The “Not enough mod tools” complaint is valid and I hope that improves as the platform moves forward.
I DO NOT get the disdain for the Lemmy userbase. I’ve been here for the past 4-5 months and can say I’ve had so many more meaningful and fulfilling conversations here on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit in the 10 years I was there.
I think it’s the same situation as between a small town and a big city. Reddit is huge and with a large number of people; you’re going to statistically get a larger number of assholes. Not to mention there are tens of thousands of people commenting on anything that hits r/all, so there’s no chance someone else is going to read your 1 comment that is drowning in a sea of other comments.
Lemmy feels more like a small town. Things move a little slower here, but there’s less competition to have your voice heard, and I end up seeing some of the same users time and time again across the Fediverse. I think that smaller feel means more people have a chance to see your content without it getting drowned out by the masses, which means more opportunity to make connections.
Some people suck, but Lemmy has been fucking awesome for me so far and I love this place because of that.
Idk. It seems like that was a bot trying to dissuade people from leaving Reddit. One of the reasons we left Reddit was bc of the bots.
I had that kind of “astroturf-y” feel from the Reddit comment as well, but their opinion about mod tools is not entirely wrong.
The fear-mongering about CSAM being all over the place hasn’t been my experience, though. I’ve never come across CSAM here on Lemmy (sorry to those who have), but I don’t tend to keep NSFW posts on because I cruise Lemmy at work.
I DO NOT get the disdain for the Lemmy userbase. I’ve been here for the past 4-5 months and can say I’ve had so many more meaningful and fulfilling conversations here on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit in the 10 years I was there.
Personally I have to disagree when anyone says how much nicer, better, greater the community here is. From my experience its pretty much the same as on Reddit by now. You got nice people and you got people who just like to argue for no good reason. But I think thats just how it is online these days and I don't see it as a bad thing. Just disagree that community-wise this is so much better than Reddit. But I guess thats an unpopular opinion.
I’m glad you shared your experience, honestly.
I’m happy with what I’ve seen here, but I’ll also say that I didn’t hang out in too many smaller subreddits. Even when I did, I saw some vitrol come out on the regular. Maybe the vibe on smaller subreddits is better than Lemmy?
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
Yeah this is basically like reddit prior to the DIGG migration. People are much nicer here.
As a 10+ year reddit user who has switched 98% to Lemmy, only checking reddit on my computer every couple days: Lemmy is completely fine, and I have seamlessly transitioned from Reddit.
Its userbase is more technical than Reddit's, and there's not as much content. But it is a perfectly good Reddit alternative. I find it isn't as addictive as reddit, which is awesome. I just wish there were more educational communities akin to AskHistorians, AskScience, etc.
Lotta people coming here from Reddit expecting 1:1 replacement, and then get pissy that the 2 man dev team that's just trying to keep up with this sudden burst in activity isn't at parity with the multi-million dollar company that's been developing their site for almost 2 decades.
Honestly, I'm just tired of the constant comparison. Lemmy can be it's own thing. It's a work in progress and it has a lot of promise, but for anyone looking for their reddit experience, there's really only one place to get that.
The only times I've seen toxicity like this is ironically whenever there is a big wave of reddit user influx, things usually settle down for a while as they adapt to the cultures here (or get banned), it's not as much of an Eternal September as much as it is a Irregularly Scheduled September.
Most of the active comms here are smaller but better quality than their subreddit equivalent. You even get good discussions here on memes sometimes. (Politics and News here still could be better, though.)
For someone who's been very unhappy with the state of social media for quite a while, Lemmy is a breath of fresh air, even though there are definitely growing pains.
"I don't like Reddit.
Its interface is ugly as sin. There are fewer users there and they're all pretentious, extremely liberal, and anti American."
-Some Digg user circa 2008/2009 (probably)
Pretentious and extremely liberal still fit perfectly for reddit today. They definitely aren't anti-american though. They have an unquestioning bloodlust for every US state department adversary
replace American with Russian/Chinese and you have modern day Reddit accurately described to a T
I'd rather deal with this supposedly "toxic" lemmy userbase than sift through a thousand comment post where 900 are bot reposts on reddit
Seems like this person's main problem is that they went to lemmy.world, which does basically seem like a collection of all the worst redditors.
I'd say a lot of users, perhaps even most, on lemmy.world are just fine, but I've seen some wildly bad behavior from their mods (e.g., one of their politics mod making a mod-flaired comment about how "The United States is not a racist nation," like what)
TBH for a liberal Western-facing website there is no better alternative.
(e.g., one of their politics mod making a mod-flaired comment about how "The United States is not a racist nation,"
Lmao what? The heart of the global empire is somehow not racist now, despite all the evidence to the contrary? After all the police killings of unarmed black men, how can anyone believe that?
Probably the same type of person who'd complain about reddit being too "left leaning." We're not talking about people with a reasonable or healthy array of takes.
one of their politics mod making a mod-flaired comment about how "The United States is not a racist nation,"
ngl incredibly glad we're not federated with those guys
I'm not too impressed with the fediverse in general, either from a privacy perspective or from a discussion perspective. The only half decent instance I've seen is beehaw.
Gonna start spending more time and energy on raddle instead of wasting it on the fools here where you get mod action taken for not being nice to a bigot ... oh wait, I guess it's totally fine to be homophobic now.
Fuck Lemmy
Lol, the user doesn't seem to realize that if everywhere you go and comment, if absolutely everyone is an asshole, then maybe it's you that's the problem...
There's also a chance everyone else is actually an asshole, but here that almost definitely isn't it.
Redditors complaining about CSAM? Last I checked Reddit had a subreddit called r/18_19 (a porn subreddit for adult teenagers aged under 20) with over 1.5 million subscribers. I sorry, but there is no way that all the posters there are over 18, given Reddit's lax verification practices on NSFW instances. That's some "trust me bro" nonsense. Reddit had r/jailbait and violentacerz not even a decade ago. Spez was there back then too.
I have never seen any CSAM on Lemmy. If it's an issue, it should be dealt with the utmost urgency and concern though.
Some people really hate lemmy. There was another post in that subreddit with a screenshot of some csam instance with the title what is wrong with Lemmy. This is enough for people who is looking for a reason to not leave Reddit. Another talking point of these people are the political leaning of Lemmy devs. E.g. See this thread https://mstdn.social/@PVTejas/111022248039156302
I really don't get why people care so much about the political opinions of the devs, you're just using the software they're making and not hanging out with them or something
i mean, when the revolution comes *checks calender* sometime in Q3 next year, i expect post screenshots across the lemmyverse to appear in multiple kangaroo trials and summary executions. But of course the same is true of Reddit, so who cares.
downside of lemmyverse: you will get death threats for being a lolicon
upside of lemmyverse: you can send death threats to lolicons
If a site couldn't handle CSAM promptly and effectively then it's not ready, period. No one should have to shut down an entire community because of it.
They do realize that Reddit had subreddits like r/jailbait and 4chan used to be filled with CSAM until they cracked down?
They also do not mention specifics on who the 'purity testers' or 'pedants' are. Reddit also has a good record of being a place for pedantic nerds :nerd:
Guy is hundred percent right. Lemmy is a echo chamber for a certain demographic as vast majority of users are in it.
We either have tech, or politics. Literally every topic ends up in either. We also don't have the differing opinions aspect as just about every debater talks like they're just the different shade of the same color.
Even spicy news that would make any other site a warzone of opinions just echo chambered here. Literally everyone agrees on one conclusion and random two comments that disagree with that having at least -15 points.
This is what 35 years of right-wing talk radio turning any cultural event into a political crusade has gotten us. The right wing echo chamber has brain-poisoned so many Americans, that they no longer have any non-political schemata for interpersonal interaction on any topic.
Want to talk about how to keep the Internet fast and secure? That's political now.
Want to talk about the science behind the causes of climate change? That's political now.
Want to talk about making anyone's life better in any material way, other than a blood-sucking c-suite executive? That's political now.
Want to talk about medicine? Oh you betcha that's political now.
Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, and Fox News have caused this. And I have no problem calling them out for it. Think saying-so is "political?" Screw off. I don't care if your politics get in the way of everything that's interesting to discuss. Deal with it, or move to Saudi Arabia where conservatives would be happiest.
The idea that something that affects society can be nonpolitical is just your bias towards the status quo.
Everything was always political, and the status quo has always depended on hordes of lumpen trained to identify with their own oppressors over their own interests.
Before there were networks of right-wing radio and websites distributing right-wing talking points, they just used TV, newspapers, mailing lists, posters, etc. The effect was still 100 million Americans cheering when the national guard shot students protesting against the state sending their friends to die while participating in atrocities in Vietnam.
Even gardening is political; the notion that you should only plant grass and ornamental plants, mow your lawn once a week, and any deviation was a flaw was popularized and enforced by William Levitt to keep people from having too much time to read and become communists.
Similar sentiments spring up after the civil war regarding edible gardening and use of fruiting trees in urban planning, for fear that black people will live off foraging instead of working.
People that act like the media landscape was better or people more informed overall when everyone got their news from the same big 3-4 networks and 2-3 newspapers BLOW MY FUCKING MIND. Like, please read Manufacturing Consent once.
This take that things only got "political" when conservative talk radio got popular...I honestly can't.
Everything has always been political. People would just deny it to prevent any change
Right, and to some people of a certain temperament, being aware of, and concerned about a vast range of entirely different issues, all of which can be engaged with on a number of levels that build on your knowledge and understanding, all of that is just an "echo chamber".
The echo chamber argument doesn't account for the fact that people can have shared fundamental values and nevertheless have constructive valuable informative conversations that engage in nuanced analysis. Being concerned about climate change, for instance, you can have all kinds of productive conversations about new research showing how hot September was, or how to make cities more walkable, or any number of things, and those are valuable conversations where describing them as echo chambers is silly. They're actually good conversations where we gain something from having them. If your primary test of a community is whether it does or doesn't have echo chambers, it doesn't have meaningful things to say about cases like this.
Yeah reddit is already a tiny bit of an echo chamber (tech savvy, frequently online folks). Lemmy is worse (every other post is "big tech bad, Linux good, privacy ftw). Not that these are necessarily bad things, they're just not representative of the general population.
I would love to get the opinions of people who fall for Nigerian Prince scams, or people who actually click the ads that say "There are hot singles in your area" just to diversify my niche online social group.
they're just not representative of the general population.
Good. If I wanted the general population, I'd scroll Facebook
We either have tech, or politics.
You forgot about Star Trek memes. Although often those are about tech and politics.
I agree. But candidly I feel like there are bots that contribute to the voting.
I know it sounds like I'm taking the piss, but I don't think I've encountered a kinder, more accepting community than Hexbear, due to admins here actually enforcing civility rules. And I'm sure there's an equally chill instance for people who aren't interested in tearing the arms off their boss and drinking blood directly from the limbless wounds.
Hexbear is literally the only place on the entirety of the internet where I can be vulnerable in my posts without worry it's going to be used in harassment against me by some reactionary freak.
r/chapotraphouse was one of the most accepting and inclusive subreddits of all time on reddit when it came to not punching down, and Hexbear is orders of magnitude better than even that.
If one can get past the 20 most invasive, tactless, eternally-online members of Hexbear and Lemmygrad, they're generally great places. Unfortunately, those people are the main ones getting attention and alienating people on other instances.
It's disheartening whenever I see a legitimate chance to teach someone something and a Hex account just makes an absolute malicious shitpost that isn't even worth calling a dunk. That, and a couple of highly-active users in particular who will consistently take the worst possible interpretation of a post and insist anyone who disagrees is a bad actor. Sankara would roll in his grave if he could see those post histories.
ngl, i love those folks. i agree we could chill out in some situations.
- joins Lemmy.world, notoriously mismanaged instance
- stereotypes the rest based on one experience
TL;DR: no. Definitively no.
NTL;R: Okay... let me chew on this.
Lemmy as a whole is definitively more toxic than Reddit
For me, at least, non-contributive ("toxic") [see footnote*] behaviour would be: assumptions (including witch hunting), decontextualisation, "didn't read but still replying lol lmao", insults, "I dun unrurrstand", whining + entitlement, and "chrust me" = "I take you for gullible". And those things happen far, far less in Lemmy than in Reddit.
For the poster complaining about Lemmy, "toxic" would be, instead:
- pedants - pedants are fine as long as context-aware. And even then, I don't recall a single pedant screeching at my L3 broken English here, unlike in Reddit.
- purity testers - this can be interpreted 1000 ways.
- concern trolls - yet another thing far more present in Reddit than here...
- contrarians - "oh no what I say should be put in a holy altar, how do you dare to disagree with MEEEEEE?". Sorry but contrarians are leagues above the sort of circlejerking that you see in Reddit, where you'd get 1000 weaboos screeching because you wrote "animes".
- "ackshyually" - refer to what I mentioned already about context. Those "ackshyually" are caused by decontextualisation, that happens far more often in Reddit.
I know that what I'm going to say is anecdotal, but it's still worth sharing: I see the difference specially because I used to moderate a small Reddit sub, and I mod a Lemmy comm nowadays. People here are more reasonable and contributive; I barely need to intervene here, and even then 99% of the time it's like "don't do that" "okay". In Reddit though? Well.
I was on Lemmy.word for slightly over a month and posted many times across numerous communities and instances, so I definitively gave it my best shot.
Depending on which instances yours federates with, you'll get a different experience. lemmy.world and lemm.ee in special tend to gather Reddit-like critters alongside a few good posters, so instances where behaviour is a bit more monitored (such as beehaw) tend to defederate them.
Also Lemmy has backend issues
I'm no coder to claim that the issues are "backend" or "frontend". Instead I'll say the issues that I see:
- papercuts, like the bell icon staying even after you checked all messages
- a lack of mod tools
- rarely lemmy.ml (the instance that I'm in) slows down.
- In the past it used to show errors and refuse to load, but I don't recall this happening nowadays.
And it never showed a downtime banana. - can't cross-instance linking posts in a convenient way
So... come on, the platform works. It has its issues, it's likely worse from lemmy.world due to the amount of posters, but it works.
Bad actors
Name them. Otherwise it boils down to "chrust me". Unless referring to the CSAM event below.
lemmy.world comm being bombarded with CSAM [...] Imagine if a subreddit had to be shut down because of this.
I seriously believe that the approach taken by the lemmy.world admins to close down !lemmyshitpost was more sensible than the actions that I'd expect any Reddit instance (oh wait, there's only Spez's) to take. If the same happened in 2023 Reddit, here's what would likelyhappen:
- subreddit mods ask for help to the admins, "we're being bombarded with CSAM". They hear admin crickets in return.
- mods lock subreddit to avoid the bombardment. u/ModCodeOfConduct forces them to reopen.
- mods eventually give up and leave. The sub becomes unmoderated and attracts paedophiles until you got a full paedo ring..
- the paedo ring grows large enough to get a mod outrage of 9001 subs.
- Spez deletes the sub while making a public announcement, like "WE SNOOS STAND AGAINST PAEDOPHILIA!" (cough former Reddit admin Aimée Challenor cough cough)
- the original userbase of the subreddit has no equivalent community to go to, because unlike in Lemmy you're expected to have a single sub per subject.
and sees an influx of kinder people
Dude. You're in Reddit. That's the pot calling the kettle black. Reddit makes even Faecesbook's community look wholesome in comparison, it's on par with modern Twitter. Lemmy is considerably nicer than Reddit.
And if you still want something nicer there's always Beehaw. I'm being serious - for people who want/need an environment with more monitored behaviour, it's a go-to place. Provided of course that you don't want to eat the cake and have it too, by behaving in a way that you don't want others to, otherwise they'll show you the door.
Footnote
It's a bit of off-topic, but this post is a great example on why I don't like the word "toxic". It refers to everything and nothing at the same time; it boils down to "I don't like this", but dresses it as if it was an intrinsic feature of the object (in this case, Lemmy or Reddit). Note how the list of things that I'd consider "toxic" are completely unlike the person complaining about Lemmy, and if you gather a third person odds are that you'll get a full list of other things to be considered "toxic".
I think what they meant by contrarians is people who disagree for the sake of disagreeing without any actual argument , usually in order to stir up drama or engage in a circlejerk
