I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit.

I understand the basic concept of Lemmy and the Fediverse, and people are touting the concept of it being federated and not centrally controlled, but it is an absolute mess and nobody seems to have an idea about what to do with it.

How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.

Outside of the underlying framework, there’s no ‘guidelines’ or consistency. The servers have random names, and the main Lemmy.ml is telling people to register elsewhere.

How is this going to bring in a wider audience if people are being directed to lemmy.fmhy.ml, sopuli.xyz, or sh.itjust.works?

What is the purpose of the Fediverse when forums for niche interests already exist on the internet?

Does it make sense to have something like a ‘sports’ server that has communities for soccer, NFL, basketball, MMA? But then how do you get a consistent naming scheme that lets people know it’s part of the fediverse?

Maybe Lemmy could work as a replacement, but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.

If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t see how this doesn’t just fizzle out.

P.S. I’ve also compared two different Lemmy servers and looked at the same post in a community, and there are different numbers of comments on each where they haven’t synced up…

I also wanted to post this to the main Lemmy community, but as I had to register via a different server, I’m not able to access that community from the server I’m using for some reason…

  • Yeah, honestly it seems like there’s no real coming back from this, unless the board gets involved and does a complete 180 (and also fires spez, that guy cannot be trusted at all anymore).

    How are you supposed to have any certainty that your communities won’t just be wiped out or the way you access reddit changed with 30 days notice, which is nowhere near enough time for setting up alternatives, right now most subreddits are going with discord, a bad choice but probably one of the only ones considering a lot of subs already have it set up. I don’t blame them for not choosing lemmy, its in beta, with mobile apps in alpha state (iOS not even fully released its on testflight).

    Its almost like, I’d rather have a slightly worse experience whilst lemmy is developed and there’s less users, than be in constant fear of further features getting removed (mod bots, old reddit, nsfw content)

    • and also fires spez, that guy cannot be trusted at all anymore

      In the long run, spez doesn’t matter. He’s the CEO because Reddit Inc. as a business agrees with him; fire him and they’ll put another who behaves the same in his place.

      Fuck, I even think that keeping spez there is good in the long run. He’s scummy and too stupid to not let people notice that he’s scummy, so he accurately represents Reddit Inc.'s true values.