As a 10+ year reddit user who has switched 98% to Lemmy, only checking reddit on my computer every couple days: Lemmy is completely fine, and I have seamlessly transitioned from Reddit.
Its userbase is more technical than Reddit’s, and there’s not as much content. But it is a perfectly good Reddit alternative. I find it isn’t as addictive as reddit, which is awesome. I just wish there were more educational communities akin to AskHistorians, AskScience, etc.
The “Not enough mod tools” complaint is valid and I hope that improves as the platform moves forward.
I DO NOT get the disdain for the Lemmy userbase. I’ve been here for the past 4-5 months and can say I’ve had so many more meaningful and fulfilling conversations here on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit in the 10 years I was there.
I think it’s the same situation as between a small town and a big city. Reddit is huge and with a large number of people; you’re going to statistically get a larger number of assholes. Not to mention there are tens of thousands of people commenting on anything that hits r/all, so there’s no chance someone else is going to read your 1 comment that is drowning in a sea of other comments.
Lemmy feels more like a small town. Things move a little slower here, but there’s less competition to have your voice heard, and I end up seeing some of the same users time and time again across the Fediverse. I think that smaller feel means more people have a chance to see your content without it getting drowned out by the masses, which means more opportunity to make connections.
Some people suck, but Lemmy has been fucking awesome for me so far and I love this place because of that.
Idk. It seems like that was a bot trying to dissuade people from leaving Reddit. One of the reasons we left Reddit was bc of the bots.
I had that kind of “astroturf-y” feel from the Reddit comment as well, but their opinion about mod tools is not entirely wrong.
The fear-mongering about CSAM being all over the place hasn’t been my experience, though. I’ve never come across CSAM here on Lemmy (sorry to those who have), but I don’t tend to keep NSFW posts on because I cruise Lemmy at work.
I think CSAM isn’t prevalent here because the groups posting it know that they will get nuked from orbit by every other instance for doing so. I think there is still plenty of CSAM content posted on lemmy, but not on the main federated net/web, instead on a private net/web (you can whitelist federate instances, which would likely be what any group of instances handling illicit material would opt for)
CSAM isn’t tagged as NSFW, because it’s trolls (criminals) posting it. I think the admins have been pretty on the ball with removing it though
To be honest, the only CSAM I’ve encountered is having it mentioned during the Purge back when it happened. Nothing else. As far as I know Lemmy is quite well moderated.
CSAM? What is that, I’ve never seen any NSFW at all.
“Child Sexual Abuse Material”. It is the new name for “child pornography”.
Ewwwwww
Can we please stop calling anyone who doesn’t agree with us a bot?
How is that a bot to you?
New users who aren’t defederated from Lemmygrad and hexbear by default are what contribute to that perception
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I wonder what toxicity the redditor was referring to
> lemmy.ml user
> incredibly stupid take on white privilege/western societies
why am I not surprised…
I’ve had so many more meaningful and fulfilling conversations here on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit in the 10 years I was there.
For one thing, it feels there is so much stronger of a push here to read the article instead of just the headline. Especially appreciated when someone adds the article to the post or leaves it in a comment. TLDR bot isn’t for me but it helps.
There’s also so much less of a push to be that meme comment that hits the top. There are still jokes but it’s not this barrage of people trying to be the class clown at the expense of meaningful conversation.
But especially the bots. Holy crap the bots were making it such a headache. The same comment slightly adjusted then posted over and over as replies to top comments for karma farming. The same stolen repost on 20 slightly similar subreddits and it doesn’t really belong on half of them. Not that Lemmy would be immune to this if it were as big as Reddit but sheesh I wish Reddit cared about the quality of content. They’re fine with whatever keeps people coming back and I guess that kind of content appeals to the most people.
I DO NOT get the disdain for the Lemmy userbase. I’ve been here for the past 4-5 months and can say I’ve had so many more meaningful and fulfilling conversations here on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit in the 10 years I was there.
Personally I have to disagree when anyone says how much nicer, better, greater the community here is. From my experience its pretty much the same as on Reddit by now. You got nice people and you got people who just like to argue for no good reason. But I think thats just how it is online these days and I don’t see it as a bad thing. Just disagree that community-wise this is so much better than Reddit. But I guess thats an unpopular opinion.
I’m glad you shared your experience, honestly.
I’m happy with what I’ve seen here, but I’ll also say that I didn’t hang out in too many smaller subreddits. Even when I did, I saw some vitrol come out on the regular. Maybe the vibe on smaller subreddits is better than Lemmy?
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
Same here. I have had better experience here than reddit. Much fewer one line / meme responses and more actual discussion on a topic.
I definitely get the small town feel. Like I regularly run into the same users, even from different instances. No one here tries to be a jerk, at least from what I’ve seen. And when you create content, people actually look and care.
A lot of it is also the instance you are on. Having my account on Lemmy.world I do not have to deal with hexbear for example. They don’t have downvotes on their instance and have a totally different culture from the other instances.
Also, know that a lot of people that ended up on Lemmy are actually the banned rejects from reddit. And maybe seeing they don’t get their “free speech” here either is what made them not believe in the platform.
I have very much been enjoying my time here, most people have been wonderful.
Agreed wholeheartedly. The Lemmy community has been wonderful. People here actually have good conversations, even if they take a few days to do so, unlike the folks on Reddit. Reddit comments were more meme-y and less substantive.
Yeah this is basically like reddit prior to the DIGG migration. People are much nicer here.
Lotta people coming here from Reddit expecting 1:1 replacement, and then get pissy that the 2 man dev team that’s just trying to keep up with this sudden burst in activity isn’t at parity with the multi-million dollar company that’s been developing their site for almost 2 decades.
Honestly, I’m just tired of the constant comparison. Lemmy can be it’s own thing. It’s a work in progress and it has a lot of promise, but for anyone looking for their reddit experience, there’s really only one place to get that.
"I don’t like Reddit.
Its interface is ugly as sin. There are fewer users there and they’re all pretentious, extremely liberal, and anti American."
-Some Digg user circa 2008/2009 (probably)
and anti American
Based
One day I will wake up, realize ‘based’ went the way of ‘tubular’ and probably still not have an objective definition.
“Tubular” I can at least trace where it came from. It’s surfer lingo. Sometimes when you catch a wave, the wave crests all the way over you and encloses into a tube. Surfing through that is supposedly the most euphoric thing about the sport. “Tubular” is thus “anything that makes you feel the way a surfer surfing through a tube-shaped wave feels”. Thrill, wonder, excitement, etc.
I have no idea where tf “based” came from. Wiktionary suggests that it ultimately comes from the chemical definition of “base” (i.e. the opposite of an acid). “Freebasing” is a way of converting certain drugs, particularly cocaine, into smokable form by converting them from acid to base. Rapper Lil B. is alleged to have coined “based” to describe his lifestyle as someone who is unafraid to be himself as an individual (which, I guess, included smoking crack). This supposedly filtered into 4chan to become an alt-right slogan for “admirable person who bravely maintains alt-right opinions in spite of adversity” (“based and redpilled”), and later was claimed by groups outside the alt-right to simply mean, “someone with admirable opinions”.
It definitely started gaining traction from based god lil b lol
I think the funniest part about it is how obviously over the top and ridiculous lil b would be, then yeah the alt right tried to take it over but now it’s basically back to the lil b style meaning.
As far as imageboards go, I believe lil b was the origin, not mere traction. KYM can hopefully confirm.
I’m not into the culture so I didn’t want to lean too heavily on this one source. It’s good to have some corroboration!
he talks about it in this interview from 2010, a little more than halfway through the article. afaik, his use is where the slang originates.
https://www.complex.com/music/a/complex/lil-b-talks-getting-sucker-punched-gay-rumors-drake-envy - so sorry about the ugly link, still learning how to do this
Yep, sounds about right for the timeframe, my friends in HS listened to his music, I honestly don’t know if they ironically liked it or not, it’s not “good” but it was pretty funny.
https://youtu.be/nYfceJhgvRM?si=xGLKpXwTq0h6aOsR
Swag swag lmao
My closest guess is “based in reality”.
I was familiar with its use referring to baseheads, and later took it to mean based in facts. https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
Doesn’t Tubular mean “reminiscent of the Mike Oldfield track”?
I’ve started just blocking all the idiots who use it.
It’s not that big a deal…
Maybe it is to me.
It’s not a deal at all. It’s simply a way to identify idiots.
not based
Nope!
Pretentious and extremely liberal still fit perfectly for reddit today. They definitely aren’t anti-american though. They have an unquestioning bloodlust for every US state department adversary
They have an unquestioning bloodlust for every US state department adversary.
Meaning Russia and China, I assume?
replace American with Russian/Chinese and you have modern day Reddit accurately described to a T
The only times I’ve seen toxicity like this is ironically whenever there is a big wave of reddit user influx, things usually settle down for a while as they adapt to the cultures here (or get banned), it’s not as much of an Eternal September as much as it is a Irregularly Scheduled September.
Most of the active comms here are smaller but better quality than their subreddit equivalent. You even get good discussions here on memes sometimes. (Politics and News here still could be better, though.)
For someone who’s been very unhappy with the state of social media for quite a while, Lemmy is a breath of fresh air, even though there are definitely growing pains.
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I agree with you kind soul. Some days this place seems like a toxic cesspool. You better not have a viewpoint that is even barely contrary to the this general populace’s.
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I replaced reddit with lemmy, and I’m slowly replacing lemmy with other hobbies. I’ve been recording more, started dabbling in warhammer and battletech, and just spending more time with my wife and kid in general. I think it’s been a net positive for me that lemmy doesn’t scratch the same itch reddit used to.
The thing is that for those Warhammer hobbies, there are great Subreddits with like-minded people, from which you can get inspirations and opinions.
But I do agree some are spending more time on those subreddits rather than enjoying the hobby itself.
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Lol, the user doesn’t seem to realize that if everywhere you go and comment, if absolutely everyone is an asshole, then maybe it’s you that’s the problem…
I’d rather deal with this supposedly “toxic” lemmy userbase than sift through a thousand comment post where 900 are bot reposts on reddit
Guy is hundred percent right. Lemmy is a echo chamber for a certain demographic as vast majority of users are in it.
We either have tech, or politics. Literally every topic ends up in either. We also don’t have the differing opinions aspect as just about every debater talks like they’re just the different shade of the same color.
Even spicy news that would make any other site a warzone of opinions just echo chambered here. Literally everyone agrees on one conclusion and random two comments that disagree with that having at least -15 points.
To name a few (note, I am only refering to the loud obnoxious minority, not the majority who are mostly cool)
- Linux: too over the top fanboying a times, and the distro war can be absurd here; this coming from me, a full-time Linux user
- Atheism: yes, I know religion is stupid; but you know what else is stupid, trying to force feed your opinion; I mean, we can’t even joke about church wifi name here
- Vegan: no, bashing meat eaters won’t make them stop eating them, they’ll just hate you more
- American Politic: no, not everything is about your shit, that orange business man/ex-president in an orange suit doesn’t affect the rest of the world
Atheism: yes, I know religion is stupid; but you know what else is stupid, trying to force feed your opinion; I mean, we can’t even joke about church wifi name here
Sure you can. Look again at your link. You linked straight to one heavily down voted comment thread under that post. Click the view all comments link and you can see that virtually all the other comments there are positive, mainly, other funny wifi names. If you find one negative post, already heavily down voted, to be too much negativity for you then you are not going to be happy anywhere on the internet.
Yes, you are right, it has become more positive recently. When I first saw this, the comment in question had a positive point. Perhaps due to different timezone (some would be asleep while others awake)?
Also: look at the number of people who upvotes that shit.
Yeah reddit is already a tiny bit of an echo chamber (tech savvy, frequently online folks). Lemmy is worse (every other post is "big tech bad, Linux good, privacy ftw). Not that these are necessarily bad things, they’re just not representative of the general population.
I would love to get the opinions of people who fall for Nigerian Prince scams, or people who actually click the ads that say “There are hot singles in your area” just to diversify my niche online social group.
they’re just not representative of the general population.
Good. If I wanted the general population, I’d scroll Facebook
The general population:
spoiler
Reddit has echo chambers in the different subreddits, and they can be about as vicious or more than Lemmy instances.
This is what 35 years of right-wing talk radio turning any cultural event into a political crusade has gotten us. The right wing echo chamber has brain-poisoned so many Americans, that they no longer have any non-political schemata for interpersonal interaction on any topic.
Want to talk about how to keep the Internet fast and secure? That’s political now.
Want to talk about the science behind the causes of climate change? That’s political now.
Want to talk about making anyone’s life better in any material way, other than a blood-sucking c-suite executive? That’s political now.
Want to talk about medicine? Oh you betcha that’s political now.
Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, and Fox News have caused this. And I have no problem calling them out for it. Think saying-so is “political?” Screw off. I don’t care if your politics get in the way of everything that’s interesting to discuss. Deal with it, or move to Saudi Arabia where conservatives would be happiest.
The idea that something that affects society can be nonpolitical is just your bias towards the status quo.
Everything was always political, and the status quo has always depended on hordes of lumpen trained to identify with their own oppressors over their own interests.
Before there were networks of right-wing radio and websites distributing right-wing talking points, they just used TV, newspapers, mailing lists, posters, etc. The effect was still 100 million Americans cheering when the national guard shot students protesting against the state sending their friends to die while participating in atrocities in Vietnam.
Even gardening is political; the notion that you should only plant grass and ornamental plants, mow your lawn once a week, and any deviation was a flaw was popularized and enforced by William Levitt to keep people from having too much time to read and become communists.
Similar sentiments spring up after the civil war regarding edible gardening and use of fruiting trees in urban planning, for fear that black people will live off foraging instead of working.
People that act like the media landscape was better or people more informed overall when everyone got their news from the same big 3-4 networks and 2-3 newspapers BLOW MY FUCKING MIND. Like, please read Manufacturing Consent once.
This take that things only got “political” when conservative talk radio got popular…I honestly can’t.
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Right, and to some people of a certain temperament, being aware of, and concerned about a vast range of entirely different issues, all of which can be engaged with on a number of levels that build on your knowledge and understanding, all of that is just an “echo chamber”.
The echo chamber argument doesn’t account for the fact that people can have shared fundamental values and nevertheless have constructive valuable informative conversations that engage in nuanced analysis. Being concerned about climate change, for instance, you can have all kinds of productive conversations about new research showing how hot September was, or how to make cities more walkable, or any number of things, and those are valuable conversations where describing them as echo chambers is silly. They’re actually good conversations where we gain something from having them. If your primary test of a community is whether it does or doesn’t have echo chambers, it doesn’t have meaningful things to say about cases like this.
There are so many “Well Acshually” people here. It’s insane.
Well Actually not enough. Debate things till the end and know what is right.
We need some form of wiki to manage those debates so that we only have them once.
We either have tech, or politics.
You forgot about Star Trek memes. Although often those are about tech and politics.
Star Trek memes are the only things keeping me on platform lmao
I agree. But candidly I feel like there are bots that contribute to the voting.
I mean, is it? Because I’ve found it to be an overall better experience so far. Am I just not going to the right instances/communities? I mean, I get that there are some fucked up places in the Fediverse, but I haven’t been actively looking for them, and I haven’t accidentally stumbled across anything so far.
Redditors complaining about CSAM? Last I checked Reddit had a subreddit called r/18_19 (a porn subreddit for adult teenagers aged under 20) with over 1.5 million subscribers. I sorry, but there is no way that all the posters there are over 18, given Reddit’s lax verification practices on NSFW instances. That’s some “trust me bro” nonsense. Reddit had r/jailbait and violentacerz not even a decade ago. Spez was there back then too.
I have never seen any CSAM on Lemmy. If it’s an issue, it should be dealt with the utmost urgency and concern though.
I miss the random non tech centric communities from Reddit. The userbase here, across the fediverse as a whole gravitates towards more tech focused aspects and while that’s fine, you miss out on the random topics / subreddits you’d find on Reddit.
(The answer isn’t also ‘just start that community here’, specially I miss randomly getting topics from subjects I wouldn’t even search for, but just get surfaced because of the shear amount of content and users Reddit has)
Maybe I’m just weird but I think the tech focus is better.
Like that’s where all this started. Kevin Rose wanted a better version of Slashdot, a tech news aggregator, so he created Digg.
And Digg was about tech news for several years before going to a general format, at which point it became trash.
And then Digg’s redesign killed the site and everyone flocked to a Digg clone called reddit, even though reddit was a clone of post-shittification Digg, not pre-shittification Digg.
Being tech-focussed really does help. I’d sooner deal with Well Actually neckbeards than the average Facebook user, even if I’m not just interested in tech news.
Check the top hour filter of all instances. That’s where other content surfaces.
It sounds like the real complaint is that it’s different.
Because yeah it’s certainly not more toxic. That’s laughable. My interactions here have been overwhelmingly better than on reddit.
And the other complaints boil down to “it’s small and new, yuck”… Yeah that’s a good thing usually. There have been terrible attacks with CSAM but people are handling it and luckily I’ve never seen a single image like that. On reddit it was not uncommon to see mutilated humans without wanting to even though there was far more time and resources available to prevent that
I was on lemmy.world
well there’s your problem
eh, reddit leans left but there’s a good chunk of far right extremists that have infiltrated a lot of subs especially politics ones and turned them to shit.
lemmy leans left but instead of the extreme right we have lots of extreme left and tankies,namely from 2 particular instances.
both kinds of extremists never make any sense, are complete snowflakes, and live in some sort of weird alternate reality where in some cases I can’t even tell of they are extreme left or right, they both trend towards extreme levels of authoritarian dick sucking
both kinds of extremists never make any sense, are complete snowflakes, and live in some sort of weird alternate reality where in some cases I can’t even tell of they are extreme left or right, they both trend towards extreme levels of authoritarian dick sucking
this weird alt reality we inhabits portal is found by reading books, engaging with reality and talking to people outside the first world
You have a bullet in the chamber and Putin in front of you.
What do you do?
And to that commenter’s point I can’t tell which side you’re on, although “authoritarian dick sucking” seems to have prompted you to self-identify.
Ironic that the liberal doesnt think the system they defend isnt an extreme to the vast majority of the world.
When I overthrow your government and slaughter striking workers for cheap fruit, that’s just the rules-based international order. When those same people organize to protect themsevles from my endless fuckery, that’s authoritarianism.
Lol its on you if you cant tell someone is on the “extreme left” when they said their views are formed by reading and talking to people not from the first world.
That just means you, yes you, lack the political knowledge to identify people even when they identify the most basic foundations of their views right in front of you lol.
You think extreme right wingers are talking to the global south and reading theory? Lmfao.
But the thing is that they aren’t formed by reading, unless you mean USSR propaganda pamphlets.
The straight up denial that Russia or China could do anything wrong is what gets me, same with the claim that Communism is in itself viable.
Communism is a fairy tale, just like the Free Market, for the exact same reason.
My user name is literally based on Thomas Sankara lol, but ok nice strawman im sure the person you just invented in your head is scary.
I also have a degree in sociology and read up to date sociological studies, I’ve read most of Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Marx and I’ve read most of what Sankara, Fred Hampton, Angella Davis and Claudia Jones have to say for one.
What have you read?
“Good” liberals and weird homophobia, name a more iconic duo
reddit leans left
lol
Reddit leans “acceptable” left, which is basically what the yanks allow.
Reddit’s highest concentration of users from 2015 was a US military base
It creates an environment where you can call out billionaires/gun nuts/anti vaxxers/homophobes/Saudis/etc and get upvotes, but it won’t let you create an actual opposition to the problem.
Like, surely you have heard about atrocities committed by Saudi Arabia or Israel or other US allies? They get maybe half a day on r/all, compared to any demonstrably less deadly event in Iran/China/Russia that hangs in news subreddits for weeks? Even if it isn’t a left wing bias, it’s definitely a right wing bias.
Reddit has a left wing bias, but also an American bias
It is mainly just Americans talking to other Americans about American things, without even acknowledging any other country exists, or when they do it is grouped together like “other countries”
eh, reddit leans left
The left-right spectrum isn’t a helpful model (Piped link) on an international forum. As you’ve seen in all the replies, people have very different ideas on what is left and what isn’t… there is actually no true definition. Many people will, for example, argue that liberalism is the status quo and therefore centrist since the advent of socialism/anti-capitalism and fascism. This is especially true outside of the Five Eyes countries (US, UK, AUS, etc.) where the political atmosphere is clearly different for historical and cultural reasons. On top of that, reddit is so huge that different communities have noticeably different leanings, so naturally someone will object when any generalization is made.
they both trend towards extreme levels of authoritarian dick sucking
Congratulations, you just pissed off all the anarchists lol
TLDW:
The political compass is a better representation purely because it acknowledged that political ideals aren’t a linear spectrum, but it still misses the mark because a plane isn’t sufficient either.
Politics is such a complex topic and any simple representation of it will lead to what would appear to be contradictions in a person’s beliefs.
Politics is such a complex topic and any simple representation of it will lead to what would appear to be contradictions in a person’s beliefs.
Absolutely. And certainly with this kind of geometric modelling, with a spectrum or plane where these broad and complex concepts are ordered more-than or less-than others.
The political compass is a better representation
I disagree with even this. It’s not better, it’s equally inappropriate.
The political compass is adding an extra idealist axis to an undefined axis (the linked video explains this in more proper detail). It’s just digging further into a hole in an attempt to make it work, when the whole paradigm is wrong. And this is bad, because the compass model has rationalized that undefined, subjective linear spectrum. It helps delude people.
My only point on the compass being a better representation is that it acknowledged a problem. That’s not to say it’s a good representation.
I think it’s unhelpful to say that a step toward more fidelity is the same level of bad, though. Even if it’s the tiniest step, it’s a move in the right direction by pointing out that a single line isn’t sufficient.
In reality, it would be more like a series of lines on different topics weighted differently by an individuals priorities so no singular generic representation will ever be truly good enough.
In reality, it would be more like a series of lines on different topics weighted differently by an individuals priorities so no singular generic representation will ever be truly good enough.
In reality, there are no lines. And that’s exactly why I say, it’s not a step forward to add another vague idealist axis on top of a vague undefined idealist axis. Politics is not geometrical, there isn’t a concept of ordered values. The entire method of thinking is wrong, and that video helps explain what a more appropriate alternative model based on human history is like.
Adding an axis is just walking forward down a wrong path; a move in the wrong direction by suggesting the issue is about how much fidelity we have.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
left-right spectrum isn’t a helpful model
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
