How do we know this post isn’t fake? Perhaps it’s all part of the ruse.

I love that a service that isn’t making a buck off of us gets levels of engagement that for-profit social networks would kill for.

This is happening because:

• Novelty, because new is fun. This will go down over time.
• The most passionate users are more likely to be early adopters. More casual users are coming.
• Smaller network means your content is less likely to be covered before. This factor will go down over time.
• Fediverse encourages multiple related communities, which means your specific contributions are more likely to be seen by other users.
• Lack of bots/astroturfing leads to more positive interactions. Bots will likely increase over time.

Therefore, I expect engagement will go down over time, but I am hopeful it will reach a higher point of stability because the fediverse design seems better at getting more varied content seen by its users, and it makes it harder for a small group of people or posts to dominate the discussion space.

PS: Anybody know how to add a space after the last bullet in a list?

Somewhat, but it’s just the “how’s the weather?” of this community because most everyone is here from Reddit, so it’s a starting point to me. I don’t think Lemmy exists just to spite Reddit, and I participate in discussions having nothing to do with the subject.

I have a love/hate relationship with desktop web apps on Linux. They are a great blessing in some ways because I get to run apps that just wouldn’t be available to me otherwise because Linux typically isn’t a priority for consumer-focused services. Often support exists as a convenient bonus because it came with the web app platform choice.

On the other hand, you get a web app, which looks nice (hopefully) but gobbles down your resources.

Underrated comment. I picked it because I had no idea what I was doing and it sounded all-encompassing and I wanted access to everything. I didn’t even know what an instance was. I just picked it because it sounded like a good guess to get access to all of Lemmy.

It really helps that the official Reddit app is so awful. The bar is quite low for acceptability!

Because of the common API, if this becomes the mode, I expect clients would allow you to sign into multiple instances in the same way that you can have multiple email accounts in the same app. I’m very curious how this plays out.

That’s what I’m using here. It has a few bugs (I can’t turn off swipe gestures, and pull down to refresh never works), but it’s minimal, to the point, and easy on the eyes. I think Boost for Lemmy has a good shot at being the popular client when it’s ready, but for now, Connect seems to be stable on my device. I do like the web desktop UI.

I can’t be too critical though because the whole community and user base is so young. If the Lemmy.world stats are any indication, the app userbase must be exploding too, testing paths that just haven’t been tested much before.

I recently experienced this while building an upgrade for my 3D printer. The upgrade kit included a touchscreen. I found out later that the touchscreen was effectively its own separate computer with more than 10x more resources than the actual computer inside the 3D printer that was doing the most important calculations.

The compute and memory resource constraints were basically nonexistent factors in the design of the printer and the upgrade kit. Merely, a simpler computer was easier to design for and characterize, so the printer itself had a very simple computer, and for the UX, a “beefy” computer was much easier to program. It’s bizarre seeing how little the amount of computer resources mattered. It might as well have been free.

Of the places I’ve been, there are a great many more networks I have not been part of arguably because they failed to achieve critical mass. Writing good software is hard. Getting people to use it is even harder in the case of social networks where the value isn’t just in the software but also in the community.

Many subreddits have fled to Discord which I think is a terrible format for their content. I suspect a great many users are still adrift. I hope more will find this island so it can achieve critical mass and really develop the communities that it needs to sustain itself in the long term. I usually lurk only, but I’m trying to be more active just to help promote its growth.

The software is merely the crucible. We are the iron. Reddit continues to make it hot by striking.

Happy to be part of the sudden stress test of your software and infrastructure! June 30 hit and I needed a place to go. Found Lemmy. Found Connect for Lemmy. I don’t know if this is the future for a Reddit-like service, but I’m pleased to see some real activity and I’m glad to be a part.