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.
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I like that I can make a comment and have it seen and not buried under hundreds of other comments.
Yes. Can feel this sentiment coming from reddit.
Huh, maybe I’m just damaged by reddit, because I rarely ever comment exactly because of that. I was active on smaller subs, but why bother writing a comment on anything on r/all when literally nobody is ever gonna read it. That sentiment stuck so far, maybe it’s time to rethink this attitude
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To be honest, even Reddit doesn’t really feel like Reddit anymore. I have a certain nostalgia for how the site used to be a decade ago, it feels far too corporate now.
I am loving that it doesn’t feel like reddit, and it’s really weird to me that anyone does while they are also screaming about how terrible reddit was in every way. It seems like a lot of people are forgetting that the reason reddit sucks is because most of the communities are too big and have been around too long.
Large groups of people with a shared interest are not welcoming, they are condescending. They are jaded and have “seen it all” and have no qualms telling others that they are anything from inexperienced to inept. Any opinion outside of the norm is attacked with vitriol. New members questions might only get a response to “set them straight”. They reinforce echo chambers just to feel superior, while claiming that they aren’t echo chambers because they are constantly arguing with other people. The whole concept of a normal conversation is lost on them because they can’t separate their ego from their demeanor. They take circle jerking so seriously that they can’t even circle jerk anymore and have to uj/ every comment. They can’t use sarcasm because there are so many hateful people that would agree with them.
I’m not trying to say “back in my day frankfurters were a nickel” but even ten years ago, the infighting, briggading, downvote wars, smugness, and soul filled anger and negativity on reddit was so much lessened that it doesn’t even feel like the same website. It feels like I’m reading YouTube comments. What used to be a place where people might disagree with you, but at most they would just make fun of your bad grammar, or misspelling, is now just a website full of hate mongerers trying to divide people into groups.
Here on Lemmy feels to me like the old days of reddit. I can feel free to comment on whatever post I feel like and don’t have to worry about someone coming at me full bore, just to try to make me feel bad that I like to eat American cheese on my breakfast sandwich, or like the feeling of wet socks on carpet.
Sorry for the rant.
That’s why we need a new place that feels like reddit used to feel: like walking into a cocktail party full of interesting strangers having interesting conversations.
I 100% agree, just without the scummy PR-driven administrators, but a more community driven vibe to it. Just like Reddit in the olden days. (my account was 13 years old and once the API went, so did I).
Now if there are instances who don’t want Lemmy to grow from what it is now, then by all means the admins are well within their rights to defederate their own community.
As for me personally, I gladly await when my default browsing sort is something else than Everything @ top day.
I should post more.
Then, why are you here and not on Reddit? Serious question. I’d like Lemmy to be like Reddit too, and I’m here because Reddit doesn’t feel like Reddit anymore. I can’t even say why; it just doesn’t.
Because we have a spine?
I’m here cause it’s what reddit was/could have been.
By which I mean, I used Reddit for my community purposes until the corporation showed profits are more important than those communities. Then I found these alternatives, and while they are smaller and less active, it provides the same engagement of community based knowledge sharing.
Bonus: less of the annoying bullshit that’s crept in seems to be here. I didn’t really realize just how annoying the “Hi didn’t I’m dadbot” comments and seeing that 30 of the 100 comments on a post are roughly the same smarmy pun. I don’t mind them from time to time but every post? I’m fine with useful bots like tl;dr or conversions or whatever, but truly useless spam ones aren’t missed.
When communities aren’t as populated we rely on a more central content feed. Young reddit was the same way. People identified with the site as a whole with advice animal memes and news instead of everyone having their perfect niche subreddit feed that emerged with a huge userbase.
The general feed that we have now is a little immature but that’s how reddit was too. Lemmy or whichever platform succeeds will mature and cater to us eventually but for now it’s kind of like going back in time. It’s weird and fun and definitely good enough. No fucking way I’m being an experiment to some shitheads that don’t respect what reddit is about. It will all be worth it when lemmy develops I think.
Because they killed the good apps. Now that sync exists for Lemmy I’m here.
And while I dislike the development of some of my subreddits in the last few years it’s not much different here. A comfortable number of users is simply difficult to reach, but not exceed.
The amount of content has been ok. It’s not always what I’m looking for, but I’ve been learning about ecology in Australia and other things I never would have on my own or on Reddit because it would get buried.
The part I like best though is also the part I like least - engagement.
I loved Lemmy right away because all of a sudden I could post or comment and not be lost in a swarm of clickbait articles or useless comments like “this” or “I also choose this guy’s wife” things. But so many things are posted that get decent up votes but no comments. There are good articles posted, but no one comments, while ragebait things about defederation and politics get all the interaction. People say they want niche content, but dont post it or don’t engage with it.
I’ve been trying for weeks now to get a niche sub going. It’s finally above 1k subs, my posts can get 100 up votes, especially on weekends, not most posts don’t get a single comment. How long do you want me to post without making me feel it’s worth my time? The votes tell me at least people are seeing it, but if you don’t talk to the group, how’s it going to grow? I’m posting animal pics, some OC, some not. Google up a pic you like, and post it with a comment. It isn’t hard.
I don’t judge, but I do not care at all for all the meme groups. If I could block all communities with meme in the name I would. But those guys post like crazy. It’s the same amount of effort to post that stuff as a pic you think is cool, an article about your town, or something you did or saw that was fun. Post that stuff! Comment on things! Let posters know you like what they post.
This got more ranty than I intended, but it’s been getting to me lately. I am enjoying Lemmy, Beehaw in particular, but I want it to grow in a healthy way.
I’m having a similar problem. Trying to grow a niche community. The subreddit for it has rules about promoting other communities that condemns my post to a weekly self-promotion thread nobody looks at even though I have no authority in that community, so that method of growth is essentially locked off. Already advertised it in some “look at this new community!” communities. I am one of a few posters there, and it feels bad. I’m lucky enough to have a small close-knit Discord group surrounding the same interest, but if I wasn’t I would probably have to go crawling back to Reddit to discuss the topic. For what it’s worth I do try to post comments on any post where I have something to add. Sometimes it’s even a fairly useless “thanks, this was really interesting” comment just to help boost Fediverse engagement.
I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.
You have a pretty solid comment history and I recognize a good number of your recent comments from posts I’ve read. You’re certainly doing your part!
In Liftoff it doesn’t show the communities the comments are from, which I think is pretty useless, I don’t know if other apps do. What community are you trying to build up?
I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.
Definitely understand! Thank you for contributing all that you do, no matter what pseudonym it’s under!
Exactly. I try to keep an eye out for the regular “what weird community did you discover” posts and do a polite plug for it. I’m not even the mod, but they don’t post anything there either. I don’t want to mod so I don’t care so much about that. I just want someone else to post so I don’t feel it’s on my shoulders too keep it alive.
My default sort is Top Last 6 Hours, but I try to remember to switch to New every now and then and find a 0 comment post or two to reply to.
Which community is that? I’m having the same issues on the community I’m trying to grow
Consider advertising on Mastodon. I’ve had decent success there.
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I feel this but from the other side. A lot of the niche communities here are almost too niche if that makes sense. I have a broad variety of interests and a decent amount of knowledge on some of them. When I come across something that I want to engage I’ll think about what to comment and realize that I dont have anything of substance to contribute.
It’s like the bystander effect in a way. I think “that’s pretty neat, I’d love to read/learn more about this” but the comments are empty. I don’t want my half informed comment to begin the dialogue and potentially set the time for the thread, but I also want to engage in conversation about it. I’m kinda losing where I was going with this now but yeah. I feel like some of these posts deserve more than I’m able to contribute basically lol
Most don’t want to be the first or only one to get the spotlight on them. I’m very shy and reserved in person until I feel I know someone well, so I’ve enjoyed the smaller audience here. Heck, on this instance there isn’t even a down vote. So i try to take advantage of it to work on myself.
Sometimes I’ll start to post, and change my mind, but at least it has me trying more. It’s a process, and like anything else, they’ll be things that fall flat. But most groups seem to be positive, especially here. I try to upvote just about everyone that interacts with me to encourage them back too.
Which community is that? I’m having the same issues on the community I’m trying to grow
[email protected] (pictures of owls)
Was a fan on Reddit, saw it was already on Lemmy, but then nobody did anything with it.
I’m on day 3 of The 50 States of Owls, trying to show off a bird rescue org in every state that people can visit and support.
I remember SuperbOwl! Unfortunately I don’t have owl pictures to contribute or anything intelligent to say about owls.
Well it’s here on Lemmy now too for you to enjoy if you wish.
I’m no means an expert, just a wildlife fan. My SO loves owls, so that’s gotten me to be quite the fan in return. They also love orcas, but owls are easier for me to find and photograph!
How many people join thinking it’s going to be about the Super Bowl, I wonder.
That would only be useful a few days a year though. They end up with something much better and fun all year round, so it serves a valuable purpose!
For more fun: [email protected]
[email protected] is like this too. I actually thought it was empty/abandoned so I started posting there about conserving wildlife.
Turns out it had one person posting there already, only they are blocked so I can’t see them. Anyway that person was disgruntled and held a poll, but the poll result was most people there want it to be about the environment.
Hah, I do remember hearing something like that about one of the conservative forums last month. I think Teddy Roosevelt would approve.
It’s been funny mentally adjusting to the overton window here.
On reddit the US democrats vs conservatives fight, on the fediverse it’s more often the US democrats vs marxist leninists etc. I find it comparatively relaxing.
Oh that’s you! I liked those pictures, but indeed there seemed to be very few comments on the posts…
Yup, plenty of others posting all the doom and gloom environmental stuff, so I stick to sharing pics of happy fluffballs to balance it out. Love for our fellow beasties is probably what got many environmentalists into it to begin with, and it’s important to remember the fun part of it.
Just realized. Did the owls on r/SuperbOwl get lots of comments? If not, many upvotes with little discussion should probably just be expected for that kind of post.
I followed cute animal subs on Reddit but it totally slipped my mind about how often people would comment. I just looked, upvoted (after all, cute animals are on topic in a cute animal sub), and moved on.
The ratio is probably the same or better technically. They have about 400k subs and the posts get like a dozen comments. I didnt post there though, because there were a good number of daily posts. It’s dead here so far, so I decided it was up to me to be the change I wanted to see.
I do feel good breaking into the 100+ likes, but it’s just kinda one sided feeling. Like if you say hello to someone and they smile, but don’t say hi back ever, if that makes sense.
I’m using a different account to grow the community. Because I’m one of a few posters there and I’d rather not make life easier for potential doxxers, I’d rather not give out the community name. Don’t want to link two different accounts together as owned by the same person.
No worries, that makes perfect sense!
I just want a place where I can learn interesting new things. So far this is filling the void that Reddit left. Reddit was already starting to suck at that anyway and the social aspect of it was never something I cared about. I’m definitely not look for a recreation of Reddit.
I like the niche communities for hobbies. Reddit was a good place to get an introduction to a new hobby or activity one upon a time. You could go to a community and their wikis had a getting started section.
I hope we get there at some point. I do think the worst thing we took from Reddit is the over active meme pages, though.
I agree, but memes are honestly what I look for while idly scrolling during downtime. It’s the necessary fluff and filler that gets people to come back regularly and makes it all less dry.
At least the memes are (mostly) better on lemmy. I haven’t blocked any of the main meme subs here and that was one of the first things I did on Reddit. It drives engagement so if they’re gonna be here then they may as well be decent
I think wikis could be integral here. I can’t believe Reddit never capitalized.
The niche interest groups are what I miss from reddit - I’m out of the loop for several things now I don’t lurk in the respective subs any more. I think I’ll start using their RSS feeds so I don’t miss out too much.
Memes are just easy to consume and upvote, so I understand them becoming popular. I’ve got multiple duplicate accounts with different communities added/blocked so can get the memes only when I choose.
I have had better than awesome interactions with the ancient coin and 3d printing communities. The 3d printing one set me up completely and I’m printing as I type. I started out as a total noob. The ancient coin took a couple of days to send me down the right the path. There are niche communities already here, I love lemmy.
I agree with you! Lemmy feels different and I like it that way. I have learn so many new things now that I can’t keep scrolling for new content. Lemmy in a way has helped me to stay off my phone , not like reddit which would everything to keep me engaged.
A nice thing we do that’s different from Reddit is being able to edit post titles.
Is that what you appreciates?
Is this a reference to something? I’m not sure I understand your reply. If it’s meant to be taken at face value, I do honestly appreciate that we can edit post titles. No more noticing a mistake in the title, copy/pasting the text of my post, deleting the post, and reposting with a fixed title. Instead, I can just change the title. This is especially beneficial if I don’t notice a mistake in the title until I have several replies on it already.
I am the kind of pedant who values correct spelling and the absence of small mistakes. I am also accident-prone and sometimes overlook things. So I am being entirely genuine in my appreciation of this feature.
Apologies about the confusions; yes it was a reference to the tv show Letterkenny. In it there is an attractive woman Katy that one of the characters Squirrely Dan constantly says he appreciates something she does. Her reply is Is that what you appreciate about me?; alluding that someone appreciates her looks more than her actions.
Meaning here, is that the feature about Lemmy that makes you appreciate it, amongst all the other features of Lemmy compared to Reddit?
But yes, being able to edit the titles without making a new post is a nice feature.
The main thing I appreciate is the federation, which helps make us resistant to getting bought out by a corporate entity and subsequently enshittified. Theoretically, even if you buy a few instances you still don’t get the entire Fediverse.
In practice, people congregated on a few big servers. I exist on some smaller Lemmy and Kbin servers as well, because I want to help with the decentralization. Spread out the server demands and all that. I’m not the only one who’s on some smaller servers, but a huge chunk of us are on a couple of big servers that, if bought, take a lot of the Fediverse with them.
But even having to buy a few servers > buy one, all set.
For more my immediate concerns though? Less big-picture “what if” future thoughts? Editing titles. It’s really nice.
I’m not the only one who’s on some smaller servers, but a huge chunk of us are on a couple of big servers that, if bought, take a lot of the Fediverse with them.
Or even worse, just totally collapse - doesn’t even have to be a case of being bought out. I know a lot of people are afraid of joining smaller servers because of this occurring, but it can absolutely occur to larger ones too.
That being said, I get that there is some nuance to the chance of this happening on larger server vs smaller servers, but I still wish the Fediverse, especially Lemmy, were a bit more spread out…
If we don’t want it to be like Reddit than we need admins/mods to be more liberal with bans and comment removals. The amount of “free speech” drum banging I’m seeing and demands by disruptive people that instances never defederate is already out of hand. You cannot let these people dictate your policies. If someone is consistently disruptive, even if they don’t technically break the rules or are borderline, show them the door.
We also need to get away from the “performative snark” (credit to another user who used that term recently, I really like it) that Reddit, Twitter, etc. highly reward. Don’t know what the exact answer is for that, but it’s a huge problem and I already see it when people are trying to have real discussions.
Don’t get me wrong, so far the quality here is much higher than most other places I’ve seen. But most conversations go one of three ways: You talk with someone and have an interesting discussion, somebody says something incredibly snarky/quippy instead of engaging “in good faith” and the other person gets dog piled on, or it devolves into a flame war and insults start flying.
Just because it’s better here doesn’t mean those other two undesirable situations aren’t happening way too often. I urge mods to intervene when people just start getting snappy with each other. A simple “keep it friendly“ goes a long way to reminding people to take a step back and remember there’s somebody on the other side of the screen. I know I often need that myself. It’s also a really great way to suss out who is there to pick a fight, because invariably someone will snap back at the mod over that and deserve a ban lol
If someone is consistently disruptive, even if they don’t technically break the rules or are borderline, show them the door.
I will say that’s exactly why we have the one “be(e) nice” rule. It’s entirely subjective and it allows mods to more freely act on that without someone being able to ruleslawyer.
And it shows! Big fan of beehaw
Thank you
You talk with someone and have an interesting discussion, somebody says something incredibly snarky/quippy instead of engaging “in good faith” and the other person gets dog piled on, or it devolves into a flame war and insults start flying.
TBF this is every Internet forum ever.
The solution is tight moderation. However, that ends up with the same old tired argument of limiting speech and the the user base because people don’t want to participate somewhere highly restrictive. We wind up with moderator fiefdoms because people are biased and some get over controlling when they get a little power. It’s a really hard balance to strike.
I want to participate somewhere highly restrictive!
Completely agree.
“performative snark”
Both a perfect term and an accurate capture of the behaviour. As I’ve seen more of the behaviour you speak of creep in, I’ve gone not thinking much about downvotes to thinking they should probably go, at least as a counter or offset to any upvotes … and I’m thinking how much of the aggressive behaviours kinda start with the fact that you can just downvote, the idea that disagreeing matters more than anything else? Not suggesting that removing them will necessarily fix things, just kinda thinking out loud here.
Beehaw’s stance on downvotes is incredibly refreshing and freeing. There are no downvotes on Beehaw, and downvotes from other instances are invisible to members. You can’t just use downvotes to slash a post you don’t like, you have to reply and state your objection and start a conversation. And if a post is pointlessly nasty you can’t downvote it to oblivion, you have to articulate your reasoning for it being removed and submit it to a mod.
The lack of downvotes means you have to think and participate. You can’t just stab a button and rapidly move on to the next post like a trained monkey pressing buttons for a hit of cocaine.
As a person who only used downvotes for incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, I mostly agree because apparently most people would use the downvote button as a disagree button.
But I do miss having the “fucking [insert slur here]” “kill yourself” “only a basement-dwelling loser would have this opinion” comments auto-hid because the average passing user disapproved of it and decided to express their disapproval via downvote, instead of coming across it myself semi-frequently and reporting it. Also meant that I could contribute to hiding the bad stuff, without fear of getting lashed out on. Sometimes I don’t reply to comments that have good points but seem unnecessarily mean because in my experience, there seems to be a 50/50 chance between getting decent discussion and getting some rude snarky reply with a lot of unflattering personal assumptions made about me no matter how civil I was and how I deliberately avoided addressing the mean tone to avoid getting called out for tone policing (I know that tone policing is a problem I personally have. I don’t want to cause problems and I don’t want to face backlash for tone policing). And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.
Too bad people try to use downvotes for ”I disagree with your civil, well-thought out opinion” instead of “spam and cruelty not welcome, misinformation not useful and sometimes actively harmful, hide this.”
And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.
I think that while this is true, it would also invite for more deresponsabilization about the spaces we make and who we allow in these spaces. I generally think it’s best for those things to be reported because in most cases - we don’t actually want people like that in our communities and simply hiding it means that they silently remain.
But I do miss having the “fucking [insert slur here]” “kill yourself” “only a basement-dwelling loser would have this opinion” comments auto-hid because the average passing user disapproved of it and decided to express their disapproval via downvote, instead of coming across it myself semi-frequently and reporting it.
This is why I think downvotes are an important element of the UI and ranking algorithms. No matter how many members there are, or how many comments or votes there are, there are still going to be 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week. So naturally, smaller communities actually tend to have larger gaps in mod coverage in length of time between an item going onto the mod queue and being resolved by a human mod.
So I’m in favor of mechanisms being built in for removing content from easy view, without mods. Downvotes seems like the easiest way to implement that kind of mechanism.
But I do miss having the “fucking [insert slur here]” “kill yourself” “only a basement-dwelling loser would have this opinion” comments auto-hid because the average passing user disapproved of it and decided to express their disapproval via downvote, instead of coming across it myself semi-frequently and reporting it.
If Lemmy does introduce a sort of “instance-level global moderator” role separate from admin role, I can definitely imagine smaller, tighter knit instances (think your average gay catgirl Masto/Akkoma instance, not Beehaw or the instance I’m on for that matter) giving mod rights to a significant chunk of their members just so these kinds of situations happen less. Anyone who sees anything of that sort and has the mental energy could just remove it for the rest of their community.
Of course there is a potential for abuse in this style of moderation especially as an instance gets larger, but then one of the good parts about federation is that you don’t need a large instance to have access to the content. And unlike Mastodon you actually get access to the entire conversation including all the replies here even with a single user instance due to how communities are implemented.
Same exact page as you
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).
The Beehaw principles were specifically crafted to avoid people having your experience and losing you, it’s bad that it’s still happening
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.
Thank you for this post.
It is indeed different here.
See I agree that it’s good to be small, but I also feel like it would be nice to have more niche communities as well. Before reddit was a thing small message boards still filled with small niche communities that spoke and interacted with one another.
I agree we dont need to become a 100 million a day biggest site on the internet, but it would be nice to be a bit more active on some instances.
The thing I like the most of Lemmy over Reddit is how straightforward the way I see the content is. Plenty of ways to sort your feed (personally I’m a fan of “new comments”) and no bullshit algorithm to try and understand.
That and the fact that the frontend has pages, so I don’t end up doomscrolling for hours.
It’s wild to see people on the fediverse complain about a lack of algorithms. Like, honey, that’s a feature. People are so used to being exploited that they crave it. Sad.
I’m so pleased about this feature and would be discouraged if Lemmy and Kbin implement an algorithm for everyone in a way you can’t turn off.
Personally I like algorithms if they are up front and honest about it, and I can understand the inputs and ranking used, at least at a high level.
The closest I can think of (though theirs is far from perfect and I certainly won’t come to their defense) is Spotify’s. Like- yes, I want more of this sort of thing, but group this sort of thing with its similar stuff, so when I want something completely different, I can click a different playlist or “radio” mix.
Given the open nature of lemmy, etc, I’d expect this to eventually exist if only because us nerds like making stuff. And the “no algorithm” version will still be there.
You, uhh lifts pen like algorithms?
Heh, as a general term, yes- it’s sort of in my job description as a programmer ;)
But I definitely recognize how they can be used for
evilcontributing to the downfall of our society and life on earth, and therefore the general reasons people don’t like them.
I’ve seen people complain that Mastodon doesn’t offer curated accounts to follow. Like, yeah, I wish more content creators were on it (not totally related) and be able to find those that are (this is “the problem” people have) , but I don’t want some feedback loop of creators just gaming the system to start trending, etc. Mastodon doesn’t amplify anyone over anyone else. You can argue maybe having a lot of followers can amplify your message, but only if they each boost your message individually.
Long story short and without the rambling rant, I agree with you and am surprised when folks complain. Honestly I just don’t think they have taken the time to realize the downside.
Why do people need to follow content creators everywhere? Just watch them on YouTube or Twitch and leave it there. These people don’t care about you at all.
I definitely enjoy my time here more than at reddit… I wish we were even less like reddit tbh, communities like mildlyinfuriating exist purely to make you get mad, and I honestly don’t see a positive side to them.
Reddit is filled with stuff like that, like videos of people fighting, or yelling at each other over petty shit, or stories in AITA of toxic people being toxic in relationships. It gets me down after a while… yeah I know I shouldn’t even go on it, but I’m still addicted fml
A lot of Reddit “sub-equivalents” are lemmy.world, I do find them humorous, even if it’s sometimes in a “haha the world is fucked up” kind of way.
If you recognize that it’s unhealthy for you, it’s likely a good idea to block those communities for yourself.
Many on Reddit simply have a subscribed list to their favourite subreddits and completely ignore the popular/all page. You can do the same by Subscribing to a bunch of communities here then limiting your feed to that, especially if you want to see things other than the memes and shitpost communities.
People have tried to copy at least some of the outrage communities over to Lemmy and Kbin and I hope they don’t take off.
I do see a point to r/mildlyinfuriating, for venting about something bad that happened that day. “Why not just vent to your friends and family?” Perhaps they all have a lot going on and you feel you’d be adding “listen to my small problems when you have huge ones” to their plate, so you go to the internet instead. I feel a lot of other outrage communities can serve that purpose too. And r/AmITheAsshole does, on the surface, legitimately seem like a spot to find out if you were the bad guy in a situation (or will be if you proceed with your intended course of action), why, and what you can do to fix what you did wrong. Unfortunately they seem to do more of making people angry and making them scroll more than letting people vent and make kinder life decisions.
I did get an unintended benefit from some of the outrage subs. When I was younger, I was unaware that some actions were unacceptable or unaware of why. In between “I can’t believe they did that, what an asshole” replies, there would also be “yeah, don’t they realize that by doing [unacceptable action] they’re [explanation of how and why it’s hurtful to others]” replies. This went a long way towards helping my young autistic self learn some social rules I was previously unaware of and that they’re not arbitrary but in place for a reason.
There are probably positive sides to the outrage subs but I agree that they’re overall a negative. I’m glad there’s no algorithm trying to recommend them to me despite hitting Not Interested repeatedly. I ignored it by never touching anything but Home and turning off home feed recommendations in settings, but before I did that it was annoying. And for people who might want home feed recommendations, it would be really bad to keep getting your “don’t show me this sub please” requests consistently ignored and to be consistently served outrage you don’t want.
Yes, being away from the judgment/advice/outrage communities has really improved my headspace.
I was fooling myself that giving advice was me helping people, and maybe sometimes it was. But it was also me getting way too emotionally invested in things that were quite likely creative writing, as well as just this relentless stream of the worst side of human nature.
Reddit did some things right, somehow. Through good decisions made by people who were probably let go later, or whatever they hashed out a workable structure for a theoretically infinite number of topics to be held and, to some extent, managed. That’s good.
The bad of course is the corporate nature of it which we’re seeing in all it’s glory as they do all they can to goose the monetization ahead of the IPO so the executives, etc. etc.
I think Lemmy/kbin’s real test is yet to come when people who don’t normally post their actual thoughts (as opposed to hot takes, recycled memes, or other “easy” content like simple reactions) step out to do that - hopefully. The “test” is that they should be comfortable and happy to do it, and the userbase’s test is to let them without reacting in a kind of ‘default reddit’ mode.
Anybody who was on a BBS or a message board or usenet or used/uses RSS or has a “home base” of a small community knows what that’s like. We see it in little pockets here and there - sometimes as a new, non-reddit type of post, sometimes as a reaction against a typical reddit-type of post (who’s spamming random? whatever.) But it’s fun to anticipate and whenever it happens that users feel lemmy/kbin have hit their stride it will certainly be different from whatever reddit is now. How, we don’t know yet. But it’s set up such that it has a really good chance to be good.
Reddit succeeded despite itself. Ultimately they stumbled into a secret formula that other social media sites couldn’t figure out: somewhat decentralized, unpaid moderators by the thousands. The competitive advantage it gives them over other sites is truly hard to overstate.
I think this is already happening. I’ve seen many people saying that lemmy allows them to actually feel like their thoughts are being heard and not just shouting into the void.
Personally I feel like I’ve seen many more even tempered responses here than the other place, even when people disagree. Of course there’s the odd nasty response but that seems to get bulldozed by others telling them to be better, which is nice.
The interactions here feel more organic. People, generally, seem to want to have actual conversations, not just yell their opinions at each other. Plus the memes here are diamond tier.
That’s what I’ve noticed also. It is nice not being overrun with bad faith trolls, bot farms and such.
Each subreddit had its own atmosphere and culture and environment. I would expect the same to happen here, only with an opportunity for different instances to also foster their own dynamics, in addition to each community within each instance.
We’re too small to have niche thriving communities
The same was largely true of reddit when I joined (in about 2008 or 2009). There were a lot of technology/science/engineering/programming people in the mix, so there was good content for that, but most of what it was just kinda grew out of some ideas that had come from other forums (lolcats style content, advice animals memes) and from internal inside trends organically bubbling up within the community (the concepts of the AMA, TIL, ELI5, AITA, narwhal fandom, grumpy cat, reddit switcheroo), and then weird turns of phrases the people started repeating elsewhere like a cargo cult (the overuse of the word “obligatory,” accidentally a whole word, ಠ_ಠ, playing with movie titles by adding or removing or switching letters). We saw the rise and fall of some content creators and power users, the rise and fall of communities (/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu, inglip, space dicks, all sorts of communities that eventually got banned).
Trends don’t stop trending. Any community, large or small, ends up developing its own cultural touchstones and a shared history. Eventually we’ll see things turn from innovative to an inside joke to overdone within different lemmy communities, too.
