New here. Migrated from Reddit. Still trying to figure out Lemmy - what’s everyone’s experiences like coming from Reddit and does Lemmy serve as a good alternative? Pros and cons/differences?
I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. I mostly followed music pages like r/TheBeatles and loved to just rant about Beatles albums, Paul McCartney’s latest tour, discuss new releases from other artists and also movies/TV shows. I can’t think of any other website that offers that kind of forum-like discussion other than Lemmy?
I really did always hate that Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber. The way the system works with upvotes and downvotes, if I said anything people don’t agree with, I’d get massively downvoted. I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom… it really felt like I was treading on egg shells. My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song. Really petty.
I’ve always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
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Feels like early internet here, enjoy it while it lasts. Good chance this place will blow up and the normies will come in.
It’s similar in a lot of ways and this is still an echo chamber and the echo chamber we have here has a lot of overlap with reddit… but, while reddit mostly just leaned left… Lemmy… just leans anti-west. As mentioned, there’s a lot of overlap there, we’ve got a lot that is shared, but the parts where those two groups differ can cause some serious wtf moments if you’re used to the reddit community. As far as over policing, moderation logs are mostly public and there have been some controversies, but mostly people just stopped caring or left. If you stick around long enough, you will notice policies being applied unfairly if you’re on the ‘wrong’ side and it’s a lot easier to be in that category here.
All that to say, you’ll likely have some moments where you think… Maybe that old echo chamber wasn’t so bad.
Idea: Try exclusively using Lemmy for a week.
If you love it, switch. If you hate it, don’t. If you miss Reddit, use both.
I use both. I like both. But I also want Lemmy to become the norm.
I like using reddit is fun app. So I’m hoping for a Lemmy is fun app.
I’ve heard Sync for Lemmy is a bit similar.
I’ve been using sync for Lemmy since the 3rd partocalypse of 23, and I haven’t been back to reddit since. It’s been enjoyable being on Lemmy, and the folks are usually pretty awesome here. I can second the niche interest thing though, but I’ve always used reddit in a curated general content fashion, so Lemmy is plenty sufficient in that regard.
First of all, welcome.
Depends what you’re after, really. I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.
If your opinion is considered garbage, you’ll probably be downvoted for it, but banned is another thing; You can find an instance more to your liking, for example if you post tankie stuff on lemmygrad, you’ll probably only get praise from there.
It mostly comes down to how a platform with many people tend to naturally operate - garbage people get treated at such by the rest. So whatever your leanings might be, I suggest you find an instance that is somewhat reasonally close to share your values.
Other than that, one of the main differences from reddit is the content quantity - Smaller user base means less content. And I’m perfectly fine with that, as I can keep up with the feed without scrolling for hours.
I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.
This is true once you’ve blocked Lemmygrad and Hexbear, which are as much echo chambers as r/The_Donald ever was.
The thing I find most perplexing about those communities is that although they themselves support marginalized communities, they also defend highly authoritarian regimes (Russia, China) that actively persecute said groups. It’s very strange to see that horseshoe wrap-around effect where at times they have the same things in common with the right wing but for entirely different reasons.
I haven’t blocked hexbear (yet). As annoying as I find their views, they do produce some funny shit now and then.
You’re fine as long as you don’t decide to jump in and offer a contrary opinion.
Yup. They claim to not have downvotes in an attempt at forming a diversity of opinion, but as soon as there’s an attempt at voicing a hint of such diversity, the ad hominim is engaged by a swarm.
First welcome a lot of the users here are ex reddit
Lemmy is young it doesn’t quite have the traffic reddit does BUT it also has less of the crap.
I’ve always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
If you block sufficient leftist/marxist instances and communities, you might not notice that this is essentially a socialist fanboy wannabe utopia.
I’d suggest to browse Lemmy by new, block a lot, refresh a couple times, and then eventually arrive at a curated, sanitized feed.
But Lemmy is far from unpolitical, merely a different color.
Welcome. Its been great for me so far. Whatever instance you are currently on the amount of politics and echo chamber does matter. So feel free to comment and enjoy. If you have a complaint try another instance (or even Kbin) to see if this helps. Also to note that there is much more control about what communities and people you can interact with
but without the politics and without being overly-policed
Lemmy doesn’t really do anything to address either of these.
You just have to choose the right instance. Federation does address those problems.
Right now our options remain limited because its still early days and the platform isn’t large enough yet. But in the long run, whichever servers do a good job of limiting extremism without being overly authoritarian in moderation will continue to thrive and grow, and servers where the admins are petty and/or politically biased will slowly die.
How is that functionally different from finding or creating a different subreddit? On reddit if you got banned from a subreddit, you could just join a different subreddit about the same topic.
If you ran afoul of a moderator, sure, you could create another subreddit with a name like r/xyz_2 or r/xyzAnarchy. But it would only ever be an alternative, it could never replace the original community, partially because the name was already reserved.
More importantly, if you ran afoul if an admin, there was nowhere to go. The reddit admins exercise absolute control over the content that is allowed on that site. On Lemmy, people will just leave the server if the admins pull a spez.
I moved over to it after the initial Reddit exodus and haven’t really looked elsewhere. It’s not quite a full replacement in terms of content and engagement obviously. It’s good for broader stuff like memes, politics/games/movies/etc in general, but not so much for the specific. There are quite a few games I used to spend a lot of time discussing on their subreddits, but they’re basically ghost towns here for a lot of them.
There are also some more specific community leanings. You’re gonna see a LOT of Star Trek and Linux related stuff.
But overall, I’m happy enough with it knowing it’s a non-privatized space to talk.
Lemmy is fickle but it’s ok. Works the same but smaller, so you might be stuck on “all”.
Lemmy is significantly smaller. Because of this:
+Trolls are easier to spot
+Interactions tend to be friendlier and more wholesome/respectful
+Far more originality shining through
-less engaged communities
-fewer niche communities
-no rich history to comb through
no rich history to comb through
WDYM? We have
- No poop guy
- Beans
- Jeans
- Me
- Defederation Drama
- Uh…
The modlog transparency is honestly my favorite part. I get so much enjoyment out of the “zomg the mods are just as bad here as Reddit” posts because you can immediately highlight their bad behavior, or alternatively see when the mods actually are power tripping.
-Fads aren’t as easily called out/quashed, there isn’t much push back on the meme of the minute, wait I just described social media in general…
Lol yeah that’s true of reddit too
Trolls are easier to spot, except for the fact that lemmy.ml is the default instance for many users and communities eventhough the entire setup of that instance is very politically influenced. You could be in for a bad experience when you try to post a fairly reasonable comment on any slightly political post there.
Small but great!!! Once I’ve blocked Hexbear (the proud boys pretending to be far-left), everything is pretty fun and respectful.
Personally I still use other websites to get news about niche topics sinse Lemmy is small, but I genuinely much prefer Lemmy for general memes news and whatever else pops up! I genuinely think the funny post are much better than on Reddit.
I’ve been discussing this on Mastodon too, but more focused on features and limitations related to federation rather than people being dumber in one place or the other. But I also want more open conversations, which is one of the things I believe ActivityPub helps with.
So instead of voting for Lemmy I’ll go ahead and say I prefer Kbin since I’ve found it easier here to interact with posts from other fediverse platforms.
Just read carefully the rules of each group/magazine/community as everyone is free to tidy up their spaces as they wish, reasonably or not.
