Is Lemmy THE reddit alternative for you? Are you thinking about moving somewhere else?

1:1 complete replacement - been very happy with Lemmy and Fediverse so far

I think the answers you will get from users who are on lemmy will tend to be positive 😁

Our voluntary survey shows that 95% of people who participated in it don't mind participating in surveys.
- I don't know sir or madam; my wife will suggest food she doesn't want for dinner.
It's kind of a dumb question. Everyone who doesn't like it just leaves immediately. That's like going to a Detroit Red WIngs game and asking the crowd who their favorite hockey team in the state is.
- "Dumb" is too strong a word for the way the questions were worded. I know some users here are on Tildes as well, or Squabble (idk if that's how you spell it). Doesn't mean lemmy is THE alternative - just one of many minor ones. Also, being on lemmy doesn't mean you're not thinking of moving away specially with Meta's arrival.

I think I'm seeing things settle down and seeing more actual content now. It was mostly posts about Reddit to start with.

I don't know where else to go.

The best thing about reddit for me was an endless stream of information and news propped up by user discussion. I rarely just scrolled endlessly through posts; I loved delving into comments on posts which didn't even interest me at face value to see what I could learn from niche communities.

It was, hands down, the best, most information dense landscape I've ever seen and frankly I feel a little lost without it. I hope that some day, some where I can find something similar.

- I'm genuinely curious, why do the points matter?
- Why not post at both places?
- If you make it, I'll join.
- 12k views but probably 10k are bots and the others are too busy scrolling to ever use your knowledge. And then your content is buried on someone else's platform. I think reddit (and lemmy for that case) are horrible for keeping and spreading useful information and I wonder why people see them as the best alternative.

This is my permanent go to. Community already seems great and I hope it gains more traction. The main difference with the change from Reddit is I've gone from lurker to trying to be more engaged and posting.

Nothing wrong with lurking but you're helping get content out there to make it stick so that's good!

Well, true. I may have gotten here though Reddit. But now I'm taken aback by what's happening here.

I mean, the whole thing is open, FOSS developed, decentralized, being everywhere and at the same time nowhere? Call me crazy, but this in itself is awesome!

On top of that, I was greeted here by a community of communities where people are kind, helpful, full of beautiful and interesting insights.

So why would I be thinking of going somewhere else? I've posted more comments here in the past weeks than in the last ten years on Reddit. And I've done that because I'm genuinely excited with this setting.

So no, I'm not joining the herd moving to greener pastures. This field is green enough for me.

It took me a while to curate a list of interesting subreddits. I am doing the same thing with lemmy and since kbin is also part of the fediverse I don’t see the point of having a kbin account on top of lemmy+mastodon. I’m spending some time discovering what is around lemmy and all its instances so it will be unlikely that I’ll move somewhere else, unless lemmy collapses somehow

Is there any option to export your subscribed communities ? I'd love a bit is inspiration
- I exported from Apollo, but Idk if you can install an old version

Unless something happens, I'm sticking with Lemmy. As for interface and everything, I liked kbin more initially, but I feel like Lemmy development is moving much faster, plus all the third-party development at the moment. As I've said in the past, I'm going where the people are. And right now, that's mostly Lemmy - and since it can federate with kbin, picking between the two is kind of a moot point ...at least for now.

How do I check out the kbin?
- ~~kbin.social is the main instance, but there are others. Check out the GitHub for more info.~~
  It seems kbin is dead and unmaintained. However, it seems there is now mbin, a kbin fork. A list of instances can be found here: https://joinmbin.org/servers/
Since you have more experience with it, could you elaborate on what the real difference between kbin and lemmy is in your opinion? I keep hearing that kbin can interact with Lemmy and Mastadon, so it sounds like its just "better", but I feel like thats gotta be a very oversimplified understanding.
- Mastodon can interact with Lemmy as well as far as posting and commenting. On a basic level, kbin offers microblogging (your Mastodon-style posting) and a more sleek interface. The visual polish is a little better on kbin, in my opinion. Right now, I'd say the biggest thing is that kbin development is slower, so new feature rollouts are slower than Lemmy at the moment as Ernest works to make sure everything is stable as kbin grows. The API might be available now for third-party development of apps, but for a few weeks there, it wasn't, whereas that started almost immediately on Lemmy with API availability. But with Artemis for kbin in beta, it sounds like that might have changed. Otherwise, though different, Lemmy and kbin are both based on ActivityPub, hence why you can interact interchangeably with communities, users, voting, and so on. And maybe worth mentioning, kbin allowed community creation earlier than a lot of Lemmy instances, though that did change quickly.
  I think it just depends on what you're looking for - a polished experience with interesting features (kbin) or more cutting-edge feature rollouts and updates more frequently (Lemmy). Of course, I don't know what the future holds for either platform, so that might change if Ernest gets more of a team on board.

My current replacements for reddit are:

A kbin account for serious-posting
This Lemmy account for the shitposting (and for communities on lemmy.ml which blanket bans all kbin instances)
Tildes.net for the extra-serious-posting
(Eventually) an RSS reader
Libreddit and a redirector extension for search results

I personally prefer to keep my shitposting from my serious-posting and I also wanted to see what kbin was like, so it kinda worked out well enough (aside from .ml)

Tildes admins enable bully accounts that bully other users on the platform
I have a kbin account but don't use it yet.
I have this Lemmy account too.
I don't have an invite to Tildes but it seems nice. Everyone I know declined to invite me so far, probably for everyone's own good actually.
I use one. I have always used one actually. It's good to just read and not participate in the cesspool called the comment section. Try it!
Have you been able to consolidate lemmy and kbin into a single reader app? I've read they're compatible but I'm using Connect on android and it's been temperamental
- kbin does not have an API yet, and even if it did it probably wouldn't use the Lemmy API.
  They're compatible in that a Lemmy instance can federate with a kbin instance. Otherwise they're completely separate stuff

Like it so far, not looking for anything else.

I think it's an excellent reddit replacement and it gets better every time i check. More and more people posting. I am also using Mastodon. I am all for the fediverse tbh. I don't want my data to be collected by one large corporation anymore.

So far it replaced my casual Reddit browsing when I'm bored. But when I want to look at some specific stuff I still need to go to reddit but it's just to get some information and not really to engage with the community.

It seems the the majority agree with you on this hence the up votes but I'm just gonna come out of and say something cuz I'm trying to stop being a lurker. Agreed.
It's going to be a very slow progression for anything federated to take the lead with specific stuff. reddit just has the knowledge at this point.
Hopefully that knowledge will eventually carry over over to the fediverse. Untill then, I'm gonna need reddit in small doses.
- I had really only one sub I wanted to keep up with. They have no intentions of leaving Reddit AFAIK so I just added them into an RSS reader, and explore Lemmy the rest of the time
Yeah this is the reality. We don't need to be so tribal about it.
For example I despise facebook, but occasionally I log in there to sell some junk.
Reddit has been on the nose generally for a long time, but some of the smaller subs were / are great communities.

Seems good so far.

My only concern is that the general infrastructure isn't 100% there when it comes to user friendliness/app support.

When I first tried Lemmy a few weeks ago, it was on mobile, and my only choice at the time was Jerboa (when it came to app options).

It felt pretty incomplete, and the user journey wasn't 100% clear (and heck, I'm a programmer myself). The login drop-down was hard to find, and user was expected to register manually on one of the instances. To anyone else, that would have been very unclear.

We do have alternatives now, like Connect for Lemmy (which seems good so far); and the likes. Connect in particular actually links to registration page and has some of the popular instances available for quick select out the box. That said, there is still more to be desired in terms of user journey. I feel like the community could do some work with improving that 'out-of-the-box' experience.

Federated approach is good, just gotta make sure there's no monopolies; so instances can keep each other in check.

I made my .world account on my mobile browser, then tried Jerboa as well and couldn't figure out how to log in lol. Switched to connect, kept having issues for some reason, didn't seem like anyone else was. Now I'm on liftoff and haven't had any issues but do miss some of the swiping features that connect had
- Case in point, if tech savvy users struggle; then imagine how bad it would be for the typical person who would just probably give up after their first app.

It feels like reddit from ten years ago, and has the critical mass to make it interesting to open and browse. I think it's a success.

I only use reddit now on revanced rif to visit a couple of communities that are too small to be worth replicating here yet

Once I got Memmy it was done. It’s everything I wanted without all the extra bullshit.

Memmy only exists for ios right? I have android and i use jerboa. It's great, but sometimes a bit buggy
- There's a bunch of Lemmy apps for android kike Liftoff, Connect, Summit, Lemming, Thunder, and Jerboa itself. Sync for Lemmy and Boost for Lemmy are on their way too.
- I don’t know if it would be as appealing coming from Android, but I’m an Apollo refugee and I’m enjoying wefwef because it indulges my muscle memory. It’s a progressive web app you can try out without needing to install anything.

I'll check out Tildes if given an invite or it opens up. But I'm content here given it's where more people went and I seek conversation which is easier to have when there are more people on a thing.

I have invite you want ?

It's no longer just a Reddit alternative for me. Lemmy is Lemmy, and I like it. I'm still waiting for the 3rd party apps of Kbin though.

I like it here. I'm waiting for better apps/UI though

Right now it is. It's still a bit empty compared to Reddit, but I see it's slowly getting traction.

So far I like it and therefore do not look around for alternatives.

I only hope that it will not remain with the first wave of Reddit migrants but will continue in the coming months and years. Currently, it is still very quiet for my taste, but this is also completely normal.

The only thing that worries me a little is the distribution of the communities.

I don't think it's a good idea to have the same community (Like a Subreddit) on different servers. This provides for an unnecessary segmentation of the already not large userbase.

So instead of having one big community for a Topic we have many small ones. This is especially a problem at the beginning, when the userbase is still small.

I'm curious to see how this develops over time. Whether the popular communities will agree on one main instance, or whether apps will reduce the problem to the extent that communities with the same names are combined. It will be exciting to see in any case.

Interesting indeed. I already saw some of this coming up over android@lemmy.world which has been locked in order to send their userbase to another instance. So yeah, interesting indeed.
edit: grammar
- That link also takes me to my phones email

I’m here until the next inevitable decay due to corporate or self greed ruins this place too. The counter has officially begun.

Still better than any alternative at this point.

Nah, more of a Kbin fan, but I also have some other forums/BBS sites I go to (and reddit still because the community around life in Japan and such never got going over here, but only those subreddits and nothing else).

Maybe. Federated sure seems to be what I'm going to stick with for now. Hopefully more seemless interaction will happen (in time) between platforms... but I'm already fully converted

Yes. I am used to appolo and wefwef.app is a life saver.

The only “Reddit” feel Lemmy is missing is a mobile app that’s as good as Apollo, which I think will happen soon seeing so many app developments going on

If you're on iOS you could check out memmy, it is heavily inspired by Apollo and has just been published on the App Store
Wefwef
- Second that. Wefwef is the best PWA-type web app in the world in my opinion. It's convenient, easy to learn, and it looks really nice and modern. Plus, it's incredibly stable.

I really like it. The community is also really cool. More like a small town feel than a huge city like reddit. I hope I don't have to move anytime soon.

Welcome to what Reddit used to be

As someone who was lurking on Reddit every day, probably not to be honest. I know a lot of people are enjoying the smaller community, but to me it just feels... empty. The bigger instances are fine, but I was never interested in the popular subreddits like r/funny or r/memes. I used reddit for things like specific games, communities that are noticeably dead on Lemmy.

I'm using Lemmy more like an intermediary step between reddit and just quitting altogether.

Lemmy will need to hit a critical mass of regular users before all the niche non-Programmer orientated communities will start to properly populate, hopefully it doesn't drop off before then
That's my problem so far. I've been leaving subreddits I can live without and trying to use Lemmy for general browsing, but some of the smaller subreddits can't be replaced.
- This is why I made !dragonquest@lemmy.world
  The 2 subs on reddit I really cared about were for Dragon Quest and Breath of Fire. I can't devote enough time to build multiple communities and figured DQ has enough fans that it had a better chance of growing.

Yes. With the added bonus of decentralization.

Yeah, in for the long haul. Once the knowledge base and communities build up a bit it'll be great. It'll take some time.. There's still a lot of good searchable information deep in the subreddits.

I like the concept of ActivityPub (though Tildes feels cognitively easier to use). But I actually think internet forums are a dying format; I enjoy them but I don’t want to talk with bots, read bots arguing, or post more stuff used to train bots. I miss having little online corners of nerds being nerdy, but I think a lot of it will have to come offline to remain "authentic."

Yes and no. I'm opening Lemmy instead of Reddit to scroll / for fun, but with searching I still have to rely on reddit unfortunately.

Wanted to Google good books about Diablo (the videogame) lore and it directed me to a reddit thread with PDF's to the book that some share has on their Google drive. Hopefully Lemmy will get there in a few years, and searching will be easier.

I use both Reddit and Lemmy now.

Lemmy for general browsing and Reddit for more niche things that are dead on Lemmy.

discussed lemmy with a friend the other day, who agreed people need to stop nerding out over how it functions, and just let it do what people are wanting it to do, which is replace reddit.

not to mention, the people discussing it just act like how it functions is a common knowledge that just makes sense.

instances, “federated”, “defederated”, user in one spot can have the same name as a user in another spot. does lemmy interact with kbin, wtf is a kbin.

dont make your acct here, make it somewhere else?

You assume I think

But….he’s asking a question, not assuming anything.
- Why do you assume he doesn't assume anything? Sounds like a pretty big assumption to assume he doesn't assume anything.

Is Kbin considered an option?

I started using both, but it seems like Lemmy is getting more use as each day passes.
- Doesn't hurt that there are lots of good mobile apps for Lemmy

Seems fine now, just needs more people/content, and to settle down.

Some people were hesitant as they heard the creator of this place was some crazy Stalinist; what happened to that?

It turns out that when stuff is FOSS and not controlled but an individual or a corporation, their opinions don't actually matter all that much.
- Hm, fair, if it's decentralised then I guess so, but what of it when one instance is pushed a certain way, do people move to another? Or does that not matter? Trying to work that out.

Lemmy and Tildes are 2 sites I'm very interested in seeing grow. Lemmy is ahead of most, and I think the community here feels like the Reddit I joined back in 2011 or so. I'm sticking around, for now.

My first account was created in 2011 too, it's definitely got a familiar vibe.

Im cautiously optimistic about Lemmy. Short / mid term I’ll be here as it provides probably 90+% of what I was getting out of Reddit. I’m not sure long term how it will work out but so far I have no reason to leave.

I’ve also noticed I just don’t interact with any of it like I used to with Reddit. I used to spend a lot of time just doom scrolling on Reddit. Now I get the highlights of the news, check the sports sun for updates, and then I’m back to the real world. I like that.

Reddit had weaponed Hate to keep you scrolling and raging. At least popular

I feel like there’s people just taking top posts from Reddit and getting them here as fast as they can. Sometimes it seems like a “best of” Reddit site.

I'm happy with Lemmy, except I'm honestly getting tired of the somewhat elitist attitude and fear/anger towards anything that isn't in the fediverse. I noticed it when I left Twitter for Mastodon too, and it's kind of getting old.

I'm not saying some of what's being said isn't justified, it's just not what I feel like seeing every time I open the app/site.

Towards Threads and Reddit is understandable given recent events on Lemmy. Are there others that you're seeing?

The sports stuff is pretty empty. Team specific (my teams) are mostly dead still. So I've been on the corresponding SB Nation blogs more than I had for a long time. Otherwise, just here.

One of the best changes I've made to my content consumption habits in the last couple of years has been not relying on following news-ish social media accounts for my news or going to certain websites in hopes that there have been updates, but really diving back into RSS hard. it's such a better way to get most news content.
- Any tips on where to start?

Only if this place moves on from complaining about reddit and posts content. No one finds the "my ex was crazy" phase endearing.

I'm trying, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to discover new content.

The default view just shows the same three or four communities on lemmy.world. if I change to show stuff from all, it just shows some three or four global communities instead.

Lots of memes from Memes@Lemmy.ml but basically nothing else.

Where am I supposed to discover communities?

- New guy here. What's the Meta threat? Are they buying this site?

It already seems significantly better than reddit has been lately. I was just mentioning to a friend how it felt like 2010 reddit did.

The community is good, it scratches the same itch, think I'm here for a while.

I was telling some friends that I actually like the awkward state Lemmy is in. Reminds me of "the old days" when things felt new and mysterious. I have worked in tech a long time (almost 20yrs) and I still feel like I'm dialing up to the internet for the first time again and rediscovering things. I love it.

I've been wanting to move to lemmy for a while it just wasn't active enough so I stayed on reddit. Fuck reddit and fuck proprietary software

Took the words right out of my mouth
- It must have been while you were kissing me.

Hate using it in browser, but Memmy app is awesome, so for me it’s “mobile only” as of now. We need a proper desktop client

It has a PWA, use that to get the "app" feeling.
- I guess I’ll have to learn what PWA is as well as improve my understanding of how Fediverse works. 😅 It’s all very new to me

I feel fine on it so far, I haven't said too much. I just want a platform where I can go, say things without dealing with as many snarky, bad faith, shitposting users that Reddit seems to endorse having itself contaminated with.

If Lemmy can be the exception, in due time, then I will hail it as a true alternative.

4chan legitimately still beats lemmy and anything else. Slap on a bunch of decent filters and it's far more entertaining and useful than both reddit and lemmy combined.

That’s a rather interesting take. Care to share your filters?
- Normally I'd just tell you all to kiss my nuts but ok, we're not actually on that site, we're on another one.
  If I shared all my filters here I'd probably get my account banned in 5 seconds due to tripping so many keywords.
  Just Google "recommended 4chan filters" and then check a couple of threads FROM 4chan for examples.
  Obvious ones would be:
  <blocking every single memeflag if you intend to use /pol/>
  furry, wypipol, gay, guro, rekt, gore, ukraine, russia, trans, etc etc etc (basically anything pornographic (use regex))
  MD5 sums for all the "rainbow priests" and other bs the merchants are always spamming. Awesome thing about these is that as soon as you block these, it blocks everything else these morons use. Forces them to recreate the images if they want people to keep seeing them. It's pretty big-brain and you need a high IQ to understand and I'm too tired right now.
  After setting up a decent filters list. eg. no memeflags, no porn, no rekt/gore, no trans etc. the site is pretty awesome. Plenty of hilarious schizo stuff, high quality bantz and because there's no karma and generally no rules people don't focus on fighting or arguing by trying to one-up each other. They just call each other a f*g and usually immediately move on.
  Obviously not recommended if you are someone who is actually remotely offended by casual sexism, racism etc. aka you need to at least not have the fragility of a two year old child.
  I also recommend:
  /pol/ only with half-decent filters otherwise it's 90% merchant spam /wsg/ /an/ /v/ /vm/ /g/ /k/ /biz/ if you're okay with losing money lol
  Or if you want something megawholesome: frenschan.org

give it time and dedication. it will grow if we want it to.

I tried communites.win and squiggles and some other stuff but they felt like reddit clones. This feels like its own platform and it feels like the future.

I joined multiple to have many feeds

Yeah, aside from the porn. The lemmy porn scene just isn't here yet. Also lemmy nsfw just moved servers to Ukraine where porn is illegal, so who knows?