I’ve never understood how or why this is an issue.
Shortly after Spez’s petulant AMA, I ran across a link for Lemmy. org. It looked interesting, so I followed it. I poked around a bit, and it still looked interesting, so I picked an instance and created an account. I played with it a bit, then I went back and found a different instance that looked interesting and created an account there too. And I just kept reading and posting, just like I’d done on Reddit (and half a dozen different sites before that). Some instances came and went and I lost some accounts and created others and eventually settled into a few that I like best, and just read and posted and didn’t leave. The end.
But it seems that every time I turn around, someone’s going on about the hardships of moving to a different site and all the difficulties to be overcome and yadda yadda yadda, and I just don’t get it. At all.
I think it depends on how you use those different sites
I transitioned from Reddit to Lemmy pretty seamlessly like you did. Around the time it became clear they weren’t backing down on the API thing and other bullshit, I looked up some reddit alternatives, chose Lemmy, and kept right on doing what I was doing on Reddit.
On the other hand, I’m having a bit of a hard time ditching Facebook.
The difference is I know the people I’m friends with on Facebook, I have actual relationships with them, I’m there to interact with those specific people. Leaving Facebook without finding a decent alternative and getting those people to switch with me (which probably means they’d also have to convince their other friends to switch too) means losing contact with those people.
On Reddit and now Lemmy, I’m basically here to read articles and have conversations with strangers about those articles. I don’t really form lasting relationships here, I don’t recognize usernames outside of maybe 2 or 3 big names. If they weren’t full of the worst kinds of idiots, trolls, bots, and scammers I could pretty much get what I’m looking for from the comment section on a news site.
Some people do build those kinds of relationships here though, they come to Reddit or Lemmy, at least in part, to interact with specific users and communities that they have some sort of connection to, and when you have connections like that, it gets pretty hard to leave that platform. Unless all of your friends leave at the same time and go to the same platform, you need to either lose some friends, split your time between the two platforms (neither of which may be as good as what you had because not everyone is there) or you have to find some other way of staying in touch and keeping the friendship going (which is often much easier said than done)
A lot of people don’t seem to get that social media services are almost entirely about their userbases, not their companies. Facebook and Meta are unbelievably terrible, but that is where most of the people you know can be found. Switching to something else is easy, but pointless, if your reason for being there is the people.
I have slowly convinced friends and family to begin using MeWe, but only a small number. And most of them still primarily use Facebook. At least recent events are pushing a few more away from it.
Most people’s relationship with any given corporate / algorithm driven social media platform is akin to a drug addict.
Start viewing people who can’t imagine quitting cold turkey as drug addicts, and it makes a lot more sense.
This is what happens when corpos have oodles and oodles from data on how to drive ‘engagement’… and then they do that, via algorithmic content feeds and dark patterns and other kinds of manipulation.
These people are addicted to convenience, to the dopamine hits, to the rage bait, to their validating echo chambers.
They don’t care that it makes them stupid, misinformed, angry, takes all their time, ruins their attention span, makes them feel like ugly failures amidst a sea of beautiful, rich influencers.
If you can’t stop ‘voluntarily’ doing something that’s bad for you without a giant fuss, without needing a guided intervention, you’re an addict.
I’ve been trying for weeks to get friends to move to Signal. They don’t have to delete WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to use Signal. Some of these people have got degrees in various computer disciplines and still won’t even give it a try. I don’t understand the reluctance to try new software either. If their job or uni asks them to use a piece of software they’ll try it no bother but if a friend asks it’s impossible. It’s so strange.
Same here. About 25% have picked up Signal, the others haven’t. Even though, like you say, they don’t have to drop WhatsApp to get Signal. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
And there’s no rhyme or reason for who starts using Signal. Some of my most tech-illiterate friends jumped on it, because they were sick of Facebook and Meta. As I’ve if them said: it’s not at all difficult to start using it. So it’s all about motivation.
It didn’t help that there are several other similar spots or there, like Viber. So some people who have multiple already installed don’t want to get yet another. I get that. But Signal is such a solid and unobtrusive app
There’s a guide in their subreddit. I was never able to get it to work (set it up like 4 years ago) so I just give iPhone users my apple ID when I’m putting in my phone number
Your life must be hard now, right?
At every corner of every street, at every TV station, in the faces of others you must see the guy that you hate and you can’t do anything about it.
Lemmy doesn’t fill every hole that reddit filled. There are a lot of industry and hobby subs that just don’t have the audience here. Especially the more niche ones.
Shitposting and memes…yeah, we got that in spades. But that’s not what keeps people coming. You can get top-notch shitposts anywhere.
My subscribeds here are dead. I can’t find direct matches for communities I have in reddit, and I have no interest (let alone time) in modding one.
That is a critical mass thing. Reddit 15 years ago didn’t have a thriving pokemon community either. Things grow naturally over time. I think Lemmy is in a good place :)
But, for example, on Reddit there is r/hockey and a sub for each team. On Lemmy those team subs are graveyards, but if you post on c/hockey you might get enough traction to have a conversation. Find the larger community and help grow that first before fracturing to smaller ones.
Yeah I suppose. I came on to reddit early, before there even were subreddits, and comparing young Lemmy to an over-the-hill reddit isn’t a fair comparison.
Still feels like Lemmy tries to be a drop-in replacement for Reddit (sent from Boost for Lemmy), and it really can’t be until it sees much, much more growth.
The internet as a whole is also different than it was 15+ year ago.
Your typical reddit user now doesn’t know what digg is or who Kevin Rose is or the significance of something like 09 F9, sites, people, and events that were big things on the internet are just nothing now.
Hell, tons of users on reddit were literally babies when reddit was young.
I’ve never understood how or why this is an issue.
Shortly after Spez’s petulant AMA, I ran across a link for Lemmy. org. It looked interesting, so I followed it. I poked around a bit, and it still looked interesting, so I picked an instance and created an account. I played with it a bit, then I went back and found a different instance that looked interesting and created an account there too. And I just kept reading and posting, just like I’d done on Reddit (and half a dozen different sites before that). Some instances came and went and I lost some accounts and created others and eventually settled into a few that I like best, and just read and posted and didn’t leave. The end.
But it seems that every time I turn around, someone’s going on about the hardships of moving to a different site and all the difficulties to be overcome and yadda yadda yadda, and I just don’t get it. At all.
I think it depends on how you use those different sites
I transitioned from Reddit to Lemmy pretty seamlessly like you did. Around the time it became clear they weren’t backing down on the API thing and other bullshit, I looked up some reddit alternatives, chose Lemmy, and kept right on doing what I was doing on Reddit.
On the other hand, I’m having a bit of a hard time ditching Facebook.
The difference is I know the people I’m friends with on Facebook, I have actual relationships with them, I’m there to interact with those specific people. Leaving Facebook without finding a decent alternative and getting those people to switch with me (which probably means they’d also have to convince their other friends to switch too) means losing contact with those people.
On Reddit and now Lemmy, I’m basically here to read articles and have conversations with strangers about those articles. I don’t really form lasting relationships here, I don’t recognize usernames outside of maybe 2 or 3 big names. If they weren’t full of the worst kinds of idiots, trolls, bots, and scammers I could pretty much get what I’m looking for from the comment section on a news site.
Some people do build those kinds of relationships here though, they come to Reddit or Lemmy, at least in part, to interact with specific users and communities that they have some sort of connection to, and when you have connections like that, it gets pretty hard to leave that platform. Unless all of your friends leave at the same time and go to the same platform, you need to either lose some friends, split your time between the two platforms (neither of which may be as good as what you had because not everyone is there) or you have to find some other way of staying in touch and keeping the friendship going (which is often much easier said than done)
A lot of people don’t seem to get that social media services are almost entirely about their userbases, not their companies. Facebook and Meta are unbelievably terrible, but that is where most of the people you know can be found. Switching to something else is easy, but pointless, if your reason for being there is the people.
I have slowly convinced friends and family to begin using MeWe, but only a small number. And most of them still primarily use Facebook. At least recent events are pushing a few more away from it.
Most people’s relationship with any given corporate / algorithm driven social media platform is akin to a drug addict.
Start viewing people who can’t imagine quitting cold turkey as drug addicts, and it makes a lot more sense.
This is what happens when corpos have oodles and oodles from data on how to drive ‘engagement’… and then they do that, via algorithmic content feeds and dark patterns and other kinds of manipulation.
These people are addicted to convenience, to the dopamine hits, to the rage bait, to their validating echo chambers.
They don’t care that it makes them stupid, misinformed, angry, takes all their time, ruins their attention span, makes them feel like ugly failures amidst a sea of beautiful, rich influencers.
If you can’t stop ‘voluntarily’ doing something that’s bad for you without a giant fuss, without needing a guided intervention, you’re an addict.
I’ve been trying for weeks to get friends to move to Signal. They don’t have to delete WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to use Signal. Some of these people have got degrees in various computer disciplines and still won’t even give it a try. I don’t understand the reluctance to try new software either. If their job or uni asks them to use a piece of software they’ll try it no bother but if a friend asks it’s impossible. It’s so strange.
Same here. About 25% have picked up Signal, the others haven’t. Even though, like you say, they don’t have to drop WhatsApp to get Signal. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
And there’s no rhyme or reason for who starts using Signal. Some of my most tech-illiterate friends jumped on it, because they were sick of Facebook and Meta. As I’ve if them said: it’s not at all difficult to start using it. So it’s all about motivation.
It didn’t help that there are several other similar spots or there, like Viber. So some people who have multiple already installed don’t want to get yet another. I get that. But Signal is such a solid and unobtrusive app
Their life would be easier if you didn’t use Signal, simple as.
I don’t agree with it, but that’s the reason.
There’s an xkcd about this: https://xkcd.com/1810/
As the only Android user in a social group of iPhone users I felt this way too much.
You can forward yourself iMessages from a mac via bluebubbles
So just buy a mac. Got it.
I see some older mac minis on eBay for $50-75. But yeah you’d need a mac
How does it connect to your phone number?
There’s a guide in their subreddit. I was never able to get it to work (set it up like 4 years ago) so I just give iPhone users my apple ID when I’m putting in my phone number
I see
wall(Unix) but nottalk(Unix) orPHONE(VMS).Consider that we live in a world where Trump was elected twice and you’ll start to get an idea of what the issue is
Your life must be hard now, right? At every corner of every street, at every TV station, in the faces of others you must see the guy that you hate and you can’t do anything about it.
The problem is community.
Lemmy doesn’t fill every hole that reddit filled. There are a lot of industry and hobby subs that just don’t have the audience here. Especially the more niche ones.
Shitposting and memes…yeah, we got that in spades. But that’s not what keeps people coming. You can get top-notch shitposts anywhere.
My subscribeds here are dead. I can’t find direct matches for communities I have in reddit, and I have no interest (let alone time) in modding one.
That is a critical mass thing. Reddit 15 years ago didn’t have a thriving pokemon community either. Things grow naturally over time. I think Lemmy is in a good place :)
But, for example, on Reddit there is r/hockey and a sub for each team. On Lemmy those team subs are graveyards, but if you post on c/hockey you might get enough traction to have a conversation. Find the larger community and help grow that first before fracturing to smaller ones.
Yeah I suppose. I came on to reddit early, before there even were subreddits, and comparing young Lemmy to an over-the-hill reddit isn’t a fair comparison.
Still feels like Lemmy tries to be a drop-in replacement for Reddit (sent from Boost for Lemmy), and it really can’t be until it sees much, much more growth.
The internet as a whole is also different than it was 15+ year ago.
Your typical reddit user now doesn’t know what digg is or who Kevin Rose is or the significance of something like 09 F9, sites, people, and events that were big things on the internet are just nothing now.
Hell, tons of users on reddit were literally babies when reddit was young.
We got Linux, don’t forget Linux mate