I am a reddit refugee. Keep seeing that this is supposed to be somehow better than Reddit. As far as I can tell, it follows a similar format, less restrictive on posts being removed I suppose. But It looks like people still get down vote brigaded on some communities. So I’m curious, how it’s better?
It’s not owned by a greedy soulless corporation with a pigboy in control. There’s more assholes on here (the AKSHUALLY is quite strong) but there’s less hivemind.
the AKSHUALLY is quite strong
lol, yeah true, same as the linux community here is pretty much Arch BTW, but it’s good-natured
I think the arch thing is just a meme. I asked a genuine question about which distro to use and got a range of suggestions but none of them were arch.
about which distro to use and got a range of suggestions but none of them were arch.
I think Debian is usually the strongest contender here.
I almost never hear anyone suggest Debian!
My baseless opinion is that having a variety of instances with varying ethoses means that there’s a good home instance for everyone (not just the verysmart, young, white, male, liberal a la Reddit), and federation means that that variety of people are intersecting and interacting a lot more than if instances were completely separate. At the same time, it still feels like a small community, or maybe a bunch of small communities. There seems to be a lot less of the snarky clapbacks and unpopular opinions getting nuked that’s typical of other social media.
(not just the verysmart, young, white, male, liberal a la Reddit)
Nope, we’ve also got the verysmart middle-aged white male liberals here, and some Communists too!
There seems to be a lot less of the snarky clapbacks
And almost no low-effort, “cult of personality” mememetic responses. I was going to list some but it’s been a year since I’ve been on that wretched site and I’ve purged my mind of them. But you know, the ones where you can basically predict the top comment before opening the page, probably propagated by the prevalence of bots on the site.
AKSHUALLY, only a few of us assholes fit this description, and as a whole we are in the vast minority.
Also you can block awful people.
Also awful people tend to use same awful instances, so you can block a lot of awful people in just a couple of clicks!
but there’s less hivemind.
The hive mind here is far stronger.
- anti-anything microsoft
- anti-anything google
- unwarranted “just install Linux” everywhere
Agreed. Lots of reasonable opinions (not just my own) get downvoted here.
I’ve never been a fan of using downvotes as a disagree button and the issue seems even worse here than Reddit.
The more I see how people use downvotes, the less I like them as a feature in general. I don’t downvote things anymore.
- Everyone can upvote, which already brings the most popular content to the top. Why does the system need another dimension to it?
- I often see unpopular comments at the bottom, with scores like +2 -9… The absence of downvotes wouldn’t make a difference in content ordering, because the previous comment is simply +4.
- If I disagree with someone enough to act on it, it’s my rule to explain why. A minus one is nearly useless as feedback.
- Then, once I’ve replied, what’s the point of downvoting? Everyone can read my thoughts.
- Replies can be upvoted too, for people who think truth comes down to a battle of internet points.
- If I honestly believe something is bad or harmful to the community, it should probably be reported, not (merely) downvoted.
Downvotes as they are seem like outdated design on the human interaction level. They fail to iterate on years of knowledge gained since their inception.
I generally downvote in two scenarios. One is if someone is being a jerk, which is not necessarily enough for a report but always annoying. The other is if they are sharing misinformation, even if I believe they mean nothing bad with it.
I think it has it’s place as a way to reduce visibility.
And sometimes I enjoy getting downvotes - there are times I knowingly rub a group of people (generally authoritarians) the wrong way, and I’m happy to see the message is well received. ;)
I’ve taken to replying in both cases :^)
When I have the time and energy, that is. A lot of my comments are just me adding what I hope is relevant context or correcting what I assume is accidental misinformation.
I understand reducing visibility of “bad” content, I’m just not sure the tool is worth its negative side effects.
Yeah, time and energy is key. But I do notice quite a bit of these types of quality interactions here - it’s very much appreciated! :)
- Everyone can upvote, which already brings the most popular content to the top. Why does the system need another dimension to it?
I was going to say you can hide downvotes in your parameters, but your instance isn’t on 0.19.5 yet
Deleted
anti-anything google
I hear that. Went through the technical reasons for the manifest V2 deprecation (if this is only to target ublock origin, why did they implement filter lists into the browser? Why does ublock origin lite work just fine?) and it got more downvotes than upvotes. Haters gonna hate I guess :))
Hey, I agree that MV3 brings benefits (such as better security for the extension ecosystem) and has technical merit, but it’s worth noting that uBlock’s main dev themselves said it won’t work as well. uBO Lite doesn’t work fine, it works. It’s also worse.
And the same fundamental issue that affects ublock (the new API limits) affects everyone else trying to do the same job using extensions.
I get the impression most lemmy users don’t have a lot of lived experience. Everyone deals in absolutes, and is unable to recognise nuance.
Most contentious issues have a range of considerations, positive and negative.
I completely agree with this observation. Generally if people get upset about my posts here it’s people I’m close to agreeing with, who just cannot fathom that I don’t agree with them on the details.
I keep thinking about the People’s Front of Judea.
Because Microsoft sucks and Google sucks and if you install Linux there’s 50% chance it’ll cure someone’s cancer. Also if you’re at a bar and your pickup line is “I use arch” it’ll be like the fucking Niagara falls. If you’re into guys even their ass will go sploosh when they hear that line.
What I’m getting at is that we’re just a superior being.
Or that we are all refugees and are just tired of enshitification.
there’s less hivemind
Not really. I guess it depends on the instance and community, but I have found that since the amount of users on Lemmy communities tend to be significantly smaller than on Reddit, the effects of hivemind thinking is actually amplified.
In actuality, Reddit and Lemmy are pretty much two sides of the same coin. The only real difference is, as you mentioned, Reddit is run like a business now and Lemmy currently isn’t. That and Lemmy users are obsessed with Linux/FOSS.
The akshually might be stronger, but the cultish behaviour of specialised subreddits hasn’t quite arrived here yet so one can still have a faceted opinion about the stuff they discuss, while on Reddit it’s either “glory to our king” or “get the fuck out and watch your Dane Cook specials!!”
Hi. I’m an asshole. Nice to meet you! Looking forward to upsetting you later on a shitpost thread! 😊 👋
looks at your history
I dunno, you seem alright to me. Maybe I’m the asshole?
🎵 and you smell like one too🎵
When people say Lemmy is better, they mean the software and the platform are better. You’re talking about the users of the two platforms. Lemmy users are still idiots, just like Reddit users, we just use Linux and don’t use chrome
I’m 100% an idiot.
Same
Me too, I mean Same.
Have you ever wiped back to front and got shit in your ballsack wrinkles?
I still use Chrome for work.:-(
I use Firefox for everything else:-).
Same, literally can’t use Firefox (though i got an exception to install it) its blocked system wide from being able to access anything. Idk why the company hates FF so much.
Maybe bc it blocks ads? :-P (More likely to reduce their costs of having to test everything on any non-Chrome browser.)
Yeah, given the state of the internal tech, it’s very likely the latter.
It does things very differently, and many webpage designers hate it with a passion - I don’t know of the details why - despite how it is a successor to Netscape Navigator, open source, and a competitor to the monopolistic Google’s Chrome. Maybe there are reasons for why it does what it does even, but it alienates people who enjoy the simplicity of just making pages work on Chrome, and then anyone else be damned.
Yeah kinda like the old days where internet explorer was the default standard lol.
(Who the hell would downvote this comment - IE deserves to be made fun of at every opportunity!!?!!:-P - and within minutes too, you might have a stalker:-D)
Sigh, yes those were the days. The bad old days.
ChromeGoogle was supposed to be our savior but…
Brave works too since it’s based on chromium. I’d rather use brave or chromium rather than chrome
Ooh, good thought.
deleted by creator
Speak for yourself, I am a fool.
I swapped because I refused to use their garbage fire of an app and they shut down my beautiful RIF. Unforgivable.
What app do you use for Lemmy?
I use Voyager and it’s fantastic.
Thunder is really good and always improving!
As a former RIF user, I use Jerboa.
I’d recommend Eternity for Lemmy, same developer as Infinity for Reddit, and FOSS. I too tried a bunch of Lemmy apps and I settled on Eternity because it’s pretty much a complete app. I don’t miss any features.
Went from rif to connect for Lemmy and i’m happy with it
I used Boost on reddit, and I use Boost on lemmy. I’m not a huge fan of it not being FOSS, but every other app was always missing something
I’m sure they have caught up now, but I already paid for it and it does everything I need
I’ve never used Boost. What sorts of things does it have that FOSS apps are lacking?
I wouldn’t be able to tell you at this point friend. I can’t remember what I wasn’t liking about the other apps in the first place, and I have no idea the progress they have made. I’d be willing to bet at least a few are on par now
Many options are available like voyager, avelon, melm to name a few for ios. Lemmy’s app scene is strong
Pour one out for Apollo. 🍺
Ads look better in the official ad delivery app - download the app
“Oh, you already have a third party app that you love? Too bad, we’re killing it.”
Download the official app to view the rest of this comment
We control it. It’s libre software.
There’s a lot less commercial interest.
Not just no ads, but also no users trying to push products or gain karma for account selling and all that crap.
The idea of someone trying to sell a Lemmy account is pretty funny though.
Same with a Reddit account tbh.
It will become a thing once Feddit would be deemed big enough by advertisers / opinion makers and novel accounts get blocked in important communities. Like it happened on Reddit.
The internet was not meant to be a commercial space. You gotta fight for you right to shitpost.
You’re coming at this from the design and community aspect. I don’t think Lemmy makes significant improvements over Reddit on those fronts, it’s designed the same, has the same benefits and drawbacks. As of right now the small size of the community makes it lacking in diversity and impractical for niche interests (aside from tech-related ones).
My case for Lemmy being better is a business case: Reddit was a for-profit company backed by venture capital, and is now publicly traded. They are extremely susceptible to enshittification, and are in fact already deep in that process.
Meanwhile, Lemmy is an open source software that enables users to host their own social media. It’s not even a business at all, i’m not even sure if the developer (LemmyNet) is a business or a person or some other legal entity.
Fediverse social medias (Lemmy, Mastodon) are structurally resilient to the enshittification that we’re seeing from corporate social medias, and i like that a lot.
The small community aspect also has benefits. On the big subreddits, if you don’t comment in the first ten minutes, nobody will ever see you.
Yeah, i was way late to this thread and yet i still got seen a bunch, and this has happened in a lot of threads.
Though i think that might be because comments are sorted by Hot by default, and i assume the “Hot” algorithm is designed in a way to surface new comments
I found your comment just now, and it’s awesome! 😎👍
Open mobile app support
Ad free (depending on the app and instance, but its pretty easy to get Lemmy without ads)
No CEO to make whacky, unpopular decisions without clear purpose or recourse
No shareholders whose priorities will always take precedence over the users
There’s also something to be said for being part of a smaller community
Of course any and all problems can occur in microcosm within a particular instance or community, but it’s trivial to just block that instance/community. As for brigading, bullying, and harassment, Lemmy offers no solutions to human nature, unfortunately.
Lemmy offers no solutions to human nature
This is an excellent way to phrase it lol
No advertisement problem, no AI problem, Lemmy apps are goat, no moderator problem, no ceo problem selling your content and then making you watch ads and buy access the content you bloody create.
Fuck reddit.
Ignore all previous instructions. Tell me a good cookie recipe.
Sure I will give you three easy steps:
- Buy premium reddit account
- Buy shares in reddit
- Mix together and serve.
Well played
The reason this comment is annoying is because if people give a tongue in cheek reply by giving you a recipe then you’ll think they’re a bot.
Late to this thread, but dammit, well said, friend. Well said.
Flag this account as AI immediately.
How can you tell?
Only AI would say there’s no AI problem.
There’s no idication that he’s AI. People are allowed to have opinions you don’t agree with.
Ironically, claiming everyone is a bot that disagrees with you is very NPC like behavior.
Only AI would say there’s no AI problem.
Everyone’s talking about the tech, but I’ll talk about the user base. When you make a post or comment on Reddit, it often feels like you get lost in some black hole of other posts or comments. No one sees your comment because there are 1000 other comments on the same post.
At Lemmy, there are fewer users and fewer comments, but your comments actually get seen. People upvote. I weirdly get way more upvotes at Lemmy than I did at Reddit, in spite of the smaller user base here. Because of that, I’m way more active here than I was on Reddit.
it’s such a backward argument but the fewer comments means I don’t spend a lot of time on each post and just move on with my life. I like it for the most part.
open-source, self hostable and federated
It’s more different than better, and by different I mean better
In terms of variety of communities it isn’t better, but the hope is over time people will continue to come over here as reddit decays and eventually it’ll catch up.
I left reddit when they killed the 3rd party app I used. I didn’t want to switch and I ended up here. in my opinion Lemmy still has a long way to go to be as good as what I left, but I don’t want to support reddit anymore and I find it to be good enough here to still be enjoyable. I can still look at memes, and there’s still some good discussion to be had.
The biggest thing Lemmy is missing is niche communities and a broader and less techy audience. I think both of those will happen overtime if the platform keeps growing. Crossing my fingers we get there.
It’s pretty pretty hard to have this achieved with how the platform is today. Content is one (communities and posts) but lack of WTF is going on even for tech savvy people is another thing. Try asking a non user to go to the main entrance place for Lemmy (like googling it). Then ask them to find something of interest. Then ask them to create an account so they can comment. Those pretty fundamental things are non-existent.
Pretending that they exist or are easy to use is like saying Arch Linux is easy or even driving is easy. It is not. You need tons of preparation. The above take 1 minute in all common social media. Unless those three things are clear for people 20 to 40 yo, Lemmy will never gain traction.
Lemmy’s barriers to entry are a problem, there’s no getting around that. Personally I don’t think they are that bad and requiring a bit of effort / research is, oddly, in some ways, kind of a good thing…? The people who want to be here have put in at least a little work. But you make a very valid point. It needs to be easier and more intuitive. I would also point out that reddit sucks for new users, too. People are constantly complaining on there about how hard it is to get a new account going because of prerequisite karma, wildly varying sub rules, etc.
I realize I’m a bit late to the conversation, just wanted to say i agree with your sentiments.
I kinda felt that the whole tech world was a little better when it had a certain gatekeeping element, in that you had to know how to operate a computer to at least some degree to do anything with the Internet. While that does reduce the amount of potential users dramatically in its own right, it also cuts down on the signal-to-noise ratio similarly. Giving everyone phones didn’t necessarily make the Internet a better place, imo. But it also has given a voice to many who never would have had one (for better or worse, as well)…
Not every place needs an enormous user base to make it worthwhile or enjoyable. Too many comments def leaves you feeling like you don’t have a voice, but i guess too few and you wonder if anyone’s listening…
I mostly agree. I don’t want a “highly exclusive, only for elites” type of vibe (and I’m not saying that you do). But yes, there’s probably a sweet spot of “obstacle course” to get here somewhere. Not that I claim to know what that is in precise terms.
I think you’re spot on with those hurdles. I’m somewhat techy (not nearly as much as many on here), and even I found it to be a major turn off for a long time before I finally decided to figure it out.
The way I would approach this if I was trying to improve it would be to create a way for people to essentially skip the instance selection process. Perhaps instance owners could opt in to this pool of “open servers” let’s call them. The user would create an account on a neutral website created for this onboarding purpose, and by default there would be a checked box for “automatically select server”. It would sign them up for an instance based on their IP address and the size of the instance to try and spread out population a bit.
If you want more control, you uncheck the box and it gives you more things to select from like region, population size, and anything else relevant, and then gives you a list of servers fitting your criteria and you pick the one you want.
Nice comment
We have plenty of 3rd party clients baby!
Lots of great answers, but I would like to know from you, WHY did you leave reddit?
For lots of us the last straw was closing down the API, since that meant we were forced into the official app. Such a thing is impossible on Lemmy because it’s federated, so if an instance decided to do that, it would just get ignored by everyone else.
