Here is a list of Apps coming to Lemmy:

https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/71764

Plenty for iOS to chose from, Christian’s legacy continues. Memmy and Mlem both feel pretty close to Apollo - and are both directly inspired by it.

These apps are in early beta. They have constant updates (daily for Memmy and weekly for Mlem), so you can kind of see them being built in real time. If you’re patient with the developers, you’ll get that Apollo experience very soon. It’s like 80% of the way there.

Liftoff is pretty cool too, though it’s a different design approach.

(I’m using Memmy now, actually.)

Spez started the site to make money. This was always true - a completely typical reason to start a company. When there was no community in the early days - he made fake accounts, and fake conversations to generate traffic to attract attention. So Spez is someone that’s always used dishonesty to get what he wants.

Aaron joined the site because he saw it’s potential as a tool for civic engagement and political awareness. He left when he saw what Reddit was becoming… or really - what it always had been: a tool to extract wealth from its unknowing volunteers.

Aaron and Spez weren’t friends. They were business partners for a very short period of time. To the best of my knowledge, that’s all there is to it.

I speculate that Aaron would feel unfazed by what Reddit looks like today… because it’s expected. The founders are people that make the Forbes 30 Under 30, marry world famous pro athletes, and are worth tens of millions of dollars. They’re divorced from reality.

I would hope that open and decentralized online spaces like Lemmy reflect the sort of values & ideas Aaron spent his life advocating for.

Forgive my comment for being a bit… crass.

Lemmy & the Federation are emerging technologies.

Early tech adopters are never “average people”, they are disproportionately geeky 18-to-35 year old middle-class white males with spare time to tinker around. Or basically… me.

It’s less likely they are ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, disabled individuals, elderly, women and/or other disadvantaged groups. So Lemmy is at a demographic disadvantage right now.

It took a very, very long time for the “average person” to accept Reddit as an accessible & safe online platform for anyone that doesn’t fit the ‘early adopter’ archetype. Heck, I still know folks that think of Reddit as a sort-of ‘radical’ space where Hackers cosplayers use tech-jargon to communicate all day. And it wasn’t that long ago where this was more true than lies.

In any case, there’s a reason why Lemmy’s most popular communities are things like Technology, Gaming, Linux, Piracy. There’s waaaaay less human-interest stuff. Way less stuff that appeals broadly.

An example:
Do you know how many subscribers there are in /c/relationship_advice right now ? There are four. There are zero posts.
Meanwhile, r/relationship_advice has over 9 million. And it’s pretty close to 1:1 ratio for men and women contributors.

Over on Reddit, I help mod a regional community of 65K subscribers. It’s a casual place with casual people. People hop in asking for tourism advice, recommendations for school districts, questions about traffic or local quirks, etc. These people aren’t always tech-literate.

So the thing that prevents me from moving my community off Reddit is… they’re not ready for it yet. I suspect a lot of mods feel the same.

In the meantime - we can focus on making Lemmy into the best space it can be for when those users are ready. We have meaningful dialogue, we respect our differences, we keep the place clear of ads & spam, and clear of bigotry.

Once there are high quality, extremely simple apps that allow everyday users to browse Lemmy without having to explain any advanced tech jargon, I’m hopeful the Federation will take off. The demographics here will shift, and with that - communities will be more eager to move over. We might see things like “Hi Lemmy, I’m an old Korean War survivor. AMA!” instead of “Plex is giving me an unsupported codec notification, did I download the wrong DLLs?”.

Hope that rambling made sense.

mlem is planning a stable iOS release by 6/30, and using Apollo for inspiration. You won’t need to wait long.

They’ll be back here again in 2-ish weeks when Apollo and RIF are done.

And when mlem and other apps start rolling out for Lemmy, we’ll start seeing shifts. Apps that have proper accessibility, a clean UI, lack advertising and don’t eat data. And they give you the same Reddit experience without Reddit’s predatory business strategy.

When the blackouts stop, a lot of users will be able to search for Reddit alternatives and will find Lemmy… through Reddit.

I mod a sub with 65K users or so, I plan to go dark indefinitely. Also considering Read-Only with a sticky redirecting here. I know I’m not the only mod.

The Digg > Reddit migration wasn’t overnight. It was fast, though.

Before Netflix, there was Blockbuster.
Before YouTube, there was Metacafe and janky websites hosting Flash or Quicktime Player.
Before Spotify, there was PeopleSound and iTunes gift cards.
Before Discord, there was IRC and AOL Chatrooms.
Before Facebook, there was MySpace and Friendster.
Before iPhone, I had an LG Dare and Palm Pre. Good god!
Before Reddit, there was Digg, Slashdot and Fark.

Something better always comes along. Especially if that “better” is tied to a streamlined, easy to use, easy to learn UI.

Reddit would’ve never gotten as big as it did without third party support. Not just apps like Apollo, RIF and Narwhal - but tools like Imgur and RES.

Lemmy and “The Federation” (I’m not quite yet sold calling it the Fediverse…) has a lot of potential to be that “better than Reddit” online space. Nobody owns all of it, so there’s safeguards against the things that we’re blacked out.

And it’s partially why its a fixer-upper.

We, the community, are going to need to make Lemmy the space we want it to be. That means competition between instances and servers, that means user generated tools and content. I read the RIF developer is working on a Tildes app for iOS and Android. Mlem iOS app is in early Beta, but are working hard to have a stable release for 6/30. Jerboa’s out on Android already and folks seems to like it so far.

Give it time. We’re all new. And whether it’s here or somewhere else - we always land on our feet. Maybe the only thing we have in common with u/spez : there’s nowhere to fail but up.