I do fee so much better now that reddit is dead to me. I check lemmy few times a week.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Right now it looks like it's a decisive victory for spez, contrary to the article's title.
Of course, the long-term consequences aren't clear yet, the moderator exodus might result in the whole platform becoming too low-quality to sustain the user interaction, leading to people moving away from it.
Or it becomes mostly unmoderated, near a major election, at the same time as twitter turns into disinfo central.
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Sure, and Digg got its way with the redesign back in the day.
Back then, there was an easy and viable alternative. Lemmy, sadly, is neither of those two.
I, for one, just signed up on this website specifically so I can leave reddit
Why isn't Lemmy viable?
Not enough people here (it's a network effect) and it's way too complex to sign up.
My signup process was like this:
- After going through the list of servers, I had to pick one of them. As someone who went through that whole situation with XMPP, I know that this alone is enough to make most people turn away.
- Then I picked beehaw, because most of the communities I wanted to join were there. The signup form turned out to be an application form. I spent about an hour mulling over what to write there.
- Since the page told me that if I didn't hear anything back after 24h, I could consider my application rejected, I wrote another account application at feddit.de after waiting for about 48h.
- The feddit.de account was approved, but I only noticed by my login working a few days later. I didn't get any notification. That's what I'm using right now.
- After more than a week, I got an email that my beehaw application was accepted.
I don't know anybody with even half as much patience as myself. Every single step on this way would have been a dealbreaker for a regular person by itself. Creating an account on reddit takes a minute, not a procedure of several days.
Also keep in mind that most people don't understand what federation means in the first place.
I'd just like to say sorry for the experience you've had with Beehaw, we're trying our best at the moment to get through everyone but it's been a really hard time.. We think we might be able to reach 0 people left in our queue by the end of tomorrow (optimistically, there's about 2k left)
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Then I picked beehaw, because most of the communities I wanted to join were there. The signup form turned out to be an application form. I spent about an hour mulling over what to write there.
Bro this is a skill issue
Not everyone is a writer.
You misinterpreted what the application form is for. I have accounts on 3 instances (lemmy.ml, beehaw.org and lemmy.one) and for each of them my application message was "came from reddit." It's just a way for them to reduce abusive signups; even with that, 2/3 of those instances don't even require email verification. It literally takes 10 seconds to sign up and somehow you spent 86400 of them.
That’s not what the form's instructions say. I can’t read the mind of the admins to know how little I can get away with.
Perhaps don't advertise that you're willing to do no more than the absolute bare minimum to try to hoodwink the admins.
I didn't, that's why it took an hour to write the application form. Which is totally unacceptable for the general population.
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not enough people here? lemmy instances total are close to a million and that isn't even including kbin users
also, what you said about the sign up process is entirely because of the influx of new users right now - of course its not good UX but with the community beehaw wants to foster, they need that application and they're 4 people accepting all of them!
be reasonable and accept that this site is young! it has not had the decade of development that reddit has behind it! things are weird and still broken and that is okay, the community adapts to its quirks
Not all of them use the application process, many are just captcha plus email. Then Beehaw is failing to send confirmation emails.
The sign up process has to incorporate security to protect the Lemmy federation from spambots and other exploitation. Yeah it's a hassle, but it's not there to annoy people, rather to provide the best possible user experience. But still an application is something that can dissuade a potential user. That's why many don't use one.
Beehaw is one of the most heavily laden instances probably second only to the originating lemmy.ml instance. An overloaded instance can result in hangs and sluggish performance. Also true for one with high latency such as one located overseas.
It's true the chore of finding a good instance can dissuade some people. If you don't know any better and sign up on a bad instance it can unfairly soil your opinion of the whole Lemmy federation.
Once you find an instance you like (good ping, good performance, good admin) all the content across all the instances is there, barring any defederation. Which communities are local to the instance is not normally a selection criteria.
I disagree that there are not enough people here. Beehaw is busy enough for act as a reddit replacement imo. The federation setup is complex, but given how many bugs and technical issues it has right now, it's probably for the best - only people with patience and a lot of interest in Lemmy should be joining right now.
My experience signing up involved no pain at all and I personally liked having my application screened. I had access within an hour or two, it wasn't a complicated process and I chose beehaw because of it's community
It seems pretty easy to understand signing up, from my perspective. The hard part is understanding how everything is connected
My exact feels. I had never heard of the fediverse or whatever, and still don’t even know if I spelled it right lol.
But I just picked the first server that had a good amount of people on it, off a recommended list, and it’s been fine.
To sign up I had to answer 3 super simple subjective questions. Took 2 mins. Had to wait to get approved, but in the meantime I could still browse so it really didn’t matter.
To me, the hard part was learning lemmy/kbin/beehaw etc existed.
It was not difficult for me to sign up. I had to give some moments of thought to each step except the form application which I gave a couple moments of thought. I was kind of glad it wasn't instant-simple because I'd prefer thinking people be here.
That prolly sounds smackish but it's just my directness. I really didn't have any problems.
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There has already been a relatively large population that has left the site (myself included) in a short amount of time. I doubt the rate will stay that high, but even though, integrating over time I see this is as the beginning of the end for Reddit and spez. The guy is a greedy jackass and I hope he loses it all.
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For me, no matter what Reddit is dead. Lemmy is enough for my time wasting and has enough content that I have not missed it one bit. I feel like the communities are smaller, less toxic, and I want to contribute more here. They could completely reverse their decision and I will not return and I hope there are enough like me to make a difference. It just amazes me a site that exists to link to other content on the web and store text comments about said content isn't profitable.
Lemmy is filling that void for me nicely. My only complaint is some bugs and lacking features, but that will get ironed out as Lemmy matures. Being wholly community driven is a hugely more solid foundation. And yeah, no ads. I see them rarely anyway because I mainly use a browser with an adblocker, but it's good to know there's no profit motivation for the Fediverse and never will be.
Lemmy is also ad free. Love that.
I'm always astounded at how few people use ad blockers. Fuck the entire ad-based system, it is cancer.
The whole internet can be ad free if you want it to be... even from your phone.
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I'm currently refusing to visit Reddit on principle. If Reddit relented, I would stop actively avoiding them, but I would not go back to it as a primary social outlet.
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Fuck u/spez
(That was missing from this post.)
They did say he's "the Kmart version of Elon Musk" which I thought was quite funny.
wish.com version, of elon musk!
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Reddit ceo Steve Huffman is an idiot, and also a massive prick.
This article has so many inaccuracies… I haven’t talked with a single person that thinks Reddit shouldn’t charge for api access. And the final comment about being legally obligated to pursue profit is just factually incorrect. https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-companies-to-maximise-shareholder-value
You can find plenty of other sources just like that one saying the same thing. I’m pretty sick of this myth, because it gives all these companies a bogeyman to hide behind.
This point struck me too:
Reddit is under no obligation to make its API free. But, it seems, the company has overreached in enforcing the new policy. If its target is the largest AI firms, then it should focus on curbing their parasitic proclivities and not going after beloved and useful software its users and moderators depend on.
This is my feeling. I understand that it could cost something. But the eye-watering rates for the small fish and the speed of the extortion is the issue.
Because the point isn't the costs of the API. Reddit wants all its users to go through the official access points, the Reddit app and the redesigned web. This will allow them to hover the maximum data to sell and ensure ads flow.
They should've just been effing upfront about it instead of trying to scapegoat API creators. Did they think users are too dense to understand what they were/are really up to?
Think of it as killing two birds with one stone: they monetize users by getting AI firms to pay for all the valuable content redditors have posted over the years, and they kill off app competitors who are giving redditors alternatives to the mobile app.
That’s really all it’s about.
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I didn't originally think that reddit shouldn't charge at all for API access, but after spez's recent interviews I wouldn't go back to the site without a promise that API access will be free forever. Is that reasonable? No, but fuck spez.
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It's his site. He will always win. Fuck him and greedy capitalists fucks like him.
PS: Enjoy Lemmy
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