this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Asklemmy

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A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish there were more people here, but the slower pace of posts has helped me spend less time on my phone. It's not quite as good as reddit was for me when reddit was good. But Lemmy is easily good enough for my needs and is better than any alternative including the what is left of reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I am happier, and better able to analyze situations with a clearer mind.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

i feel a little more comfortable commenting here.

being a smaller community, i feel like i'm actually contributing when i post something, instead of just adding to a sea of noise

it also helps that i've come up with this new "persona". i'm able to be more of the real me than i can with my main account.

it's like half way between anonimity and publicity. this account has very little connection to my meatspace existance, so i feel safe to say anything. but at the same time i'm not gonna act like some 4chan user. halfway_neko's a good girl lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

For the better :)
I haven't been active in online communities for over ten years. It's been fun to contribute with comments and posts and I feel like I'm finding my voice again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Used to be a powermod on reddit. Got banned. Kinda miss fucking with shitters but beyond that I enjoy the extra time each day to do literally anything else.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I CAN ACTUALLY POST ON c/asklemmy NOW!!

Back when I was like 13 and on reddit, I posted what I thought was a good open question to askreddit, and it immediately got deleted with no stated reason. Now, I can ask any interesting question I have, and receive tons of interesting responses from people!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

A lot of the same Reddit mods have transferred to other major communities. Unfortunately you'll likely still hit the same issue over here, I've already been banned by one outrageous mod for disagreeing with him.

Best part about lemmy, ban that user/community/instance and move on.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i am curious as to your experience.

not too long ago i am having exchanges with people who wouldn't hesitate to use derogatory term to label me because i held a differing view on certain issues.

i thought it was reminiscent of earlier reddit days where overly woke individuals would abuse you on reddit and then abuse the report system to perma ban your account.

don't get me started on the mods who were power tripping and dishing out bans because they got offended over simple facts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ah yes the classic online insult to someone who has a slight difference of opinion from you.

A hefty amount of people don't understand that it's ok to not all agree, unfortunately those people are also mods.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’ve already been banned by one outrageous mod for disagreeing with him.

I rarely find it is as simple as this. There’s a remarkable number who had their post removed or that been banned from communities that “literally did nothing wrong.”
I’d be very curious to see what exactly led your being banned.

Edit: Comments like this signal you’re a pot stirrer and I’m afraid to ask you to expand this comment further.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have a new fan, which is nice I guess. Welcome

I ~~banned~~ blocked the community and admin which abused their powers, whether you believe me or not it makes no difference to what happened.

No rules were broken, and I am happy I am not part of that community

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m confused. Who banned who lol

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been posting regularily on [email protected] for the past eight months, so I see no malicious intent in whoever is a mod.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I'm not specifically talking about asklemmy. It's probably one of the good ones

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably because of the instance I happened to join (for entirely accidental reasons), I can feel myself being pulled in to an information bubble for sure and that is to a subtle extent influencing and perhaps hardening my pre-existing views about the world at large. I don't think that's a good thing exactly, though I'm not sure it's entirely bad as before I'd just kind of given up thinking about a lot of that stuff since my early 20s when I had to start focussing on other things and it's more like a return to form. I'm, perhaps misguidedly, okayish with this development because this bubble, this biased lens is so stark that I feel like it's hopefully less easy to end up being totally subsumed (maybe I'm just telling myself that). Of course, like everyone's favourite kind of bubbles, it's obviously one that's reinforcing of my own tendencies anyway, the folks here just take it a far greater extreme in rhetoric, to an extent seeing the kind of blind anger and mechanical doctrinaire response to even the most tangentially related of topics has kind helped me see where my stop is on that train of thought. Another way it's influenced me has been to strengthen my existing preference and respect for FOSS software and I think being here is gradually increasing this preference and will likely result in even greater adoption on my part.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it’s laudable to be aware of when we are only surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, but I also wouldn’t put too much stock in this Internet narrative that there is some morality to “avoiding echo chambers” or whatever.

You should always introduce yourself to a diverse range of (valid) opinions and ideas. But it is also OK to have spaces that are reserved for people that make you comfortable/are more like-minded. We do this in our daily lives too. The internet isn’t some sacrosanct space where we have to be engaged with people we disagree with constantly.

It’s the difference between a support community for LGBT people, and /r/conservative. The former is good and healthy, the latter is toxic and distorting.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well it's been 10 months since I left redis and spun up my own instance. It's been a fun little ride with a very fast surge at the start and a bit of a plato. Lemmy seems to be gaining traction again, which is good.

How has it changed me? - I guess I actuall spend more time here than I did on reddit - as I find the quality of comments far better and more enjoyable

As an admin / owner I have had to see and deal with some stuff that I wish I hadn't had to see - there are some sick fucks out there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Sorry you've had to deal with those things.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I dunno - at first it was promising, but today I was actually thinking of leaving Lemmy and trying to find a larger site.

I'm not sure if the entire Internet has somehow become addicted to groupthink or if this is just a symptom of Lemmy's smaller size and a selection bias, but it's been getting worse and worse over the past nine months and it's definitely turning me off to the community here.

What I loved about Reddit was that on any given story you saw a number of well informed opinions debating the nuances of those opinions. You'd learn so much more by engaging with the comments than just reading the article itself.

But here it seems more and more to be turning into a confirmation bias machine, where discourse and nuance takes a back seat to conformity to locally populist narratives. I can't tell you the number of times I've been downvoted for linking to multiple recent research papers (from places like Harvard and MIT) because the implication of those papers was contrary to popularly held beliefs here.

While I've had a few good interactions, it's become less and less of a signal to noise ratio on those interactions.

It's possible this is a larger trend, but I haven't noticed it to nearly the same degree on other less generalized forums I spend my time, so I suspect it's just a Lemmy thing.

A shame, as I think the tech is outstanding. But as is often the case, good tech is only part of a product, and in the case of social media it's the community too, and I've been growing increasingly disappointed in Lemmy's community who likes to pat themselves on the back for a welcoming spirit with the apparent unmentioned footnote in small print that it's a welcoming spirit that only extends to people regurgitating their own opinions back to them.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

tell me about it.

my exchanges so far has led me to think the left leaning extremists are populating lemmy because they are still angry at spaz for his dumbfuckery.

else it's beginning feel like reddit all over again.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Redditors aren't used to communists not being actively suppressed while fascists get passively protected and it shows. All you're saying here is that you prefer the one narrative reddit forced onto everyone with their moderating and astrotruf, and being exposed to different ideas makes you feel uncomfortable. You're always welcome to go back to the race-baiting and fascist propaganda, sounds like you'd be happier there.

Lemmy is a collection of differing voices from all over the federation, so your "there's no diversity of thought" sounds like when conservatives mald that their terrible ideas aren't well received the moment they step out of their racist circlejerk. To the white, equality feels like oppression.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's strange because that person's from lemmy.world? That seems like a pretty liberal/reddity instance from what I've seen. I was gonna tell them to go to another instance if they don't like .ml's politics but then I saw theyre not even from .ml lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah that's why I went as hard as I did. LW's somewhat of a nazi bar so that paints a picture of the kind of person we're dealing with here. I could just imagine their head popping like a gasket if they ever ran into a hexbear or lemmygrad user who could hard counter their shit.

EDIT: I looked into them and honestly not the worst i've seen. They're very reddit-poisoned but I bet a year or two off and they'll be fine.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's been 9 months tf?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jesus. I've left 1,124 comments already.

My wife's right; I am that guy.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I'm on my phone less, commenting more, avoiding more ads, and much happier with the content/comments on Lemmy. Reddit chains sometimes felt a little brain-rotty.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, with the smaller communities, I'm trying to comment more. However, I still mostly lurk because I usually don't have anything to add to a convo.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I have a lot less to say, and I'm more careful about what I do say.

I believe it's mostly because of the smaller community. It's easier to be an ass at a soccer game with 15,000 strangers than at your great-aunt's birthday. (Even if your third cousin is a neo-nazi.)

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I kinda feel like I have more of a persona here? Lemmy is a smaller community than Reddit and I recognize people more than I used to. Read: I ever look at usernames. I've bothered with an avatar, for instance.

Something I still miss is the "brain trust" that was Reddit. You could ask "experimental exo-ornithologists of Reddit" and get at least ten of them. Reddit had a culture of tracking down mysteries, I don't think we have anything like The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet or Celebrity Number Six. I miss stuff like that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lemmy is a smaller community than Reddit and I recognize people more than I used to. Read: I ever look at usernames.

That's a little terrifying for me as someone who likes using reddit-likes for the anonymity lol. Although on reddit I used to recognise some usernames in smaller subreddits where there were a few active posters.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Things like that come with a larger community. However, there are certainly message boards where exo-ornithologists gather where you could likely get a better answer than reddit, and if it's not actually enough of an interest to look for, then does the answer to your question actually matter? Knowledge is great, knowledge is power, but fleeting questions on a subject you won't think about for another decade is just mental masturbation.

https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/discussion/

https://ornithologyexchange.org/forums/

https://www.birdforum.net/

https://afonet.org/resources/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

i like having some of them here to bridge the gap and let me know they even exist.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm mad much more often and I don't like it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Its like going outside

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I miss the niche subs, but I comment more here on threads I normally wouldn't bother with because I know I'd get buried. Interactions here are slower, better thought out and generally more positive. I have actually witnessed someone back down from a position when presented with evidence a couple times and that was a breath of fresh air.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I still use Reddit for research purposes (programming and auto related things). But I also got rid of other means of social media like Twitter and Instagram. I still have a Facebook account, but it’s strictly for communications with family.

I only use Lemmy and Mastodon (for hockey news).

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