Or why Lemmy is too much like hard work
The sole admin of the first instance I joined (which isn’t small) has gone missing. So it’s been defederated by some other instances. Then re-federated by some of them.
So about six weeks ago I made an account with instance two, which seems to be well run BUT updates to the latest version so it doesn’t work with any of the third party apps I use.
Which wouldn’t be an issue except the Lemmy web UI works horribly on mobile. There’s a PWA but that hasn’t been updated and won’t now authenticate.
So I joined a third instance but that seems to have completely disappeared without warning.
I’d join Lemmy.world but it has regular resource issues and downtime. Plus moderation issues.
App 1 hasn’t seen any development for over three months and now barely functions.
App 2 which is apparently the second most popular app now only receives emergency fixes when it won’t work at all
Apps 3 and 4 throw authentication errors on any instance running above 0.18.4 because the developers are re-thinking.
As a user it’s almost enough to send me to Reddit.
It seems to me that as well as the bullies (apparently it’s all my fault for not choosing instances by running a detailed analysis and not being aware of things that wouldn’t happen for months after I joined!) there’s also users who genuinely haven’t noticed any issues. Although they are on problematic instances and using apps the developer knows needs an update.
So it’s quite possible Lemmy will survive with most users on one or two big instances and some more who don’t know they are on troublesome instances.