Hey everyone, I’m new here and just testing the waters. I’ve been on Reddit for years, but lately it feels like a mix of heavy-handed moderation and echo chambers where any dissenting opinion gets buried.
For those of you who’ve spent real time on Lemmy: • What do you like better here than on Reddit? • What do you miss from Reddit? • Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?
I’m curious how people see it — especially those who made the switch after the API drama.
- Cozy
- Authentic
- Lately, it feels like everything on Reddit is treated like a joke, and you see an endless string of puns and snarky comments. I like that you can have a serious discussion about a topic on Lemmy without it unraveling unlike Reddit.
Yup. Lemmy is a bit more barren than reddit (at least when i was last on reddit), but the conversations you do have are genuine and not some lame joke.
we do get that a lot here though, snarky, canned oneliners for that upvote serotonin boost. But this bizarre phenomon wiht people pavlov’d into posting certain canned redditisms is much less
decentralization and the lack of reddit admins
pretty much every subreddit i was in
it skews a bit more tech literate but it’s mostly the same besides that
What do you like better here than on Reddit?
It’s simple and doesn’t try to overwhelm you with pointless features just to pander to Techbros. Not only it is open-source and can be self-hosted, but it also part of the Fediverse. I originally heard about it when someone was talking about it on my Mastodon feed so I check it out and have a love/hate relationship with it.
What do you miss from Reddit?
Really niche subreddit on there to be honest. And while yes, I can “be the change that [I] want to see”, it takes lot of effort to:
- Posting regularly on that community (Lemmy’s version of subreddit just a FYI)
- Trying to promote it and having a thick skin that not everyone would but maybe there’s few that might be interested to giving it a try
But otherwise, I might try throw my hat to the ring and give it a try again at some point. But to be honest, I’m not too sure I would be the best moderator but who knows. Never say never.
Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?
Yes. I find Lemmy has massive FOSS/DIY-Tech culture embedded which I find FOSS community just in general to be very hit and miss. Great for if you wanting to find FOSS project and support related to whatever Open-Source Software you are using. The major downside that is does feel like at times, a echo chamber of the same opinion and also the lack of nuances which can be frustrating. If you mention anything that isn’t FOSS or something that is very mainstreamed that most normies (and I hate using that word) likes, just expect some bitchy comments about it in the comments selection.
And also expect a lot of dry-humour and sarcasm just in general.
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I like that it’s FOSS, and that there are a lot more leftists here.
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Some niche communities, that’s about it.
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Yep, there’s a lot more Linux and FOSS content, as well as a lot of communists and anarchists (though Lemmy.world blocks the communist instances from you, so that should be harder to notice).
I’ve been here since the API drama, but many have been here for a lot longer.
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- Very politically left
- Very FOSS oriented
- Sometimes kind of a circlejerk
- signal to noise ratio
It feels a bit like how Reddit was prior to the digg exodus when overnight pun & lyric threads, ascii art and terminally shit one word responses appeared.
There is the awareness to the benefit of building slowly will bring, rather than having a an uncontrolled mass exodus, that risks little to no integration to the current curated culture.
- Transparency
You can see who the mods are and a mod log and currently, people are giving time to grow the communities rather than welding power.
- Quality content
It’s not the same stories getting posted by karma farmers or by bots. It’s more curated.
- Interactions
They’re more conversational than adversarial
- Much higher quality interactions
- Lot less random bot posts or subs that are 99% bots/trash stories
- Not enough content to always keep me engaged when I am looking to mindlessly read some things
- Many communities are mostly dead. Even if you want to revive them, no mods makes that difficult
- culture is completely different
Good day! I’m here for around ~2 months.
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Something that I like better here, is the higher average level of thought put in the comments. Fewer dismissive one-liners, fever thoughts that seem to start and end within a single second. That does not go for all communities, but I’ve received some great help when I posted some questions, and posts where I shared info got valuable comments too. Reddit can also be good for this - but sometimes not exactly on par to the quality level.
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Another plus, and that’s obvious, Lemmy is a free platform where you know you won’t be cut away, or have to tolerate a bad UI with animations and opening treasure chests because the for-profit core of the business thinks it’ll sell well. (The legal goal of any Reddit emloyee is to maximize company’s profits. Not satisfy user’s needs. Only in the places where these two coincide you get something.)
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I miss certain specific communities.
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Also the feel of it sometimes: 9x% of all communities here are unofficial of course. And migrating your community here might be scary, of course, because the total number of Redditors is magnitudes higher (these redditors are not all in YOUR community, but the lizard brain is nevertheless afraid of such commitments).
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A bit of both, different and the same. I think the people and their motivations are a lil bit different, and you can feel it. But it’s still also people. Having their jobs, doing things for fun or out of boredom, etc etc. So also the same in a way.
Perhaps a wrapping thought. For my posts and comments personally, I’ve felt that communities here are larger than what I thought they would be based on numbers. You do get responses and help even in smaller communities. Maybe it’s a phenomena that for a smaller group, the noise levels are lower, so more people can survive the noise and continue reading besides “best of the month” filters. So they would go on and respond to something that would otherwise be filtered out as overwhelming.
Dunno.
Onboard and tell us how it feels later ;-)Oh, I forgot one thing on the downsides. The onboarding captcha-like thingy on the lemmy.ml instance is quite elaborate where you have to quote some text from a Communism book. Instances like Memes are rich with upvotes and glorification of Stalin and of the Soviet Union. While I do agree on many of the downsides of for-profit culture (as you can see in my comment above for example), here it’s just extreme levels in my opinion. I personally feel somewhat uncomfortable with the strong political push in general-purpose channels, especially since lemmy.ml is supposed to be about free software.
That’s the other downside. I still use Lemmy as you see, but I felt it’s fair to share a negative point even if the overall conclusion is positive.
If you’re not happy with communists, there are other instances like Lemmy.world.
You’re kind of proving my point right now, this comment and the downvotes above.
I personally feel somewhat uncomfortable with the strong political push in general-purpose channels, especially since lemmy.ml is supposed to be about free software.
There’s a non-political memes comm on Lemmy.ml if you so choose. The fact is, the devs are communists, and a ton of us on Lemmy are communists due to the nature of FOSS, so that’s sort of a natural sorting.
Other instances, such as Lemmy.world, are also politically biased, but towards liberalism. All instances have their own biases, you can’t escape politics for good.
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What do you like better here than on Reddit?
The interfaces are better, and being able to integrate with mastodon is interesting.
What do you miss from Reddit?
The size of the communities, really. On Reddit, a lot of the subs have grown big enough that they can maintain themselves, whereas here, they’re pretty much dead without input. A few of the more interesting counterpart communities that I would frequent a tonne on Reddit are dead now, and if you’re just one user, it does feel like spam to try and contribute to it constantly.
It’s really only a limit subset of communities that seem very active at all, and they are generally news or politics based.
Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?
Bit of both. The culture in the larger communities would drift the way of Reddit just by volume, but the smaller ones are a bit more unique, and not always in a good way. Because Lemmy is a bit more tech-focused, I find a lot of the main medium-sized communities tend to have similar abrasiveness you see a bit in tech, though it can depend on both community and server.
There are exceptions to all of the points below, but generally:
What do you like better here than on Reddit?
Everyone is here trying to build something better. The developers are actually prioritizing transparency and user choice when making the software. Since the instances aren’t after profit, there’s no financial conflict of interest. It’s actually possible for instance admins to prioritize user experience and a healthy community instead of making a profit.
I love seeing all the different organizational structures emerging; some instances are nonprofits, some are co-ops, some are benevolent dictatorships. I think in the long run this will produce a fairer and more representative online platform.
Also my interactions feel human. If I get 5 upvotes on Lemmy or 5 likes on Pixelfed, it feels like I connected with 5 real people. On Reddit, I just can’t tell anymore.
What do you miss from Reddit?
Activity in niche communities, but that’s changing slowly.
Also, as a mod, we could still use better moderation tooling.
Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?
I think over time it will become more like Reddit. As the user base grows, the average will shift closer to what Reddit is like. Also, at the end of the day, a number of the issues are because of how groups of humans interact and not the platform itself.
However, the reason I’m here instead of the many other Reddit alternatives is because of federation. I believe that as long as we maintain a healthy balance in the fediverse (and not let one entity control too much), we can avoid the enshitification while centralized social media becomes unbearable for more and more people.
What do you miss from Reddit?
Activity in niche communities, but that’s changing slowly.
Actually, two other things I do miss from Reddit: In the heyday (and even still to some extent now), it was so massive that you could have whole communities of types of real-world people you would never interact with. There is a subreddit for cops, one for air traffic controllers, one for sex workers, one for working historians to answer the general public’s questions, and so on. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ghislaine Maxwell had active Reddit accounts. You could come into contact (in their weird text-box-only way) with people you would never come in contact with, and more to the point you could see what their hivemind looked like and their consensus on public issues. I always liked Reddit’s community model better than the twitter “everything goes on the pile” model, because you could have these for-real communities develop, and it was fascinating sometimes to see what they thought of things or watch them in action.
Edit: Oh, the other thing, AMAs of real public figures, similar idea
That’s a really good point, I hadn’t thought about the AMA angle or how unique those niche pro communities were. Thanks for sharing that, definitely gives me a better picture of what people feel is missing.
What do you like better here than on Reddit?
You won’t get banned for speaking your mind, even if that includes talking shit to bad actors who argue in bad faith. Reddit effectively protects and cultivates bad actors acting in bad faith. They can spread their misinformation. When you point out that they are dipshits and why, complete with sources, you get banned while they continue to spread their misinformation.
Threads also stay active longer on Lemmy. If you’re a few hours late to a Reddit post, too late. No one will see or interact with your comment. On Lemmy a thread can stay active for a few days.
What do you miss from Reddit?
The more nuanced subs. That’s literally it. Lemmy doesn’t have a lot of the subs I had on Reddit…yet. Mostly art subs dedicated to very specific forms of art. There’s nothing else to miss. Reddit is quickly becoming a cesspool that is losing what worth it once had.
Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different
Yes. There are notably less dipshit conservatives on here than on Reddit. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a partisan asshole. I am partisan when it comes to modern American conservatives. They are shitstain fascists and I don’t want them to be anywhere near me. I don’t view them as good people and I’ve never met one that argued in good faith. I respect and desire alternate viewpoints, but I don’t respect or desire conservative viewpoints, because they’re always in bad faith, if not outright racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or xenophobic. To give you an idea, Lemmy users ran the conservatives out of the actual conservative sub and it’s effectively used for mocking conservatives now. So yeah, Lemmy isn’t a big fan of shitstain conservatives. Which means on an average day, I’m reading a lot less filth than I was on Reddit.
Ok great! From the sounds of it, certainly seems like Lemmy is promising. Hasn’t quite grown to the point where smaller niche subs have made it here just yet, but *hopefully * with a growing user base those niche subs may make their way onto the platform. I do love the idea of Lemmy.
As for your culture response I’m a little confused as quite the contrary was my experience on Reddit. Seemed to be an echo chamber of liberals who were incapable of debate and so therefore mods would often times delete posts or worse ban users even with sound rebuttals. (I am conservative, quite conservative I might add.) A moderators ideological or political stance shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether a post or user gets banned.
In addition, as a side note. I’d gladly be the first conservative to debate you in good faith sometime. ;)
Regardless, thanks for the post! Going to start wrapping my head around Lemmy. I’m virtually walking in pitch black running into walls. Need to dig deeper in setting the account up!
Lemmy is what you make it. If you join the biggest and busiest communities, your experience won’t be as good as if you joined smaller more quality communities.
heavy-handed moderation and echo chambers where any dissenting opinion gets buried
I have bad news for you lol
It is fine, Lemmy is far superior. But, their baffling decision to copy Reddit’s “lords and peasants” model of moderation has led to a lot of the same moderation rot on Lemmy I am sad to say. It’s just in less of a late stage terminal form as it was on Reddit. At least the echo chambers are separate echo chambers, and they can yell across the void at each other. lemmy.ml is pretty much the only community that is severely balkanized to its own isolated community where politics / geopolitics are concerned.
In general, Lemmy is nice because it is more varied. lemmy.world is the most Reddit-like in terms of having a “hivemind,” then there are particular smaller servers with their own cultures going on. It is more quiet but a lot more human in my opinion.
Enjoy.
has led to a lot of the same moderation rot on Lemmy
Almost as if the platform wasn’t the problem.
People. What a bunch of bastards.
amen.
How would you redesign the moderating system on lemmy?
Make it pull instead of push. Each user has way too little control over their own experience in my opinion. To me from an old-school-internet background, it’s very weird that a moderator can override what comments you’re allowed to see or not allowed to see. I much prefer Bluesky’s model, where you pick your moderators, and someone can’t override you and decide that certain comments you’re not allowed to read just because those comments happened to land within that person’s little domain after they were the first to claim the “worldnews” name for their community or whatever.
How to graft that onto Lemmy is a little bit difficult. It’s just a different model. I mean you could have a list of moderators whose decisions you want to block (similar to your list of users you want to block) – if any of those moderators removed a comment, you can still read it, their decisions just don’t affect your feed in any way. That would be a simple hack, sort of a useful check on their “power” if you want to say it that way, although it’s definitely a little bit rough approach. Probably a more holistic way would be to restructure how content even gets shared around. I haven’t looked at how Piefed does “feeds,” but that might be one good approach; let someone create or share a “politics” feed for example, and it can be a modification of someone else’s feed (“!news@lemmy.world but take out the Trump stuff” or “block these specific annoying users” or “ignore decisions by these two moderators”), so that it’s not a monopoly in terms of who gets to curate and control the content. You could subscribe to !betterpolitics@lemmy.world for example, and it’s just the identical posts sourced from !politics@lemmy.world, but with some users that are widely disliked banned, and then also with certain moderators who consistently make bad decisions disabled. That’s a lot harder to implement of course… IDK, this is just me thinking out loud about solutions I could see, but hopefully it makes some kind of sense.
Make it pull instead of push. Each user has way too little control over their own experience in my opinion. To me from an old-school-internet background, it’s very weird that a moderator can override what comments you’re allowed to see or not allowed to see. I much prefer Bluesky’s model, where you pick your moderators, and someone can’t override you and decide that certain comments you’re not allowed to read just because those comments happened to land within that person’s little domain after they were the first to claim the “worldnews” name for their community or whatever.
I feel like we’ve had a debate on this before. This would just negate the concept of communities built up by moderators. Also, in many case, instances have rules before communities. How does that system work here?
I haven’t looked at how Piefed does “feeds,” but that might be one good approach; let someone create or share a “politics” feed for example, and it can be a modification of someone else’s feed (”!news@lemmy.world but take out the Trump stuff” or “block these specific annoying users” or “ignore decisions by these two moderators"), so that it’s not a monopoly in terms of who gets to curate and control the content. You could subscribe to !betterpolitics@lemmy.world for example, and it’s just the identical posts sourced from !politics@lemmy.world, but with some users that are widely disliked banned, and then also with certain moderators who consistently make bad decisions disabled. That’s a lot harder to implement of course… IDK, this is just me thinking out loud about solutions I could see, but hopefully it makes some kind of sense.
Feeds are just made and maintained by one person that draw from a pool of selected communities. You can subscribe to a feed or follow new posts made in it. The creator doesn’t curate it beyond curating what communities are visible in it. Piefeds word filters already work to mitigate content users don’t want to see.
I feel like we’ve had a debate on this before.
Are we having a debate? I honestly was not aware if so lol
This would just negate the concept of communities built up by moderators.
Correct. Moderators should not “own” the communication that goes on in “their” communities, they definitely shouldn’t look at people as “their” users as I’ve heard some of them say before. We are just people. We are allowed to say things. The fact that letting people say things even if the moderators don’t want them to, would do damage to their concept, is a flaw with their concept.
Also, in many case, instances have rules before communities. How does that system work here?
To a certain extent, it is cultural. At the end of the day, the instance admins can physically control whatever passes through their server. In the old school Usenet sense, someone who was in that role would never modify someone else’s message. It just was this kind of wild fascism that would never be done except in the most dire circumstances (there were actually arguments about it when spam started cropping up, some people felt like even removing spam was going too far). Now, even someone who doesn’t own the server hardware feels empowered to set “rules” as you say for what people are allowed to say to each other, sometimes very arbitrary and clearly self-serving or etc. In my opinion, success lies somewhere between those two extremes: People generally being able to talk to one another (and the architecture being designed where it’s assumed that they’re allowed to) even if someone else doesn’t like it and wants to make rules against it, but still moderation set up for people who want it to the extent that they want it.
There’s obviously still a need for someone to take responsibility for deleting spam, harassment, or abusive content, and there’s going to be a grey area. I feel like, generally, you can let people control their own feeds and moderation that applies to them, and they will probably decide to configure it in a way where the anti-spam protection is applied to their feed and their weird additional arbitrary rules are not. That’s what I was saying.
The creator doesn’t curate it beyond curating what communities are visible in it.
Yes, I’m aware. I was proposing a new way in which it could work, I know that currently it doesn’t work that way. I don’t even know that the thing I spitballed is the way to do it, just someone asked how it could work, so I spitballed one possible way.
Moderators don’t literally “own” the communities they run now. They steward them. They can power-trip, but they can also be supplanted and replaced much easier on the Fediverse than they are on Reddit.
As for being able to “ignore” specific community moderators decisions, that’s a recipe that doesn’t scale well. In more active communities, that would mean that you would end up consistently seeing a lot of spam and abuse and nonsense because even a poor moderator will do the janitorial work that all communities do.
In terms of instances, there simply isn’t any appetite for the type of instances and community culture you want. You are simply in a minority here.
In terms of instances, there simply isn’t any appetite for the type of instances and community culture you want. You are simply in a minority here.
Severely tempted to code it up and see what the interest level is. IDK, I am lazy also, so let’s see. In any case thank you for your constructive input lol.
Got it, that makes sense. I guess I’ll have to poke around and get a feel for the different instances/cultures myself. Appreciate the perspective!
More chill here
It’s great I come here to argue with people until I am forced to assign myself homework. Reddit just bans you over and over unless you are 100% chungus at all times.
Well thats fantastic to hear. It’s my biggest issue with Reddit. I’m big into debating. Don’t mind being wrong, but I sure as hell don’t want to be be banned for trying to create dialogue.
Oh I missed which instance you’re on. World is basically for people who miss reddit. I only vouch for the rules on this particular instance. Which are stict, but fair. Lemmygrad and Hexbear will ban you no matter what if you disagree with a regular or mod. Same with World or the 500 other liberal ones. Good luck. ☺️
I used to look down on the whole debate & logic thing since I flirted with American policy debate in high school, which is disgusting game for charlatans. However eventually I realized that the issue was bad premises, me being too rude to people, and that nobody explained logic to me until I was studying comp eng 🫠
Be passionate about logic, self-critical, and kind. Then you never have to hesitate before striking a man down.
