The migration of large communities from Reddit to Lemmy is like a world-renowned band performing an acoustic set in a library for 50 people.
The fanbase is still large, but the Lemmy community hasn't quite caught up yet, and now there is a transitional period where the audience is smaller.
I'm kind of enjoying the smaller community size. Unlike reddit where I'd come across a post that I have something interesting to say about and see there are already 27,481 comments.
It certainly has it's ups and downs. It's nice having smaller communities as it really helps having more congenial conversations, but I do miss the larger user base sometimes, since it ensures more coverage of a given topic.
Or that topic is covered in general.
Yes, Reddit feels more like information overload platform to me, even ur limit it with subscribe page only.
Only thing that bothers me is that most of the biggest communities are @ lemmy.world or lemmy.ml, so it still feels kind of centralized.
Obviously it's not, but I wonder if too much "power" in one instance will have some negative consequences in future. For example one of them going black results in losing half of lemmy content and orphaned users probably won't spread to smaller instances but will join next biggest.
This is true, but there are good reasons it's shaking out this way:
I think the rise of more topic-specfiic instances like ttrpg.network will help spread the load out.
This is a concern, but luckily this isn't required. I set up hobbit.world to host my Tolkien related communities. It only costs $6 a month plus the $35/yr for the domain name to host a tiny instance like this. I don't need to depend on anyone but my hosting provider.
To be safe I should download backups once a month or so.
But the point is that for big communities that people put a lot of time into, there should be an instance for each one owned by one of the mods.
To be safe I should download backups once a month or so.
Maybe look into borg and https://www.borgbase.com/ - they give 10gb free. I sat it up for some important data I would want to keep if utter disaster struck yesterday, and was pretty straight forward.
You could also set up a more ghetto time machine like rsync with https://github.com/laurent22/rsync-time-backup if you have a machine on your network with ssh access from outside.
I was against it at first, but there’s probably a lot of value in communities spinning up their own domains and hosting their own focused communities. Instead of a central Lemmy.world which hosts many different communities, we should have lemmyPics.com and lemmyMusic.com and MaleFashionAdvice.com that all run Lemmy software, and then people can subscribe in from remote instances easily.
There’s still a place for general instances in this model too, but I think these communities might get off the ground easier with a $12 domain name and cloud hosting services than trying to all be the next Reddit.
Lemmy.ml is hosted by the maintainers and Lemmy.world is the biggest instance (because they were one of the few that didn’t restrict sign ups when Reddit API went dark) so those users are going to have the most communities.
Despite this I still am subbed to many communities on beehaw, Lemmy.world, lemmy.ml and sh.it.just.works
And I have some subbed communities on smaller instances.
But I will say that I’m thinking of starting a new community but I’ll probably do it on Lemmy.world as they have the funds and manpower to guarantee uptime
But all the other federated instances will have an duplicate of certain posts/comments, right?
Maybe some content in cache. Not photos for sure. I'm not sure how exactly will this look like, but we can observe vlemmy.net as example, as it seems to be permanently down.
So, matrix has the concept of aliases for channels/rooms. ActivityPub should do something similar for communities.
Isnt text content stored by servers that are federated with those big instances so if they go down the content is still accessible?
It's still accessible but new comments/votes won't go through properly anymore
That'll all even out much in the same way the users evened out.
Or like if an A-list Hollywood actress suddenly started marketing her new summer blockbuster on a small forum of mostly tech workers.
Sure makes you think.
That is good since we are all beta testing the site and developing tools to manage everything before the real migration occurs.
Enjoy the intimate atmosphere while it last. The hordes will find us eventually.
You can always have your own universe within the fediverse.
I once saw Yo-Yo Ma perform at a Borders book store in Boston.
IDK but if, say, Motörhead came to a 50 seat library in some small town it would be kinda cute and would make the library famous, and it would make all other libraries envy them in a good way.
Edit: just learned that Lemmy died 8 years ago. Just imagine I said Imagine Dragons or something...
I will imagine Imagine Dragons.
Just imagine I said Imagine Dragons or something…
But they're not Lemmy. :-\
Small communities and slow content feeds are fine for me I think. Either way I'm glad I'm here to witness this liminal period.
👍
This could be a concern but i think it will even out in the end. Many people will naturally gravitate to am instance that suites them. I created unilem.org as an instance aimed at not defederating. Some will like that and join others will not and find a different place that suits them. Its the beauty of the fediverse. You can choose your home or even host your own.
How's not defederating going so far?
Well its only a new instance but no problems so far.
Thank you for sharing this.
I've been looking for an instance that protects free speech.
Edit: It would be nice if we could sign up without giving a rationale.
The explanation box is more just to prevent bots, once im confident that the captcha is working as intended I'll likely remove it
allow me to introduce you to https://lemmy.world/c/tonightsdinner it's pretty much that except playing in the empty back room of the library - cooks come and post please
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !tonightsdinner@lemmy.world
Well done, robot - I'm still learning thank you!
Good bot!
Bot!
I don't cook but I'll support your cause.
hey its like our own little MTV Unplugged session :D
I'm just over here waiting on more Braves fans to show up from /r/Braves. That's where I was the most active.
The trouble is the fediverse means there can be multiple. I’m subscribed to two Red Sox groups but there’s only a couple dozen people in each one so there’s no real place for GDTs yet.
Build the community and they will come.
It exists already, I'm just waiting on people to show up.
And the old memes trend is that time the band did a bunch of coffee shop shows playing nothing but ukuleles.
They're just doing their part for decentralized social media.
If their fans love them enough, they'll make an account.
When Bush were at the height of their success, I saw them in a little 300 person room. It was brilliant and we should appreciate Lemmy while it is in that state.
You're talking about Kate Bush, right?
No, rock band Bush.
Wow, what an amazing privilege.
The community here is already 100x better then anyone I've communicated with on Reddit
Agreed.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Good to know!
True, but since it's about the Fediverse and Lemmy, this was a better fit.
For sure! Just sharing a community you can cross-post to, or inspire others to subscribe to if they like this type of post.
I find absolutely nothing on Z-library and other important areas - I bet TOR, LMDE, Mint, Debian are absent.
I have no idea what any of those things are.