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You’ll be back…
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Both suck.
Reddit has the base and the niche communities and the activity, but is scummy for its own reasons.
Lemmy has the structure/organization but none of the niche interest activity that kept me on Reddit for so long. Plus it's got all the weird pro china shit and an even worse problem with the hive mind bullshit than Reddit.
With the death of third party apps, I would say that my time that was formerly spent on Reddit is now spent 10% still on Reddit, 15-20% on Lemmy, and the rest just isn't spent on that sort of thing anymore.
I've been reading more, maybe a 2-5% increase on Facebook of all places, going to the source for news (Axios, Washington Post mostly), gaming with the computer time, maybe a 15% increase on YouTube time...started streaming more shows and stuff, and spent more time outside, even in the sweltering summer heat.
So basically for me, Lemmy has turned out to not be a reddit replacement, and instead that time has just been split up many different ways.
I do miss Reddit, and wish that Lemmy had indeed been a workable alternative, but it's just not. I won't go back to Reddit because I accessed it 95% on a mobile 3rd party app...but just because I won't go back doesn't mean that Lemmy is just as good.
As time goes on, I'm starting to realize that the time I still spend here is mostly because I want it to be better and I'm trying to be active long enough to see that change happen...but the longer I just kill time here waiting for it, the more I see shit I don't like.
I would expect that while I'll still keep my account open, I'll probably be done with Lemmy by the end of the year.
I just see too much of the same posts and I'm not sure if it's a user issue or not sometimes i reopen the front page after 3 days and 25% of the posts I've already seen plus a lot of posts are about reddit anyway :(
6/10
Thing is that is a fixable problem. It's technologically very possible to set up a simple algorithm to try to get like 3-5 posts max from one community, have them be as recent as possible, and return the most popular ones.
Reddit has a problem that is rooted much more deeply; their CEO.
I think this is unironically a big problem with Lemmy. The sorting is way, way, way too fixed and inflexible. You can sort by active which ends up being the same few communities. Hot is too much like it's kinda new. Top Day is usually what I use since I want to see the most popular posts first each day, but then more niche content is just hidden.
There is no best sorting order, because the best sorting order would be a combination of multiple sorting orders. This is one thing reddit really excels at with their sorting orders, they seem to have like a "combined" approach, like an intelligently-designed system of sorting algorithms to show people good, active content while not hiding important things.
On a community/platform like Lemmy where it's less popular and less active, having proper sorting is even more important.
Like you said though, this is entirely fixable, and something Lemmy definitely can improve. The question is, will they improve it? I certainly hope so.
I feel like this is where 3rd party clients can really shine. Offer a good default algorithmic sort, and let users configure it themselves as much as they please -- it's their feed after all.
I'd do it myself if I didn't have enough work on my plate already lol.
That's true but this is the kind of thing where it's important enough that it shouldn't require a third party client, it should just work on the main website itself.