Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:
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I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
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Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
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Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
Jerboa be like:
(I realize I’m posting this with a very real risk of somebody replying “yes,” but Jerboa was, in fact, usable on June 12.)
It was fine on June 12. It didn’t have the polish that decade-old Reddit apps had, however.
I’m guessing Jerboa development has kicked into overdrive and it will soon catch up.
You can practically bet on it. Everything related to decentralization is being incentivized to push new releases. Personally, I couldn’t be happier about it.