What alternatives? I am here because I lost access to Reddit.

Lemmy is not a replacement. A totally different experience for every sub-Reddit is not going to work.

Reddit was pitched as The Front Page of the Internet. Where is the front page of Lemmy?

> Reddit was pitched as The Front Page of the Internet. Where is the front page of Lemmy?

https://wefwef.app

> Lemmy is not a replacement. A totally different experience for every sub-Reddit is not going to work.

Not sure what you mean.

Probably means [this](https://tenforward.social/@elight/110708424512879073) and [this](https://tenforward.social/@elight/110696839817687860).

There's a bit of conflating terms but the underlying point makes sense: topics shouldn't be linked with an instance, they should reach across different servers. This is what groups are for, and are being actively worked on.

"Groups... are being actively worked on."

Where? By who? For what platform? Show me?

You're welcome on Sqwok (https://sqwok.im), it's chat based, in active dev

If that's you idea of a Reddit replacement, then you've been using Reddit very different from most people.

The issue with replacing Reddit is that you need millions of users to crowd-source all that information that has gone into every minor sub-reddit. I don't think it's sub-reddits like /r/askreddit, /r/pics or /r/politics that people would be missing in a Reddit clone. It's all the small specialized sub-reddit, where you could get help fixing a lawnmower or debate the finer points of the various aspect ratios of national flags.

I've never claimed it was a replacement, it's a new experience focused on what I believe is a shortcoming with current social media sites in that they aren't optimized for live discussion.

For instance you mention "debate the finer points of various aspect ratios". Current social networks are not very good for actual debate, in fact the genesis of Sqwok can be traced to a live debate in r/worldnews where I grew tired of refreshing the page. Many of the alternatives popping up for both Twitter & Reddit are cloning the underlying data model and user interface without offering much more.

Sqwok is different in that it couples some of the familiar aspects of existing social networking with high quality instant messaging, designed from the ground up for live public debate and discussion in a new format. Still has a long way to go but I believe there's a place for it.

Usenet? The more I think about it, Reddit is just Usenet with better moderation and voting. The voting doesn't make that much sense in the smaller sub-reddits where you'd typically read all the posts anyway. So that basically just leaves you with building better moderation. Still a hard problem, but not impossible.

If we had spent the time building better NNTP clients, rather than trying to integrate with the API of single company, I think we could have had the possibility at least of having true communities.

NNTP was a bit of a dumpster fire though. Each ISP carrying some groups, or none at all, losing messages left and right ... Those problems cannot be solved with a better client, they were fundamental issues.

Now, if you had said "if we had spent the time building a better NNTP protocol and servers", I would have agreed. In the end, that's basically what the fediverse is.

The fediverse might be technically better, but it's a big mess. Is it PubSub, is it Mastodon, Lemmy, Podcasting 2.0? We're trying to put way to many project and ideas into "The Fediverse" to provide a clear trajectory.

I feel like it would have been easier to fix NNTP. It had at least a clear focus.

Same, I mostly came to HN through search results or links out of Reddit. Once Apollo shut down I pretty much was done - I only ever used Alien Blue and when it got bought, I was off Reddit until Apollo came along.

HN is where I’ll be for my daily news stuff, and I’m actively looking for communities and forums around my more niche interests and hobbies.

No one (within the margin of error) has gone to "federated alternatives". No one cares about "federated" or "decentralised" or any of this nonesense.

I was skeptical too.

Lemmy has grown exponentially in the last few months and I've found it to be an adequate replacement after learning the basics.

I was skeptical about reddit in 2008 and hesitated to leave digg.

The only real pain with Lemmy right now is that it doesn't have all the niche sub Reddits due to lower population. Hopefully that'll change, because that's Reddit's real draw for me, not just shitposting and memes, which Lemmy is now doing a decent job with.

Your broad statement is ridiculous. I am not friends with 3 billions of people, but many people I care about are on the fediverse; everyone (within the margin of error) is on the fediverse. No one (within the margin of error) cares about a tech forum hosted by a VC (from https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective). And yet here we are.

Please don't use only your tech and stats goggles to analyze the situation, understand that we are talking about people with a vast range of experiences and wants and needs.