I thought this was an interesting post and discussion on selfhosted. Thoughts?
Some great points, but it’s nonsense to say r/selfhosted isnt about selfhosting. I’ve learned so much there.
Reddit is dead to me, and given their stance on their apis, should be dead to pretty much all hobbiests deeply interested in self hosting.
I see more engagement across my Lemmy feeds every week. It’s definitely smaller and slower here but there are real relationships and communities forming. I think the fediverse is strongly positioned to outlive and maybe even outgrow closed social ecosystems. If you’re frustrated with a lack of a certain kind of content on Lemmy make it your responsibility to go create or share some of that content.
Geocities, Myspace, Digg, Reddit all started somewhere. I think any good underlying framework (federated social networks) that enables strong communities will always stand a chance. I really do get early reddit vibes on here.
I wonder if anybody here has tried some of the other failed reddit alternatives like Voat for a long enough time to be able to speak on how lemmy has fared relative to them.
I tried a few during other reddit exoduses, and they all felt… bad. Lemmy is the first one I’ve managed to actually stay on comfortably without being tempted back to reddit.
Voats problem wasn’t engagement. It was literal nazis.
They tried to prop up a thin veneer of legitimacy but at some point they just stopped caring. The front page became blatant “kill all [whatever]” type posts. That’s when engagement completely collapsed.
Lemmy has some clearly in bad faith instances which are probably run by nazis. Federation seems to be doing its job of resilience.
Yea, no disagreement. I more am curious if the federated nature is what helps mitigate that risk, or if there is some other systemic distinction that has helped.
I also just don’t know what the others were like long-term - did they peeter out? Would I realize it if lemmy was in the same decline?
I’m contemplating moving my blog to write freely but they don’t seem like they will last. I don’t want to host it as I keep my servers unexposed.
Can use a cloudflare proxy to hide your IP
Any access from the internet is a possible attack vector.
I just hope Lemmy doesnt fizzle out due to user diminishing.
I’ve stopped using reddit the moment they locked out third party apps. I still read one community in read-only mode. I’ll stop doing that when they’ll kill off old.reddit.com.
The Reddit space is just a bunch of pictures of people’s home Labs it’s not really a self-hosted community at all.
It’s not interesting to explore and read like this one is.
It’s suffered from a common phenomena of any community that grows in popularity where it caters to the lowest common denominator and loses its niche.
Id much prefer people just posted on Lemmy.
Believing that either the Reddit exodus was negligible to that community, or that it was entirely decimated and left to Lenny are both inaccurate opinions. There was a very tangible effect on the selfhosted subreddit specifically when many left for Lemmy, and now both communities both feel like two halves of the same whole. Enough people moved over to lemmy that I truly don’t feel the need to open reddit hardly ever, but I do from time to time. I think lemmy also has a benefit that other fediverse sites like Mastodon don’t, in that Lemmy is not quite as allergic to the concept of discoverability, and the fact that Lemmy is inherently based around communities means that you don’t have to do the Mastodon thing where you spend the first month having to go out and follow a ton of individuals. You can just follow a couple communities and the content flows in.
Continuing to use Reddit is just sunk cost fallacy, does it have more posts? Yes but Lemmy can have more posts if we use it. As someone who spent a long time building and maintaining subreddits did it hurt a bit when I left? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely
As much as I like the interface and idea of lemmy, I think the content traffic is not enough for me… and keep going back to reddit :/
I spent an unhealthy amount of time on Reddit. Getting bored of Lemmy is a feature, not a bug. Embrace it.
Yeah it’s pretty amazing that there’s kinda no algorithm, you just see what you subscribe to in chronological order
Huh? Are you sorting by new to have that opninion?
Ahaha I guess that must be the default of my client then
In some ways that’s a pro for me! I like that Lemmy isn’t endless content that changes when I refresh unlike Reddit. It helps keeps me off my phone XD
But yeah I can see how that’s a con as well.
Too bad I like to use it during lunch break. :(
That’s simply a matter of numbers. More people = more content, but people can’t seem to get past the fewer content so they don’t join/stay.
It’s likely not as bad as you think. :) It took a bit of adjusting for me realising I didn’t have several endless AskReddit threads a day to scroll through, but for 99% of my usage it’s great here. It’s also nice being able to interact with posts while not being one of the first commenters. I get more interactions here than Reddit. The only things I go to Reddit for are specific subreddits like dashcam videos, but that’s a once a month or perhaps less frequent affair.
Tbf the quality on Reddit really nosedived.
I frequented the sysadmin, mildlyinfuriating, homelab, spicypillow (and adjacent), AskMeReddit and some other subreddits.
The quality in some of the bigger and less moderated spaces is atrocious.
The most upvoted posts compare with actual spam on Lemmy but they prevail on Reddit.
Same. And it’s not just the amount of content.
The amount of times I’ve had a reply with someone obviously trying to be pedantic and argumentative saying “define common thing” is off the charts.
I didn’t really care about the subreddit even before the API shitshow, as I find the place filled with toxic, elitist gatekeepers.
As I was just starting to self-host and was merely a modest hobbyist, I only encountered hate and downvotes there.
In short, I don’t miss that place.
That said, I find the community here much more helpful and positive. It could use a bit more engagement, and we should all post and share more—myself included. But overall, I like it.
/r/selfhosted remains just an entry in my RSS feed to ensure I don’t miss anything of interest; mostly, I just read post titles.
So let them have their primary space over there.
Yeah I dislike that as well. Left many subs for beliefs I agree with because they’re so toxic and maintain some made up elite orthodoxy that no one actual believes
It wasn’t always followed on Reddit, but downvoting there was supposed to be for comments that don’t contribute to the conversation.
Here the guidance is looser – the docs don’t address comments, but do say to “upvote posts that you like.”
I’ve tried contributing to some conversations and sometimes present a different viewpoint in the interest of thought exchange, but this often results in massive downvotes because people disagree. I’m not going to waste my energy contributing to a community that ends up burying my posts because we have different opinions.
That’s true on Reddit to, so I’m kind of being tangential to the original question. I guess what I’m saying is that some people might feel like I do and won’t engage in any community, be it Reddit or Lemmy, if it’s just going to be an echo chamber.
It seems to me software designed to facilitate discussion shouldn’t have a downvote buttton. There should be a UI for marking comments as inappropriate, but it should require a second step saying why. Perhaps one of the reasons should even be “I disagree”, but that option should have no effect.
It’s not impossible to abuse of course, but it nudges people in the right direction. Those UI nudges can be pretty effective.
Your point is a bit off-topic but I for one agree with you.
I’m not actually sure comments get sorted by vote tally by default here.
I’ve always just ignored downvotes - I know when my opinion is unpopular, I don’t see the votes as validating. I’d be fine if there were no visible votes at all
I have them turned off!
I think it’s great there’s a lemmy community for selfhosted but honestly the subreddit often has more information and replies.
And it’ll stay that way until people use, and keep using, this space. So, to use an overused phrase, be the change you want to see :)
Too bad if you consider yourself more a lurker than a submitter.
I love how reddit keeps me from relapsing by auto-blocking me cuz vpn
What vpn gets auto blocked
A lot of protons IP space is blocked. I’d bet every major provider has a significant number of IPs blocked.
Reddit blocks when they can to attempt and force you to expose your real IP. Once given they can associate it to your activity and make that sweet sweet money they crave.
