cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19004972

Let’s be honest, the real reason Lemmy build most of its traffic is because of Reddit users. But the thing is, outside of the mass exodus in the west that too from the PC era… people discover and join Reddit not because it’s another social media like Facebook or Twitter that people need to reserve their usernames on like a brand or celebrity but because Google Search is kinda… actually absolute trash by SEO and machine learning crawlers.

Most of the world (I am from India btw, hello~) join or even discover reddit because they’re trying to search for actual solutions, recommendations, advice or even reviews by actual experienced people without having to go through another YouTuber which can stem from troubleshooting a router, finding an actual FOSS option or seeking immediate solutions to the recent CrowdStrike fiasco for example. After having to visit reddit every time whenever using a search engine including for education to career advice, I ended up directly signing up with reddit a decade ago.

Recently, Reddit even restricted its search results to Google only in a business partnership meaning those using Bing, DuckDuckGo to Ecosia or even SearchGPT wouldn’t be able to access Reddit answers anymore. Say, if someone searches for how to block ads on chrome as example - Solutions like uBlock Origin come into existence and continue to exist because of the combined community in Reddit that Lemmy is trying to preserve.

Unlike others, am not saying Lemmy would be dead but it would be pretty much like Discord-Telegram or Tumblr instead of wiping Reddit or correcting Facebook. Reddit is not something you discover from word-of-mouth or join from peer pressure unlike other social media which is even truer for Lemmy but because it actually helps and is useful to people.

Lemmy can’t be taking the path of 𝕏 (Alone Mask’s Twitter) but any of the good platforms were before the Enshittification with Facebook’s way~

  • captainastronaut@seattlelunarsociety.org
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    2 months ago

    Isn’t Lemmy content being openly indexed by most search engines? I think we just don’t have the years of content here, so it’s not going to have the same gravity.

    Also, I wonder about all the varied domain names of all the servers. Would search engines treat them all as separate sites, and calculate page rank for each separately? If that’s the case, the influence of Lemmy in search results would be even lower.

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    Listen, it’s not our job to make Google search result better. They could have easily parsed apub sites like lemmy correctly of they want, but they’re so enshittified there’s low chance of that. But that doesn’t mean we should be trying to fix their shit.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    It’s a bad idea to compare Lemmy to Reddit or expect Lemmy to replace Reddit.

    Slow growth is not a problem, it’s actually a benefit.

    There is no hurry, and no need to push for high user counts.

    Rather than trying to attract more people, focus on making your communities an attractive place to be.

  • Richard@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    As many others have already said, Lemmy is fully indexable by search engines. In fact, in this very community there have been posts about Lemmy content being above other results from more prominent sites like Reddit for certain topics.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    I mostly agree with the OP, it would be great if Lemmy had more sources of newbies than just “pissed off redditors”. (I have further reasons for that, but they don’t matter here.) As such I’ll focus on specific tidbits here and there.

    The content is indexable (by Google), but your point stands as it sucks. It’s hard to reliably find Lemmy content by it.

    Do you - or anyone here - have a good idea on how to solve that? Someone suggested a Lemmy-based engine; it’s tempting but it wouldn’t help if the person doesn’t know about Lemmy already.

    Reddit is not something you discover from word-of-mouth or join from peer pressure

    It used to be like this. “Stumbling” upon the site was only a thing later, as it had already enough content to become a source of info.

    • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      type site:lemmy.world in front of your search if using google. You can combine multiple instances with the OR operator ie site:lemmy.world OR site:programming.dev this will force google to give you content only from your desired domains but lemmy.world posts will likely trample the other instances for a lot of stuff.

      We’re becoming a little centralized (which I personally don’t find to be such a bad thing yet).

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        I’m aware of the site:example.com google feature. And, while useful for users who already know about Lemmy, it doesn’t help to recruit new users, and that’s a main point of the OP.

        About centralisation: that “yet” is key. Putting all your eggs in the same basket is not a bad thing… until someone drops the basket, you know?

  • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Lemmy won’t catch on until there are groups of communities you can ban at once. Sports, Linux, German, pervy anime… It’s a very rare user who will put up with the absolute dreck of the initial feed and manually block communities until they have a feed that’s marginally personalized.

    Then there’s the fact that any communities that are specific to peoples interests are completely empty.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      Then there’s the fact that any communities that are specific to peoples interests are completely empty.

      Those should be locked, and redirect to more generic active communities for the time being.

      Any example in mind?

      • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Sailing. Boating. Sewing. Those are they tops ones I miss from reddit that had active users. Instead we have 7000 communities for linux and pervy anime.

        • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          I mean it predates a lot of the pervy anime, but Usenet looked the same at the start with lots of Unix/computer boards and an alt.

          Computer enthusiasts gonna enthusiastically talk about computers. People who pick up and move to a new platform are likely to be united around being technically competent enough to get there first, and everything else second.

        • mark@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          Very true. But that’s what we can create whole instances for: to be the site you think will attract the users you want. With curated feeds, less pervy content, whatever.

          There’s nothing stopping anyone from starting a whole new world they want to see in the fediverse. Lemmy and other fedi apps are built like this for that very purpose.

          • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Yes, but I’m talking about mass adoption. Very few users care, they want to scroll through and see stuff they like. They don’t want to curate and host and delve into the intricacies. Until such time as someone makes lemmy palatable, the masses won’t eat it.

            • mark@programming.dev
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              2 months ago

              That level of feed curation will appeal more to the masses, yeah. Just no one has started an instance like that yet. Although you seem like the perfect person, based on your analysis and responses. 😉

              Bluesky is closer to what you’re describing. The platform is more centralized and the feeds are more curated for the masses.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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      2 months ago

      The “instances hosting communities” structure alleviates albeit not solves this problem; communities about related topics end in the same instances, that you can block.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    Why rely on google which is going down on reliability so quickly.

    What we need is a GOOD lemmy based search engine. Which I think is entirely possible with current lemmy implementation.

  • Xylight@lemdro.id
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    2 months ago

    Lemmy will be indexed less than Reddit, ignoring user counts, because lemmy-ui is client rendered. Googlebot and some others can still index client rendered sites, but others will ignore the content.

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      God I wish someone went and finally fixed that. It’s incredible that of all the FOSS and community stuff you can find on the internet, lemmy is the big one that can’t even remotely be browsed via w3m / elinks / anything-without-Javascript.

    • herrvogel@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Its niches are nowhere near as strong as reddit though. The only reason I can’t ditch reddit is small hobby subs and stuff like that. Their alternatives on lemmy are just not good enough, because of a hideous combination of lack of users and fragmentation.

      • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Yeah clerk.

        What’s the point on commenting on something when you know you’re gonna be the only one doing it.

        So I guess a few more people would be nice on Lemmy.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    There are MANY reasons that Lemmy won’t replace Reddit…the list is almost endless, with each individual reason not being a hurdle on its own that can’t be solved. However the combined number of problems is just mind blowing.

    There is one chief problem that sums up all the little problems quite nicely. It’s the Fediverse culture. It’s somehow a platform that is designed to be open and free, but because of the userbase comes off as a walled garden. If you’re not a programmer, or a linux user, or have techie interests, it’s not the platform for you. And in order to even be comparible to reddit, it has to be a platform for everyone.

    As it stands though, Lfmmy is a disjointed, unorganized mess that if you aren’t part of their clique, you’re not welcome. If you say anything bad about linux, or star trek, or github, you get downvoted to hell. Ask me how I know.

    Oh, and for the record, linux is ALSO a confusing hot mess for the average person. But until linux developers accept this, and make a linux distro that is as easy to understand as windows, it’s userbase will remain something akin to a rounding error for windows userbase numbers. And I’m saying that as someone who’s remaining on Windows 7, because everything since has been hot garbage.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      If you’re not a programmer, or a linux user, or have techie interests, it’s not the platform for you.

      There is a group of people who created a community here because their sub got banned. They cannot be more far from linux or tech, still they do well, their community is active and they are able to discuss.

      Sometimes I feel like the complexity of Lemmy is exaggerated. People ask you about it, “go to Lemm.ee, use it the same way as Reddit. And as Reddit, don’t hesitate to block political communities”

    • Bo7a@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      People said the exact same thing about reddit being only good for technology enthusiasts and porn in the early days.

      In my experience that is just how it goes on the internet. Nerds, furries, and porn collectors, are the early adopters for most places. The normies follow along years later.

    • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      You’re not gonna get many linux users respecting your opinion on tech if youre such an outlier. Windows 7? Cmon, ya gotta expect to get pushback on this right? Not just Linux nerds either… like Who do you tell this bombshell to and they’re like “yeah ok that’s normal?”

    • Cloudless ☼@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      You are right. I made a post about why I liked my iPhone in the Apple Enthusiasts community, and some Lemmy users were furious.

        • Cloudless ☼@lemmy.cafe
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          2 months ago

          No. My post got 40% down votes. One particular user insisted that I was using Samsung flaws as an excuse to like the iPhone. That I should admit that I just wanted an iPhone and my criticism towards Android were invalid.

          I felt like talking to cultists. But I don’t think mods needed to involve. Lemmy is what it is.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        I’ve seen your post. Ouch - you stumbled upon some nasty circlejerking there. On multiple levels.

        Plenty people here expect you to treat their “vision” as above everything else. Including your agency (“free will”), issues that you might want to solve, etc. That makes them unable to tell the difference between “criticising Apple” (a fair thing to do) versus “treating someone who bought an iPhone as an emissary of Satan” (what they’re doing against you).

        To make things worse plenty muppets there are putting words in your mouth, regarding Samsung vs. Apple.

        If it’s any consolation, it isn’t just Lemmy. The whole internet of the 20s feels like this nowadays.

        TL;DR: I know that feel, bro.

    • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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      2 months ago

      If you say anything bad about linux, or star trek, or github, you get downvoted to hell

      If not simply moderated out of the community because ‘fostering dialogue is an important goal’.

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      Oh, and for the record, linux is ALSO a confusing hot mess for the average person. But until linux developers accept this,

      I’ve heard the same kind of stuff about lots… lots of things that “will never catch on”. Every one of those doomsayers were wrong. Some of them unfortunately, but still, they were all wrong.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Linux has been in existence for 30+ years. How long do you think it will take for Linux to overtake Windows or Mac? How long for it to even reach 10% of computer userbase? Because right now, after 30+ years, it’s at an all time high of 4%.