lemmus.org As I understand it, lemmus.org was launched only 5 years ago. reddit has been established for 21 years, nobody was looking for alternatives until the reddit mods became synonymous to political dogma groups and began to deteriorate into one of the most toxic, divisive and counter productive platforms on the internet. people aren't finding lemmus because google refers to reddit as default provider for answers/results. I only found this because I looked through articles particular for FOSS and decentralization, normies don't know what that is to look for it.

@squirrel there may also be people following topics in Lemmy from another Fediverse service but not having a Lemmy account (i.e. which actually use Lemmy, but may not be counted there). Thats my case for the moment, while I still try to figure out if I can keep it like that or need to create an account

Just because they know the Fediverse, doesn't mean they know Lemmy.

For more than 50% of all Mastodon users (that's more than 25% of all Fediverse users), the Fediverse equals Mastodon. For large parts of the rest, if it doesn't behave like Mastodon, it's disturbing.

Besides, how are they supposed to learn about Lemmy anyway? Yes, in theory, Mastodon and Lemmy are federated. In theory.

In fact, however, they're almost completely incompatible. Lemmy is all about groups. It doesn't support any interaction between users directly. Mastodon, on the other hand, is about users interacting with each other directly. It has no support for groups whatsoever. At all. Nada. Zilch.

One of many reasons why there's almost no interaction between Mastodon and Lemmy that'd demonstrate to Mastodon users that Lemmy exists by confronting them with Lemmy content.

By the way, the latter won't work anyway. Mastodon doesn't show you what software a message came from. Thus, most Mastodon users assume that everything they see comes from Mastodon.

I think its okay the way it is. Too much attention leads to many reposts, karma farmers, bots, now AI bullshit etc.

I don't use Mastodon or Twitter either. I never understood following specific people and prefer following topics instead.

"nobody", nearly 50k people.

Asking people on mastodon if they use lemmy also doesn't make much sense to me. I don't use mastodon because it's not threaded, people on mastodon probably don't use lemmy for a similar reason. I'm not sure how many people use both threaded and unthreaded platforms, but it feels to me like the two layouts attract different people.

I have to be that guy and point out that the Threadiverse isn't just Lemmy, and microblog-Fedi isn't just Mastodon.

sue 2: Users could agree on one community. Or (a functionality Lemmy doesn't have), similar communities could be grouped or linked together. Instead of choosing between Linux@lemmy.ml and Linux@lemmy.world, users could follow a combined “Linux” topic.

Doesn't PieFed do exactly that?

Lemmy and Reddit usage are relatively low compared to their respective social media siblings. I've always believed the reason is in the difference in how they're structured. Most other social media is wired around people as the primary structural unit. "Who's saying what?" Reddit and Lemmy are instead wired around topics. "What are people saying about this?" And I assume the difference in popularity is evidence for how most people themselves are wired.

217 comments on this in 24 hours says to me that there must at least a few people using lemmy

Boiling it down to 3 things:

1. Content Scale & Variety - Lemmy has a lot of content but it's very tech/political heavy. It doesn't have much to offer outside of that domain. Meanwhile, there's a whole shitposting subreddit dedicated to an NFL conference -- I don't even closely follow professional American football, but it's glorious.
2. User Experience Friction - You can't just sign up, you need to pick a server. You've already lost a significant amount of people in that step.
3. User Base - There's nice folks on here, but some really sour the experience for the rest of us by being straight up hostile if we don't agree on every little detail.

I mean the sad explanation is that they simply don't care. They'll complain all the livelong day about the problems but they'll never leave. That much was clear after they killed the API and everyone protested for a whopping 2 days.

Social networks live and die by network effects. People don't use Instagram because it's the best. They use Instagram because that is where their friends are. Either everybody uses a site, or nobody does.

Nobody used reddit for a long time as well

Until people did

Lemmy feels like reddit around 2009

I kind of like this level of people as lemmy is less saturated and that's a good thing. Quite often when I was on reddit you'd look at a thread and everything that can be said has been said, so there's nothing new you can add.

I find myself commenting on lemmy a lot more because it's not saturated and that pun hasn't been done, the perspective hasn't been provided, the counterpoint to another comment hasn't been commented etc.

The UX still has a long way to go.

I'm very tolerant of shitty tech and like a struggle, and even I am often like wtf.

Signed up to piefed.zip the other day, and the default feed is just horrendous

Most users will just quit instead of trying to figure out how to fix it manually.

No proper onboarding

nobody

I'm somebody!

It's because everything that becomes popular starts with people in the 14-20 year range.

Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Tiktok...

The Fediverse will eventually grow once something triggers a snowball effect due the nature of connectivity and federation. Until then, the way to make it grow is to have young people make it popular.

Edit: There also needs to be more "fun" here. I think the Fediverse is a more "serious" place which isn't what those other social media sites offered. "Serious 24/7" isn't that enticing for young people.

The other day I was imagining a game or game service that has you make a Fediverse account of some kind. You get people to signup with a username that automatically creates a "@fedi.games" account. That account can have access to Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed etc.

Reddit started out small too, you know when it was actually good.

I don't like the title cause there's a decently sized userbase here, but the article is good. If the article was something like "Why don't more people use Lemmy?" then I would share this on Reddit, but as-is most people will just read the headline and skip it.

I use Lemmy

I’m a 31 yr old dude that just found out about this along with what the fediverse is. When I found out, I was researching this stuff so it took me some time to understand it all and I still don’t think I fully understand it all

Lemmy as a name is very poor branding. It's almost as bad as Mastodon.

Hi. I'm Nobody.

The real answer, that we all know but dare not speak, is that it's miserable here.

Once you've blocked the tankies, porn, and militant dweebs, it's wall to wall politics and titty memes.

I'm here because I'm also a miserable asshole.

I use Lemmy. And you do. And 1000 other people do. So I'd say it's big enough.

Finding communities can be confusing: There can be multiple communities about the same topic on different servers: For example: Linux@lemmy.ml and Linux@lemmy.world

I agree that finding communities can be confusing, but I don't think the problem is the naming.

For example on Reddit if you wanted to talk about video games you'd look at /r/gaming. However over time, since that was a "default sub", it became a bit of a mess and instead /r/Games was the community to have real discussion about video games. But of course over time that too became a bit of a mess and /r/TrueGaming was the best place to talk about video games. In fact for a long time /r/True was a common way to find the better community.

Of course the name of a community might be confusing to an outsider. On Reddit if I'm a fan of Game of Thrones there is /r/GameOfThrones, but what if I'm looking for something a bit more meme worthy, well that's /r/freefolk.

And that's true even on Lemmy. What if I want Star Trek memes? Well that's !tenforward@lemmy.world

I think discoverability is something that can be improved. Of course at the moment so many communities are so small, so looking at all of them isn't really much of a problem. You can usually find what you're looking for.

The people love algorithms, even if they don't admit that. Reddit and the other platforms invest a lot of money to make people more addicted, and it works. Lemmy on the other hand... well people quickly engage with lemmy.ml and think what the fuck is this place

A lot of people do use Lemmy. I dont get why so many people think something has to have literally everyone on earth using it or its dead. You see the same thing in games, too. Id rather there not be a singular monolirh even with lemmys fediverse design. The internet was better when it wasnt this way.

If I had to guess: the culture here seems unusual, and unwelcoming — sometimes even hostile — to diverse opinions (i.e. people who aren't similarly unusual).

I haven't met many people IRL who would fit in here. For some visitors, that's okay (I don't fit in here, myself), but I think most people would just move along and forget that Lemmy exists.

Being federated, Lemmy is technically capable of being more diverse. It's a bit ironic that it still ended up being like this.

Also, some images don't load. I just ignore those, but still people might be put off by broken UX

I was on Reddit a long time, it wasn't always huge. Usenet forums before that. I like following topics, not people, and like hosting communities built around topics but would hate to have "followers" of myself personally, that sounds hellish. So never used Facebook, etc, and don't even love Mastodon, really.

But apparently this is a minority view?