this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

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To me it feels like a matured Reddit. (At least most of the time 🙃)

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

It’s like Reddit from 2007, if everyone were expecting it to be like Reddit from 2017. (E.g., creating fragmented, fine-grained sub-communities before the coarser-grained communities are saturated.)

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

I love it here but have one gripe… I can’t play videos in-app. (Maybe it’s just my app’s problem, but it’s a bummer for me.)

Lemmy is entertainment / social media for me, and I’d like to have something like Reddit’s TiktokCringe sub here. I don’t like Reddit and I don’t like Tiktok, but I do like funny videos that are presented to me because people think they are funny rather than because Youtube’s algo thinks it’ll boost an advertiser’s clout. Playing video without having to open another app would be nice.

Beyond that, I love it here. Conversations can actually happen here and I’ve even met people on Lemmy and continued to chat with them outside of the platform on other apps — I’ve never had that happen on any other social media. So cool.

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

I love the fediverse and especially the threadiverse. I'm okay with Lemmy specifically, but I prefer Kbin, and am looking forward to some entirely different option.

It's not as notable as it was in May or June, before the main Reddit exodus, but it still feels sort of like the early days of the internet here. People have to kind of go out of their way to be here, and the system's a bit wonky and obtuse, so there's a pleasant lack of lazy idiots. And I can actually interact with people who actually have things to say, rather than just wading through regurgitated memes and botspam.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m starting to see the propaganda bots and spam creep in. I guess that means it’s reaching a certain popularity level.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

Friendlier than reddit, but a lot more really stupid hot takes than reddit. Not as many shitheads; but the shit heads that are here are even shittier than anywhere else I've been on the Internet. Mostly the super paranoid security and super hardcore "free speech" folks that are like the main character of Conspiracy Theory. This platform seems to attract a lot of those.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think you've hit the nail on the head. There are some hilariously poor takes on here, and some that were never an issue on Digg or early-days Reddit. I've had arguments on here that I've never had anywhere else, from Americans telling me that I am incorrect about my own country, people telling me that I am wrong about software I've literally worked on with my employer, and frankly some of the worst political views you'd find on a left-leaning board.

I can tolerate the Linux and security nutjobs, because they're just rehashing the same tired arguments from a decade ago, and will be making up the same nonsense about switching their parents from Windows to Linux and them just saying "oh, that's nice, it's really good" all while they're just happy that their son is interacting with humans for a change.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Makes sense. There are two types of people here: those that left reddit by choice, and those that got ran off because they were assholes.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Most of the time is great, but there's hive mind here too. If you're against running closed captions on your TV for example. That was the most recent I got bombed for, but there have been other times.

Most of the time it's more adult, but sometimes it's just like Reddit.

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

Try being supportive of Israel if you want a Really Good Time. jesus.

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

At least a bad votes/karma count doesn't mean that you loose rights/access to stuff, though you can still get banned.

I held back some opinions on Reddit, as the hive mind would have disagreed and thereby hurting my ability to post on other, unrelated, subreddits.

But yes, the hive ind is alive here too.

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

To be honest, it's not particularly great. But it sucks less than Reddit, so....

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On Reddit I would feel like I was speaking to one individual all the time. All of the top comments were like they were written by the same person. Here I think everyone is unique

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

I’m with my people—Linux nerds and fringe liberals. If the horde finally comes for us, I’ll be proud to stand with my Lemmings.

Plus, this place finally got me proficient with Docker, so that was nice.

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

Pros: Smaller, older, more reasonable userbase means participation is (for me at least) less intimidating and more meaningful. The atmosphere is very different and more pleasant. People are generally polite here. Comment fields have more interesting replies and less one-word comments and shit posts and memes and whatnot.

Cons: less content, not really feasible to endlessly scroll as an infinite distraction faucet. The userbase has clearly defined interests and certain fields such as sports don't have particularly good representation here, compared to tech fields for example. Comment fields are emptier.

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

Reddit where I can block people and without /as much/ absurd delusional nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely needs more content, more active communities but on the whole it’s OK. It’s unrealistic to expect it to be as large as other platforms at this time. I’m doing my part by participating in threads that I usually wouldn’t jump into.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Thanks for your participation. I think every user's contribution counts.

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

It certainly has its own distinct culture at this point, sometimes annoyingly so. Probably a consequence of the very skewed demographic still making up most of the people here. It also has less content, which is good for the comment quality but bad for scrolling.

Overall I like it here, though I often wish the memes were a bit better. Now I’m not a teenager myself but especially the more generic communities often have a distinct boomer and/or low effort flavor.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm less settled on Lemmy, but fully settled in the Threadiverse. Basically I see Lemmy like my current Linux distro: It's good and getting the job done, but I'm always watching the next iteration in the ecosystem.

That said, I feel like I've landed on a good host and alternate frontend that I like. And I LOVE that I can choose my host and frontend.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Basically I see Lemmy like my current Linux distro

This is also a really good thing. The only problem I see is that it's a little more complicated if sites would change their backend.

Like, imagine in 10 years Lemmy isn't the hottest threadiverse backend any more and now it's something else. But what about the existing sites? It's infeasible for all users to manually migrate their accounts to other, newer instances and they might not want to either (they might like their current instance).

So given that situation, instances need a migration path to a newer backend. But that seems more complicated than switching a Linux distro for as a single individual.

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

It's already happening with discuss.online, they're building their own backend. It shouldn't be too hard to migrate but I agree that multiple backend would increase complexity

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

Indeed. Data longevity is a concern for me in general. There have been enough Lemmy instances that have disappeared (including once I used to be on) that our ability to become a massive first-hand knowledge center (like Reddit) is endangered.

I know user portability is getting active attention. I'm hoping at some point there's a cohesive solution where all our data is in our own hands and we can plop it on to any instance of any service with a few simple steps.

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

There have been enough Lemmy instances that have disappeared

I'm not so worried about this tbh. This is to be expected in the start when all instances were new. Something that's only a month old is not so likely to stick around. But as time goes on, lemmy instances will get more mature and established. Some will stand the test of time and users will go to those instances.

In 5 years, the instances that have been around since now will likely stick around for a long time more.

I hope we won't need users to move instances. Instances themselves need a migration path instead.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm really happy with it. People here are mostly thoughtful, smart, and post interesting content. Less fighting, less toxicity, no shills in political discussions because it's not big enough, no corporate astroturfing (the closest we come to that is adderall spam ha ha).

It feels healthier to me than reddit, which I think I had probably been addicted to. Being on Kbin I never have to run out of content because of the "microblogs" section which has Mastodon, and my multireddit style "collections" (like this news one). But I also find it easier to put my phone down.

Also I find it hilarious that although I do still see occasional screeching about US liberals, over here it's because the poster wants "the libs" to be more left wing not more right wing.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If Reddit was a water park, Lemmy is the small adult jacuzzi room in the back.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

If Reddit was a water park, Lemmy is the small adult jacuzzi room in the back.

The soak and poke?

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

It really is fantastic here. Lot’s of cool people with interesting nuanced perspectives. What I miss are the niche subs with solid activity and conversation.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I wish that a lot of communities would consolidate. It seems like there was such a rush, and all these people trying to stake out their homesteading claim, that the community with a capital C wasn't able to develop. With reddit, subs would get big and shitty, then you'd see something like,"Hey, join us over at . It's like this sub, but with(out) ". And that spinoff had enough momentum from the start to keep going.

I'm not a sports guy, but it's like there are 30 NBA teams (I don't know the number, don't care, and irrelevant to what I'm attempting to stay). The first community should have been NBA@... until there are enough people visiting so that the fans of TEAMA can go create their own TEAMA@.... As things stand, instead of starting with 30 basketball fans having a common community to bullshit, we ended up with 30 communities with 1 person in each and often zero traffic.

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

Weren't a lot of the sports team communities started by one person just like a lot of the "Only X pornstar" communities?

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

The one thing I'd object to with the sports example is that I don't wanna see game day threads for teams I don't care about, but I'm totally open to general discussion of the league, including about teams I don't follow. If literally JUST the GDT were split off to the individual team communities I'd be cool with it.

But I totally agree with the over-fracturing of interests. Every now and then I'll see someone make a "spinoff" of a mostly dead community, just to post 2 or 3 things and stop. It'd be better if they just posted that in the existing community even though it only aligned 90% as well as they'd hoped.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Comfortable, but a little meh.

There's a handful of users I see posting and commenting. I read the Everything feed, but most of the posts are US politics, technology (with a FOSS/greybeard bent), or centre-left political takes.

There was a burst of activity during the Reddit exodus, but everything seems to be slowing down. I feel like I see fewer Canadian posts than the summer/early fall.

I appreciate

  • the handful of conservatives who are trying to build a community here. We aren't very forgiving to folks outside our Overton window, but it's nice to see other perspectives.

  • the Star Trek communities. I don't know if they're posting OC, but it's new to me.

  • PugJesus, the Picard Maneuver, and girlfreddy for their posts. Lemmy would be a quiet place without their content.

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

I read the Everything feed, but most of the posts are US politics, technology (with a FOSS/greybeard bent), or centre-left political takes.

I actually just ended up blocking all the US-centered comms and most of the meme comms and I now see mostly news that is not just about the US and also some discussions and stuff from other comms. But it's just my preference.

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

That's a good preference. I enjoy the memes, and I don't have a problem reading US politics, so it works for me.

I spend too much time scrolling, so I appreciate the volume. I would like more content tho.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think matured reddit is literally correct. People here at least seem older.

However people here definitely are also of a certain group. Which is not too surprising - it's a certain demographic taken from Reddit, not a random subsample. This is not really a good thing.

People here also seem more extreme in their political opinions (as in, not very "usual" or "casual" political views). This makes discussions a bit one-sided and polarized... But then again political discussions on reddit have always been so nice and proper and productive in comparison right /s

However I also see a lot of reasonable people and a lot of hope. I see more politeness (mostly outside of any political stuff).

I also like that people have choices - choice of instance and choice of client for example.

There's some good and bad but for me it's basically reddit with a bit less activity and slightly different experience but not significantly so. I'm confident that more people will come over time and that will solve most issues. And the benefits will still be there by then.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

I like how on Lemmy we can actually talk about things such as Climate Change. If the question is 1 + 1 = ? then we can discuss whatever the actual solution might be - whether it be 3, -1, 1.9, 2.1, whatever - as opposed to "it's not even happening and you are stupid for thinking that it is".

That's not even Right vs. Left, it should just be Polite, and it is Engaging and Fun or at least more so than getting yelled at by bots and toddlers on Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 152 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Less content to go through, so you end up going through posts and comments a bit more thoroughly. This translates to higher engagement from users overall compared to Reddit.

The con of course is less content to go through.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Agree. For about half of what I’m interested in, there’s some activity on Lemmy and the conversations aren’t just “no u.”

I wish I didn’t have to, but I still lurk on Reddit for some very specific hobby and occupation hubs. I think there’s a lot more “blue collar” activity over there than there is over here.

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

Same. A bit more mature user base (but not too mature. Poop!, teehee....). Plus I like that it's generally smaller, and therefore avoids a lot of the negative effects of huge communities.

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