It’s almost exactly a copy of reddit issues but most people that use reddit haven’t heard about it.
Among other reasons, there’s no marketing budget.
Too bad because this is a really great site
I reckon that is one of the reasons. Lemmy’s (and the entire ActivityPub/Fediverse ecosystem/graph) attracts people with a positive, progressive attitude.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
There was a lot of negative being accepted (and sometimes actively pushed) on some instances, but most other instances defederated from them.
Advertising is based on passive attitude and thrives on negative attitudes.
This is a nice-sounding story that flatters our egos, but unless scientific studies corroborate, that’s all it is.
As long as it stays semi-obscure, the powers that be won’t notice it much so maybe it’s a blessing and not a curse. Reddit didn’t start as a shithole, you know. 😕
The powers that be have had their eyes on us for a few years already. Previously. Previously. Previously.
Yikes. Well, let’s hope we’re low on the list…
Why should it be? Embrace this moment when it is both active and not yet destroyed by the mindless masses. For me this is the perfect size of community
Reddit is bigger, more established, and Lemmy is smaller and more unknown. As reddit gets worse Lemmy will get bigger.
yeah and a lot of bots are filtered whereas on larger sites, such as reddit, most of site usage is bots. It’s also very anti-troll and yeah I agree size matters a lot
Because in my opinion people are used to reddit, and is the biggest one, baiscally everyone else is there, why changing for a platform where you have evem to choose " an what? An instance?"), with a fraction of the users.
I stopped using reddit after the api rules changes, i quit twiitter as sson as that nazi guy bought it.
The main socials I use are mastodon and lemmy.
How many of my friends are on madtodon? 1 or 2, how many of them are active there? 0. And i think my nbers are even higher than wjat i think they should be because most of my friemds works in the IT
People unfortunately just wants everything quickly, without hassle, and are not prone to change.
A question on reddit? Probably you’ll get an answer in few hours. On lemmy? You are luckynif you’ll get one.
I have a small crafting page, that I’m trying to spread using only mastodon, it’s much harder. These are the reasons I think.
And most people don’t even care about the content of if their timeline is 85% ads and suggested pages.
They will just scroll. Algorithms are shitty, but who cares. Everyone is there…
over half of reddit is bots, little to no bots here
I might be a bot. Those “I’m not a bot” puzzles? Tricky!
If you are not a bot, say penis
Okay, I did! How do I attach a recording to a comment in Lemmy?
Many people stick with what they know and often won’t or can’t change unless forced to. Being first to market creates a persistent market majority.
It’s almost exactly a copy of reddit
The magic of reddit isn’t just the structure of the website, it’s the fact that there are so many people posting to diverse niche subjects. Although one structural thing lemmy is really lacking is the wiki and post flare components; those help give experts a reason to make effortful contributions as they do not fade into the ether after a few days.
That said, if reddit was new in 2025 or 2020, I don’t think it would take off as much. It gained popularity in a previous time of the internet and is now coasting off that.
Reddit greatly benefitted from the DIGG implosion (Reasons include issues with power users, censorship, redesigns, etc.) around I want to say 2012 +/-. Similar to how this site benefitted from the Reddit API implosion the other year. For social media applications, success usual comes from a halfway-decent platform + lucky timing. (This is all from memory, so apologies for any inaccuracies and generalizations.)
There’s only so many Linux furries on the planet
We like it this way. Please stop pulling this thread.
The joining process is too cumbersome and a few things like cross posting across instances are way too complex for people to easily understand.
Not sure why you’re getting down voted… These things are true. Maybe amended to “way too complex for most people to easily understand” would be less controversial.
The vast majority of people’s relationship with technology ends with an email address and a credit card. Here on Lemmy there tends to be a more sophisticated understanding of social media and the underlying social and technical aspects. But the idea that you have to do anything more than decide to join something and at most you need an email and a credit card would be a significant barrier to entry for most.
Most people downvoting probably haven’t ever questioned how Lemmy works.
For example: posts are duplicated across instances. But usernames and accounts are not.
The hard-core leftist/communist/anarchist slant scares a lot of people away. Im a left leaning liberal but not a leftist. If I were conservative I think this site would drive me crazy.
If I were conservative I think this site would drive me crazy.
Good
The only reason to be here, instead of Reddit, is because you have wingnut opinions and an abrasive personality that prevent you from posting on Reddit without being banned.
Its hard to break into peoples minds with no advertising budget.We can’t tell people on reddit about Lemmy because reddit bans your account.
Lemmy got a ton of traffic after the api black out and it did an incredible Job at retaining a lot of those users. There were 200k active users and Lemmy was much more unstable at the time. Active users did fall off as expected but 50k stayed for 2 years. Thats great in my opinion. If we had another migration wave I reckon the retention would be even higher.
For someone to switch from reddit to Lemmy three things need to happen
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They need to know it exists
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They need to dislike reddit or centralised corporate controlled social media on an ideological level.
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They need something disruptive to happen. Either a ban or a change they dont like.
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You are applying the thinking of wholly owned platforms and how to judge their success. They have to grab a sizable and hopefully growing number of users who keep coming back to be successful. Because they need the data from their users and/or their eyeballs on ads for commercial success. None of that applies to the fediverse really. It can grow as slowly as it wants to or not grow at all. As long as there is a small percentage of people who spend time and money to keep the instances going. This laced corsage of economical necessities is much tighter for a centrally hosted platform which will have a thirsty boardroom to answer to. Popularity isn’t so much the factor why reddit is/was more of a success, it is/was the quality of information others got from it and it definitely used to be the ease of getting to it. People who got pissed off at reddit will slowly add to our numbers here (or another iteration of a service like Lemmy) as the idea of becoming your own algorithm becomes more normal for the non-techy minded users as well. We’re playing a long game that we don’t even want to win.
