I think it’s a boon that we’re a tiny fraction of Reddit’s size. Reddit is something like 30+ million MAUs and Lemmy dropped recently from 62k to ~50k. We’re a grain of sand compared to Reddit, and I think the community is better for it.
Lemmy isn’t really a Reddit alternative. We’re too small to have niche thriving communities, and depend 100% on sorting your feed by “all” or “local” to get new content. What’s nice is it feels like one close knit community vs closed off micro communities inside of subreddits.
I get exposed to more things this way oddly enough- viewing content I normally wouldn’t in favor of my smaller selection of subreddits. People are more polite, more informative, and far more original with their comments.
Keep on doing your thing, everyone! We’re building something different here.
I feel like I’ve seen a ton of comments about how the Fediverse is so nice, but I feel it’s the same as what was my Reddit experience. Just less likely to get enshittified because it’s not corporate, and not optimized for maximum engagement and thus max outrage, so still an upgrade.
Seeing bigots (not on Beehaw, but on other servers), although they’re downvoted to hell and contradicted? Check. (Yes, they were downvoted to hell and contradicted on Reddit too.)
Seeing contrarianism just for the sake of being contrary? Check. Happened twice on my own post. I asked people to please reply with advice to my post and not just “me too” or “I didn’t find a solution lol” and got two “I didn’t find a solution lol” so it’s contrarianism, not just me freaking out over a differing opinion. At best they didn’t fully read my post, didn’t get to the part where I make the request, but somehow I don’t think so and I’m usually the type to try to assume the best of people. Those two replies were thankfully removed by an admin, so unfortunately I don’t have any proof to show you that this happened anymore.
Seeing people being condescending? Check. Lots of “Imagine telling people with real problems [insert the original poster’s complaint about a non-world-ending issue]” type replies. Lots of “touch grass” or “and those who think [other opinion] are dorks who need to go outside more” added when a user disagrees with the person they reply to. Lots of all these other snide things that let you know a user thinks very little of not just your opinion but you as well, merely because they disagree with your opinion. And it’s used against people acting in good faith talking about stuff like video games, not against people spouting bigotry on a server that explicitly has rules against it.
The kicker is I don’t even go on the communities that you’d think would be more likely to get heated, like Politics. I have that blocked.
Maybe it was wrong of me to say this was like my Reddit experience. It was like my Reddit experience when I wandered into bigger subs. When I stayed in my niche topic subreddits I rarely saw this kind of behavior.
I still post here out of habit and to try to contribute to the Fediverse’s activity. But I see something like this in at least 75% of my Beehaw sessions. (Yes, I report the meanness when I see it.) I’m probably going to slow my activity and fall off, back to a Kbin server and a different Lemmy server where all I sub to is tiny hobby communities that don’t have any of this behavior. And where they didn’t promote themselves as a nice space, so I’ll be less shocked if I do run into bad behavior. I understand bad actors are everywhere but most of the people seem like abrasive actors and less like intentional disruptors—perhaps it’s people not being too aware of the norms of the instance they’re on because they come from a different server. But I’ve also seen this kind of behavior from people who are on Beehaw accounts. Would think group norms would filter the meanness out, but I encounter it more often here than I do in other places. Honestly not sure how to fix it, otherwise I’d be posting my suggestions because I really do want people to have a nice experience on the be(e) nice server, including myself.
I’m glad everyone else seems to be having a good experience.
Based on my own experience, Beehaw is a successfully inclusive environment, but not necessarily or always a nice one.
I agree. Overall, the culture feels pretty similar to Reddit, except without the many small, niche communities that I loved about Reddit. The amount of bigotry I personally see feels pretty similar in terms of percent.
Plus, there’s some problems here that Reddit didn’t have. Hexbear users, for example, love to do rather annoying trolling even in threads outside of their instance, often spamming their comically large images (I know they’re not supposed to be that big, but they spam them anyway). There’s been no shortage of defederation drama over and over in different instances.
If anything, I find the various comments expressing how good Lemmy is to be… a bit forced? Like, do they really believe that, or are they trying to convince themselves? Frankly, I’m only here because I don’t want to give Reddit (the company) any money unnecessarily (plus they need the competition). The tech is kinda cool, but I honestly don’t care that much and it’s got a whole load of problems to make up for that. I also do like that it’s open source, (even though I don’t personally have the motivation to code outside of work anymore).
I agree with you. It’s hard to foster a community free of the snark and the contrarianism that poisons other platforms. The moderators are doing their damn best here to do that, I’m still hopeful and I’m trying to become better as well.
It’s unfortunate that this kind of attitude just keeps seeping back from every other place though. I’ve been thinking about affordance lately. For example car drivers will go fast on a large road no matter the speed limit. To slow down trafic, narrowing the road will be more efficient than any warning sign.
Lemmy is built very much like Reddit and I wonder if some of the design decisions both platforms share lead to similar behaviour simply through affordance. A Lemmy/Reddit thread is a bit like a political debate. There’s this thing that happens where a user will reply to another not in the aim of discussing with the recipient but of scoring popularity points with the audience. The recipient of the reply receives little empathy, as the author is mainly looking “at the camera”, hoping to rake in the (up)votes.
I don’t think Lemmy or Beehaw for that matter is doomed in any way to devolve into a mini Reddit though. It’s just good to stay aware that tools are never really neutral.
The interesting thing is this is that sometimes replying with a mind towards the audience instead of the person you’re replying is a beneficial thing to do! Most of the time, internet debates won’t convince the person you’re arguing with but they do have the potential to convince onlookers and change their minds. I’ve definitely had my mind changed by reading some debates. So you’d maybe address your opponent’s arguments with a mind more towards convincing onlookers than towards convincing your opponent, or towards your frustration with your opponent.
Of course, the part where this happens with little empathy to the person they’re replying to is bad. And the part where it’s happening as a ~epic clapback~ smackdown for upvotes, not as an attempt to present onlookers with your point of view.
The Beehaw principles were specifically crafted to avoid people having your experience and losing you, it’s bad that it’s still happening