First of all, thank you @[email protected] for pursuing Sync for Lemmy. It’s honestly given me so much hope for Fediverse adoption to actually happen. I do have one thought to share with you to help with success:

Come July 1st pretty much all Sync users are going to open the app due to muscle memory or due to a lack of awareness of what’s happening.

If they see “this app doesn’t work any more” or similar, they are simply going to delete the app and will likely go to the official Reddit app. The opportunity to engage them will be gone.

However, you can use it as a huge marketing opportunity if on that day it says something to the effect of:

  • Sync for Reddit doesn’t work any more due to the API changes…
  • However Sync for Lemmy is in development
  • Here’s how you try Lemmy (and/or kbin) in the mean time…
  • Keep Sync for Reddit on your phone to receive a notification when Sync for Lemmy is launched

Even if they don’t try Lemmy right away, if they get a notification from the old app saying the new one is ready they will possibly try it at that time (but you need to convince them to keep the old app on their phone)

But the clock is ticking - after July 1st the chance of engaging someone in this way is very low as they’ll likely uninstall the old app. IMO getting this teed up is of a higher priority than developing the minimal-viable-product for the new app.

You likely already have this in the works, but wanted to throw it out there incase you hadn’t planned on it already. Thanks again for doing this - I am so hopeful and excited for a viable alternative to Reddit and Sync could be such a huge piece in making it possible!

Originally posted to /r/syncforlemmy but figured I should put my money where my mouth is and post here as well. After all, this is the future!

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago

    All good points, I largely agree. I still think it’s important to spread the word on reddit right now and use our momentum.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•1 year ago

      I think the biggest obstacle is the mods. I think very few actually gave a serious thought to leaving reddit, and some using reddit to communicate to each other when reddit can read everything instead of moving to stuff like slack, matrix, or even discord was bizarre. It was like a union discussing plans while corporate is invited to sit in.

      To me it is very apparent the mods don’t want to leave reddit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many who are holding polls on whether to continue black oust or go back to operations are hoping redditors vote to reopen so they can save face and say it was a community decision and they had no choice and that they are remaining on reddit for the community. Like just looking at some mod profiles they are still contributing to subreddits that are functioning normally, so even their contributions indicate they want things back to normal since they are providing the type of content in line with what reddit wants.

      And obviously the people left are people who just want to use reddit, so when mods don’t give indications of wanting to move the remaining community with be very hostile. I feel like people who have made the decision to leave have had their commenting and contributions to the reddit site just drop significantly, and or completely left. So to me it seems difficult unless the mods get on board with actual alternatives.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        Totally agree with all of this. They’ve been bowing down to reddit for so long they can’t truly comprehend leaving. And reddit is fully aware of that fact, which is why they’re not even pretending to negotiate.

        You’re spitting facts

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 year ago

          I realized if the mods wanted to increase visibility to alternatives they could restrict /r/modcoord and then put in an announcement and link to the lemmy or kbin instance where the reddit mods proceed to do the rest of their rants. That would be an opportunity to get people who love drama to check out lemmy or kbin to lurk, and people who want to participate whether negative or positive would also then have to end up making an account to talk back to the mods.

          • @[email protected]English
            3•1 year ago

            That’s another good idea, but I fear many of the mods simply don’t care enough. But I do, and I can give you this meager reward

            • @[email protected]English
              3•1 year ago

              Better than any reward I’ve ever seen. What a delight mouse? That is. Speaking of which I’m pretty blown away that lemmy supports in picture comments, since I’ve been so used to relying on needing something like Reddit Enhancement Suite to auto expand images from like imgur. And I never liked reddit redesign, so never knew if it ever did end up getting image comment support.