I use Lemmy. And you do. And 1000 other people do. So I'd say it's big enough.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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That is what we want people to believe. It's nice and cosy without the 'mainstream' users. ;)
217 comments on this in 24 hours says to me that there must at least a few people using lemmy
on reddit it would be 6000.
30K users is small potatoes. even niche subreddits have userbases larger than that.
Yea, once a post is up on reddit for even 3 hours its not worth interacting with because no-one will see what you have to say anyways. Honestly its what makes Lemmy better to me.
Where do all those meme posts about "Lemmy is bad name / bad branding" come from? I've seen it recurrently enough every time someone launches a FOSS thing that I would normally suspect it's part of a LLM farm or a scam attempt from some sort of naming / patents agency, but I've seen these reactions from long enough (2015-ish).
It's named after a famous musician that was active for like 30+ years. Half the results when you search "Lemmy" are him, not the platform. Oh, and he had an unfortunate collection of Nazi memorabilia - he claimed it wasn't because he liked the nazis just that he liked the look of their shit...
FOSS often ends up with bad names unfortunately. People never know what is going to become big when they start a project and they might get a giggle out of the name when it's a small project. By the time the project becomes big enough that the name might actually start being a problem, it is also known by that name and changing it could significantly impact how many people keep using it. Unfortunately, a name change is often a touchy subject for any project.
I’m a 31 yr old dude that just found out about this along with what the fediverse is. When I found out, I was researching this stuff so it took me some time to understand it all and I still don’t think I fully understand it all
Part of the problem is there's a lot less to it than it feels like there is. The analogies we use to teach to non-tech people don't quite match up.
It's simply a structured way to log in and send messages back and forth.
You can use it to stitch together forums, link shares, social media, video sharing, or image sharing sites.
But we really don't bind things together all that tightly. At best you can follow someone on pixelfed or mastodon. Since there's truly no minimum wiring, a lot of services don't even really fully communicate with each other. So we end up mostly with mastodon <-> mastodon links and lemmy->piefed<-lemmy links.
activitypub is a protocol. like email.
instances are just what provider you want to use, gmail, hotmail, outlook, etc.
and the 'platform' lemmy, piefed, mastroton, pixelfed, is just the aesthetics
Lemmy as a name is very poor branding. It's almost as bad as Mastodon.
I think it's pretty good. Two syllables, easy to say, no similar sounding competing platforms. What do you think's wrong with it?
Naming something after a famous person means you're starting off on the back foot in terms of SEO and brand clarity.
Digg worked well because it came out of an era where adding a second G was enough to sound techy, but it also played into the dig/bury aspect of voting. Reddit works because the name is "read it" while also being a unique string you couldn't mistake for anything else. Both have a lot going for them that Lemmy just doesn't.
Eh not that famous, I bet most people dont have any name associations with Lemmy except that it sounds kinda like "lemming". Which is sort of unfortunate though because lemmings (the de facto name for lemmy users) generally means crowd-following idiots. But as far as factors that inhibit the growth of lemmy go Id put the name way down the list.
It’s this plus onboarding. Reddit is easy to remember. It tells you exactly what you are getting. Lemmy sounds like a new lemmings games. It gives vintage when it should do the opposite.
It’s a bad name and will never become popular because it’s stupid to say outloud and on top of it onboarding is unnecessarily complicated.
Perfect. I'm in the right place.
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It's because everything that becomes popular starts with people in the 14-20 year range.
Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Tiktok...
The Fediverse will eventually grow once something triggers a snowball effect due the nature of connectivity and federation. Until then, the way to make it grow is to have young people make it popular.
Edit: There also needs to be more "fun" here. I think the Fediverse is a more "serious" place which isn't what those other social media sites offered. "Serious 24/7" isn't that enticing for young people.
The other day I was imagining a game or game service that has you make a Fediverse account of some kind. You get people to signup with a username that automatically creates a "@fedi.games" account. That account can have access to Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed etc.
what, you don't think it's fun endlessly memeing about doomerism and murder?
There's not enough politics IMO. No fun at all.
People need to spend more time on lighthearted issues like Palestine and the evils of capitalism
I'm offended now 😱
I think you guys have a great chance to capture Reddit's exodus. I used it for about 16 years and me and all of my friends have realized how awful it's become. People are looking for a new platform. I'm going to try and help by opening PRs against the repos.
Reddit has been exodusing for multiple years now. At some point, people are going to have to stop caring about the gorilla down the road and just be good, and I think Lemmy is good. Posts that make it to the front page often have over 1K reputation! It's far from Reddit big, but it's still big!
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