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I dislike that Lemmy is such a left-wing echo chamber. Reddit had a much wider variety of opinions being voiced openly; on Lemmy, there’s almost none. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s acceptable to say here and what isn’t. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting because it can make you feel like the opinions of the average Lemmy user represent the wider population when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Also, there are almost no blue-collar workers here, and most discussions revolve around office jobs and big city life.
EDIT: and the extreme levels of cynicism.
Personally don’t like the constant echoing of political positions or takes but that’s in my experience equal on both platforms.
I cba. The thing I like more on Lemmy is slight more civilly discussions or what’s being shared.
Just hate how its always have to be polarized to what side you lean on ot emphasis on.
Defaulting on the American aspect of things as well.
Defaulting on the American aspect of things as well.
As always ofc, but I feel like less so here. Though the Western aspects are still predominant for sure - UK & EU as well as USA.
The US has a left lean (“left” by US standards). What I mean by that is it’s not an even split. The majority of Americans lean left. The only reasons the right has any power in this country is due to the first past the post voting system, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the electoral college.
I meet Trump supporters everyday. I see signs on the lawn in every town. I hear them speak in media regularly.
Not really, liberals here tend to overpower and speak over leftist voices. Any time a Leftist disagrees with Kamala or points out a legitimate concern swarms of smug liberals say “erm akshurally what about trump you Russian bot”.
(Liberal =/= left-wing)
I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.
I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation. The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years. This Lemmy account has only been around for about 1/10th of that.
One of the biggest strengths of Lemmy is also one of its biggest curses. Due to its federated nature, anyone can create a new instance. The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc. They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.
“I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.”
Oh yeah that seems an excellent way to keep a power balance between users and moderation. Hadn’t used reddit all that much, but heard of the nightmarish moderation abuse.
“I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation.”
Sadly is a big issue with many platforms where politics is used for excuse to mental flex, invalidate, clout motives, and flat out bully. So i try to avoid politics or deflect and avoid people who just looking to argue for the sake of argueing to assert dominance. Too many headaches online deal with.
“The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years.”
I might do the same tbh, i can see there are quite a bit of users needing filtered out on lemmy. Can also see some get angry knowing that people would rather just block em’ and not engage with them because then they can’t fuel their clout driven ego 🙂
“The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc.”
Perhaps this could be resolved by implementing a user follow list and making it so users can only be interacted with if the user approves the follower who is trying to follow em’
“They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.”
Imo i think lemmy could just do away with a voting system, it would reduce cognitive bias by not giving them a sense of popularity contest to determine if it’s worth reading a user’s post or comment. People should judge for themselves rather than having others do it for them.
You seem a a reasonably decent person btw.
The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.
That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.
I encourage aggressive blocking. Without it, the assholes drive the decent people away over time.
I’d be fine without voting, too. I am glad they at least got rid of karma.
Here’s a
hard(edit: damnit! “hint”!) that when I noticed it, improved my experience on the Fediverse enormously. Enough to convince me not to leave it outright as I nearly did. Pay attention to what instance someone is from. It’s no 100% guarantee… but it’s not useless either. This is like 1000% more relevant for someone on an instance other than Lemmy.world, but it still helps for you too.The aggressiveness also varies by community, so likewise, some of those are just straight up worth blocking (so that you don’t keep forgetting and end up replying in it yet again and again) and finding alternatives for.
I like the relatively sane moderation compared to Reddit.
I dislike the heavy far-left/communist presence here. I’m a lefty myself, but a lot of people here are extremists in my opinion, little better than the far right.
I’m also a lefty and often find myself going against the extreme grain here. The narratives about everything being a scam designed to steal your balls, the generational hatred, the cynicism and fatalism… That shit isn’t just more liberal than me, so I hesitate to even call it leftist extremism. I’m not sure what it is. Nihilism, maybe.
Ah yes, gotta love our little tankies
“Can’t complain!”
Please tell me which subs you go to find extremist leftists
They’re all over the place, but I suppose I encounter them most in the news and politics forums.
I mean iunno about subs but for instances hexbear is largely known as the tankie instance. For the other kind of extreme leftists, the anarchists seem much more spread out even than they were back on reddit
I’m a new user and I don’t know the lingo yet. Can you tell me what a tanky is?
Tanky is authoritarian communist / Lenninist
Have a look at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
Like
Editable titles
“All” here vs other social media is much better
It’s more likely that arguments are civil. There are still quite a few venomous arguments but I’ve noticed that it it proportionally less.
On Reddit or Facebook, if you didn’t like a group you left and made your own. If you didn’t like the admins, tough shit. Here, if you don’t like the admins, you can use a different instance.
Likes and dislikes are separate, and are in some cases viewable who submit them. I feel like this keeps people a little more honest.
I like the modlog and transparency. It’s so much easier that when someone complains about unfair mod action, to see if they are in the right or exaggerating.
There is an “end” to Lemmy. There isn’t just infinite content to scroll through.
Dislike
Smaller user base means that niches that Reddit filled just aren’t here.
There is an “end” to Lemmy. There isn’t just infinite content to scroll through.
Neutral
The types of common negative personalities here are different from that of Reddit. Reddit has more misogyny, classism, antinatalists, and obnoxious atheists. (As opposed to the chill atheists.) Lemmy has quite a few people that are pretty shitty to those that are disabled or cannot get out of some situations. If you cannot work towards the greater good without any rest, can’t escape a bad situation, or can’t just extend yourself further, you are trash. There are also more fringe beliefs here. I do like it because of the different perspectives, even if I very strongly disagree. (It makes me think!) Unfortunately we still have the dumbass arguments about generations but you can’t have it all.
Like: Long-ass posts. Mastodon has a ridiculous character limit; lemmy doesn’t seem to have any. Dislike: Long-ass posts. Jesus people, the rants and drawn-out arguments.
I was going to quote you saying arguements are civil, and then mock argue with you in an absurd way. But then I thought it wasn’t clear that I was being absurd and joking, and you might think I was actually toxic argueing with you. So I turned up the absurd.
Somehow this ended with me giving you a lapdance as I insulted you. It made ME laugh, but I think instead of coming across as funny, it was just confusing.
…also erotic.
Now I am hard. Goddammit
The 14 year olds with “big brain” takes.
Like or dislike?
I don’t mind the kids themselves, I might have been a teenage embodiment of edge too, but it sucks how many adults get pulled into childish fighting about nothing, instead of having a teaching moment.
It makes the platform seem immature and childish.
All the trolls.
The people. For both.
I genuinely cannot express how much it annoys me that I cannot have a blocklist for keywords.
Most of the things I read are from my subscribed communities, which i’m very happy about generally, however given the overall state of life today, half of the posts in completely unrelated communities end up being one of the following:
- Twitter CEO
- Hate speech in US politics
- AI propaganda for some pump and dump quick money
I really just don’t want to see any of those things
Connect app for Lemmy actually has this feature, and it really is a gamechanger. I mean, it makes Lemmy kinda into a desolate wasteland of posts, but its better than seeing most of the garbage I don’t care about and don’t want to interact with.
Granted, this also relies on users putting said keywords in the title of their post, so I still end up seeing stuff I don’t want to, but it is drastically decreased.
On browser you can put this onto your custom filters
lemmy.world##div.post-listing:has(span:has-text("/musk/i"))Voyager has word filters : https://m.lemmy.world/
A few front-end do, yeah. I’m talking about native support
Like:
- It has that small-community feel still. I don’t see (perhaps because I stay out of a lot of the more tech-ey communities?) the kind of farming, low-effort, generally mediocre content I saw on Reddit.
- Lack of the sense of a hyper-corporatized, “You’re only allowed to do things that make us money” sense that’s enshittified much of the internet lately. I’m not even sure if Lemmy can be monetized.
Dislike:
- Not yet large enough either. I don’t want hundreds of millions of users, but I still miss a lot of the more niche hobby/discussion communities I used to be able to participate in. Even communities for fairly large hobbies or interests can be dead on Lemmy.
- The awful political takes. Everything from typical dumbness up to advocating violence (but it’s okay because it’s my point). And it’s everywhere.
Even communities for fairly large hobbies or interests can be dead on Lemmy.
Have you looked at !newcommunities@lemmy.world ?
I have, thank you! Unfortunately, I don’t see the niches I’m looking for, and even when they do, they’re basically dead. I can only scream into the void so long…
Like: decentralization and a renaissance of the old- school dream of what the Internet should be.
Dislike: media bias fact checker bot spamming every damn post. Power tripping mods.
Might i ask which mods you feel are power tripping? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want, no pressure.
I’d rather not. Not sure if you can view the mod log for other people’s accounts, but if so it’s easy to spot from mine.
I’ll say that I have some sympathy because dealing with internet randos is painful soul-sucking work and it’s easy to default to the ban-hammer, but…
My experience has been the opposite. I’m unclear what you are posting, but MY posts exist almost exclusively to entertain me, by saying my weirdst inner thoughts, and seeing how people react.
I regularly insult the concept of linux. I don’t insult the people who use linux. I insult linux itself. And people have…opinions…on that.
I CONSTANTLY call George Clooney a smug bastard.
And I’ve never been banned here. That being said, I avoid lemmy.ml. I hear they ban anyone with a different opinion than themselves.
Now downvotes? I’m unclear if I have more upvotes or downvotes! People don’t like it when you insult their precious wittle linux!
sucks on a penguins mamas nipples for milk
I’m still unclear what the purpose of that bot is, and why everyone hates it. It always just says bias checking is unavailable right now.
I hate it because it shows up everywhere and adds nothing of value while displaying busy formatted text. If it lately shows even less meaningful content, that barely seems possible.
Power tripping mods.
Are you not able to block it? I’ve blocked the entire community so I don’t see it much. You should be able to just like any other user… I would think?
You can but it bothers me that it exists, shitting on everything.
Oh okay, that makes sense! 🙃
Like:
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Decentralized system that limits abuse
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Great customizaion
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It works (unlike much of the competition)
Dislike:
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Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)
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Generally very pessimistic userbase
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Lacks polish and features in many areas
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Currently trends towards extremist echo chambers - the fact that .ml (an instance known for banning criticism of violent, racist, authoritarian governments) is one of the biggest instances, is a good example of this.
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tends to be extremely hostile to any sort of monitization, regardless of the quality or cost to produce content
tends to be extremely hostile to any sort of monitization
This is a good thing, seeing as how monetization has ruined other things, the web and newspapers in particular.
It absolutely can, but doesn’t always. For example, Gamer’s Nexus is well respected for their thorough and unbiased research and journalism. It would be extremely difficult for them to do so without ads and merch sales, as any products reviewed must be purchased, testing equipment needs to bought, and experts need to be hired to use said equipment. Until capitalism ceases to exist, most people who make stuff will need to find a way to fund their work, from paint brushes to high-end testing equipment. If we can’t accept this, we will rarely get creators willing to provide quality content, and what we do get will be biased towards those with the money to burn.
Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)
Unfortunately, while it only takes one user to make these communities, there is rarely enough to maintain activity and esspecially not discussion on them. Even fairly large niches, such as Dota, rarely get more than a post or two a month, and no meaningful discussion despite it being a game that emphasizes theorycrafting so heavily.
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Dislike: every post inevitably has someone complaining about capitalism, Trump, police, Musk, …
I wish I could filter communities by language.
Also one thing I like is the open war we have with memes with censured bad words for fucking fuck’s sake
I think the problem is that people think the memes are created by the person uploading, as if they chose to censor it.
Someone is just sharing a funny they saw on Instagram, there’s not much more to it.
Yup I know, some people uncensor the memes before posting and that always makes me laugh
Have you tried setting up the languages in the settings? If communities don’t configure languages properly, you can also point it out to them
It takes some time to block out stuff to make Lemmy usable. So much anime, bots and dumb American politics.
It’s nice there are a bunch of apps for Lemmy, but using it without an app is not very welcoming. It needs a lot of improvement (e.g. manually compose urls to subscribe to communities on other servers).
Honestly I’ve been raw doging Lemmy. I chose an instance that doesn’t block anything and I haven’t blocked a single thing. I just scroll past the politics and usually sort by new comments. I don’t see many bots at all
The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.
Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
more mature and can actually discuss complex topics
I mean… well okay, more than Reddit yeah, for sure, in the sense that here at least it is possible at all.
Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
How so? Genuinely I’m wondering lately if I’m causing issues. Generally that phrase presumes that the “witches” do not exist (I … thought?), but e.g. tankies (literally: those who deny that the Tiananmen Square massacre ever took place, like with actual fatalities rather than being staged or some such) actually do exist. Anyway, I wonder if it’s a natural reaction to the contentious atmosphere that has developed. Like all it takes is one person to walk into Chapotraphouse unawares, and bam, now you have radicalized someone against the bullies on the Fediverse.
Oh, or you might mean the overzealous modding of certain instances? Though I think that predates the Rexodus, so it’s not “becoming a problem” so much as it was here long before most of us that are now here came over. e.g. here’s a post from 3 years ago with a very familiar tone: https://lemmy.ml/post/206994. But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.
Anyway, the Fediverse has a lot more technical work to get done before it can be more palatable to most people, without HEAVY blocking - as that 3-year-old post shows, the issue isn’t going away anytime soon, hence the friction between mutually opposing ideological constructs (e.g. “people in the USA should just die”, vs… not that) is only going to spark more conflicts. We’d best settle in and get used to it.
I know, the maturity standard isn’t too high, but I still think that Lemmy is going rather well given where the userbase is from.
By “witch hunting” I mean “to claim that someone, a group, or a piece of content belongs to a socially undesirable group, without rational grounds to do so.”
Here’s a made up example. Let’s say that Bob uses a picture of Richard Stallman as his avatar. Alice sees it, and…
- [Alice] Bob! Why do you use that sick fuck as your avatar? You must be a paedophile!
- [Bob] Nah. I use this avatar because I agree with Stallman’s views on software freedom, and nothing else. I don’t agree with his opinions on sex and sexuality, specially not about children.
- [Alice] That’s bullshit, I bet that you abuse little children! MOOOODS!
- [Bob] No, Alice, I don’t. Stop lying.
- [Charlie] Alice, please, stop making shit up. Pleeeease.
- [Alice] CHARLIE YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING A PEDO???
Alice here is witch hunting. Alice has no grounds to claim that Bob is a paedophile, but she’s still doing it.
The “witches” often do exist, mind you - they’re racists, bigots, sexual offenders, paedophiles, incels, transphobes, fascists, so goes on. They are socially undesirable, and need to be kicked out. Even then, witch hunting should not be tolerated in online communities: what they do is intrinsically unjust, it makes their target feel like shit, it makes the whole community walk on eggs (because anything that they say or do might get distorted into “witch behaviour”), and it numbs people against the issue with the actual witches (just like the boy who cried wolves unwillingly protected the wolves, witch hunters unwillingly protect the actual “witches”).
I saw this plenty, plenty times in Reddit. But here in Lemmy it’s surprisingly more common, given the smaller userbase.
But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.
Fighting back is good. Punching random people isn’t. Witch hunters do the later, not the former.
I agree. Most the witch hunts are senseless and for all the mods and admins that grouped together to be a part of the witch hunt and even defederate platforms as if just one big systematic centralized group of eradicators kind of defeats the whole point of decentralized networking in the first place.
It seemed a poor choice to migrate redditors here, give in to the demands of the deranged folk, and drive away all the misfits deemed undesirable. That can only end with a bunch of dead communities. And now it seems large portions of users are lumping in just a few instances like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml rather than spreading out, which seems to poses a threat to the intended decentralization of lemmy. What’s more is many instances seems to federate with threads.net which is essentially facebook. Lemmy might end up even worse than reddit. What on earth were they thinking?
Edit: grammar fix
Speak for yourself! I want it known that *I* for one, am *very* immature!:-P
Ah, that part “without rational grounds to do so” makes such a huge difference doesn’t it? :-D
Like e.g.:
Ignoring all the genocide done by Russia, and China, and North Korea, but hyper-focusing on the not even direct but mere indirect aid to the actual genocide-doing people, and even then painting with an extremely broad brush and saying that nobody who thinks otherwise exists within the group on that “other side”.
I disagree though that it is directed at “random” people. Hexbears yes (it’s kinda their whole thing!:-P), perhaps Lemmygrad.ml too (whose content definitely appears on your instance) - though importantly, Lemmy.World (which this community is based in) defederates from both of those, and has ~80% of the monthly active users btw (thus the userbase “here” only partially but mostly may not be thought of to include those 2 instances, depending on how you look at it?) - and yes also that mod of Lemmy.ml who told the person to kill themselves seemed fairly random as well (yet all the more troublesome since lemmy.ml is federated by nearly every instance, the only exceptions being tiny single-admin ones). But the above image, note from the URL that it is from lemmy.ml, seems not entirely “random” to me - it is instead very much “directed”, at a particular group. As that style of propaganda tends very much to be… not “random” at all!
Although conservative Alt-Right sources appeared on Reddit as well, so both sites have a hefty amount of “alternative fact” sources. Moderation efforts are a more limiting resource on Lemmy so it makes sense that there is more of it here, overall. So long as we allow the lure of communities such as !firefox@lemmy.ml to sway us as we retain federation with those instances that not only allow but propagate that content, from the very site instance admins themselves, the situation will remain - the only recourse being for people to either leave their instances and go somewhere that allows defederation (either instance-wide such as the tiny lemmy.cafe or quokk.au; or switch to Mbin or PieFed that allows full content blocking of any instance that any user specifies, without needing admin approval). Edit: I forget to finish my sentence there: or else get an app that provides that functionality (I don’t know which ones).
