Moving to the fediverse
Hi guys, are you familiar with the fediverse? It’s an open-source reddit-alternative that is owned and run by no one. So it doesn’t suffer from the threat of a single hostile entity making drastic, unwanted changes, as we recently saw with reddit, resulting in the side-wide protests.
It would be great to have your subreddit join the fediverse! If you do, I would suggest not using lemmy.world, as it’s already the largest instance and it’s better to spread things out so no one has too much control.
Info:
- https://fedi.tips/
- https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-the-fediverse-and-can-it-decentralize-the-web/
- Graphic: How federation works https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14ier24/for_anyone_wondering_how_lemmy_works_and_is/
- https://lemmyverse.net/communities - explorer
- Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances. This can help you pick an instance to create your community on.
- https://join-lemmy.org/instances - Click on an instance, and look at the right sidebar. It will list local rules of the instance. You can also browse the “local” feed to see what kind of communities live on that specific server.
You can even create your own instance like /r/futurology and /r/piracy did https://futurology.today, https://lemmy.dbzer0.com. If you do, you may want to seed your community with content https://futurology.today/post/166237.
Once you make a community on Lemmy you could sticky a post in your sub to let your community know, and/or create an automod sticky in each thread.
I get that you’ve got good intentions, but this reads like an email I would find my spam folder and I can’t imagine it would inspire any reddit mods to move over to Lemmy. The mods who were so dissatisfied with Reddit that they would be willing to migrate with the information in this script have already done so.
There are likely be some who might be willing to migrate if they get personal support from an instance admin or some other tangible offer of assistance, but nobody is going to jump ship just because “Reddit Bad” anymore.
Any suggestions for improvement? Or you think messaging mods is just completely useless?
you need to personalise it for each person and appeal to their unique interests. They are people, not bots.
Yeah at the very minimum you should tell them which instance to use, don’t make them choose
I would only message if it was a custom tailored message and you have a history in the sub (mods often check via RES/toolbox)
I think messaging mods is worse than useless. It is harassment that will make them actively not want to bother with lemmy.
Do you have a suggestion other than “do nothing”?
Make Lemmy a place worth hanging out and having a discussion rather than desperately trying to recreate the shit hole that is reddit?
People weren’t “organizing” to convince users of digg to migrate to reddit For The Greater Good. It was instead obvious digg was a mess and people went to the better site.
And everyone acknowledges that mastodon is much healthier than lemmy (… damn that is a low bar). And that is because there aren’t swarms of people constantly trying to convince kylie jenner that she should post on mastodon instead. Instead, there is very much “This shit isn’t twitter. Twitter sucked long before dipshit bought it” and it is building its own identity.
Whereas… a lot of y’all feel like the ex that sends texts a year later about how you bought a new shirt or you lost weight. And I am sure a few of you are looking to pick up some strange to show those jerks at reddit that your new boyfriend has an even bigger dick and knows how to use it before tearfully calling in the morning about how you are still in love with him and want him to take you back.
rather than desperately trying to recreate the shit hole that is reddit
I don’t want that either. See my other comments.
There are a couple of principles to ensure an activity drive like this is successful:
- You need a significant number of contributors acting under agreed upon guidelines. The contributors will give you reach and the guidelines prevent singular actors from ruining momentum by taking counter productive actions with good intentions.
- You need lead-up time to gather contributors and establish guidelines. In this case you would probably want some Reddit mods sympathetic to your cause so that it doesn’t sound like the initiative is from a purely external group.
- You need to leverage bandwagon effects. In this case those Reddit mods are critical to giving the impression that there is already momentum in this direction.
- You need a well formatted landing page to establish initial impressions. A lot of folks will click on exactly one link before giving up on an effort. You need to make that link count.
I’m working on compiling guides and establishing a community to organize initiatives like this over at [email protected]. The project is in very early stages but the hope is to ensure your digital activism is actually effective.
All that said I would strongly recommend against this approach unless you can make a BIG push and that takes time to organize and a lot of one-on-one conversation.
over at [email protected].
That link is not working for me. https://sh.itjust.works/c/[email protected]
Could be the federation bug between 0.18.5 and later versions. I was having trouble accessing from lemmy.world
Seems to be working alright
Yeah it’s working now.
Mass unsolicited messages are like JW knocking on your door to preach. No one will appreciate that. This is like the alien.top creator’s methodology. While backed by good intentions, you’re not really convincing anyone to switch. Organic movement of users is really the only full proof way to get more people on lemmy AND actually retaining them. A large number of reddit users who joined the mass exodus 6 months ago are probably back on reddit now and only a few actually stayed.
This is like the alien.top creator’s methodology.
Hey there ;)
I am not sure if you are singling me out becuase of alien.top or not, because alien.top (by which I guess you mean the whole fediverser project) is less about “asking” them to move and more about getting those who are already aware of th fediverse and making it easier to migrate?
However, if you are talking about me personally, I have indeed sent messages to people (not in mass, personalized) and I can no doubt say it is effective as a way to bring awareness.
A large number of reddit users who joined the mass exodus 6 months ago are probably back on reddit now and only a few actually stayed.
Yeah, for a lack of content in the niche communities. How would that be the fault of the people who are trying to promote the Fediverse?
Hey. Not singling you out at all. The fediverser project was just the first thing that came to mind when I posted my comment, and I remembered the part where you messaged people directly. I think I have the same opinion with regard to people having accounts made on their behalf and their comments reposted without their consent. I’m curious, do you have any data on the % of people who chose to take ownership of the accounts that were created for them? I’m sorry about the negative (and some very harsh) feedback you received on lemmy with the fediverser project.
How would that be the fault of the people who are trying to promote the Fediverse?
Wasn’t saying it’s the fault of people promoting lemmy. I was just using that as an example of how even users who willingly tried lemmy during the exodus are hard to retain. My point was was that the only way to get more users on lemmy is to make the platform and its content better and let it grow naturally.
do you have any data on the % of people who chose to take ownership of the accounts that were created for them?
Not really. To do that the system would have to message everyone who posted or commented in any of the threads, and I didn’t get to that stage.
My original plan was:
- Start mirroring the content to bootstrap the communities
- Get people on Lemmy interacting with the content.
- Use the interactions from people already on Lemmy as a signal to people on Reddit that they have an audience outside of Reddit. (The original idea was to make Lemmy responses creating DMs to the user to let them know about the Lemmy link). Get the people on Lemmy co-invested in bringing these “higher-value Redditors” to Lemmy.
Profit. Start seeing a bigger mass of people joining Lemmy via the “fediversed” instances.
This plan stopped at step #2 because I did not expect to have so many people here browsing by “all” and then complaining about the flood of content from the mirrors. So the absolute majority of Reddit users never actually were made aware of the mirrored content. I still think it’s illogical, but I gave up on convincing hordes of people by arguing with “logic”.
I was just using that as an example of how even users who willingly tried lemmy during the exodus are hard to retain.
Agree, but it’s also a problem of pure lack of content. Now that I disabled the mirrors from alien.top, I honestly miss the niche communities that I participated and it is taking quite a bit of willpower to avoid saying “screw it” and re-joining the subs I participated there.
Most mods will think this is just spam tbh
Any suggestions for improvement?
Think of a different approach.
I’m working with a few subreddits and their Lemmy equivalents, and I’d strongly recommend against this approach. As people have said, it sounds spammy and it would make the mods more suspicious of the Fediverse when someone comes along to actually try and work on stuff with them
It’s better to have this happen organically, but if you want to plan it out, what I’d recommend is work with one or two subreddit(s) you’re familiar with. Also know that you might have to take on the majority of the setup and moderation initially. When reaching out, be specific about the needs of the subreddit and why the Lemmy community might help the community, and be cool with them saying no.
Different ways it might look:
- copy in the subreddit rules (when it makes sense) and add mods from the sub, then let them run with it
- copy in the rules and have it be an official relationship between the communities where each just recommends the other
There’s no script because each time I reached out the situation was different. I can write up more on what’s worked well for me but that’s the gist of it
This is the way if you want any movement. Start the communities yourself and curate/nurture them. Hand them off to a mod or trusted member that wants to break away from Le Reddit.
Great offer
Sounds approach. I tend to do it as well. The more organic and tailored you are, the higher the success chance is.
It’s better to have this happen organically
Of course, but organic moves seem to be done at this point.
Agreed, so you’re welcome to take initiative! More just don’t send a boilerplate message around everywhere :)
I appreciate that you’re working on building things up. That’s how we make the fediverse better for everyone
How about no. Mormon level spamming.
I was just thinking this sounds like Lemmy becoming e-Mormons
The fact is most people are perfectly happy being herded like cattle if it means avoiding a slight learning curve and new ecosystem
I could be wrong but is the previous statement referring to Lemmy, Mastodon, Linux or my entire career of shielding management/entrepreneur types from minor technical details?
Is t that the JWs that spam? Maybe I just don’t live near Mormons
Bah, you’re correct, slip up.
Feel free to offer other suggestions. As is, “do nothing” is not going to grow the fediverse.
Most of subreddit admins and mods are not interested in migrating to somewhere else. A few months after API changes Reddit is still usable and active. Even third party apps are functioning if you apply a patch with your developer token. Also mods don’t want to lose their power.
If you really want to bring more official communities here, you should ask admins who are already interested in open-source or Fediverse. For example, I found that people behind Fossify (a Simple Mobile Tools fork) had created a subreddit. Ask them about Lemmy. It’s FOSS-friendly, there are a lot of fans here, so the chances that they’ll make and promote a Lemmy community are much higher.
Even third party apps are functioning if you apply a patch with your developer token.
Reddit is updating the link format, so some clients are starting to get broken: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/9459491
Good point about open source communities.
I would move an entire group of fighting games reddits over here but there’s no automoderator or mod toolbox equivalent. Until lemmy gets that basic functionality it’s moot to try and moderate anything at a high level
Honestly? Please try it. First I think you will not have as many problems because the platform is much smaller than Reddit so it won’t be as targeted as some popular Reddit subs are. Second, I think I can help developing the tools you need but it gets a lot easier to do so when working with an actual use case in mind.
As as big fighting game player I await you. At the very least maybe we need our own improved version of kappa
Why don’t you just create your own Lemmy community?
Reddit has already proven that they won’t let you just close down a sub. You can’t “move over” your sub.
I wish people would stop going there but they don’t have the spine.
It doesn’t appear that reddit is preventing subreddits from creating ans advertising lemmy alternatives. They don’t have to close down.
The fediverse isnt a reddit alternative. Lemmy is. The fediverse is a network of different type of service, like lemmy, mastodon, or peertube.
I was thinking about the idea of adding “community ambassadors” to https://fediverser.network. The plan would be for people already on fediverse to tell which subreddits they miss the most, and then help them promote the Lemmy alternative by, e.g, listing which reddit users are the most active and send a customizable message showing them how to migrate. I haven’t done it yet because I’d like to have other instances besides alien.top to share the influx of potential users.
During my days of Reddit, I’ve been active on r/Morocco a lot.
Here in Lemmy, I have only encountered one other Moroccan. That’s it. I don’t even know anyone in my country who’s ever heard of Mastodon even, despite it gaining traction everywhere else.
And I think I prefer it this way, it kinda makes me stand out from the crowd in a way.
honestly, I don’t want established Reddit supermods land grabbing topics in the Fediverse. The right people will find it organically based on their own motivation (as simple as searching for “reddit alternatives”).
Especially don’t want the shallow, low-quality content from default/“top” subreddits.
I think there’s less risk of name grabbing with so many instances, and the admins understand the issue and will likely step in if there’s a problem. It happened a few times during the migration and it got fixed after
Yeah, I blocked all the meme subs on lemmy. I’m not interested in inviting those. I plan to invite some niche subs that I’ve followed/known about for years that haven’t moved over yet.
Thanks for the great post and resources list.
I think imma start prefixing my AskLemmy questions with the “subreddit”/community of interest. Many of them are awesome but not super active here while there’s lots of people to discuss and answer so why not skip the middleman?
I don’t want more redditors on Lemmy.
People are people
I don’t think the problems on Reddit are because of the people on it, but the structure of the platform itself
In large part, I agree. But there are subs/content on reddit that isn’t available anywhere else. I’d like to stop having to go to reddit for anything. The more communities that set up shop on lemmy, the more search engines will provide people with alternative results to reddit, and the less we’ll have to go to reddit for niche content.
