My instance had 5 users after a few days, two of which were my own.
Then one day later there were over 600 users registered on my instance.
All of those 600+ new users were spam bot accounts.
Lemmy is sorely lacking the tools for dealing with that kind of thing.
So in order to avoid that the spam accounts that were created could cause problems for other instances, I temporarily shut down my instance until there are tools that I can use to deal with the spam accounts.
I wonder how many of the 2M users mentioned in the OP story are real persons, and how many are spam accounts.
I'm excited by the idea, but I'm honestly pretty confused by Lemmy & Kbin. Reddit accounts and subreddits give an incentive to protect the account and "build up a history". My Reddit account is 13+ years old, and I don't want to sign up on the "wrong instance" of Lemmy/Kbin.
1. Will apps like Liftoff, Boost for Lemmy, and Sync for Lemmy support Kbin instance accounts? Should I be signing up for Lemmy instead if I want a familiar mobile app?
2. If I register a Kbin account, can I register with the same username on a different "home instance"? Can you login (not federate) to a different instance with a Lemmy/Kbin account? e.g., if I sign up for an account on kbin.social, can I login to lemmy.world with the account since most apps currently only support Kbin instances?
3. What happens if your home instance goes down temporarily? What happens if it goes down permanently? What if there is drama and suddenly many instances stop federating with your home instance? What if my instance stops federating with an instance I participate in? Do you need to start over somewhere else?
4. Are there multi-reddits to combine the same topic from multiple instances? What happens if multiple instances each have their own version of a community? 5. How do you moderate a community on Lemmy/Kbin? How do you deal with spam?
6. How do I link to or save a post? How do I search?
I want to sign up, contribute, and give the best chance of it taking off. But I don't understand the future implications of which instance I sign up on.
FediDB.org has more conservative numbers, ~300k total users, ~100k active users: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse
It's because of attempts at excluding spam accounts: https://fedidb.org/site/news The author's mastodon has some posts on this: https://mastodon.social/@dansup
I'm on lemmy.world and personally not seen any spam though.
There's another interoperable 'threadiverse' platform called kbin where development really is taking off right now. Project page: https://kbin.pub Main instance: https://kbin.social Code: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core
Its lead developer is Ernest from Poland and it's implemented in good old php.
Coming up in 3 weeks on HN:
Why did Lemmy migration fail? (65 comments)
(dead) I'm leaving Lemmy (0 comments)
The social website without users and content (128 comments)
From my PoV so far it looks that subs which decided to join lemmy or fediverse did not become active in same way as on reddit. I'd guess that these communities are rather a 'rogue' spin-off of subreddits created by people who didn't like mods and how they ruled subs. It's also possible that only more tech-aware enthusiasts moved over while those who mainly provided content and activity didn't bother themselves with "alternatives" and exodus. They decided to stay (or don't do anything) and join the blackouts or whatever else these protests took form.
Overall, I'm not surprised with what happen to reddit or even twitter. This crawling enshittification driven in most cases by the greed and power lust; I've seen this happen many times in the Polish part of the Internet and it looks like it's an inevitable stage in platform's life.
It's hard not to feel helpless when it comes to dominant sites (monopolies), like Reddit or YouTube. There doesn't seem to be any real alternatives.
I'd encourage people not to give up hope. You don't have to give up using Reddit and YouTube, but instead you should find other sites that match your values and give them preferential treatment.
I signed up for a Lemmy instance. I took 10 minutes and logged into it on all my devices and removed all the quick links to Reddit. During my 10 minutes of discipline I made it as easy as possible to use alternatives during my times of low-discipline. I did whatever I could to redirect my "I'm bored, I'm going to click on something for entertainment" energy towards Lemmy instead of Reddit.
Basically, just make sure you put alternatives first on your list and Reddit and YouTube come last. I wont visit Reddit for entertainment unless I've first read through a bunch of posts on Lemmy. If a specific search directs me to Reddit, so be it, but I wont post there for fun; not unless I have to, not unless I've tried the alternatives first.
Remember how easy it is to type another URL into your address bar.
I just wanted to suggest including some more helpful links.
Graphical search indexes for finding and joining an instances aligning with your interests:
An index of subreddit migrations, both official and unofficial community spinoffs to subscribe to:
- https://lemmyverse.net/communities
A list of alternative clients for mobile, desktop, and web browsers:
For those who are wondering just like I did…
Lemmy is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums
A lot of people whine about Lemmy and federation. They can't see how it works? What happens if the server closes down? Which instance do I choose. All of this is answered with some reading.
If picking a server and understanding how it works is too much effort for you, then don't use it. You have had to put effort into understanding every single service you use. Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin and other federated services are no different.
If it's too much, stay with Twitter or Reddit. It's okay.
People question the user numbers yet ignore the rising number of instances which is non-trivial and hard to fake. The usual bots dont (yet) set up new instances. Its not that easy and it costs real money.
It wasnt quite clear how serious the reddit event but it seems now more than a blip. Many subs still silent or disable comments because they cant moderate without the tools.
The fediverse platforms and overall design have still some way to go but those inroads are vital validation and testing at scale.
Remember these are still tiny teams with very limited funding. When the history of social platforms is written they will be hailed as heroes and visionaries long after the lazy comments on HN are forgotten.
While it has a long way to go I am very hopeful for the fediverse. Got the Memmy app via Test Flight and got signed up to lemmy.world in like 2 minutes. Was a lot simpler than I realized and honestly I am giddy with excitement. So long and thanks for all the memes.
Also, bravo to that dev. Seriously, v0.0.2 and you are killing it mate. You should be proud.
With the recent surge in discussion around Lemmy, I decided to spin up an instance and give it a go. It seems to have a lot trouble syncing up with other instances making for a very disjointed experience.
For example, I commented on one post, which added that community to my instance, but then my instance never did sync up with any new comments from that post so I just thought there was no activity on it until I went to the original instance and saw all the new comments.
To be fair, it could be on me and my configuration. I'm not really sure, but it makes it difficult to keep track of moving discussions and will probably drive me away from it eventually.
/r/Firefox migrated to https://fedia.io/m/firefox (Kbin based)
Why is HN so negative about Lemmy?
What is really interesting to me is Sync for reddit (arguably the best of the Android 3rd party reddit offerings) is back in 2 weeks with Sync for Lemmy.
If he can use his UI skills to give the level of quality that Sync offered, packaged with Reddit users in mind, I think this will absolutely solve this.
It’s great, but imho activitypub is kinda of a flawed protocol it won’t THE ever changing thing but actually the first step, creating an account anywhere from one different host defeats the purpose why social media is very unique and why hardly are there duplicates of the same kind of niche, secondly activitypub is a heirloom of confusion I do wonder how get information faster or at an equal speed of r/technology, third whose gonna take responsibility? Is it jack?, or the server, when something become part of the lifestyle they’ll always be someone to blame trust me even tho I do not like musk or mark I still use Facebook and Twitter, Reddit is here to stay no matter how we hate Steve people will still use it
I have no idea what I am supposed to see on this link. It is completely unreadable, with green text overlapping each other and green icons and no zoom. But I suppose that the UX is a good indication of the overall Lemmy experience.
The site is crashing for me, isn't this a bit symbolic for the state of Lemmy?
Basic Guide https://imgur.io/a/uyoYySY
Lemmy.one wants a written answers and pre-approval. Garbage.
Awesome! As long as no one I know has to run an instance, looks like a great time to jump ship.
And how many of those are bots?
The problem with these Reddit alternatives is that just like 99% of Reddit, they're a complete waste of time. There's nothing of substance, no real community, and no value add to anyone's life. I just opened lemmy.world and I don't see anything of substance, just posts talking about Lemmy and how Reddit is dead.
For me personally to use any of these sites, it has to at a minimum be a place where one can learn and have stimulating conversation. Reddit was like that in 2008, and it stopped being that way when memes, marketers, and political correctness took over. HN is the only site of this style that I regularly frequent because the quality is relatively high. Without keeping a high quality bar, I don't see why anyone would care to use any of these sites unless there's enough of a differentiating factor, and I don't think fediverse is an attractive enough of a feature to attract any serious users long-term. I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then.
I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? Doubtful without at a minimum getting the ball rolling seeding it with content, and marketing is not my forte or interest. But in any case I hope we'll see more competitors trying to build a "better" Reddit than attempt to replicate the cespool that is Reddit (outside a few high quality niche subreddits), that persists not due to any superiority but simply just from network effects at this point. We don't need more of the same, we can do better.
Lenny has a major issue (which I think is a fatal flaw) which is that as soon as you go to the site you have to choose a server (of which there are hundreds) and you have no idea which to pick and then you don’t bother and leave the site.
No casual user is ever going to leave Reddit for Lemmy. Even for myself I’m probably not going to use Lemmy because it seems stupid to have to join multiple “Lemmys” and make multiple accounts, this isn’t a good user experience. People are supposed to have separate accounts for every Lemmy? All the communities are disparate and separated? It makes no sense to me at all.