmys way to show posts that ppl engage in and I guess two toilets in a bathroom is a very hot/trending topic right now because it doesn't seem to die down 😂

So I usually sort on all and new to find post that is lonely and maybe help them out a bit by commenting :D

I don't think this is a big different from reddit tho, on reddit do I see almost the same post all the time or even repost, here I just see the same post more 😂 just go and look at r/steamdeck, same question over and over again, but I will read them all! haha

I don't know what kinds of subs you joined but big ones like meme is posting a lot. But I saw this on reddit too, even reddit thought my feed was a bit lacking so I had maybe 50% posts from subs I hadn't subscribed to, to scroll through 😂

But also remember we aren't as many here(yet). we just hit over 100k users yesterday.

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

And I think it is good to have multiple sources of entertainment. Even tho it is nice to have everything at one place :D

Sorry if this sounds like preaching and that I wrote a book. But here you have it haha

Edit: fixed a few grammar mistakes (that I saw right away)

[–] relyn@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

You aren't doing anything wrong! This site/app (lemmy) and the concept (fediverse) are still super early days so there are going to be many problems. The site has some layout issues and there isn't nearly as much content as Reddit but that's just because it is new.

The most important bit, to me at least, is that the fundamental idea of the fediverse is good. We have had to many instances where social sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter can just decide what people can and can't say, they can remove our content and they can monetize it all without doing any real work of their own as far as creating content. The idea of the fediverse ensures that no one server, person or company has all the content and thus the control.

I really hope people stick with something fediverse whether it be lemmy, kbin or any of the other projects out there. Post content there, cross post it from Reddit if you really have to post to Reddit too for whatever reason. Please don't give these companies all the control anymore.

[–] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (9 children)

It's tricky at times, but I'm really liking it after a few days. It's a bit chaotic but in a fun way I think.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out https://browse.feddit.de for a way to search for more communities

Hope you start to enjoy it more :-)

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[–] Noedel@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does anyone know why so many subs I've subscribed to say pending? Does a mod need to approve it?

[–] jcb2016@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I Think its a bug. if you subscribe to lemmy.ml communities it will say waiting or something else. but if you actually check your communities, you are actually subscribed to them. It's happening to me as well.

[–] thesalamander@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It's far from perfect, but I'm taking a stand.

Half the reason I used Reddit was to cure boredom. I've decided to find other things to do. The other main reason I loved to check in was to make sure I don't miss big news. So far, Lemmy seems to scratch that itch. It'll take a long time for niche communities to establish, but I'll just deal with that for now. Maybe I'll just go back to some old forums for that purpose.

[–] araquen@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

I would say to breathe deep and take your time. Lemmy is not a clone of Reddit, and it shouldn’t be viewed as, say you would compare functionality between 2 third-party Reddit apps.

Think of it as coming in to a new MMO after having played the old one for many years. Some things will be familiar, and some things will be different. Some mechanics may feel like a “step backwards” while others are cool additions.

Lemmy isn’t new, but it’s getting fresh eyes on its user experience and that is a good thing. And unlike Reddit, each community/server/whathaveyou can be far more responsive to their users feedback. That said, not every response will be a “yes” but you don’t have requests filtering through various levels of technological red tape, which I understand has been a challenge for the Reddit moderators, who still do not have the necessary tools to effectively moderate their subreddits.

When I first joined Beehaw, and saw, originally, a “lack” of diverse subreddits (including my mainstays) I was a bit disappointed, but then I thought to myself: “damn the torpedoes, I’m just gonna wing it” and subscribed to a bunch of communities that looked promising.

I’ve been on Lemmy since the disastrous AMA and have not looked back. I’ve even engaged more in these last 5 days on Lemmy/Beehaw than in the last year on Reddit. And while I still miss my 250+ subreddits (including r/superbowl and the subreddits I collected as part of a Reddit gestalt (r/inthesoulstone, the subreddit for Purple button pushers, r/buddhistasfuck (created as a lark, someone posted it wouldn’t last a day and I stayed to prove them wrong, and while it was a quiet subreddit, every once in a while someone would post something they thought was “extremely” buddhist)) the Lemmy communities have provided more meaningful interactions. Plus, Lemmy will create its own gestalts, and I’ll have new ways to experience the never-ending stream of random data tidbits I have grown to crave.

[–] manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Its hard for readers early on. You need lots of people to fill the feed. Get busy or wait for people to get things addressed and pipelines running.

Its mainly UX, it will come in time.

important to note, none of this made itself (even reddit); it took people using and contributing.

[–] Potato_in_my_anus@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Yes, you' re right, I've been a Redditor for more than 16 years and have seen many subreddits come and go. Even today, there are subreddits like Android that only get 200 or 300 upvotes on a good day.

[–] Brad_Brace@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The mobile browser version is pretty much unusable for me. I select view All, then organize by either Hot or Active, and what I get is an endless stream of posts, but newly made and from two years ago (so, neither Hot not Active). And the page becomes unresponsive because of the endless stream.

The app works better but kept timing out when trying to upvoted stuff. Just updated to see if that fixes it.

So far, I gotta say squabbles is working better for me as a reddit alternative.

[–] pfannkuchen_gesicht@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope they disable the live-update stuff soon.

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[–] mvu@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'm actually enjoying the lack of doomscroll.

Since Lemmy isn't built to trap you for hours on end to get that sweet ad revenue, you can just run out of new stuff to see and then stop lemmying. Bust open the eReader or get to that backlog of bookmarked articles.

[–] tRFRmrNe8Nj2Kimc@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I know what you mean. The biggest issue I'm having is finding and subscribing to communities that are not a part of the instance I joined with.

I kept seeing links that listed communities I was interested in subscribing to, but then it would ask me to log in, I'd put in my credentials, only for the log in to not work. I finally realized I had to make a new account with that instance, and then i could log in and join it. I don't want to have to juggle between 3 or 4 accounts to enjoy content, plus much if it is duplicated as some instance are linked, but others are not.

Also I use Jerboa to browse lemmy, don't have a PC, and would rather use an app than my web browser(Brave).

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[–] BromSwolligans@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'm warming up to it. Actually, I was never not warm to it, but the learning curve is real. I am on the website right now because the iOS app MLem, which is in beta, doesn't (as far as I can tell) have a way to search for other communities. But I want to shout that creator out, because I think it's difficult, thankless work, and I really appreciate their effort. The fact there is an app for iOS at all is a wonderful start. Who knows how solid it will be a year from now?

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