Just found this space, I’m trying to play around with this platform. Can anyone help to explain?
I think it’s mostly subjective or anecdotal, but what comes to mind:
- The community generally is more friendly. Absolutely, there are still jerks or trolls around, but the ratio of jerks or trolls feel way less than reddit.
- I feel more active here myself. This one I can’t explain. The community is smaller, so maybe I’m not subconsciously worrying about being drowned out by other comments? On Reddit, I’d average about 1 comment a month at best. On here I usually leave a few comments a week.
- This point might not mean much if you didn’t join reddit when it was younger: I joined reddit when it was still young. I think back in '08? Lemmy feels like a young reddit, back when I enjoyed it most. Again, I can’t really explain this since it’s just a feeling, but one example of what I mean by “young reddit” is community wide memes. Wayyyyyy back in the day, everyone on Reddit was ravaging about “The narwhal bacons at night” or something like that lol. There were also a bunch of dickbutt memes… if you know, you know. Well, my first week on Lemmy everyone was posting beans for a good couple of days. No reason. Just beans. A few weeks ago there were a bunch of “Taylor Swift going to Australia,” Taylor Swift taking a swim," “Taylor Swift spotted at the airport,” titled posts, but all those posts were pictures of airplanes. The rotating meme right now I think is Jeans??? Idk. This is just a symptom of a younger community, and why I like it more, but there’s more to enjoy about it than rotating memes. This place just feels more genuine if that makes any sense.
- I feel like I’m not missing out on anything on Reddit and I have a healthier relationship with social media on this site than with reddit. Every once and a while, I log back onto Reddit to see what’s going on. Most of the “Big news” that’s posted on there is also posted here, but the experience now feels more bloated compared to here so I don’t stick around as long. As for this site… Yes there is less content. Yes there is less to scroll through. At the same time though, you can scroll for a very long time if you really want to. This eventually led to me being on my phone less and being somewhat a little more productive as opposed to doom scrolling.
- Lemmy absolutely has better third party support for well, anything. Sure, it doesn’t have official apps, but go to the app store and count how many different Lemmy apps there are vs reddit. Nearly all of these apps are better than the reddit app IMO. Most of these apps are also FOSS; they’re free with no ads. Yes, there are still few paid apps as well if that tickles your fancy. I know Sync for Reddit came over to Lemmy as Sync for Lemmy as an example. This shouldn’t stop at apps though. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are browser plugins.
- You have more say in your experience here. Again, with the smaller community, your voice is louder. On top of that, is your server’s admin doing something you do not support? Your instance is doing something you don’t like? Create an account on other instances! Lemmy is federated, so most of what you see should be the same as in other instances, but you aren’t under the rule of one toxic CEO anymore. I myself have like 4 accounts on 4 different instances lol.
- Piggy-backing off of the previous point: if reddit is down, it is down. If your instance is down here? Sign into another instance!
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, does some instance have a bunch of members or just communities you don’t want to see? Lemmy might not have native tools out of the box, but some Lemmy apps will let you block entire communities.
- One fun thing I like about Lemmy is you can post pictures in comments!
If anything, the only reason why I still use reddit is for smaller, niche, communities. To that end, yeah Lemmy is smaller, thus the smaller reddit communities are even smaller here. If I find myself wanting to make a post on a given niche topic, I typically post on Reddit AND here. Sometimes, my post on Lemmy will somehow get more comments than reddit still though. Reddit posts seem to fall off after a day or so, that’s not typically the case for Lemmy if you do trend something.
At the end of the day though, this is just a social media platform, and the enjoyment you get out of it comes down to you. ☺️ One tip I do have though is to sort by “Top of 6h” or “12h”. I don’t like the “Hot” sorting on here that much.
I don’t think this is definitively “better” than reddit. The functionality of the site is more bare bones. No big hidden features or anything like that. What you see is what you get as far as interfaces go. But I am enjoying it. It reminds me of a much younger Internet and much simpler times. I am loving that Lemmy servers are run by your average joe who just wanted to start up a Lemmy community. No single CEO who only cares about how profitable a site is.
Reddit, especially the bigger subs - feels really, really stupid lately. And I hate to say that because it sounds so insulting, but it really does feel like the average “IQ” on the site has gone from being this kind of tech/nerd culture of reasonably well educated people to like… old ladies complaining about their ‘entitled’ DoorDash drivers. It often feels like Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong, Lemmy isn’t 100% geniuses or anything and there are some smart people on Reddit, but on Lemmy I’ll actually have back and forth conversations with people and it feels like more people are acting like human beings
Eternal summer hasn’t hit here yet. Eternal August? Whatever the term is.
It’s funny, the “zoomers”/teen audience is not even a bother to me - I genuinely feel like it’s a lot of the more 40-50s demographic which makes any form of conversation a nightmare.
It might be insulting, dunno, but I think that it’s completely true. In special, verbal intelligence and logic reasoning are extremely low there.
Ohhh. Logic reasoning is extremely low indeed! I see so many fallacies there, it’s crazy.
Reddit feels like a corporate advertising driven hellscape where fear and rage is encouraged.
Lemmy feels like 2010 when the internet world was a lot more simpler and you could actually talk to people.
Yeah Lemmy feels a lot like Reddit from 10-15 years ago. Mostly cordial conversation on a wide variety of topics, the biggest difference I see is the lack of activity in certain communities, which is a bit of a shame. But I guess that’s a trade-off.
Give it time. Better to grow organically.
That’s where we need to get back to is 2010.
No one on the platform side is incentivized (or capable) of controlling things, which is nice.
I think it’s a huge plus that it’s not run by big tech corporations. How many such things do we have today?
You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.
For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don’t find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.
Steve Huffman isn’t here, so that’s a huge plus.
Nah he’s here. It’s the guy downvoting all the anti reddit posts
No, that’s me. I don’t care to see Reddit, Twitter, Threads, etc posts.
Steve Huffman? Former moderator of r/jailbait and current CEO of Reddit? That guy?
Self-proclaimed future leader of an apocalyptic survival compound, and obvious Elon wannabe? That Steve Huffman?
Uj/ wait, what?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”
…
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
There are some other funny bits in that article, like Spez having “large blue eyes” and once was a competitive ballroom dancer.
Doesn’t ban you because of your opinion. If you disagree with the wrong user or mod, you get banned from the subreddit or the whole site.
Fuck r/cordcutters and fuck r/news
I dared to question how Nazis were still alive; instant permaban to my 10+ year account. They are more interested in defending Nazis than they are removing them.
Well there was a video on r/news where a group of cops beat sonebody pretty bad, body cam footage I think.
I commented “I hope those cops get what they deserve” you know like criminal charges of some sort. Oh no, reddit was perfectly fine with cops being bad cops.
That was my secondary account oh well.
And any recourse/appeal is not guaranteed a response, nor will you know if it is ever looked at. Nuts, especially since there are subs which I was on and had built a large reputation for trading, one of which no new users can register on. Fun loss of earnings from that day forward.
I was never really worried about reputation or virtual points. I just tried to contribute to conversations and be respectful. But Reddit has gone down hill. Soon it’ll be dead like MySpace.
Mine was for trading, which was profitable for me. I needed that reputation/review score for people to trust me. Oh well.
Note that you can get banned from specific communities or instances, just not from Lemmy itself, as long as you are on a permissive instance or your own instance.
I really enjoy the variety and diversity of federation. There are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences each instance brings. It’s refreshing.
Preventing power tripping mods
I wouldn’t say it prevents them, but it does contain them to their own little fiefdoms.
I was just perma banned for saying…
this, to the New York Times being down voted.
I’m amazed anyone openly dares to say they work for New York Times now that everyone knows they are fully controlled by israel
Super eye opening story. This should have way more awareness.
A top level comments on an AMA that isn’t a question? Yeah that’ll be a paddling
Spank me, daddy.
Allows me to actually use an interface which isn’t awful
I’ve encountered far fewer Nazi shitheads here than on Reddit.
I particularly like how the Threadiverse dev’s and server hosts don’t count our posts and the work of mods as their value.
3rd party app support…
There are many other reasons, but let’s be real. A lot of us ditched reddit because they dropped support for third party apps.
There’s many communities I miss, but without third party apps that place became unbearable. The equivalent ones are not as active, but i can actually read and participate in discussions here.
