this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
130 points (96.4% liked)

Asklemmy

44148 readers
1283 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Reddit got redundant. I like arbitrary All and Popular feeds and boy did those suck after the nth made up feel good repost.

As for staying, I'm more inclined to comment here. I'm shy even by online standards but Lemmy feels like it needs more commenters.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Reddit went ban happy and nuked my 13 year old account over attempting to appeal a mod power tripping over an innocent comment they didn't like.

Which was after the api think killed RiF

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Non-ideologically: the culture is measurably better. Here's why.

  • The Lemmy Algorithm. This is a big flaw with Reddit -- people have the attention span for the first ten comments, and then subcomment upvotes halve (with decent std. dev -- we aren't Zipf's Law devotees there) until invisibility. I don't think my Reddit comments are even seen, let alone replied to. But here, new comments have a chance.
  • The sense of "mineness". A lot of people see this place as "their own", so there's responsibility to raise your communities right, and another to interact (hence, variably lower hostility). I don't post much but I respond a lot to the people who comment in them, because I feel that it'd be nice to contribute to do my part and keep this place up.
  • At risk of sounding self-absorbed/elitist, the entry level helps culture too. People are here because they were dissatisfied with the state of other sites, then made a jump; this is a sieve that to an extent increases the standard of sorting by new. (This has limitations of course -- we still have extremists for example -- and it isn't necessarily advocating for Lemmy to never be mainstream.)

e.g. that Draw a Duck post a while back is probably far beyond a lot of platforms' capabilities/proclivities.

(I admit: this is a paraphrased comment I made a few months ago)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I left Twitter and Reddit and I found Lemmy and Mastadon. Lemmy is going much better than Mastadon.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 weeks ago

Reddit made me constantly angry, then the API thing forced me on their app which made me angrier.

Lemmy makes me feel good and the app I use fits my needs near perfectly.

This is a pretty decent group of weirdos we got here.

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

API issue made me leave, AI scraping posts and forcing ads made me stay away.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Reddit banned me. They hate anti capitalists and anti fascists

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

waiting for a bus

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Because Kbin isn’t around anymore

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

oh wow I quite liked kbin. what happened?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I think that public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that's accountable to the public.

Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.

Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. The information collected about the users can reveal a lot more about the individual than most people realize. It’s possible for the owners of the platforms to identify users based on the address of the device they’re using, see their location, who they interact with, and so on. This creates a comprehensive profile of the person along with the network of individuals whom they interact with.

This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.

Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.

From that perspective I think that open platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon should be the focus. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.

One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.

Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and popups.

Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.

On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network.

Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.

Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.

No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.

On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.

It’s time for us to get serious about owning our tools and start using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Where Boost goes, I go.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Once RiF announced it would shut down due to the API changes I made my account here. I only used Reddit on mobile so just staying on old.reddit wasn't an option. Tried a few different apps for Lemmy and landed on Sync since I can set it up as close to RiF as I could, but with improvements like sliding to up vote.

It's a much better place here, and I actually comment more here than I ever did on Reddit due to the toxicity and just getting buried by bot accounts. My account was 12 years old when I left, now I've been here over a year and don't plan on leaving any time soon. You're stuck with me now

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Got banned from reddit too many times. It's just like reddit here, but also worse in every possible way.

Peak liberal echo chamber in here...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Got banned on Lemmygrad for being hitler. Most of my family considers me Stalin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

The people inside the walls told me to. I no longer dare to defy them.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Reddit was reddit. I left when I was forced into using their stupid app and watch ads.

I've generally enjoyed Lemmy.

Edit: or to and

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same, used Apollo on Reddit, they made it so I couldn’t so I jumped ship then. Lemmy is where I went, along with mastodon

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Yep, I went to Mastodon too.

It's very upsetting that the way most people know about federated platforms is Meta's Threads.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Reddit's app is a pile of shit and I did not want to be forced to use it. I have donated to Boost a couple of times.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 weeks ago

I came because I was sick of Reddit.

I didn't realize how horrible a lot of users on Lemmy are.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Reddit banned r/chapotraphouse for saying "slaveowners should be killed"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I found it in the reddit kerfuffle and stayed because it reminded me of a combination of Usenet text forums and early Reddit. The pace here is manageable and it's mostly nice.

So I am here for whatever I was on Usenet then Reddit for, just to have a space to read people's opinions and maintain a niche community.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Honestly don't remember why I signed up. I like it though. Kind of similar vibe to when I used Reddit except much better. It's got some nice small-ish (but not too small) communities for FOSS stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

apology for poor english

when were you when Reddit dies?

i was sat at home eating smegma butter when pjotr ring

"Reddit is kill"

"no"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I want to talk to people online but reddit is too yucky. Lemmy has a better community than reddit and it's not for proffit open source decentralized and all the other things that I love.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

As in, why here and not reddit? I drifted away from posting on reddit about 5 - 8 years ago. I was icky over their ads and tracking and it was just a time sink I didn't need back then, but I would still use alternate frontends (the current equivalent would be libreddit) to lurk while on the train trip to work and back.

I forget whether I found lemmy from /r/piracy exploring bunker options (raddle and lemmy) or if it was through FOSS, but I liked its potential and have been here posting here since 2022.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Allows Tor and VPNs

UI is so clean and mobile browser friendly

No "Download Our App" annoying BS

No ads

Federation make it censorship resistant when it comes to discussions, no one person can ban all dissent, while consensus of the instances can ban all the hate speech, and there's the tool of defederation to stop instances that allows hate speech to go uncontrolled.

Lemmy and fediverse platforms are probably the best examples of "Free Speech" platforms there are that, unlike those other "Free Speech" platforms, this isn't just filled with hate speech all the time, although it isn't perfect, and there are still jerks sometimes.

Edit: As to why a "Reddit" type platform with communities and upvote/downvotes, its because I don't like the "Twitter" style of following people. People become bad all the time. I like to discuss topics, not focus discussions on a person.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't want to advertise Reddit, but I gotta say they do have an onion site.
Although... they fucked it up with rate limiting. Yes, IP-based rate-limiting on TOR network...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yea the onion site still doesn't let you make an account.

Nothing beside your real IP would work on their site. Its a shitshow.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, no, this isn't just about making an account. They won't even let you log in.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Was ready to jump ship from Reddit before the API changes were to come in full effect.

Joined Lemmy after I heard about it and saw Jeroba worked well on my phone.

Completely switched over once 'Reddit is Fun' stopped working.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

i had trouble with jeborah doing this thing where it would say my account isnt authenticated yet for a full day or so about once a week. using summit now and it works very well

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Because spez was being a dip shit. Other than that, yeah, idklol

[–] [email protected] 86 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Came because of the reddit API. Stayed, because I couldn't stand reddit users anymore.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

In the same boat. I stayed because I can’t stand reddits god awful app showing you shit that your not subscribed to, that’s what r/all is for (miss you Apollo)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Dozens of us!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Left reddit for the #FuckSpez incident. Stayed because mostly everyone here is a lot nicer than reddit and there is almost no transphobic shit on here(at least on my instance) which is really awesome!

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›