I have noticed that I interact a lot more in Lemmy than I ever did in any social media. Let it be Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… I am used to be the lurker, but here for some reason things are different. Wonder if more people feel like I do.
I feel like you are more encouraged to interact here. Like you’re helping the fediverse grow. The other thing for me is that people seem to be much more civil then in other places. So yeah I feel the same.
Like you’re helping the fediverse grow.
It feels like a civic duty.
From what I see, Lemmy is just at the edge of “not enough content”. So many communities have one or two committed posters. So I comment as much as I can and post when I see something interesting.
This is how I see it, and it seems like comments are better received here, too, which encourages me further.
I’m doing my part. soldiers laugh
Exactly this. I never bothered to do much interacting on Reddit. Either comments were trolled or downvoted “just for shits and giggles” or they were buried in no time under all the snarky oh-so hilarious comments that instantly killed all real discussion.
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It certainly doesn’t help that Lemmy had and still has absolutely no sensible way to actually surface niche communities to its subscribers. Unlike Reddit, it doesn’t weigh posts by their relative popularity within the community but only by total popularity/popularity within the instance. There’s also zero form of community grouping (like Reddit’s multireddits) - all of which effectively eliminates all niche communities from any sensible main view mode and floods those with shitty memes and even shittier politics only. This pretty much suffocated the initially enthusiastic niche tech communities I had subscribed to. They stood no chance to thrive and their untimely death was inevitable.
There are some very tepid attempts to remedy this in upcoming Lemmy builds, but I fear it’s too little too late.
I fear that Lemmy was simply nowhere near mature enough when it mattered and it has been slowly bleeding users and content ever since. I sincerely hope I’m wrong, though.
Agree to everything but the doom. Yes, most people will only give 1 chance to a platform, but we haven’t churned through most people yet. Most people are yet to honor Lemmy with their first visit, at some point in the future. We will be better prepared than ever. This wil be true for a long while. So I think we should make (reasonable) haste, but nothing is lost yet. In the long run, we’re still growing.
Not really, the post quality is low and the commenters are overly assured and aggressive.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Is that how it is on .world?? On my instance and the ones I browse I find it to be ten times higher quality and massively less aggressive than Reddit.
I agree. On Lemmy, saying the wrong thing on the wrong community is like stepping on a landmine. The ideological differences are wild. Maybe I just need to get used to this and block the worse communities. It certainly feels very hostile. Especially from leftwing users and communities.
I consider myself to be moderate left. But I may as well be a fascist in the eyes of some for pointing out flaws that are inherent in utopic thinking. I think social media only rewards those at the extremes with serious engagement now and these echo filters drive people to holding ever more extreme views.
I think a lot of people spend so much time online and so little time engaging with their local communities that they lose sight of how their opinions actually map out in the world and the nuances of how society actually engages and compromises. This is true of the left and the right.
Well said. I suppose we can all be guilty of this, and this is why I try to engage with people of with many different ideological positions. It’s not always comfortable to confront out own beliefs and biases, but I do think it makes us more well-rounded.
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Lord, you and I must have been on different forms of reddit if you think the users over here are more overly assured and aggressive than reddit. Personally, I find most conversations so much more productive here.
Yes I’m seeing the same sentiment bubble up in multiple comments here. I don’t relate at all…
It’s been a few years since I encountered any meaningful discussion on Reddit that wasn’t immediately polluted by screeching buffoons. I’ve yet to see that here.
I hope this trend personally experiencing continues!
I have read so many thoughtful comments on this thread that made me say to myself “Yes, that. Exactly that’s the reason I mostly rarely bothered formulating a comment or opinion on Reddit.” The whole atmosphere on Lemmy seems so much more mature, considerate and genuinely interesting to read. I really hope we can maintain this as Lemmy is (hopefully) growing.
I’ve seen it fairly often by now; many people seem to enjoy posts with moderately long comment sections. I believe this is what contributes to a more wholesome experience.
Similar to how groups meet a natural breaking point when they grow too big and people cannot know each other anymore, I imagine huge comment sections create a sense of being meaningless and unheard. This discourages sensitive voices, and may appeal more to people who don’t care anyways, which isn’t exactly a great attitude for social encounters.
I can further imagine large comment sections create FOMO for the reader, and can overall be more stressful, which leads to aggression.
Just guesses and impressions. No idea if true. Also no clue how to foster that environment in a growing network.
That is probably a part of why I do comment more here, I would see comment sections on reddit sometimes already with hundreds of comments and just felt like I was trying to slip into a convo that had already been well established or whatever, here I feel more likely to comment because the sections will be sparser and my comments will actually get replies from the users in the thread.
I couldn’t have said it better! This is exactly how I feel
A LOT more. It’s also in part because I’m not being stalked by Nazis which I was on Reddit, but I feel so much more comfortable talking here in general.
Heeeey, nazi stalkers. Not bad bruh.
What did you do to get that kind of attention?
So I have a fake white supremacist Facebook account where I befriend white supremacists and then I would take their photos and put them on r/beholdthemasterrace. It was absolutely glorious to mock those inbred hooded motherfuckers, but then some of them found out their faces were put on Reddit, and they complained to the Reddit admins who opted to permanently ban me as a result. Yes, Reddit took the side of Nazis.
But before my ban they were all messaging me telling me why the white race was superb and all their usual kind of bullshit.
Not surprised at all. Hope you’re enjoying the fediverse.
Loving it! Firefish and Lemmy are my happy internet places.
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Well if you have swastikas tattooed on your face I don’t know what you expect.
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Why did it happen to you?
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On R×ddit, I wrote about a scary experience I had and posted, not thinking much of it. Weeks later, someone in a server I frequent sent me a YouTube link and asked “isn’t this you??”, as they recognized my R×ddit username. It was a video of someone reading out my post and giving it much more exposure than I would have ever wanted.
It spooked me to realize that R×ddit is now just a content farm. Posts will be picked up for videos, news articles, Facebook fodder, etc. Most of that shit is 20000% fake anyhow. What’s even the point?
Give me a smaller community any day. The moment people start farming Lemmy for content to read out in their YouTube videos? That’s the moment I bow out.
That’s an interesting perspective that I really hadn’t thought about much but you’re totally right. Glad I was always more of a lurker there.
Dp you think Lemmy would not be one if they were as popular as reddit.
How naive.
The best you can do is using different alts to avoid recognitions with your main username.
I am far more interactive on here. I was almost exclusively a lurker on Reddit.
I findyself upvoteing way more on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit.
Lemmy feels very different to me as well. People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn’t totalitarian. Plus Reddit really seemed like it was controlled by moderators with an agenda. I’m not a flagrant asshole (I think), yet I was banned from a few subreddits for not following seemingly arbitrary rules. For example, I was banned from my city’s subreddit for making a post asking a question that wasn’t directly about the city, it was more about the state’s culture/history. I just wanted to know what my neighbors thought. Apparently someone decided that wasn’t what the subreddit was for.
I also have found the discussions more mature, usually, even in some cases where the other person is to my right or left on the political spectrum (I am in the progressive / social democrat range). Of course there are always some that post in bad faith but it seems like the ratio of those to others is lower here, thankfully.
People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn’t totalitarian.
You’ve finally found the right echo chamber for you!
Kidding, kidding. But really, I don’t find people on Lemmy that much more mature or skeptical than Reddit, and I’ve had fewer productive discussions (though those have also been rare on Reddit for several years now). It’s definitely more left-leaning, though.
Moderation seems more friendly, though, I agree with that.
You’ve finally found the right echo chamber for you!
It’s been a very, very long search, lol
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Yes.
I’ve always disliked the current state of social media, because it always felt like everyone is shouting at each other rather than talking to each other. That’s why I like having penpals to writing letters back and forth and shoot the shit on whatever, and I’ve blamed Facebook and Twitter for killing that.
I lurked reddit anonymously but I don’t comment much, because it felt like the only place that you can discuss various topics with random people and learn cool things. But part of it is that slowly, it made me miserable, the hivemind with all the arguing and smugness and unfunny one-liners and most of all, the cynicism.
This place is a bit different I think, I really didn’t expect to get as involved as I am, but it kind of brought back that feeling of writing back and forth to random people and having a conversation again.
I’ve made it a goal to read and write more and talk to more people when I have the time to spare right now.
I was mostly a lurker on reddit for many years. Before that was a forum board user, moderator, and even setup a few for sports leagues. Despite being sports centric there was usually off topic sections for politics and other off subject debates. Often these sections became more popular than the sport.
Then it would became drama filled and once a year there would be complaining about all the new summer users once kids were out of school. They would flood the forums with newbie stuff and people would leave the forum and find a new home. Seems like this pattern repeats to the newer socials too.
With FB etc the forum boards seem to lose a lot of that daily traffic over time. FB and other Socials delivered that quick dopamine hit and it didn’t even need to be in the niche the forums were. For those that wanted the niches, FB groups came on the scene.
For me with Reddit it came on one of my early Android phones which was great for reading with. I didn’t comment much as the threads were usually fairly deep with comments and sort of done by that stage. It didn’t have that small town feel like the old forums so I wasn’t as inclined to add much. Still there was plenty to read, perhaps too much as books began to be replaced by socials too. Since I was only a mobile user, the API changes were a great reason to get off reddit and read books again. Still working on that.
I’m finding myself commenting more on Lemmy but like the life cycle of the forums and reddit, it’s only a matter of time when the users reach the tipping point and the feel of the place will change.
So I’m trying to enjoy things as they last these days. Hopefully get some books in there now too…
I miss having pen pals, social media really ruined that for me as well. I still remember when my, then, close friend moved over to Facebook. Our usual bi-weekly exchanges slowly changed into her posting updates and dozens of followers writing simple replies. No longer having the time to write individually. I still don’t know how exactly, but we just drifted apart after that. Still hurts a little when I think about it.
Anyway… That was about 15 years ago and until now I haven’t really been vocally active online, just spend my time lurking like so many others. I really had to make a conscious effort to get more interactive and I took the move to Lemmy as my excuse to do so. People were already complaining that no one commented and only upvoted, so I’m trying to be the change I want to see :)
It’s not like the old interactions I had with my pen pals, but I do like the human connection I sometimes get with others.It’s nice to meet you, thelsim.
:) Nice to meet you too, Margot
Less. There’s less developed community in my interests. Heck, even the football channels are quiet today.
Way more. There’s lots of genuine posts on here and not karma farming bots. Also, my posts in c/lockpicking and c/balisong actually got replies fairly quickly. On reddit, I would’ve been met with downvotes or people who don’t even interact with my posts.
Compared to reddit, yeah, kinda. On reddit it often feels like it’s not worth it commenting on a post if it’s popular and 14+ hours old. On Lemmy I will see new comments with the default sorting of comments.
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There are fewer people at Lemmy who only exist to blast threads with tired old jokes and memes so there is room for well thought-out comments to get more visibility.
I come here for discussions and so far most of the posts seem to welcome it, leading to more desire to engage.
