I’ve noticed that most people here are ex-redditors, migrating due to the API changes and u/spez’s problematic leadership. I’m wondering, though, how many people here use Lemmy despite never using Reddit?
Personally, I only ever interacted with r/place, and lurked a few times, but I kept up with the protests and I liked the idea of building up Lemmy as a Fediverse alternative for Redditors to migrate to. So I’m not sure if I count.
I used reddit a little bit, but never really took to it much, and if so, only pretty late.
But I’ve always liked old school forums and other link aggregator type places like HackerNews, and of course ye olde blogosphere. So when I came to the fediverse last year on Mastodon, and being enthusiastic about the whole idea of a broad interoperable network of FOSS internet spaces, I looked around for things other than microblogging, which I personally find to be the worst form of social media. There are blogging platforms, which are nice, but when I found Lemmy I was immediately excited. I joined once I had some spare time, and poked around trying to get people to use it more, in part because it complements mastodon well, and because I think it’s a better form of social media.
Having now used mastodon and lemmy for a bit of time, I’m more convinced of my opinion of microblogging.
In a world, which I hope the fediverse gets to sooner rather than later, where multi-paradigm or multi-platform social media is easy to do, I think Reddit-style forum/link aggregator platforms (+ threaded comments sections) with personal micro and macro blogging on the side and privacy respecting chat rooms like matrix integrated would be the “killer meta platform” of the fediverse.
People will vary in what they use most, perhaps over time and context too. The killer feature will be being able to move across and leverage these different formats easily. Forums for public searchable discussion. Microblogging for public but personal conversations. Chat rooms for closed conversations amongst trusted people. Macroblogging for long form authorship.
I have to imagine a lot of people here have used Reddit or something similar to Reddit given the similarities.
What’s attractive to you about Lemmy that differs from Reddit that you want to use Lemmy for but not Reddit? What other social platforms did you use?
I tried out Lemmy because I wanted to support the protests against Reddit corporation, then I found I like the topic-based format a lot more than the person-based format most sites use. Tried out Mastodon to support having a good Twitter alternative back during the musk takeover, didn’t like it as much and stopped posting there.
In general I’m excited about federated social spaces, since they allow for better moderation and less enshittification than the walled gardens that populate Web 2.0. If more Fediverse social media sites come around that start gaining genuine traction, then I’ll use them just because they’ll make me feel excited for the future.
I’ve also used Tumblr because my favorite youtuber recommended it, and I liked the posts that got screenshotted off of it, and I stuck around because I liked learning about disability and queerness (and discovered from tumblr that I myself am asexual). I only ever lurked, though. Lemmy is the first social media platform that I’ve genuinely interacted with, unless Discord counts.
I only used to use it several hours a day. But not once since the blackout.
Man, I wish I had that strength. Ive tried to avoid reddit, Im not actively searching for it, or logging into it, but it comes up a lot in my google searches and Id feel like a fool for not at least using that resource when Im trying to find an answer to a question I might have.
I’m an ex-redditor. Had I not used or known about reddit, I would never have known about Lemmy. Likely the same for Mastodon had I not been a twitter user.
What’s reddit?
