Diversity has increased by a lot. It's not just circlejerking about Linux anymore. Only positives in my book.

It feels more like reddit now, but still is populated by a certain type of person that would seek out Lemmy. Mostly techy, left of center+, over age 30+, etc. I enjoy it.

My main gripe with mainstream Reddit now is the engagement baiting that people are falling for all the time. "What are you thoughts on [Controversial Topic]?" If there is a new exodus from Reddit coming, I really really really wish all the baiting to be left behind and moderators to remove it on the Fediverse.

I like it here, I only lurked on reddit. There isn't much reason to comment when it seems that everyone was in a competition for "who can post the best zinger comment first"

Lemmy didn't have much content at first so you would run out of things to read after a while. It felt friendly at first, but certain topics still set off people at lemmy to the point I thought about leaving. Then lemmy seemed to improve and I could talk about those topics again, but now there are more trolls (even ones that seem to follow you around since they troll each post or comment talking about something) and spam bots that weren't there before. I think a lot of conflict on forums like this has to do with miscommunication, but sometimes people are just mean and there isn't a fix.

I feel it's changing positively, as instance admins and our tool-sets mature, and more and more people are becoming permanent residents as they're either permabanned on reddit (so they have no alternative) or they recognize the value of a system that is not and cannot be controlled by a corporate entity and they US billionaire interests behind it.

However I'm also concerned that our yet small size has protected us from truly existential issues like dedicated spam and propaganda orgs, especially those who would utilize GenAI to be more covert. I've already published tools like the fediseer to help prepare for this, but I really hope to see more people per-emptively getting ready for this. I see way too many doe-eyed admins firing up instances without a care in the world, open registration, no captchas, no botnet protections etc and they either burn out and close shop after a few months of firefighting, or get defederated, or they have to re-learn a painful lesson the rest of us did.

This does give me an idea, we do need a more holistic "So you want to open a threadiverse instance" guide to give such pointers to new admins and way to get support from others. Hmmm....

I’ve been in fediverse since API debacle, I feel the same vibes as I do on Reddit, both the good parts and bad.

For example, same controversies on Reddit also exist here, and have the same talking points and flamewar nature. I had an opinion about Pitbulls (that an owner should be far more responsible than the average owner - I know, controversial take), which got me banned from that sub and several other furry related subs. Which is something that also happens on Reddit when you tick off a moderator of several subs

So for the most part, I’m just a lurker that comes here to get some memes. Sometimes I share my opinion if I feel like it. But I don’t necessarily feel that it’s an upgrade from Reddit in terms of communities.

there are increasingly a greater number of nutjobs, spammers, and hostile/miserable/angry people. my block list is like 300+ now. 6-9 month ago it was like 12 people.

2 years ago it was mostly super nerds just nerding about.

Lemmy or Reddit?

Lemmy hasn't changed much at all.

Reddit OTOH is pretty unrecognizable now.

(and before you ask: This is a different account than what I initially joined with because my old instance shut down)

The extremists are a bit much but otherwise I like it here.

Basically the same. But with more users and communities over time

Lemmy feels about the same, but Reddit seems much worse.

Now to be fair I don't know if Reddit is actually worse, because when I browse Reddit now it's while I'm logged out and via a browser (force old.reddit.com and OldLander extensions). So the site is A) harder to navigate than it used to be and B) my experience is less curated and I see more crap and C) because my experience is less curated I've lost access to many of the niche communities.

As an example if I want to read some discussion about the recent Game of Thrones prequel series "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" I can find a small community here on Lemmy. Nice people, but too few of us.

So I go to Reddit. If I search I find r/AKOTSKTV which is fine, and I find r/GameOfThrones which is fine. But I have to know, as a previous Reddit user, that maybe r/ASOIAF is also a great choice. Or if I want some real shit r/freefolk is where the glory lives.

So for that universe I know where to go. But for a new series? For a new niche? For a new community? I don't know shit. I've found some of the more niche communities by luck. That's what I would have been subscribed to in the past. I would have been in the community and in the comments and discovery was natural.

But nowadays I just get the front page of Reddit, and the front page kinda sucks.

But Lemmy? Yeah it sucks sometimes too, but at least there is a community.

Its gotten significantly less optimistic and more cynical. Its in my opinion more of a reflection of the state of the world than a Lemmy specific issue but it affects Lemmy users more because this isnt a space that allows people to live in ignorant bliss.

It has gotten much better. More content and general activity and nutjobs at .ml and similar got mostly isolated from the rest of the network.

I think fediverse is really shaping up as a strong reddit alternative. Most pop subjects are mirrored here and the vibe is very similar to early reddit so there no real reason to go to reddit other than super niche communities like of a tv show or something.

Most props go to the lemmy.world team as it kept a consistent big sane network running that keeps the project stable! If .world never happened I think Lemmy would have remained cess pool of social rejects like most reddit alternatives like Voat or lemmy.ml

Honestly? Not much.

It's gotten a bit busier as far as new posts showing up go (been here since reddit api debacle) but we need like 4,000,000 more users, and then if we just held right there, we'd all be able to live happy little lives. There's still just not enough people to support smaller, more niche instances.

On a side note: Doubly fuck reddit again. I don't get on there to use it, but occasionally I'll hop into an old sub looking for info. Got a notification that /humor deleted my post of a funny poem thing from 15 friggin years ago. One of only 2 posting I ever made that still occasionally got comments on.

TBH, not much.

Which pleases me. I actually donate to my instance every month in order to help keep it ad and algo-free.

My account is 3 years and 5 months old. I joined Lemmy before it was cool, because I like open source things. In fact, when I joined, Lemmy.ml was the main/recommended instance. Now you all hate it.

Lemmy used to be a barren wasteland of content. Now it is not. I've noticed no further changes. The tankies, the in-fighting, the debates about whether to de-federate with instances, the arguing over whether it's becoming too much like reddit - it's all been here as long as I can remember.

The biggest change for me was losing Lemm.ee. That was a blow. I had probably the most thriving (not by much) synthesizer community. I haven't had the heart to try and start it back up elsewhere.

I've been here since. I've noticed very recently big improvements, I think mostly due to a few bot accounts sharing a lot of stuff all over. Also though, I recently switched to default the "All" channel and just filtering out the communities I don't want. It's so much more stuff I've discovered that way. Sometimes I feel like dropping reddit entirely and it likely wouldn't hurt.

Fewer people marveling about Lemmy itself, which is fine.

There are a couple of people who are now a constant presence. For better or worse. Some of y'all need help that Lemmy can't provide. I won't name a name but if you have to ask...

Less lurkers and more people making comments over time. This thread is a great example.

I arrived during the API debacle.

Some things are better, content and activity.

Some things are worse, spammers, AI proponents who harrass you despite the clear community-wide dislike of the plagarism machine, fascist chuds trying to mainstream rascism, misogyny, and ableism.

Basically each new wave is another usenet September equivalent, and it feels like we're approaching the eternal september epoch as lemmy becomes more widely used. Soon we'll have to deal with state actor bot-nets if we aren't already.

Population seems to have increased and become more diverse. There's always communities being created. It's not recognised as a desirable platform for businesses or influencers yet so upvotes aren't treated anywhere near as divine, but you still see some users with remnants of Reddit; massive psychological damage if they're downvoted. I mean, makes sense, people generally use social media to feel validated about their opinions. When it comes to comparing with Reddit, Lemmy has no monetised awards or such, bots are mostly rudimentary and live on a couple communities, and there's little toxicity, harassment etc. because the user has complete control over blocking anything and instance admins have complete control over banning and defederating. I think being able to close some doors is preferable to being wide open to all, and I don't think it causes any "echo chambers".

Overall, definite improvement over the years.

Been here since exactly the API debacle, and it's still kinda the same, just less attempts to make niche communities become a thing and more clustering on the big communities.

It's the same but I had to block a few users. Very Reddit-like in some ways. Glad karma isn't a thing though.

Significantly, and for the better. The is significant engagement, a large increase in new communities, and we have even had our very own memorable, memeable instances!

Lemmy seems to have increased in userbase a bit and many communities are less dark with sometimes infrequent but not absent posts and engagement. It's looking good. Also we all hate Israel now. That wasn't a thing when Lemmy started.

1. It has gotten bigger. More active. More posts, more new content. When i first came over i would check the All page, sorted by eitber Active or Hot, and only find a couple of new posts per day. It is still nowhere near as active as Reddit was back then (probably a goos thing), but it has enough content to help me procrastinate at work now.

2. LemmyNSFW died and has been replaced by FediNSFW recently. I am sure that it will be better in the long-term, but it still doesn't seem to be back to where it was yet. I think a lot of the old posters were bots, largely re-posting from Reddit, and not all of those have been rebuilt yet. I have mixed feelings about that.

3. The Connect app has gotten better and better. Love it.

4. For the past year or so, Lemmy has been of a size big enougj for patterns to ripple and promulgate through it bht small enough to notice them. For example, almost immediately after New Years several different communities on different instances started to see a drastix influx of webcomic posts. Usually 4-panel ones. Usually low-fidelity ones (XKCD-style, not Girl Genius for example). And usually oned with some sort of error or controversy. Rage bait to get the comments going, but nothing controversial enough to get banned or removed.

There would be new accounts made that just posted a handful of these comics quickly, and sometimes argue with people in the comments. Once people like me started pointing out the pattern they started deleting the posts and accounts after a couple days. I'm not sure when it stopped, but i have not noticed one for probably a month.

I just came here cause my preferred reddit mobile app wanted money to work with the api or whatever. I've enjoyed being at Lemmy ever since. Granted my feed does seem to have its off days with not much going on. But that's ok.

I haven't really looked at reddit to tell what it's current state is. Nor do I care that much because Lemmy "works for me".

Just use whatever you like.

Very recently I have noticed some extra misogyny that I hasn't noticed before I wonder if it is due to a new exodus

It's not just circlejerking about Linux communism anymore.

It hasn't changed too much. It was wild for a hot minute and then mellowed out. Some people feared it failed but it just stayed steady year after year.

It has changed a bunch, but I don't mind it. It has gotten larger, and with that comes a greater number of trolls and spammers. I don't see as much tankie discourse nowadays. There seems to be more political content, but that's likely a reflection of the world.

Communities have become more concentrated — after the Reddit APi debacle, it was common to find the same community across many instances, and these were often inactive or sparsely used. Now many of these have been consolidated into fewer, more active communities.

Some communities are niche enough that you can easily read over a week's worth of posts in one small burst, but remain active due to the dedication of moderators who do things like weekly threads.

There are frequently recurring big names who post frequently. These people aren't necessarily the same as at the beginning, because there are still a few individuals who make up a majority of posts. I worry for these people sometimes, because it must be a lot of pressure to know that if you stopped posting, the community may wither away. Some of these communities are just silly little meme comms, but I imagine people still feel a sense of ethical duty towards these things.

The rules pages for communities are much better now. It's easier to know where you stand in different communities, especially in areas where there may be overlap between the communities' scopes — there has been gradual iteration that has helped people to understand how things relate to each other

When I first got here, I was struck by how much it reminded me of my early time with Reddit. It was much easier to have productive conversations with people. I felt sad because it highlighted how bad Reddit had become. It has always been a bit of a toxic cesspit of a site, in some ways (when people ask me what pseudonymous social media site I used most as a teenager, I am often embarrassed to admit that it was Reddit), it had a lot of good going for it — people engaging in genuine conversation despite everything. I can get that a lot more reliably here.

Things have changed, but Lemmy is still capable of fulfilling my desire for genuine conversations with random internet people. I often write long comments, and I often feel that my time was well spent. Sometimes I non-judgmentally call out people for being unpleasant in their comments, and it leads to productive conversations. I honestly live for that shit, and Lemmy reliably helps me to scratch it. I am better able to navigate the site to find what I am craving.

I wish there were more posts and comments sometimes, but I recognise that this is a bit of a monkeys paw wish, in that a greater userbase will degrade the experience further. Nothing lasts forever though. When Lemmy dies, whenever that ends up being, I will have been glad for my time here

I left reddit the day the api shit went down and came here. Same Lemmy as its always been but noticeably more people now. My feed is more curated. It reminds me of my reddit experience in maybe 2011 or so. As with anything on the internet, the experience is only as good or as bad as you allow it to be. If you see a community or instance you dont like, just block them and move on. Do I like Lemmy as much as I did early reddit? Id say no, but not by much. Maybe its my rose colored nostalgia glasses for early Reddit that keeps me wishing for things to be the way they used to be but its totally possible that reddit was never as great as I thought it was. Idk. Im here now and I dig it. Its not the same but I like watching it grow and it keeps me entertained when I need it to. Overall, its better than the invasive nature of what reddit is now. Thats just my own opinion tho.

I'm new. On piefed not Lemmy. Feels like back when the internet was for nerds.

Not really. Same tiny echo chamber.

Amounts of political propaganda are wild in some comunities and instances. But, I guess that this thing will eventually occur in any social media.

One thing I've noticed recently was a massive uptick of adolescent sex jokes. It's really annoying.

It’s a lot busier and there are more communities, which I’m thankful for. When I first joined I was pretty much always a handful of posts away from being “caught up”.

A lot less beans nowadays

Less star trekking these days

This is how I know I'm old. I consider the "Reddit API debacle" recent history.

It was too much like reddit so you went back to reddit which is "the same" but without api access and third party apps?

I haven't read all the comments in here, and probably won't. But based on what I've seen so far, I'll be the contrarian.

I first started actively participating on Lemmy maybe a few months before the API debacle, but I'd also been checking the place out a bit for a few months before even signing up.

This place was A LOT kinder then. Users were more apt to stand up for each other and call out bad behavior. Someone called another person a "fucking idiot" over an inconsequential difference of opinion and multiple people would be on top of that.

The API debacle itself meant a lot more users arriving at a faster pace, and they were mostly a good mix of all the different Reddit archetypes -- the good and the bad. To me, it seems like it's the in between Lemmy picks up the, shall I say, less appealing Rexitors. The ones that were permabanned for no reason at all they simply said they LOVE KITTENS -- and then you see their toxicity here and that internal conflict strikes where you're like "permabans shouldn't be a thing, but in this case, I can kind of understand why it might've happened".

Anyway, all this to say, back in the before times, the Fediverse felt a bit more distinct, like it had truly had its own generally amicable vibe and culture. Now, it feels like this is probably "Reddit-vibes" but from six months ago.

Not that I'm hating on Lemmy, obviously I'm still here, and it's still currently the lesser of two evils.

Less beans

kbin imploded and piefed came on the scene.

A bunch more assholes who take any and every opportunity to be an asshole, and tripping mods who can't be bothered and apply blanket bans because you said a thing they didn't agree with. What's new.

Can we discuss the bots? Lemmy's communities are being over automated and I see bots reposting threads from Reddit and other junk usually from xitter

Lemmy used to be too "left wing" for me. I felt like my opinions were not a great match for the group here, so I tended to not comment much.

Then simultaneously Lemmy's opinions seemed to make more sense (eg, billionaires should not exist, which is proving true in the current political climate), and also, more "right wing" people have arrived. And they are aggressive and vocal (eg DEMOCRAT cities will be hell to live in and hurt you and arrest you if you fart in public or something).

So actually I think maybe just bots have started to arrive.

Same for the most part. There was a period of time where it seemed like every post and comment was angry. Silly fights over semantics. That still happens but it seems like less. I see more and more English speaking European influence. Still lots of angry Linux guys but Linux seems to be in a winning season so it’s chill.

I haven't really noticed any change whatsoever.

Feels about the same but bigger, niche communities have a bit more content. If you feel like the uniqueness disappeared in a few months, social aggregators are not for you.

However I felt it lost its uniqueness within a few months of mass migration and started turning a bit like reddit again

This has gotten worse but it's still smaller and not algorithming your experience so it's still not as bad.

Doesn't actually seem much different to me. Would be nice to have a few more people for the niche communities - but I do kinda worry that Lemmy becoming popular will lead to an influx of bots.

After switching from several instances that dissipated, it seems to have stabilized and i find it odd you keep it to lemmy. Many other instances exist, and many more might. HA.

Very little, if at all.

People seem to have a variety of experiences here because of the way federation works. I've seen people complain that there's no activity, or that they only see one type of conversation, but it's clearly because of how their instance is set up, since there is constantly new stuff to see on others' feeds. Reddit being in one place did make finding lots of niches easier once it matured, but it's having it in one place that caused the problem. Now that federated platforms have caught on somewhat, it will be interesting to see what it looks like in a few more years, if the content compares to Reddit at its height of effectiveness.

It's changed since the first migration. For the better overall, even with some of the drama and technical hiccups. In the end, most of the complaints I see, usually referred as "Lemmy" problems, are simply issues that have been around since people have been discussing things online, back with Usenet, AOL, Compuserve, and Q-Link. No technology is going to keep people from acting as they do, but the tech can protect the ability for others to defend themselves and still have a voice by decentralizing, as the internet was designed to do.

I will say in the early days the adult level stuff like nudity spam was pretty bad, but at least from my pov that hasn't been a problem in a while, so thank you, moderators and instance owners, for what you do.

I don't know when that time frame is, but, I have noticed an increase in poor modding in some places [which also lowered my interaction rate with the whole of Lemmy], and a drop in correspondence quality to nearer reddit level. But maybe that's just from me as I expand out to more places in Lemmy.

Personal opinion: Came over when the API changes went live, simply because being forced to their official "app", which was a pile of garbage in all aspects for me, was too much. And since that started the exodus, I couldn't be arsed to mess around with 3rd party apps to make them work again, because I was too lazy and it simply didn't feel like it's worth it anymore. Made a lemmy account, lurked mostly as I did on reddit, content for doom scrolling was lacking quantity mostly. For me there's now enough content for the daily scrolling session, where quality posts end about as I start to get bored or need to get my ass up, so it's a win win here.

It really just feels that more people are here. What I'm missing are a few more different users, because it kinda feels that most people here are very similar in their views, but that also would probably pave the way for more defederation drama.

Since I'm mostly lurking and liberally use the block instance/community feature to simply hide the content I'm not interested in, for me personally it only got better, so I jump in, get my daily fix of memes, news and other random interesting things, comment occasionally and get back to whatever. I'm honestly lacking an alternative, so it's as good as it gets for now, and I'm happy with that.

Lemmy/Piefed is starting to feel like reddit when it was most enjoyable. Actual communities gathering around common interests and real conversations around those topics. Moderation isn't too far into the curated accepted response only zone that reddit fell into even before the API debacle. Meaning if you have a disagreement or differing opinion with someone you have to hash it out instead of the insta banhammer many subreddits implemented.

Also I kinda like that there's a diverse age range of people here. Seems moreso than on reddit but that may be because there's less of us altogether. So age stuff sticks out more.

Considering how much of an angry echo chamber it is, it really feels like a lefty truth social. Or at least that's how I describe it to non-users.

Ich iel, we used to beanjean the gar

I created an account on .ml when it was the largest instance and basically no one except FOSS nerds knew about it so it had basically no activity. At some point, I vaguely remember certain leftist subreddits getting banned by Reddit admin which flooded Lemmygrad and Hexbear, then Reddit started doing stupid shit for everyone else who flooded .world and various other instances. So it changed a lot lol. (Personally I started browsing here often when the Reddit mass migrations started happening, first on my own instance, then .world, then .dbzer0, then here again.)

Kbin was once more promising than Lemmy, we didn't know how hard it was to keep a Kbin instance running, and the mighty PieFed wasn't here yet. We couldn't imagine that kbin.social, lemm.ee, and lemmy.fmhy.ml all wouldn't last. Instances also defederated each other far more commonly back then. Art communities were just getting started here, experimenting with what types of posts work best across platforms. Our disdain for corporate social media united us here, and that disdain has only grown stronger. Yet, ![email protected] was once more active than it is now

I miss baby elephant gifs

I miss Kbin

Way higher volume of politic related posts.
Also reduced post volume on other topics

Has not changed all that much. Really depends on the instance you join.

any post or comment I make immediately goes into negative karma, I suspect it's because bots will mass downvote competing content to allow their own other bots to farm karma

I hate Reddit with a passion

Five years here. Not sure if that qualifies as 'the very beginning', but it's a while. I never used Reddit as a conventional user, always disliked the voting system and always used throwaway accounts. My accounts always had positive comment karma, I wasn't a troll, but inevitably, my opinions collisioned with the mainstream's. Reddit is mostly American idiosyncracy. They like their mobs with forks. If someone posted a video of something looking a bit bad, they are fast in condemning it and feeling themselves better people instantly. Reddit was about roasting everybody else, point fingers and be judgmental, enter the mob.

If you kept your cool about something, as I used to, you could end up being accused of being a protector or defender or collaborator of Nazis, paedophiles, patriarchy, molesters, etc. The voting system would let it be clear you were not appreciated in the community. A lot of people, sometimes even me, deleted their messages, their opinions, just because they were harshly judged. I don't think auto-censorship is a good thing at all.

At some point, I would stop commenting. The mob ideology, the collective "we are better" attitude would be too much to bear, so I deleted the account, and after some detox time I'd go back with a new throwaway. After the API debacle, I just picked up my old Lemmy account. Same things happen here, but to a lesser extent. Also, I deactivate the voting visualization and try to be loyal with my point of view. If I comment, I try to do it only if I can keep a durable conversation. I don't need to like to strangers on the internet, their morals are not mine, I don't need the anxiety of good or bad karma.

Lemmy has changed a bit. When there were just a couple of instances, things were pretty much the same in each. Now, instances seem to have attached ideologies. That's why I also hide user name's instances, so I can treat everyone the same, no matter where they come. These instance wars are pretty lame and disheartening, but so much better than Reddit.

Honestly not all that much different.

We do get asked this question every week now, so there's that.

Seriously though, once you block all the tankies and dweebs there's about a dozen regular posters and a few hundred regular commenters.

I like it here.

I still browse reddit using redlib. Theres more content.

A lot.

What is reddit? It's just a fast paced forum with lots of people.

Lemmy is in essence the exact same thing. It just operates far more decentralised than reddit.

The difference over the last months/years is that lemmy as a whole is growing. More people, more engagement. That's it.

I don't know what you mean by "lost it's uniqueness" the only unique part of lemmy is it's decentralised system. And that's still the same.

Less fun stuff more divisive stuff. Way more boring stuff. But I probably attribute these things more to tiktok influencing whats cool to post.

I haven't really noticed too much difference in terms of comments other than more bots. But that's because of AI.

Actually the API change was because AI it wasn't some evil move on Reddit's part. It should be well understood what bots are doing to the internet right now it was a "we can't have nice things" situation... You can still use the API you just can't hit it hard without paying or what ever.

Lemmy has become more friendly to otherkin and neopronouns. And now you can use PieFed, which is even more left wing.

On the negative side, dbzer0 has shifted more right wing over time, mostly due to influence from the tankie triad.