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.
CSAM? What is that, I’ve never seen any NSFW at all.
“Child Sexual Abuse Material”. It is the new name for “child pornography”.
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.
New users who aren’t defederated from Lemmygrad and hexbear by default are what contribute to that perception
Removed by mod
It sounds like the real complaint is that it’s different.
Because yeah it’s certainly not more toxic. That’s laughable. My interactions here have been overwhelmingly better than on reddit.
And the other complaints boil down to “it’s small and new, yuck”… Yeah that’s a good thing usually. There have been terrible attacks with CSAM but people are handling it and luckily I’ve never seen a single image like that. On reddit it was not uncommon to see mutilated humans without wanting to even though there was far more time and resources available to prevent that
I wouldn’t say it’s more toxic, but it certainly is a different atmosphere.
Coming from my curated subs on reddit to mostly browsing All-top on Lemmy, it certainly feels like Lemmys audience is surprisingly more authoritarian-conservative than reddit, despite the very active Linux, FOSS, and privacy communities.
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.
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.
I’m a 15-year user of Reddit. Lemmy right now is very similar to very early Reddit. Reddit’s users were more technical back then, too. I’m betting the early adopters of places like this are usually the technical types.
Another nice thing about Lemmy is that a lot of the low-effort, casual users on Reddit haven’t gotten here yet. Interaction here is definitely a lot more pleasant.
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…
One thing I’ve noticed about the alternatives subreddit, is there is a lot of people persuading people against alternatives. It’s almost like there was some organising to persuade people there was no alternative.
I mean, when you factor in you’d probably get removed, or shadow-banned, or have your posts removed for mentioning Lemmy, it feels like there is a multifaceted approach to discouraging folk from leaving the reddit teet.
While there is an element of truth, it’s scattered in with exaggeration and only focussing on negatives. The objective was to say Lemmy bad, staying good.
No way is Lemmy more toxic than reddit. I find those “well ackshually” folks are much less here.
I use to follow /r/degoogle on reddit… but it felt like pretty much every discussion was people shitting on every alternative, and implying that all measures are totally pointless unless you stop interacting with any form of computer for the rest of your life. It’s just so weird having people say there there’s no point switching from Chrome to Firefox because google is the default search engine on Firefox. I got to the point where I really did believe there was some deliberate destabilization going on, to weaken the community. (And it worked. I unsubscribed; and I’m sure it struggled to keep anyone who actually had anything useful to say.)
Anyway… I wouldn’t be surprised if /r/RedditAlternatives was similar to that.
Oof, I can imagine that sucks. Come join us on !degoogle@lemmy.ml :) Everyone seems quite enthusiastic about finding alternatives. I’m all about the Firefox, GrapheneOS, Proton Mail, Signal, Element etc. :)
There’s a lot of FOSS nerds here who get disgusted at you if you suggest someone use a web browser that isn’t Firefox. But if you hung around on the Linux/FOSS subreddits, you’d get the exact same thing…
Agreed, feels like the vast majority of people here are FOSS enthusiasts, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily if you align with them, but definitely a bias and could put off people who genuinely don’t care about FOSS or tech in general.
There is quite a bit of bias on reddit that makes it quite uncomfortable for some of those people. Quite often Linux, Firefox and great open source software is bashed. It can be quite disconcerting to be in a different environment, but it isn’t solely because of the views and biases of those on Lemmy. It’s also significantly down to the views and biases of those one reddit also.
Yep, bias exists everywhere. There’s no avoiding it. Reddit does have the benefit that biases tend to change from sub to sub though. Lemmy instances that I’ve seen (not defederated ones) tend to hold the same FOSS bias, but the intensity of it varies from instance to instance.
A lot of open source advocates do tend to be inclined to open source software on an open source link aggregator.
Signed, Open Source entusiast. :)
Yeah that ain’t the issue, it’s moreso the attitude than anything when someone chooses something that fits their needs better than the open-source alternative.
I say this as someone who uses Firefox but still uses MusicBee.
Out of a quick glance (really quick), I found this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/2915403
It seems you’re throwing rocks and getting surprised when people generally respond. You cannot complain about fanboyism when you’re trying to start fires. If you don’t want those conversations, maybe don’t start 'em.
I get that when you bash Firefox on reddit, you can start a circlejerk, but you don’t get the same response here and it’s as much to do with you being used to the biases of reddit.
That was after dealing with said fanboyism both here and on Reddit. Thought I should warn OP. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There wasn’t any really in that thread. You brought it up.
I’m sure you’ll warn OP, and another OP, and another OP, and another OP, and after getting any response, blame Firefox fanboys for beaing unbearable…
Yes. I ain’t gonna deny my experience both here and on Reddit, lol
We got some Hexbear toxicity, and some real Linux apologists.
But the fun thing about the fediverse is that you can just block those instances and be done with it.
What is a linux apologist?
Any supposed “toxicity” of Hexbear is far less than the average user on Reddut
I quite agree with you. I think tankies are quite misguided. They have good intentions, but not so great conclusions. I don’t mind engaging with them, and they mostly tend to be in good faith.
I wouldn’t describe it as toxic, and it’s weird some views in that regards. Many are probably engaging with people that just quit engaging in reddit.
“Tankies” are just those with a view based in reality and not ethereal ideas of “rights for me but not for thee”
You misunderstand my point.
Communists who believe in sharing the wealth amongst the workers, fair enough.
People who will obsess about Stalin and China, and justify atrocities, not so good.
When I say tankies, I do not mean communists.
So you are against communists
So you’re saying communists aren’t Marxists? They’re just folk who are in a weird cult of personality and love China and Russia including the capitalist elements of it? For someone from lemmygrad, I’m quite surprised…
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.
He is not wrong. I have had to block and get rid of other instances on Lemmy, because they are filled with toxic motherfuckers, and elitist Linux users
I was on lemmy.world
well there’s your problem
Sounds fairly accurate to me.
This feels like it was written by someone who has never been on Lemmy because that has not been my experience at all.
Reddit is fucking full of bots astroturfing right wing political nonsense and we’re not getting that on Lemmy because those instances are often defederated.
Or, you know, he’s one of those guys who signed up for world when he should have gone to exploding heads.
Removed by mod
Reddit is shit, no question, but what’s to the left of supporting Ukraine/NATO in this conflict in your opinion? Supporting Russia? Or something in the middle?
Removed by mod
As a russian native I don’t think you get the point. Let’s me speak it like no translator can replicate it.
Тебе, бляди (то есть, шлюхе), снаружи удобно выбирать коняшек в этих скачках в безопасности загнивающего капитализма, и мечтать о коммунизме с нефритовым хуем сзади, да по гланды, и ты почему-то охуенно так сильно игнорируешь, что ты отвергаешь одну центро-правую повестку чтобы подрочить свою бибу на открытую фашню, которая прямо заявляет об уничтожении людей по национальному признаку. Никаких тайных уйгуров, всё открыто, всё домтупно для тебя, слепошара. И люди, сука, гибнут. И они продолжат гибнуть пока фашистская пидрастическая гнида не подавится. И ты зовёшь себя леваком, поддерживая это?
Sorry for going too personal tho. That’s not what you are used to. I’m just tired of these arguments.
О, дополнительный лулз.
Тяга про-западных блядей к проекциям грехов хозяев на Россию и Китай - это не ново, в конце концов вы, карго-культисты, за хозяевами только повторять и можете, но не перестаёт быть смешным, что псевдолевые дегенераты, искренне считающие себя свободными мыслителями, с пеной у рта защищают центр империализма и главных спонсоров геноцидов, просто потому, что были шокированы реальностью в какой-то момент и не выросли из абстрактного гуманизма.
Removed by mod
libs are the same everywhere
I answered this person before, Feel free to join. I’m no lib and I’m living here.
"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)
and anti American
Based
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”.
Removed by mod
eh, reddit leans left but there’s a good chunk of far right extremists that have infiltrated a lot of subs especially politics ones and turned them to shit.
lemmy leans left but instead of the extreme right we have lots of extreme left and tankies,namely from 2 particular instances.
both kinds of extremists never make any sense, are complete snowflakes, and live in some sort of weird alternate reality where in some cases I can’t even tell of they are extreme left or right, they both trend towards extreme levels of authoritarian dick sucking
eh, reddit leans left
The left-right spectrum isn’t a helpful model (Piped link) on an international forum. As you’ve seen in all the replies, people have very different ideas on what is left and what isn’t… there is actually no true definition. Many people will, for example, argue that liberalism is the status quo and therefore centrist since the advent of socialism/anti-capitalism and fascism. This is especially true outside of the Five Eyes countries (US, UK, AUS, etc.) where the political atmosphere is clearly different for historical and cultural reasons. On top of that, reddit is so huge that different communities have noticeably different leanings, so naturally someone will object when any generalization is made.
they both trend towards extreme levels of authoritarian dick sucking
Congratulations, you just pissed off all the anarchists lol
Like some of the top-ranking comments here are saying, that place has a very large proportion of people who were coming from the banned subreddits like The Donald, various straight-up hate communities, and typical alt-right groups. So naturally, alternatives that were founded by anarchists and socialists (raddle, lemmy.ml) were almost always disregarded there, possibly with the exception of the Wolfballs admin (I can’t remember too well if they got much attention with the ‘they’re not all like that’ line)
It’s always funny to me to see newer users complain about a lot of political (incl. FOSS) users in an inherently political project, which was picked by many precisely because its political values prevent the for-profit shittery that reddit.com has been doing for 15 years, and that alt-right social media alternatives frequently do whenever they get enough users. Yes, we’re going to voice our concerns when people show up at the door and want this to be just like reddit was, or bring over the uncritical mainstream ignorance we came over here to avoid.
Everyone wants to bring over Reddit bullshit like the idea of “brigading” too. If you complain about that on a federated instance then you are simply too Reddit-brained
Honestly, brigading is still a valid thing that can exist here, but yes, people don’t realize that if a post gets popular on a popular federated instance, people who appear like ‘foreigners’ (for lack of better word) will jump in and flood it. It looks as if a brigade, but it’s entirely organic, non-malicious, unorganized and unprompted.
I’m not sure how to classify things like ‘dunk tank’ posts, where someone on an instance will say ‘lol look how dumb this post over there is’… it’s not really calling a raid but many people will go to the source comment and dogpile them. And sure, that’s just part of being a public website, but it’s a bit easier with federation to go over and interact, just like it is moving between subreddits on reddit.
