First of all I am super happy that such alternative exists but it’s far from perfect due to many reasons and this is why I think it’s not ready yet to absorb the influx of reddit users because many of them will just bounce off when they realize it.
My biggest gripes so far:
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Users are unable to block whole instances hence you either need to register with instance that already blocks unwanted instances (which is not perfect because it might block also those that you don’t want to be blocked) or you need to block manually every single community there or you will be exposed to lemmygrad or other tankie instances. That’s so basic feature I can’t find any logical reasons that was not a thing since day 1.
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Lemmy is one of the least privacy friendly (unless you just use throwaways and disposable mail like you should) service I have ever stumbled upon and while it’s partially due to how federation works it’s just a fact that even reddit did that better because it was way easier to nuke your account and all traces (including nicknames in deleted comments, which is not a case on lemmy).
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There is no possibility to migrate or backup your subscribed/favorited stuff or even move it to another instance (which somehow is possible on Mastodon), so you basically have to trust that your instance won’t disappear overnight. Obviously any site can disappear, centralized or not but there are bigger chances that some random Joe will decide to close instance without saying anything than reddit closing down overnight without letting you copy your stuff. That’s even more annyoing if you consider that instance admin can restrict you from viewing instances they don’t like, hence you would need to create account on another instance and resubscribe to anything manually which is far from perfect.
What are your views on that for the time being?
My view is that you shouldn’t shit on the devs while at the same time demanding they do more free labor for you. Lemmy is free, the ppl working on it don’t get paid, like it’s not a faceless corporation that exploits workers and runs ads. That’s the whole point. Maybe contribute in some way instead?
Well, yeah you shouldn’t shit on them for not having gotten to features you want yet, but it’s also okay to talk about how important and crucial some features are. And yes, I agree that the best solution is to lend them a hand in building the features you want! I know Rust pretty well and would love to help out tbh, but I have a serious disability that makes extended focus on cognitive tasks very difficult and deleterious, so all I can really do rn is cheer other people on.
Also I’ve heard the main two Lemmy devs are actually being paid to work on it, which isn’t surprising to me as a lot of software companies will pay their employees to work on open source projects. So it isn’t totally free labor.
I just contributed with sharing my opinion on crucial features that would help with getting more people onboard. I have no information if they are paid or not (not really my business) but that doesn’t change anything as it’s just my opinion on a service that’s accessible for everyone. Don’t be offended on someone’s behalf.