I get what you’re saying, and even partially agree.

But at the same time, if I’m looking for a social media/content aggregation platform, and I have to choose between “idealistic vision, small and problematic community, low quantity and low quality content” vs “corporate/capitalist asshole vision, large and mediocre community, variable quality and quantity content” the latter is going to win every time, based on the fact that there is actually at least some content there that’s worth my time.

So far with Lemmy, the only thing I get here is memes…and news that I am already getting from 4 other sources first. None of my niche Reddit communities have any real presence here, so my visits are brief and unsatisfying.

There’s concept and there’s execution.

Gotta have both.

I’m not wasting time on, or making any commitment to, a flawed execution, no matter how much I might appreciate the concept.

And for that matter, while I know this isn’t a receptive audience to the idea, decentralization isn’t the be-all-end-all concern for a platform like this. Idealistically it’s nice, sure. But for me (and I’d wager most), it’s not even in my top 5 concerns when deciding how (or if) I spend my time on social media.

For me, it has to be relevant, informative, fresh, and well-delivered. If that means trading some of my personal data to their collectors, I’m fine with that. Lord knows everyone else is gathering it too. In the case of Lemmy, the benefits don’t matter if it’s not delivering on my main needs of it.

I mean… My own experience here completely agrees with their overall appraisal of the situation.

The only reason I’m still here instead of back there is 3rd party app support…but rather than 100% of my Reddit time becoming 100% Lemmy time, it’s more like 100% of my Reddit time becoming 20% still Reddit, from a computer, 20% Lemmy on mobile, and 15% in disbelief that I’m spending time on Facebook, and the remaining 45% of that time I used to spend on Reddit, I’m just not spending it on social media anymore.

So yeah. Lemmy wants to be a reddit alternative, but for me it’s just not. It’s similar, but with less content overall, less relevant and less interesting content, less interesting comments, and on average a worse community. Other than the shitty spez business practices (which are a big deal, don’t get me wrong), Lemmy’s just “Reddit, but worse in every way” to me.

Unless Lemmy gets better, it’ll never be more than an occasional visit for me…and if Reddit were for some reason to right the ship, shit can spez, and reintroduce 3rd party app support, I’d probably go back in a heartbeat.