Yes, it is. And I literally have no idea what I’m doing or what the fediverse is or how to best utilize it and I have a mastodon account but don’t use it because all of this fediverse/instance stuff stresses me out and I just want a cool community to feel like I’m a part of, not a bunch of stuff I don’t understand and I hope I can feel comfortable here with Lemmy. Oof.
Imagine there were multiple reddit websites. Reddit.com, reddit.org, reddit.social, etc. Doesn’t matter what account you have, you can see communities/subreddits across anyone of them.
That’s Lemmy.
When you make a lemmy account, it’s more like an email address. You are evolone@lemmy.ml, I am cosmicsploogedrizzle@lemmy.ml. Someone else is joeblow@beehaw.org. We can all chat and post and have a good time no matter what website/instance we post to.
That’s how users work on lemmy. Just like email. Communities on lemmy work the exact same way as users.
If all you’re interested in is that, then you can stop there and fully enjoy your time with lemmy as a reddit replacement.
The future potential and complexity comes from the next part:
The fediverse is someone said, "hey, you know how people on reddit can’t follow people on Twitter, or people on YouTube can’t subscribe to subreddits, or people on Instagram can’t leave YouTube comments? Well let’s make it so you can.
Now this isn’t perfectly implemented at the moment, and there are a lot of growing pains (it’s kinda like the wild wild West), but you can make a mastodon account (like Twitter), and follow the this lemmy community !asklemmy on it, and you’ll see all the posts and all the comments that you would otherwise see on lemmy, just in a twitter-like format.
It’s not perfect and compatibility across these decentealized apps is not perfectly impremented atm, but in the future you could theoretically have one giant interconnected web where everything from “Twitter” to “reddit” to “YouTube” to “Instagram” to whatever fediverse equivalent app are all interwoven. And if any instance of them gets a big enough head to pull something like reddit is pulling, or what Twitter has been pulling, the community can just make a new “email” on a different instance/website and continue as of nothing changed. No single website/instance can abuse their power, because another instance can be spun up any time.
Going to sound sad but I'm a more than a bit bummed.
Outside my family and my job, reddit and the community was a massive social outlet for me. I don't have as much contact with friends any more and being part of some of the communities there made it not so bad.
Reddit has a longstanding reputation for being a hive of scum and villainy (like hosting the_donald for years, or kotakuinaction, etc). I really hope that Lemmy keeps with the general left-leaning vibes of the fediverse overall, hopefully being a good space for queer people, women, people of colour, etc.
I think you do have to be careful here though. If you're too permissive you allow bigotry, but if you're too restrictive you cut off honest, good faith debate and create echo chamber silos where beliefs are never challenged.
Bigotry should never be accepted but that means non-discriminatory opinions, especially ones you disagree with, should be allowed.
A little bit, there’s a lot of specific subreddits I enjoyed browsing and talking in that have yet to reach a good critical mass here on Lemmy. I’ve been sharing my own custom Zelda monsters for Pathfinder 2e on the ZeldaTabletop subreddit and there’s no substitute for that subreddit over here yet (I might make one once RiF dies on June 30th).
I think Lemmy desperately needs to integrate two things:
The ability to search for communities across instances inside of Lemmy (I’m aware of the search option outside of Lemmy, but that’s less than ideal)
The ability to easily search within posts A) in all local communities, B) in all subscribed communities, and C) across all communities in the whole Fediverse. Yes, I’m aware that C) is a huge ask. But I think it’s vital to the success of Lemmy.
I’m not 100% hating reddit right now, though I do hate them a lot. So not deleting my >10yo account or anything…but I do recognize that this is near the end.
The default app is garbage. I’m someone who likes my feed and interaction set up EXACTLY to my liking. So losing any customization, etc is just going to make me like it less, use it less, etc.
But I know that eventually, once they have control over how you interact with Reddit, it will only be a matter of time until it looks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: ad-filled, “suggested content” GARBAGE. I honestly can’t use any of those sites/apps anymore they’re such cluttered wastelands, I don’t know how people stand it.
So I guess less heartbroken, and more like dread as I know the enshittification of reddit is just getting started…
I'm a little sad because I met my partner of nearly 10 years on Reddit on that account. I will keep the account because our original DMs are on there and would like to preserve them. Will probably wipe all the content and contributions, and just keep those DMs
I've been trying to jump for a long time now, I used tildes for a while, but it just didn't have enough content I'm interested in. Now it seems lemmy is gaining enough steam to be my primary social media.
Reddit really peaked with the Obama ama. After that it was all downhill, the place grew too quickly to keep its culture.
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