cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19004972
Let’s be honest, the real reason Lemmy build most of its traffic is because of Reddit users. But the thing is, outside of the mass exodus in the west that too from the PC era… people discover and join Reddit not because it’s another social media like Facebook or Twitter that people need to reserve their usernames on like a brand or celebrity but because Google Search is kinda… actually absolute trash by SEO and machine learning crawlers.
Most of the world (I am from India btw, hello~) join or even discover reddit because they’re trying to search for actual solutions, recommendations, advice or even reviews by actual experienced people without having to go through another YouTuber which can stem from troubleshooting a router, finding an actual FOSS option or seeking immediate solutions to the recent CrowdStrike fiasco for example. After having to visit reddit every time whenever using a search engine including for education to career advice, I ended up directly signing up with reddit a decade ago.
Recently, Reddit even restricted its search results to Google only in a business partnership meaning those using Bing, DuckDuckGo to Ecosia or even SearchGPT wouldn’t be able to access Reddit answers anymore. Say, if someone searches for how to block ads on chrome as example - Solutions like uBlock Origin come into existence and continue to exist because of the combined community in Reddit that Lemmy is trying to preserve.
Unlike others, am not saying Lemmy would be dead but it would be pretty much like Discord-Telegram or Tumblr instead of wiping Reddit or correcting Facebook. Reddit is not something you discover from word-of-mouth or join from peer pressure unlike other social media which is even truer for Lemmy but because it actually helps and is useful to people.
Lemmy can’t be taking the path of 𝕏 (Alone Mask’s Twitter) but any of the good platforms were before the Enshittification with Facebook’s way~
You are assuming the point of this is to be famous rather than non profit niche community driven
And that’s OK. The Internet was better before everyone was using it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September#/media/File:Internet_is_Full_-_Go_Away_t-shirt.jpg
Oh, that’s a throwback. The internet and “nerd culture” used to be somewhat more exclusionary now that I reminisce a bit.
Listen, it’s not our job to make Google search result better. They could have easily parsed apub sites like lemmy correctly of they want, but they’re so enshittified there’s low chance of that. But that doesn’t mean we should be trying to fix their shit.
Unless we want more users.
On Kagi there’s a fediverse lens (basically a filter)
Even if it’s indexed, there’s no single website to search for so even if I add “Lemmy” to help, it won’t look for content where Lemmy isn’t mentioned.
The mistake that was made was making the decentralization something that affects the front end. If the backend was decentralized and the front end was a single default website with people being able to create alternatives (but everyone being guaranteed access to all the content), that wouldn’t be an issue. We could tell new users “Sign up on Lemmy.com and if you decide you don’t like the UI just choose an alternative and use the same credentials to sign in.” No one would know you’re using a different UI, all content would be searchable by adding site:lemmy.com to your query.
A centralized frontend and a decentralized backend seems great in theory, but I’m not quite sure that’s even possible without some one or some group owning the centralized frontend. And if one single entity controls the frontend, it defeats the purpose of decentralization. We want to avoid any one person or group owning the flow of our communication.
That’s why you make the backend available to all to develop a front end, but there’s a default option just called Lemmy that helps solve the indexing and getting people started issue. If the Lemmy default option becomes shit the data is still available and something else becomes the default option.
A bit like Jerboa is the official app, but everyone can develop an alternative… Get rid of the instances and make all content available no matter where you sign up from and let the users curate their feed, you get rid of the admins completely, only moderators continue to exist.
I agree it gets complex for users. But pushing back a bit, wouldn’t we instead say:
We could tell new users “Sign up on Lemmy.com and if you decide you
don’t like the UIaren’t a pedophile justchoose an alternative and use the same credentials to sign inmake sure you start blocking.”I have in mind that the top blocked instances are pedo oriented. Also seems like it would create a liability issue for servers mirroring that content.
Although it’s not a perfect solution to choose a default instance for new users, I do think it’s a powerful question to eliminate.
Hosts could choose to host NSFW content or not, right now they have the exact same issue anyway so the current situation is no better…
Why rely on google which is going down on reliability so quickly.
What we need is a GOOD lemmy based search engine. Which I think is entirely possible with current lemmy implementation.
The post is saying it’s difficult to discover lemmy without someone telling you about it. It’s not really about searching lemmy.
Thank you.
It’s a bad idea to compare Lemmy to Reddit or expect Lemmy to replace Reddit.
Slow growth is not a problem, it’s actually a benefit.
There is no hurry, and no need to push for high user counts.
Rather than trying to attract more people, focus on making your communities an attractive place to be.
I’d rather Lemmy burn to the ground than become famous, seriously watching AND experiencing twitter, reddit, Facebook, MySpace, my-yearbook, and (does Skype count?). I would like to make Lemmy my forever social media. Only time will tell if it lasts though.
Yeah. Last thing I want is to deal with all the anti-environment, anti-EV pro-extremist right wing toxic-macho shit bots.
Quality, not quantity. With too many people, moderation begins to fail
I really don’t want it to become worthwhile for the Russian troll farms that want every discussion to turn into a shitfest.
Lemmy won’t catch on until there are groups of communities you can ban at once. Sports, Linux, German, pervy anime… It’s a very rare user who will put up with the absolute dreck of the initial feed and manually block communities until they have a feed that’s marginally personalized.
Then there’s the fact that any communities that are specific to peoples interests are completely empty.
The “instances hosting communities” structure alleviates albeit not solves this problem; communities about related topics end in the same instances, that you can block.
but Lemmy already does show up on Google results
I clicked that link and the first dozen results were Reddit posts and garbage
something on your end? my top result is from lemmy.world
maybe try opening the link in Private Mode or Incognito
For me it’s 4 Lemmy results and then 2 reddit results and after than chaos ensues.
Top one is Voyager for me but right below that is Lemmy world
Tried searching this on ddg, not there yet probably because it’s not indexed and cached yet
As many others have already said, Lemmy is fully indexable by search engines. In fact, in this very community there have been posts about Lemmy content being above other results from more prominent sites like Reddit for certain topics.
I mostly agree with the OP, it would be great if Lemmy had more sources of newbies than just “pissed off redditors”. (I have further reasons for that, but they don’t matter here.) As such I’ll focus on specific tidbits here and there.
The content is indexable (by Google), but your point stands as it sucks. It’s hard to reliably find Lemmy content by it.
Do you - or anyone here - have a good idea on how to solve that? Someone suggested a Lemmy-based engine; it’s tempting but it wouldn’t help if the person doesn’t know about Lemmy already.
Reddit is not something you discover from word-of-mouth or join from peer pressure
It used to be like this. “Stumbling” upon the site was only a thing later, as it had already enough content to become a source of info.
type
site:lemmy.worldin front of your search if using google. You can combine multiple instances with the OR operator iesite:lemmy.world OR site:programming.devthis will force google to give you content only from your desired domains but lemmy.world posts will likely trample the other instances for a lot of stuff.We’re becoming a little centralized (which I personally don’t find to be such a bad thing yet).
I’m aware of the
site:example.comgoogle feature. And, while useful for users who already know about Lemmy, it doesn’t help to recruit new users, and that’s a main point of the OP.About centralisation: that “yet” is key. Putting all your eggs in the same basket is not a bad thing… until someone drops the basket, you know?
You can use wildcards:
site:lemmy.*
It does suck, that even within the apps or sites themselves, the search only gives communities.
Like, not being able to search for specific issues, people, or any other topic already posted even within your own instance is my biggest issue with Lemmy not being a sufficient replacement.
Like Reddit was the best place on the internet to go when was stuck with a Linux issue for instance. And rarely even having to post. Just searching the issue would generally get you fixed. Then we could start copying all the invaluable information over here from our communities efforts, and could then be truly free of Reddit once and for all!
Like, not being able to search for specific issues, people, or any other topic already posted even within your own instance is my biggest issue with Lemmy not being a sufficient replacement.
The search page does allow all of this.
You can filter by type (post, user, community, etc), Local/All/Subscribed, searching within a community, choosing a sort option or restricting to past year/month/week… I think it’s much better than Reddit’s search.
My bad, but good to know. The Jerboa app is almost all I use currently since I’m without a computer ATM. Do any of the apps do better with search?
I haven’t used Jerboa in a while, but I know Boost supports almost all of the search features
To add on to that, Thunder have implemented all these search features in the app.
I don’t understand the Fedievrse objection to search indexing. Search indexing is the most important piece of what makes the internet.
There’s no objection here https://www.google.com/search?q=Lemmy+wouldn’t+really+takeoff+to+replace+Reddit+until+it’s+content+is+search+indexable
An example fix from over a year ago https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1418
What I had in mind was the Mastodon meltdown some years ago over search indexing.
What? There is no “Fediverse objection” to indexing by search engines. Who told you that? Lemmy is actively being indexed and is showing up when you search for posts.
I don’t think I’ll ever take off while it’s called Lemmy. It’s just not a word that sounds ‘good’ in my opinion.
It’s not really about the name, people are just too lazy to switch app and they don’t care about the greedy Reddit’s CEO trying to make money in every possible way. Last thing I read about him was his idea to put some subreddits behind a paywall.
I was still using the Reddit app but with some tweaks installed on iOS to block ads, otherwise every app that it’s full of ads it’s just unusable.
Even taking only English speakers into account, it isn’t a bad name. It’s a simple word, it sounds like “let me” (good association - unlike… GIMP), at most it might evoke you Lemmings.
And once considering other languages it’s actually better than plenty brands out there, including Reddit, Facebook or Twitter. By sticking to CV syllables there’s less room to butcher it into unrecognisability.
I tries to pus lemurs, but no one followed.
