I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don’t care so much about what happens to Reddit anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of us.

I think it’s because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit’s best days are behind it. Maybe it’s the effect of ad money and monetization, or it’s the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it’s both.

Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it’s all already long gone.

When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go “heh”.

So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit’s users make it here, I’m excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.

I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don’t care so much anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of us.

I think it’s because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit’s best days are behind it. Maybe it’s the effect of ad money and monetization, or it’s the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it’s both.

Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it’s all already long gone.

When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go “heh”.

So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit’s users make it here, I’m excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.

whatsapp’s killer feature was “no killer features, just a messaging app with number-bound IDs and good UI that even my grandma can use with minimal setup”. for anything like that again I’d change, but the minute they think they need to add something like numberless IDs, or stickers, or a social media feature, or a payment system, they can fuck right off.

and smaller screens? 145 x 65 mm would be perfect! and anything larger than 150 x 70 is too big.

same here, I’d be happy about an invite too!

First of all, it has one big difference: What types of communities you see when you browse the “Local” communities (on most apps or web UIs it’s gonna be a setting at the top). “Local” shows you threads posted in communities that are on your instance; “All” shows you the whole network, similar to /r/all on reddit; and “Subscribed” shows you only the communities you’re interested in, similar to the main page on reddit. It makes sense to switch this setting to All for the time being, and to see what’s going on everywhere else and which communities develop; to Local when you get confused, e.g. with lots of posts in languages you don’t speak or lots of duplicate posts; and to Subscribed once things have settled down and once you have found your communities that you’re interested in (and other stuff that you’re not interested in becomes more and more on the All feed).

There’s some eceptions when the “linked instances” structure does make a difference:

• during heavy development (like in the early stages right now), federation might break here and there (for example right now between some servers using on older version of the Lemmy backend and those that already updated). also, there’s probably gonna be multiple similar communities on various instances (nearly every instance has a “main” community and a “Lemmy discussion/reddit bashing” community). this will all settle down with time, federation in general will be more stable, and “main” communities will develop, with smaller alternative ones spread around that can take over if the main one is taken offline.
• when instances decide to “defederate” from each other. this is a conscious decision by the admins (standard setting is to share everything with everybody else, but specific instances can be added to a blocklist). this means their content doesn’t show up on your instance, and users from those instances can’t interact with one another anymore. this happens at the moment with lots of NSFW instances and the more tame ones, but once moderation tools are improved, it will settle as well.

Quick tips: Don’t be too stressed about “missing” content on other instances, right now it’s still early days and a bit chaotic. And do consider making multiple accounts on other instances, and checking out what’s different. the apps that are being developed right now make switching between multiple accounts easy, and one day will hopefully bring bookmarks and comments across multiple accounts together as well. Shop around for different instances and apps and see what’s out there, read people’s recommendations, try and find instance and community lists. And in general, don’t see your current account as the only way you’ll interact with the Lemmy network (just as alt accounts were a thing on Reddit), and don’t expect the network to serve you everything on a golden platter, you’ll have to do some hunting around for the cool things, a bit like in the internet days before Web 2.0 happened – but that’s half the fun!

yeah it’s great isn’t it‽

baconreader here. best media display behavior, hands down.

hoping for baconreader, personally

we’re on what list now?