I get there are still users but it feel empty at times compared “other” platforms.
Why isint lemmy more popular?
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Because there’s still a handful of basic stuff that still hasn’t gotten sorted out yet for some reason.
Like if I wanted to share your post with my friends, I’ll send them this link: https://piefed.ca/c/nostupidquestions/p/377144/why-isint-lemmy-more-popular. If they’re using a mobile app, then it might be fine. But if they’re on desktop and want to comment or vote here but aren’t already on my instance, they need to go back to their home instance, search up this community, and then search for this post. Why isn’t there some sort of native way where I can just click on a button and have it open up in my home instance? Or even better: integrate something like threadiverse.link into Lemmy/PieFed so it immediately redirects me to my home instance’s version on this post.
And before someone suggests using a different front-end or using a browser script, I appreciate you trying to help but my issue is why this isn’t even natively part of Lemmy. And I’m not even sure if it’s in the pipelines for V1.0.
Another issue is that there are still posts that don’t federate properly. And it’s not because an instance was defederated. What posts I see on this account might never be visible from a separate account. What is even more frustrating is that sometimes, I can’t even force my instance to fetch the post. I’ll give it the direct link and it still can’t find the post on my instance.
As long as these basic issues remain unresolved, Lemmy will not become popular. A site can’t be popular if I can’t even share a post to my friends properly. Or if I can’t even see the post, then I wouldn’t be able to share it with anyone!
Edit: added clarification
Having to choose a server before you know what that means or the differences between the slightly different versions of federated networks makes it more confusing.
Yes, “it doesn’t matter which server you choose,” because you can see the posts from anywhere, in theory. Except, it also kind of does matter. Places defederate from each other. If you pick a smaller instance, it may suddenly just go down and then you’re back at the start again.
Honestly, I’ve made… 5? 6? different versions of me on different instances. Kbin went down, didn’t get into Mastodon, lemm.ee went down, didn’t like Mbin as much as Kbin, tried fedia.io sort of liked it, ended up largely on piefed.social, but also like being on sopuli.xyz because it’s defederated from less and has more global content.
It’s confusing and niche. I honestly really love it even when I kind of hate it. I end up ahead of the curve in a lot of tech news because of the hardcore enthusiasts on here.
!fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com il people want to help
Lack of marketing.
Because its got too much political bias and censorship which alienates one side and the centre. Elon did this by making twitter open all other platforms must be just as tolerant or cease to be relevant in the medium of the marketplace of ideas
If you think Lemmy is bad, then you were never on Reddit. Spez went full MAGA, and after the MAGA Inauguration, he permabanned all the active users who built the site. Now it’s all MAGA trolls, novelty accounts, bots, Russian propaganda farmers, etc.
Meh. Reddit had a very strong political bias.
Lemmy doesn’t have the same polish, it’s a little more difficult to create an account, and doesn’t have any marketing. Also success snowballs.
I respect the crap out of everyone that pitches in to make Lemmy as good as it is. But if I’m being real, I’m here to spite Reddit. Few people have that moral give-a-fuck. Spite is easy, following through to do something that is more challenging and pays nothing is not.
People stay on mainstream corporate platforms no matter how badly they enshittify because that’s where everyone else is. They don’t want to jump ship unless everyone else will jump ship with them, and so nobody makes the first move.
Lemmy isn’t more popular because Lemmy isn’t more popular. Lemmy wants to be an alternative to Reddit, but the best thing Reddit had going for it was all the niche communities for fandoms, hobbies, and other interests. That’s something that just can’t exist here, because if you take a niche thing and multiply it by a niche platform, I’ll bet that I might very well be the only person on this platform who is into some of my hyperfixations. So people who want to talk about topics that have no community here, leave and go back to bigger platforms.
I’m still here to try and push for a better future, but I honestly don’t know how we can grow this place to the kind of critical mass it would take to really get the ball rolling.
Critical mass does what they do.
most of them are still addicted to reddit thats why, when you have all under one house, its hard to beat, and thier communities there is still large and eclipses lemmy.
plus most niches have been on reddit for decade+, it will be hard to convince like 20k-100k people to move to lemmy.
It’s not necessarily a matter of moving. People who are into those niche subjects will gladly add more. I’m into guitars, and that’s the only thing I really miss about Reddit. If I was in all the Reddit guitar subs, and found out about Lemmy guitar forums (which practically don’t exist), I wouldn’t switch to Lemmy, I’d just start browsing Lemmy’s forums, too.
Start with Cats. Lemmy has a real lack of Cat material. Cats are like Artists in a run down neighborhood. Once the artists arrive, everybody knows the neighborhood will change over the next few years. Cats are like that in the Internet. Lemmy needs cats to attract more eyeballs.
network effect. There’s fewer people here so there’s fewer people here.
That said, I like it just how it is and would caution anyone against wishing for more users.
Don’t focus on getting more users. Focus on making the content here the best it can be.
It’s inevitable that the quality of the experience here will change with more users. Whether it’s a net positive or negative remains to be seen.
To be sure, these are the “good old days” of lemmy.
As long as corporations and states can’t get a foothold with their bribery, dark algorithms, and bots it should remain fairly decent.
Same reason Mastodon isn’t as popular as Twitter… a lot of people really don’t understand the concept of federation, or why it’s important in order to maintain a robust and healthy discussion. They’re fine with dictatorship as long as it aligns with their sensibilities.
Also, the concept of “one website, one app” is infinitely easier to comprehend than “many instances, many apps, still one protocol”.
Advertising. I’m not going to elaborate, because it’s all just going to come back to that. Grassroots, paid, you name it. Advertising.
For me I feel like to many instances to sign up to. Like . World. Ml .shit just works .etc…
I think whoever wants to promote anything on the fediverse should probably just pick an instance they enjoy and promote that, without caring to explain how it’s all part of a federated network or whatnot.
It’s somewhat difficult to navigate at first and most users find the most popular platforms and don’t have a reason to move on, simple as that. Ease of access and, unfortunately, advertising would lead to Lemmy being more popular. But who would fund the advertising?
most users find the most popular platforms and don’t have a reason to move on
This is definitely a good point. Is even visible here, with not just Mbin but also Piefed still barely having users compared to Lemmy.
Guerilla marketing?
Wheatpaste posters or something.
Everything new starts in the underground.
To the biggest degree it’s comfort elsewhere and numbers attracting numbers. To a smaller but still substantial degree it’s the same reason the top 3 phone brands have less customization and a more plug and play experience than rooted phones. It solves a huge amount of the problems with Reddit, but reddit is simpler to join, simpler to understand, feels more secure, and has so many communities and active users that even inactive communities can look active by how many people mistakenly post there.
I don’t know a single person that knows it exists other than a few that ive tried to get interested. I have told a few friends that use reddit but they just don’t get it.
I started lemmy a few months ago, stopped using reddit completely a few weeks ago and I don’t miss it other than all the dog posts…more people need to post pics of their doggos on here !!!
Everyone to whom I mention lemmy - even some of those to whom I have before - responds by asking about a musician of whom I’d never heard before I started having these conversations.
To be fair, telling people it was founded by Motorhead fans is a better selling point than that it was started by Marxist leninists.
