Lemmy isn't much better than reddit
Title. Alt account cause obviously.
Been on lemmy for like 2 years, at first it was okay, possibly because I started on lemm.ee (RIP), possibly the influx of new users from reddit has changed things, who knows.
But now I keep seeing all the same things happen here that happened on reddit. People abusing rules that go unenforced, mods removing posts/banning users only when they take offense, users (and even mods) fighting each other over instances like rival gangs, communities propped up by single users, all of it.
The only actual differences I've found are that there's no ads, and some instances have a more gated sign-up process to deter bots/spammers. That's it.
There are some good faith users of course, but it seems the vast majority just want to be in a safe space echo chamber and talk shit about each other. It's like that meme from the office: corporate needs you to differentiate these images, and one is reddit and the other is reddit wearing a lemmy mask, they're the same image.
Upvote, as this is indeed an unpopular opinion
second post on this subject in a couple of weeks
this place was pretty fucked from the start as it was populated by people banned from reddit and fundamentalists that disagreed with reddit's fantasy zionist capitalism (and a bunch of cool linux users)
honestly i think it's turned out pretty well considering
the left wing tankies are mostly isolated on thier own instances, unlike on reddit where conservatives have majority propaganda presence throughout most subs, via bots/spams from russia and users themselves, followed by gatekeeper of certain subs.
Yeah I feel you, but also, that's just people. Specifically, people on the internet. There is no perfect place where none of that happens, it'll happen everywhere. No matter how you start or how small you are, if you grow eventually you will get assholes, and people disobeying the rules, and trolls, and every shitty thing.
I see it too here, and it's bittersweet. We've grown which is good, but also with growing means more assholes. Even if assholes are ~2% of the users, when the userbase doubles it means we have double the assholes too.
it's what you make of it where. I think we've done as good as a job as we can here, always room for improvement, but personally compared to the random reddit thread I stumble into when researching stuff, I still feel better here.
Thank you! The in-fighting is such a turn off! Why are people so hostile? Like I don’t think I’m the only one who comes on here and does NOT want to read crap about so and so should be murdered, wtf?? This is not how normal people behave or talk! Get a grip, seriously!
This. So much this. I don't know why it's so tolerated so widely here, and I hate that it's becoming normalized. You nailed it: normal people do not behave or talk like that.
Every now and then there's an Ask Lemmy thread along the lines of "what would you do if you could do anything" and the number of people sharing their violent murderous fantasies there and getting upvoted for it is genuinely staggering. Like you said: normal people don't behave like that. If someone finds themselves having daydreams about murdering "the elites" or whatever, it's time to get off social media and go take a walk outside.
Preferably to a psychiatrist who enjoys a challenge.
Oh, c'mon now... we're naked apes, we are. We're naturally gonna react in all KINDS of different ways, completely outside of "Starfleet."
Suggestion to get over yourself upon that nonsensical, @[email protected].
People on Reddit migrated to Lemmy. They are literally the same people. It is made worse by the fact that malicious individuals can now host instances instead of just Reddit (who tried to keep the bare minimum of public image).
Exactly.
People got banned from Reddit a long time ago for the mildest criticism of the US regime and especially shitrael.
Those who were still on it have either kept quiet or condoned it.
Only after the Blue MAGAts got problems themselves Reddit suddenly became bad.
I remember the 'Reddit refugees welcome' phase here.
All we got was more shitlibs.
Hey that was the promise. Like reddit but no big money
Centralized profit seeking service: We platform the trolls because "user number go up!"
Decentralized community-run services: We throw out the bad actors since users cost money to host.
I like one of them better than the other.
People are people, manage your expectations accordingly.
These kinds of federated services were never meant to be better than reddit in a content sense, all they do is provide a system in which the possibility of a subjectively better platform was possible.
More simply, federated services are about federation/decentralisation.
The idiomatic solution to the problem you're describing is either to:
start your own federated instance, with the prerequisite amount of hookers and blackjack, but also sufficient rules and moderational enforcement to adhere to your expectations of what a better reddit looks like.
or
find an instance that already does this and join it.
This is a thing that is possible in a federated service, which is the actual difference between reddit and lemmy/piefed etc
My issue is also the echo chamber. You can't hold an alternative opinion to the hive
This. There have been some times where I wanted to say something, but was afraid or going against the hive mind. I get that it's easy (just type and post), but I didn't want to be hounded over it.
the tankie instances and communites are pretty much pure echo chambers.
In other news, people exist and some of them are dicks. Some of them just disagree with you. Some are/do both.
Also, maybe consider the possibility that there is no such thing as a 'hive mind' anywhere and its just a lot of people in a particular space don't agree with you about some things.
Can be argued but I would say the lack of corporate oversight and moderation makes it better by default.
Can say that at least some of that is due to a lot of communities getting created during the initial 2023 Rexodous, abandoned shortly after, and picked up later by new mods. They often don't change the community sidebar info. Suggestion there is to reach out to the mods (polite DM or even a meta post in the community) asking that the specific rule be enforced or removed.
To a lesser but still important degree, there's nuances to the interpretation of every rule. As an example, I've removed many posts in this community that have the exact same title as this post. The difference is those were not-at-all thinly veiled rants about getting modded or banned from another community/instance (rule 5) where this one is describing specific aspects of the platform.
Mods are people, people are fallible. Beats an overaggressive modbot, though. Also keep in mind mods put up with a lot of shit you don't see (abusive DMs, persistent trolls, absurd conspiracy theories and rumor mongering over in YPTB, rules lawyers who come within one Planck unit of the spirit of every rule just because they can, etc). We also don't get paid, and it's a neverending job where you're severely outnumbered and outgunned. Often, if you sincerely apologize and express regret they'll reconsider. You'd be surprised how far a genuine apology will get you. And I don't mean some phony-baloney "sorry I said the quiet part out loud" apology but actually realizing you fucked up and owning it.
I'm going to assume this is related to the recent LW defed announcement, and I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole other than say "about time".
That's something you can help with. Unless it's a mods only community, which I don't think is what you're referring to, then you can absolutely tag in and contribute. I'm guilty of lurking, especially lately as I've been super busy with work, but used to try to post content to random communities to help grow them.
Honestly, just try to notice which users those are and block them. Seriously, don't be afraid. Blocks are free and cut out so much of the immature bullshit around here. The comment sections on news/politics articles here (from my perspective) has gone from a raging dumpster fire of echo chamber circle jerking to a ghost town because I've just blocked so many people who do nothing but comment low effort knee-jerk reactionary garbage. The plus side is the actual insightful comments really stand out that way.
The point is, to a large degree, the experience here is what you make of it. Don't be afraid to curate your experience, and don't give into FOMO just because you've blocked a lot of communities, users, and instances
What are you talking about echo chamber, you mean to tell me everyone else isn't a communist cat girl?
Who use Linux and wear thigh highs all day.
Got a problem society? Solar panels!
School shootings? Make the kids carry solar panels to deflect bullets and make free energy!
Seems to be an increasingly popular opinion, but hey ho. For me Lemmy is better by an order of magnitude - at least for now.
I've yet to have to deal with any overzealous mods, or been site-banned for some minor rule infraction by some bot. Nobody's been particularly shitty to me. Plus my comments, although never accruing stellar amounts of up-votes, are usually acknowledged and added to rather than being ignored because I posted an hour later and people can't be arsed to scroll that far down the thread.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it. Sure, there's certain vocal, marginalized groups who are always massively over-represented on platforms like this, but I filter out certain keywords using the Boost app and, basically, it's all good.
Was on Reddit since it started, left about 4 years ago during the reddexoxodus— it’s nowhere close. not even in the same galaxy. Sure, there are some pretty nasty corners of Lemmy, but on the whole, it’s much more like Reddit was around 2007 to 2010. It’s still pretty virgin territory. Although it is “maturing” much faster than Reddit did, but that’s to be expected.
And Reddit has become much more foul in the last few years.
reddit started the purges last year, many couldnt even return to the site without using different Ip and devices, and you have to be vigilant because reddit will eventually detect them. its not something a normal user would do. the purges were so much different previous ones, because they were using AI to just indiscrminately ban people with little recourse. and i heard people appeal for months or a year without any kind of word from reddit. when before the purges they at least will get around to responding eventually. more than likely they dont respond because they ban too many and unlikely want to handle that many appeal requests.
Hard downvote (I agree).
That's why I came here plus stopping generating profit for an American corporation
IMO, that alone already makes it much better than reddit. As for the users, sure. At the end of the day, it’s all still humans, just a different demographic and bubble. So all the same human behavior on reddit manifests here too.
People are starting to get snarly and insulting on here as well. Not surprising though, it's an manufactured unfair world and people are angry about it. I'm guilty of it myself from time to time...but I try to do better.
Its just a less active version of reddit.
Upvote for unpopular opinion.
I joined years ago and as more people with more variety in perspectives from all around the world are joining in, things are better and better.
I started on reddit when it opened, and quit after they started selling out more and more. I think lemmy feels a bit what reddit was starting off, and thats a good thing.
As we get more and more people who were banned from Reddit and think they can come here to contonue being assholes, yeah. I'm here because I hate the Reddit UI and official app, so when they killed off 3rd party apps I refused to play along. The people who jumped ship by choice are usually fine, but yeah overall you're not wrong.
The lack of content a couple of years ago and behaviour of a lot of the userbase now has consistently helped cut down on the doomscrolling though, can't complain there.
Thing with ads < thing without ads.
Ads on reddit have always been completely optional though. Just like with the rest of the internet.
theres also ublock origin, i never see a ad since.
Yeah true, unless the quality suffers on account
uh, wasn't the entire premise of this thread "lemmy isn't much better than reddit" - therefore quality being relatively same, but no ads?
or are you just quibbling for some reason to shit on this?
here's a self evident bit that apparently escaped your notice:
SPEZ GETS ZERO DOLLARS FROM ANY OF THIS.
That should be enough to justify the platform.
reddit knowingly allows thier data to be crawled in exchange for services from google and openai.
Not sure whether to upvote or downvote, so I'll just reply.
The content is not much better for all the reasons OP mentioned. I'd like to add one more thing, that has been mentioned earlier in similar discussions: niche communities do not exist yet or at best hardly have any activity. For those I still occasionally use Reddit.
One thing that is actually better, apart from the ads that OP mentioned, is no corporate filters (which may or definitely do reflect the current political climate, dependent on the social medium in question).
It's honestly way worse in a lot of ways. The amount of overconfident edgy teenage hot takes on every fucking issue is exhausting. And the lead dev is legitimately one of the most cringe people on the Internet.
These issues are somewhat unavoidable to some extent when it comes to community-moderated forums, be it Reddit or Lemmy.
And what's wrong with communities propped up by single users? (I may be biased as one such user.)
I totally agree. except now instead of communities beefing with each other it's entire instances defederated over owner disagreements.
I have more control here. that is all I really care about.
It's Reddit Lite
The moderation certainly isn't better. Looking at you .world mods.
Do you think Lemmy Blueit? 🤭
i feel like a lot of you people are absolutely terrible at moderating your own content, you know you can block people and communities, right?
I think the biggest difference is how much of an echo chamber Lemmy is compared to Reddit. I'm saying this knowing Reddit is an echo chamber as well but Lemmy goes above and beyond.
I dunno. I didn't have arguments with Marxist-Leninists on Reddit.
Lemmy can be considered as a playground of anarchy. Unfortunately, anarchy shows clearly what kind of chaos humanity is.
Without order nothing exists; without chaos nothing evolves.
Most/all social media platforms generally allow/encourage users to create bubbles and echo chambers. Heck, a bunch of people fled to lemmy from Reddit, because Reddit had started to become more right-wing entrenched with its censorship of socialist / progressive viewpoints and removal of anti-republican content. Ie. they came, in part, to re-establish their ability to have a left-leaning echo chamber/bubble. And in many ways, that's what most of the lemmy content I've seen for the past year has tended to be. Things like Lemmy's options for banning instances, or de-federating 'bad instances', is arguably a 'selling feature' that's basically saying 'you can bubble up!'. Likewise the ability to ban people from communities is touted as allowing vulnerable groups to establish safe spaces, though it also leads to echo chambers -- like it's common to see these stupid memes in threads that basically ask a 'question' that reinforces a community's position, and anyone that challenges/engages with it, is basically violating that communities rules and gets banned. Like posting something about trans-rights in a trans-friendly space, asking why cis people do X -- but if anyone responds in any way negatively about the trans community, even if it's a viewpoint held by a large number of people outside that community, they risk banning, so there's no real authentic dialogue occurring. It's that weird question mark of how to create a safe space for marginalized groups/opinions (be they leftwing or rightwing or whatever), while not bubbling up.
I definitely agree on the communities propped up by single users note -- but I think it's not as benign as you put it. There are people who practically astro-turf communities with biased / ideologically rooted articles. They essentially steer communities to align with their own personal political views by spamming it with their bubble-content. Some of these folks post like 70 articles a day, which, if they're actually reading articles and posting conscientiously, they'd basically have to be doing this sort of thing as a job. It genuinely makes me wonder if that's exactly what it is -- a social media job aimed at influencing public opinion.
Having said that, I think lemmy is not at the size or sophistication to be used as a playground for most corporations at this point. While I see users doing stuff like astro-turfing, it's not easy to see specifically how any one company may be benefiting from what these people are doing -- it feels a lot more politically driven in general, like a single user posting tons and tons of articles about minority rights issues. It could be a campaign to raise awareness, it could be a campaign to force a wedge into a nation (drumming up animosity by highlighting negative stories -- you'd only need a couple 'agents' doing this as a govt to steer things on a lemmy-sized community), etc.... but it's far less in your face than them overtly banning any negative post about product/sponsor X, like you see on reddit. Over there, the manipulation is very overt.
Lemmy, for its part doesn't have karma.
Piefed has a soft form of reputation that only notes people with very bad reputation.
What else are you referring to that the Threadiverse has copied that is corrosive?
also minus the right wing astroturfing and the invasive propaganda that reddit allows. this is the most annoying part about reddit, trying to confront those 2 issues by reporting or arguing often gets you ban sitewide. i generally ignore/avoid tankie, and gatekeeping communities, no problems since. plus blocking here is more effective than on reddit, because of the smaller userbase, on reddit its impossible since it would be immediately be replaced by another bot.
plus reddit has very oppressive AI moderation, and has given MODS tools to utilize more filtering and detection. several instances of how ridiculous some subs are is like r/gym doesnt allow you to mention peds in any form(trying to make sound like htey lost weight or got thier body naturally, one post about a obese dude suddenly got ripped and jacked in under a year thanks to roids and tried to play off as getting that body naturally), or responding to a post that is suppose to be a joke, if they dont like you answer on how you respond to the joke you can get banned.
you could be interacting with the tankie posts too much, just block them.
Not at all obvious to me as to what there is to lose by posting this from your main account.
Accountability.
it does make me wonder if they're a chud and butthurt that people don't like them here, either.... but I try to assume positive intent.
Pseudonymous Internet is acting like pseudonymous Internet.
Shocker
Federation and transparency is the differentiation, not how people act on the Internet.
If you think you can do better, you fucking can show everyone how it's done, instead of whining and complaining.
It's not for everybody and doesn't have to be. Especially not for corpo astroturfs.
These safe spaces are a ton more useful than right-wing global surveillance safe spaces you're used to.
k thx, bye!
Well, why would it be?
Idk I got multiple 3 day bans on Reddit for simply upvoting content. That won’t happen here, that’s a big plus to me.
Also Lemmy is SMALL! If you want to make a
subcommunity different then it is it’s not that hard I’ve been lighting up comicstrips with non-topical content and it’s already started moving the other posters that way. The culture here isn’t set it’s not the freight train reddit culture is.As far as the other complaints I think that’s still an issue of Lemmy being small
You can absolutely get bans for upvoting stuff here.
This is constantly happening here.
lemmy.ml for sure. I haven't experienced it elsewhere... where are you seeing it?
Just follow [email protected], there is a story about it every other week. Also accused mods will often ban people there just for participating in the the comments, so be careful.
am subbed now
most definitely not, if you go the tankie instances you will get banned for not agreeing with the narrative. everywhere else is pleasant.
As a toxic Reddit use I found the transition to becoming a toxic Lemmy user quite easy
"Lemmy isn't much better than Reddit"
"Both sides are the same"
"Harris would have been just as bad as Trump"
"Liberals are just as bad as Conservatives"
"The other side wants to hunt you for sport, but this side wants to give you healthcare; it's all the same!"
This probably isn't directed at you specifically, but the false equivalencies these days are simply unhinged...
I certainly feel this.
yeah there's a lot of false equivalency imho.
here's a reason: SPEZ GETS ZERO FUCKIN DOLLARS FROM LEMMY.
Should be enough for any reasonable human being. Fuck spez
Lemmy is way better then Reddit.
The Reddit mods are crazy oppressive
Like mod power trips havent happened here...
There's an entire community on our db0 related to mod/admin power tripping on lemmy. We are not way better. Just more community oriented, "no big money" involved place. Everything else comes with how humans act around other humans.
In my personal experience I haven’t had one comment to get removed on lemmy (this is my fourth account I joined a couple years ago)
But on reddit it happens all the time
I've seen oppressive modding here as well, and maybe it's because lemmy is smaller so it's easier to see, or maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I've seen more bad faith modding here than on reddit, which to be fair I don't go to anymore.