No Stupid Questions

It's possible. I think the biggest obstacle is that the corporations feeding on people's data are not going to just stand by while it happens.

I don't think you need to have the largest following to have great value, even lemmy as it is right now feels great. I'll actually want to dive into comment sections compared to the endless scrolling on reddit.

As long as there's enough people using a platform for a variety of ideas and experience in topics, I think that's good enough for me.

Not everyone who left Digg went to reddit, and not everyone who left Myspace went to Facebook. "Replacing" reddit should never be the goal, it should be "be better than reddit".

If this is ever to go mainstream, what we should be concerned about is making good, high quality original content. If people see us having fun and being nice here, they'll want to join in too.

In their current state, definitely not. There is a real bubble effect browsing on Lemmy because it feels like 1 post out of 3 is just praising the platform, but I think they’re far from ready to become mainstream. I’d say there are for now 2 major problems:

• The global instability (a lot of bugs, many third party apps, but a poor on-boarding with the main website).

• It was made by engineers and marketed by engineers. The federated aspect should IMO be public and known, but seamless. It should be possible to just create an account and start browsing without having to do some research on how the thing works. The technical aspect of the fediverse is great, but it’s also its main drawback, I believe that hiding it for newcomers could be a way of not scaring them.

Yes, but not in the way you'd think.

I think lemmy won't be easy enough to use for a vast majority of users, they'll stick to the traditional platforms.

However, I think if the hype continues for a while, and the little kinks are ironed out soon enough, it will give rise to a new, different kind of platform.

People have this idea that lemmy will replace reddit and just become Reddit 2.0. I think lemmy is still a place similar to a phoenix burning. The new bird has yet to take it's first breath, and it'll be quiet different from what we imagine or what we are used to today

Replace? No. Be a valiable second option? Sure. Like in the early 2000 when you had dozens of major forums for certain topics. Something Awful, GameFAQs, Digg, Slashdot, 4chan, NeoGAF… It‘s not a natural law that there has to be one service having 95 % of the discussion market locked up.

Well, bugs and UI aside, it seems like Lemmy can work but there's not a lot of substantive discussion right now. The most upvoted stuff are memes and other low effort content. I'm not sure how long a bean meme can sustain serious activity.

We are so used to the idea that a social media network has to dominate the world - ekse it's a failure. If Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed or your old fishing forum is enjoyed by some people, it's a success.

Personally seems like an almost insurmountable hill to become popular and mainstream. It's not that I don't think it's possible, I just don't think that there is a significant push for it to do so. There's no corporate advertising to help push it.

Is that a problem though? Does it need to become popular and mainstream?

I honestly couldn't care less. I rather hangout with you cool degenerates than the rest of the mainstream.

I don't understand why everyone is talking about this going mainstream or winning against Reddit. If that happens then in come the corporate interests to ruin it. We don't need to take on the unlimited growth unsustainable business model we can just be happy with what we have

I've been on Lemmy for about five minutes; I think that in time it could take a really strong market share from Reddit, because Reddit, even in its success, is kinda niche. The platform just needs to be functional; the communities are what makes it worthwhile. Mastodon, I think, will have a harder time as it's attempting to ape twitter, which is by its nature a bit broader.

God I hope so, I'm so tired of every aspect of our lives being monetized or having an ad shoved into our faces.

Like a lot of people here have already said, I think a different space is being created for those that are more in the know. The average person just isn't as invested or versed in what's going on to move to a different platform when the current is working fine for them.

I think we need to see how the content and platform grow organically over time. Reddit is an incredible resource and forum for very niche communities that don't really have a better place to chat outside of Facebook or things like that - where they can remain anonymous.

The whole concept of different worlds connected to communities might scare some people off - but I think naturally new apps will pop up that streamline this whole thing.

It depends what you mean by "mainstream". If by that you imply that the Fediverse will become a true public forum, and a place to exchange ideas and form opinions, then yes, I would like for it to be a counterweight to legacy media and corporate content silos. However, if the fediverse becomes yet another astroturfed propaganda outlet, then no, I do not want it to become mainstream. Fortunately, the loose Fediverse network makes it hard to take over and control, provided that the ActivityPub protocol remains untainted by actions of bad actors.

While I sincerely hope so, possibly unpopular opinion... Lemmy will have to offer a lot more than "Not Reddit". It'll have to build up as a primary destination for a lot of "content of substance" and culture around creating and nurturing it (just cross posting from Reddit will not cut it). It may have to offer communities and opportunities Reddit bans or suppresses, although there should be some red lines there. And, like all Federated technologies, it will have to actively work to reduce friction for potential users.

How much horrific awkward teenage shit did Reddit have to go through to get where it is now? Bacon narwhals at midnight, rage comics, bullying an uninvolved brown kid into suicide after the Boston bombings, reluctantly removing CP adjacent subs only after being called out on cable news, the /r/fatpeoplehate nonsense, /r/antiwork mod humiliating xirself on Fox News, the woody harrelson rampart ama, fumbling the bag by firing Victoria, probably 20 more.

I don't want it to. I want lemmy to stay niche but active

All I need are the quality people and post and reply from reddit to join lemmy

Let go of that thought. Reddit is (probably) here to stay. Lemmy will have less users, less communities, and tbh, probably less quality content. That's okay. Grow your seeds.

The average user does not care enough about the reasons that drive people off the mainstream social media - in short, they're idiots. So, no, these won't replace the shitty mainstream solutions, because most people just have no clue that they really should.

I doubt it would ever get to a full replacement, but that's fine. It doesn't have to become the new Facebook to still be competent and successful in it own right.

By their nature, both Lemmy and Mastodon will be unlikely to have the same kind of reach, simply because they have the added complication of Federation and all of that on top of everything, which complicates things a bunch.

You also have some decent competitors starting up, which would also split things. Lemmy is competing with Reddit, and the similar services, like Kbin/Threads/Tildes.

Sure, the competition is a bit less direct for sites that Lemmy Federates with, but it's still going to split the user base in some way.

Lemmy also has a few technical hiccoughs and other issues that get in the way of it really becoming popular as it is now. Lemmy.world, pretty much the biggest instance around, suffers from several issues where the code-base simply wasn't designed for the sheer volume of users and activity that they're seeing.

Lemmy's devs would have to go and fix those problems before it could sustainably become a mainstream app.