What's changed about Lemmy over the past year for you?
I’ve been on lemmy for over a year now, and I just realized I used to read all those HackerNews articles + their comments, I haven’t done that in probably 6 months because the discussion here has gotten much better. What’s changed for you with Lemmy over the last year?
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Started to participate in discussion more and pleasantly surprised actual conversations happen and the comment section is not flooded with generic bot shit within minutes.
When I first came here, I was so jaded, with the expectation that every account was a bot or an asshole. Seeing the actual conversation among humans has been nice.
Absolutely. The jadedness coming off of reddit is real. Took me half a year to slowly start participating
Yeah, that's something I really like about Lemmy. You can have actual conversations. On Reddit, on even an unpopular thread, any comment would be flooded by replies from other people. You couldn't just talk with one person.
I don't mind other people joining in, but reddit makes it impossible to do 1-on-1.
Lemmy really does give the feel of "early reddit" where it was small enough for real communities, where you would recognize regulars and see them in multiple subs.
Agreed. Oftentimes I describe Lemmy as "reddit back in the day" whenever someone asks me wtf is Lemmy.
In my view, Lemmy ecospace became a lot more dark. People are snarkier, less prone to engage in polite conversation and divergent opinions get hounded.
I also sense an increased tendency for doom and gloom. Nihilism is on the rise, as well.
Would you say the doom and gloom is Lemmy specific, or more of a global thing, given the state of life ATM?
I'm only on Lemmy. Can't speak for other places. On my day to day life, people are concerned with living their lives.
It's definitely not just a Lemmy thing just any site that grows a user base.
I kind off think of it like the difference between talking to random people at a local hobby space vs a national convention. Sure you're gonna still find people with shared interests but you got more people coming in with an agenda or chip on their shoulder, Or just general trolls who target larger groups because it's more people to get a rise out of.
But you'd have to consult some sociologist or someone for a in-depth factual answer, I've just been on a lot of random sites/forums over the years.
Honestly Lemmy has handled it's growth a lot better than most places online I've seen. I'd say people on here are pretty raw but not actively spiteful (mostly), which I very much vibe with.
Agree. The size of the community seems to correlate with the number of trolls, which can quickly change the tone of a platform. Trolls are more active, outspoken, and literally feed on negativity.
Great point.
"Doomers sure love doom scrolling"
does nothing about the amount of doom in the world
Yeah, yeah, yeah... and Happy New Year!
That's interesting because for me it's the opposite, or maybe I just don't notice it anymore. But when I first joined people were almost always hostile to one another. I feel like that's not the case anymore.
Among American users, this probably has a lot to do with the recent election.
I can't see a flag near the nick, so I just try to treat everyone with respect.
Still better than Reddit, where a divergent opinion is grounds for a permaban.
Not saying that makes it ok though, it still sucks, just a little less.
I see that too recently. I just call them out, report, and block.
A lot more comments like reddit that are the quick (very tired) zingers. I was happy to get away from that but I'm sort of thinking of putting lemmy down if it gets worse.
I don't need your "this." Or "broken arms" or "that's insulting to trash" etc.
It's beyond tired. But it gets up voted and can dominate the comments section. I appreciate threads like this one that promote actual discussion.
I feel that, too, but also...
There's a large number of news articles that it feels literally pointless to respond to with anything other than jokey derision because it feels like we've been talking to people about those issues for two decades (or more for some of us) and no one listened.
So, with a lot of it... what is there even to talk about anymore and instead crack jokes to try to feel less dead inside?
I fully agree, but at the same time find myself making jokey throwaway comments on the millionth thread about "turns out Trump was lying about his campaign promises!!!!" as if anyone with a fucking brain couldn't figure that out since at least 2015. It just feels pointless to engage with beyond comedy when the media continues to sanewash that guy.
I would love to slap down my copy pasta in every poltical post about how First-past-the-post voting artificially limits the number of viable political parties to 2 and is the greatest barrier to effective non violent change in the country. But people don't want answers, they want to be mad.
And the mods kept banning me. Even when I ran the copypasta through chat GPT to get a unique comment every time I posted the pasta.
Why the fuck should my comment change at all when the solution hasn't changed?
Some or most of the people upvoting this stuff is just part of the lucky 10,000
Sorry, but... "broken arms"? What does that mean, aside from its literal interpretation?
Famous story of a son who broke both arms and the mom felt bad he couldn't masturbate so she started jerking him which led to more...
It's very fucked up story. But whenever a similar topic comes up someone has to say "I bet he had broken arms" or something like that.
Similar one is "shoes came off so he's definitely dead" whenever some fall or other force throws someone to the ground.
It was funny at one point... Maybe like 6 years ago. But like jfc there's no original thought, just echo chamber zingers.
Oh another one: "I also choose this guy's dead wife"
While I understand your sentiment, the coconut will never not be hilarious
I completely agree. It's tiring to ask a question and then have some low-effort absurd answer every time.
yeah jeez thanks. It's worse than no replies.
Lemmy is teaching me things by accident.
Most recently; I've started learning media literacy and now I can see all the same manufactured consent and narrative shaping that exists in legacy media and social media like Facebook and reddit; but in .world and lemmee too
I will always link Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" when this subject comes up, haha.
I wish the .worlders & lemmee's would open up a book to learn this for themselves.
Yea... 🫠
The hard truth is .world and .ee deserve to make their space exactly like reddit and/or facebook if that's what they want.
They have their space, we have ours. The weekly feud posts at .world are hilarious. Desperate attempts to keep the barn doors closed so no one escapes to the better instances.
These sorts of people eventually show their hand and people will leave on their own. Most recently the Luigi related debacles.
i wonder if this is why .ee rose to prominence in user counts.
Lol
Your go to
My goodness, that was a roller coaster. Although I found it lacking in cohesiveness (I'm not sure that the evidence supports the conclusions), it's certainly a thought-provoking article. Thanks for the link.
No problem!
Lemmy has become my main social media outlet. For better or worse, Lemmy's just my kind of place. I'm off of all mainstream social media except LinkedIn, which I barely use, but keep around for work related reasons.
I do still peruse Reddit, mainly for TV shows and niche subjects I can't find here. But I haven't logged in or posted since the first major exodus over the API pricing, and have no plans of returning.
I do post on Mastodon from time to time, but the format is just too geared towards short form content, and ultimately just isn't my cup of tea.
So yeah. I'm generally happy to be here with you all shooting the shit about politics, Linux, etc. Long live Lemmy!
Hey bud, you dropped this
Here's one from me to help.
It's become clear that Lemmy is not about to take off. For most users, it's probably a fine Reddit clone, but it's not about to replace the big R.
I'm sure that will change in 2025. 🧌
I suppliment Lemmy with Imgur. That said, Imgur also forces you to use their offical app, and it also sells your data to 3rd parties, like most apps. But it's not nearly as shit as the offical reddit app, and you can always block the trackers with the DuckDuckGo app.
I still don't have a replacement for niche subreddits, though. So I only visit them on the desktop now to minimize that time on the site, and so I can use old.reddit.com.
I dream of the day when I can finally ditch both for good and just use Lemmy.
Can't you just look at imgur through your browser? I just went there and it looks functional to me.
Perhaps you are referring to the mobile web version? Just another step in enshitification to drive you to the app. Don't give in, use imgur only on your PC. Heck em
It’s actually had content for me now
Starting to see different people reposting stuff on similar communities, which reminds me a lot of that other site. Not a huge fan.
I've also started noticing people downvoting instead of engaging when they disagree with something as well, which is frustrating.
I wanted to let you know there is an option in your settings so you don't see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn't even show you your total upvotes (karma... whatever it's called) by default either. None of these imaginary points fucking matter.
So why don't you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad as fuck)
Probably a solid idea - thanks for the suggestion.
Not sure how well it will work with my mobile app but I will look into it!
It's not great, but at least downvotes barely affect anything other than visibility of top level comments on popular posts, and are easy to hide. Better that than people disagreeing using lazy insults and tired truisms.
I often think the place would be better with no downvotes.
If you think a post/comment is good, then upvote. If you think a post/comment is bad, then either get over it and move on or grow a pair and say why.
The freedom of expression means that you have to read/hear/see things that you might not like every now and again, but I'd much rather that than end up in another echo chamber.
Hexbear.net and a few other instances disable downvoting for similar reasons you describe.
From what I've heard, there are instances that don't have downvotes. People should be able to vote how they want. Could you imagine... wanting to tell people how they can vote? I certainly cant.
I'm not telling anyone anything, I'm just saying it'd be shame to end up in another echo chamber, despite the knowledge that I know other people are absolutely fine with that idea.
I agree. Hate to mention the R-place, but some of the subs there that only allow upvotes are a generally more positive place.
When your post is downvoted, you're sometimes left wondering why, and question yourself. That can lead to less engagement. Same can happen for disagreements of course, but at least then it's clear what the problem is.
Hexbear.net is nice for this.
I'm fine with seeing things I don't like or agree with if it is a fully formed thought, but I still think downvotes are a nice trap for lazy inarticulate people to feel like they are doing the equivalent of dropping a low effort flame comment while actually doing basically nothing. I have display of vote scores disabled and don't have to know or think about the approval of people who are only voting, which is nice. If they had something to say that isn't already fully communicated by the downvote button, maybe they would say it instead despite downvoting being an option.
Yep, downvotes are usually an "I don't know how to counter what you're saying but I don't like it" button.
But what I'm saying is, they are good because they likely deter toxic thoughtless comments.
They also deter good comments that go against the grain for an instance. Labeling comments as "toxic" even if they are fine but controversial isn't good. Such toxic comments can be reported and removed anyways.
I mean they deter comments from the people leaving the downvotes. Anyone wanting not to be deterred by downvotes can adjust settings to not see them.
I'd be fine with the downvotes if they were used as you described, but as there is no realistic way to stop people using them as an "I disagree/I don't like that" button which is in reality the way they are mostly used. I think we'd be better without.
Definitely seeing some people doing mass downvotes. By that, I mean they disagree so much with a person's post that they then downvote other, unrelated posts by the same person.
I suspect I have a bit of an "anti-fan club" these days, I'll have the sole downvote in threads for a benign opinion that goes along with the rest of the comments, but I don't pay it any mind.
More content and more comments. I basically only use mastodon and lemmy for my memes nowadays and as general social media.
My participation has dropped a lot compared to when I only just joined. There is only so much us centric doomer content I can stomach, and Lemmy is so extremely political that it is impossible to just browse cat memes and have a good time. So I spend less time here I suppose.
I almost never see political content or cat memes. I think your experience comes down to your subscription list.
I just block those that post that stuff. Lemmy is small enough that that works to a sufficient degree 👍 it's a small group of prolific posters
Don't forget to block me as well! Peace.
I just started filtering all of it
This is the way. I am happy to hear you are taking control of your lemmy experience.
It’s so much better! Filter, report, stand up, and block. I’m so done with people being unnecessarily rude and I immediately stop contact with them here. If it’s me I try to apologize. All that garbage should stay on reddit
Sounds like you don't understand how to curate the content lemmy has to offer. I understand the hesitation, there just isn't as much content here as there is on reddit.
But if you don't want to see most of whats here, just don't visit 4 times a day like people do with reddit. The content turn over is slower, so adjust your usage accordingly.
Well, I'm here now. So there's that.
You're welcome. /s
The cell phone apps are a lot better nowadays. They look a lot better.
I've been posting more fedi content instead of just the popular links.
With the end of the US election, there has been a bit of an ideological demographic shift, but more of a strong wind than a foundational upset.
It seems more active now. Which has been great!
All of the "a vote for Kamala is a vote for genocide" spammers mysteriously disappeared
Edit: my point is that they seem awfully quiet about Trump
I mean, the vote happened and she's not running anymore, sooooooo not really a reason for them to keep talking about that issue?
Also, I remember a couple usernames from some of the most vocal and I just went and looked and it's not like they up and deleted their accounts or stopped using Lemmy. They're still active, so they didn't "disappear."
@[email protected] was pretty loud about that opinion and they're still here, for example.
I know reddit being flooded with bots for 10 years has made y'all jaded but real people with real opinions that differ from ours shockingly still exist.
Her pronouns are she/her
I will
NEVER
log off!
The election ended, the Leftists are still here. What were you expecting to happen?
Is this a joke? They didn’t leave, the election cycle did.
You shitlibs are still whining that leftists didn't want to vote for your genocidal ghoul?
The liberals are desperate to blame anything and everything they can to justify not changing a single damn thing about the democratic party.
Because they know the blue conservatives won't change. Their donors will not allow it.
"No, it's the voters who are wrong"
I'm still here posting about the flaws of the voting system that gives us two shit options to choose from.
Are you working to replace First past the post voting in your state? Now is that so venerated time to push for these changes at the state and local level.
Don't you care that your country men/women/and more are under represented by their options at the polls?
Upset over 3rd party voters? Best get back to passing electoral reform in your state then.
You wouldn't tell people how to vote and then do nothing to fix the voting system that is the source of the problem would you?
Wonder why? /s
Same reason people aren't still discussing who will win Euro '24
I feel like there's less Canadian content. After the Reddit API Exodus, there was a fair bit, but that dropped off.
I think a lot of people have gone back to Reddit.
Lemmy is my only social media interaction these days, the content has improved, and the communities feel more distinct than they did a year ago. That could just be me getting up to speed though.
It was a nice surprise finding out that the left wing instances on here are actually pretty chill, way more so than on Reddit these days.
I peaked into r/communism and it's genuinely awful. Full of the most toxic people I have seen in the supposedly "Marxist" communities. Surprisingly Lemmy is way more chill than Reddit.
Not enough jeans. :(
Real answer: there's been an uptick in the amount of content lately, which is great. I've also unfortunately noticed an uptick in belligerent comments, which often detracts from the conversations taking place.
I see a lot less but muh Media Bias/Fact Check now than I did a year ago.
People here have gotten progressively meaner and I am seeing more and more AI slop. Also the quality of memes have fallen off a fucking cliff in all meme communities.
How can you complain about the quality of the memes if you haven't posted a single one yourself?
Show us how it's done.
I got banned from the Canada community and according to the mod log, it was for homophobia and bigotry.
That really rubs me the wrong way because I’ve never ever posted anything like that. I’ve been the subject of homophobic and bigotry based bullying my whole life and the only comment I posted on that topic there was an account of my first hand experience of being catfished on Grindr and then outed as bi on the towns facebook page and subjected to ridicule and harassment.
I mean the nice thing about Lemmy is you can always create your own community, and if that's not enough, your own instance.
It removes a bad mods ability to completely dominate, because there's always an escape hatch for folks who are just done with their shit.
True, but when it’s a main community that pertains to your interests, it’s crappy to be banned from it for fictional reasons. Would be the same on any other social media site I guess. I find people here are more militant in their beliefs.
You can do that on most platforms. It isn't worth the effort unless you can pull users into your new community. That's hard.
You don't need any users to interact with other instances. A lot of people are in a instance of one person, themselves.
Are you still bound by the rules of individual instances, no matter if you agree with them or not? Yes.
If their rules upset you, consider blocking the entire instance/community.
I believe you misunderstood why you were banned.
You were banned because of incivility and ableism. You were making derogatory comments about the mentally ill as though having a illness was a bad thing.
I can see why you were confused, as homophobia is also listed under rule 1.
Yeah. Lemmy's biggest strength (decentralization) has also shown to be one of it's biggest flaws when micro-managing admins/mods turn their instance into their own personal fiefdom, inflicting their "justice" broadly and without discernment. I've been banned more here in under 2 years than on reddit for over 13, almost exclusively for voting "wrong" according to what feedback I can find, which is a a seriously treacherous practice in communities like these. I have no real sense of loss over it, but I do worry the Lemmy-verse will end up with tons of siloed off instances instead of an interconnected community if it goes on unadressed.
Lemmy has a bit more active users which is great. However, I have also noticed that Lemmy has gotten similar things as Reddit these days. Different opinions are not welcome, quick/ angry comments (politic community though)
However, Lemmy now has a decent app(s) such as Voyager. I also love that Lemmy does not restrict/ block users from using swear words (at least the instance I’m on does not).
Though in all honesty, I mostly use an RSS-feed such as Reeder and InoReader.
I feel like Lemmy is consistently hostile to different opinions. It's a real disappointment.
I, unfortunately, have to agree and that’s why - most of the times, I just check Lemmy posts through RSS-Feed.
I sometimes hop onto Voyager and comment on posts/ articles. But the more hostile, twisting of words and such are happening. The less I will be using Voyager to comment and just use the RSS-Feed to see the posts.
I really liked Lemmy in the early days when people went from Reddit to Lemmy. Miss those times.
Depends on instance, largely. Lemmy instances usually lean towards 1 or maybe 2 camps of the "liberal, anarchist, Marxist" triangle, and are hostile to the other 1 or 2 camps.
Given that this website has experienced the Reddit migration (I am one of those migrants), it has definitely started to feel a bit like Reddit, but it still differs in a lot of ways. There's less bots, actually engaging conversations, actual content. To me, this website continues to capture the vibe of the early Web2 days of the internet in a way that Reddit clearly moved away from, definitely so that its executives can make more of them monies. It feels a bit nostalgic in a way, and that's what I like about this website.
It's become much more moderated and controlled. I think reddit is actually less controlled. I'm seeing conversations about Swedish immigration that would never be allowed on Lemmy.
On the other hand, I saw that Luigi was not allowed to be mentioned in Reddit now in some subreddit.. So... Lol.
That’s correct: racism is more tolerated on Reddit than on Lemmy, and anti-capitalism is less tolerated Reddit than on Lemmy.
Every person and every platform has its biases and values, so it's not as helpful to think of moderation and control as more-or-less, so much as what is being controlled.
For example, reddit's revenue model led them to censor moderators during the API fiasco, and some of the communities on Lemmy since its early days are continuations of quarantined or banned subreddits. Meanwhile, most Lemmy instances take a stand against bigotry which would fly without a worry on reddit. This is a result of each platform's values, what they as a community (or in reddit's case, business) consider tolerable. reddit has the added constraint that they can't alienate their advertisers and other sources of income, and face increased scrutiny from mass media (news articles are usually the cause of controversial subreddits finally getting enough attention to cause them to be banned).
Change your instance. You can still use lemmy and see what you want. No need to switch to a new service.
That's the beauty of this place. Make it how you want.
I see a fair number of Reddit posts on the main page with 40k+ votes mentioning Luigi. I think that subreddit is in the minority.
Just got banned from !linuxsucks, got a feeling that's nothing uncommon though, power tripping mod situation
Lol I didn’t even know this community existed. To be fair their description even states that moderation is heavy handed.
Edit: Pretty sure that’s a troll community or something? Every single post there is kinda crap and is being downvoted.
Yeah, unfortunately it is, ended up blocking it now because if I can't comment with my own experience with Linux when I relate to a meme. (even if the "meme" is followed by half-truths) Then its just a guy ranting about how Linux sucks and power tripping when someone comments.
Election spam which filled the front page is mostly gone.
Tremondous change!!! A year ago I didn't know about it and now I do!
Getting a bit busier these days
For me, Lemmy was a place where I mostly found like-minded people. Even if we don't always agree (and we shouldn't) I have had some genuine feedback to the thoughts that haunt me or tickle me. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the interinstance drama which I mostly ignore. And I think that the base probability of transphobia is higher than the sidebar rules would implicate. I am always surprised when I see naive and uninformed takes.
Although I do have found a place to share such thoughts with less harassment and backlash than Reddit, there is some unearned harassment and hating here as well, eg there are some consistent downvoters, to the effect I have a single downvote to anything I post.
Although I think that here in Lemmy I enjoy a higher probability of getting thoughtful responses and well-intended humor to what I post, I feel that a number of people I have interacted with me were highly prejudiced I was a troll or a bad faith actor.
This lack of trust to other users is one of the greatest achievements of fascists and spooks, and they have successfully used it with freedom movements everywhere.
I was also surprised at how conservative the privacy community is. Compared to the amount of radical content posted on every other topic, I find myself among those who think that c/Privacy actively discourages newcomers from developing advanced privacy and anonymity skills.
The privacy thing and some aspects of the Democrats situation pre- and post- election make me think that there is some "manufacturing of consensus" bad faith actors among us. This can lead to disbanding of any project, so we need a solid mindset, in which we assume good faith, but have exact methods for handling disagreement and genuine questions, but also look out for bad faith actors and take steps to build healthy online communities for anarchist and communist free and private software enthusiasts.
Afterthoughts
The visible buildup and collapse of anti-democrat propaganda pre- and post-election. Then blaming the democrats for trump’s win. The shift to pushing intergenerational conflict shortly after and blaming specific generations for trump’s win. Now blaming the democrats for everything the Republicans do.
Pretty much a steady undercurrent of individuals attempting to blame democrats for everything.
That wasn’t a Lemmy problem before. Sure, we had issues with grad or ml, but there really wasn’t such a uniform front pushing such monochromatic propaganda.
That, and I think some of the edge has come off of Lemmy as a techie/linux platform. It’s still there, but I think there’s a much better variety of discussions now.
Leftists existing and being critical of liberal right-wingers was not an organized campaign, rather, it was a salient discussion around the US Election. The Leftists are still here doing what they always do.