What are your thoughts on the Lemmy ecosystem?
I’ve been trying it out for the last week. I have my own opinions, but I’d like to hear others and see if we have common ideas on what is good/bad/indifferent about the Lemmy ecosystem.
Yeah, but no, but yeah.
On Lemmy, individual communities aren’t big enough to be communities but the community is big enough to be a community.
So any post that makes it to the front of the entire Fediverse has quite a few familiar faces and feels like old reddit would.
The issue I find with wanting Lemmy to be as big as Reddit is, you’re pining for an era of Reddit that doesn’t exist anymore. You can’t go back to 2011-2020 Reddit. It isn’t there to go back to. Bot posts aren’t just indistinguishable on occasion, they’re upvoted all the same, by other bots.
This is the best you’ve got. Pitch a tent and make the most of it, fam.
Unfortunately the bot problem is coming to Lemmy.
Bots posting content is already a thing here, and then taking up front page space is already a thing.
Lemmy is speed running “How to lose your sense of community”.
I disagree somewhat bc of one very crucial factor: here bots exist but they tend to be labelled as such. Look in your settings on the web UI if you find this not to be the case.
You click on a user account, then click block them, repeat just a handful of times and then bam, pretty much you have blocked all the bots there are. Yes it takes effort - it’s not done by default - but at least it’s possible, whereas on Reddit there is simply nothing that can be done, with virtually any amount of effort. Over there they are baked right into the system… right?
And here the bots are, or even can be, helpful. A bot that you know is a bot is a good bot, or at least an honest one.:-)
I don’t agree, the longer I’ve been here the more familiar usernames I see, so to me it’s been improving.
Do you have examples of such bots?
Reddit repost bots I guess
Lemmy is developing. Lemmy will be a second Reddit. It will be…
Lemmy is the Linux of reddits
Well ever since reddit died it’s the best thing around.
For conversation about various subjects with broad appeal and a left wing slant, sure.
For tech support or info on niche topics, not at all. Lemmy is not big enough, old enough, or easily indexed by search engines.
The porn is also pretty mid tbh
Short answer is No. It suffers from many of the same issues of echo chamber, bias, and bullying. Just on a somewhat smaller scale due to fewer users. And never forget - Winter is coming. There will be a time in the future the bots will notice lemmee and come for it also.
But I suspect this is all a human thing. We are a contentious bunch at best and down right hateful at worst. We build communities only to poison and kill them in the end.
I think it has potential to be better in a way Reddit can never be, but the two biggest instances do so little moderation their userbase might as well be “people banned from too many subredits”.
I assumed the killer feature of Lemmy would be “zero reply guys” but instance owners seem willing to tolerate them in the interests of faux-engagement. But the irony is this sort of “engagement” actually scares new users away.
Forgive my ignorance, but what’s a zero-reply guy?
i think corgana meant zero people who reply with meaningless comments just for the sake of replying, like those tiresome one-line joke threads that choke up every big subteddit.
A “reply guy” (wikipedia) is someone who responds to posts/comments in an annoying (usually smug/condescending) way, like what you think of when you think of a “redditor”. Big platforms like Reddit like reply-guys because they generate engagement (often someone telling the reply-guy to f-off) it’s also not a behavior that an algorithm can recognize, so human mods/admins are needed to curb it.
Over time, if Reply-guys are not banned they tend to make the overall ecosystem too exhausting to participate in, and (authentic, desireable) engagement declines.
I’ve started a few subreddits and not had much engagement. I started a really niche community here and had someone posting to it within hours. Yes, fewer users, but the ones that are here seem to be more willing to engage.
Platform-wise, it’s already proven that it’s a viable alternative (with some advantages even - the federated nature for one), but content-wise, it has A LOT to catch up (because let’s be honest - in addition to all the bullshit and toxic people, Reddit has tons of useful information and good people still).
I was a 15 year Reddit veteran and modded a couple dozen communities over there. I’ve moved over here with no regrets. The only thing that takes me back to Reddit is search results, and that’s getting less and less as more people have abandoned it and deleted comments.
The amount of bots there now is astounding. It’s making me believe in the Dead Internet Theory.
I last logged into Reddit in 2022.
There’s a lot of things missing - especially niche communities - but there’s enough people to get into silly debates with and enough memes for me to scroll each day.
A large part of what’s hindering Lemmy is search engine visibility, the “append reddit to your query” trend is really helping Reddit while it can sometimes be somewhat difficult to find content on Lemmy or the fediverde more broadly
Well, I deleted my r account the day they fucked over the app developers. Been here since, so I guess it’s a decent alternative. Not as much current content and it’s 90% politics on the front page… That can be filtered out though.
The militant Linux missionaries though, they get blocked. They show up in most tech threads and it got old a year ago.
Hello my dear friend. Can I ask you what distro you are running?
WRONG here’s why Arch is the best, and I know because I spent 13 years getting my first install running
Yeah the politics is annoying at this point, it feels like 60% on the front page is politics. I’m glad when the US votes are finally over.
Not yet but i hope soon. I started to like lemmy
Welcome here, first time I see your instance, seems nice
The userbase is too small for now. But I hope more people start coming over from Steve Huffman’s hellhole.
80% effective. The porn quality is weak.
I spend a lot of time blocking the lewd communities, it’s not good for my mental health
Also true. The lewd communities are numerous and botty and weak
Well that’s (porn) what reddit is for!
I personally think it’s a ton better. The platform is a bit less mature, but the people are much nicer and the filtering/blocking is lightyears ahead
And you can say fuck without being auto banned or something. Not a big thing but sometimes it’s nice to not have to sugarcoat everything.
Fuck yeah!
I wanted to ironically say something mean to you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it :(
I’m autistic, I would’ve thanked you for the compliment
I’m guessing that filtering helps make it nicer, I see way more nasty and extreme shit on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit. I want to like Lemmy, but I can’t recommend it to anyone I know because of how toxic the base experience has been.
May I ask what you filtered out to make it seem like “the people are much nicer” on a day to day basis? Genuine question, not sarcasm.
Same as I did when using reddit. I add a filter almost every time I see something that I feel like doesn’t belong on my feed. Comment sections are also filtered on the app I use.
I can screenshot and dm you my list of filters, if you’d like. I would prefer not posting them publicly
If you could that would help give me a place to start. My worry is how fast the content pool might shrink, can you DM me the worst offenders? The main thing that bugs me is the frequent calls for political violence from people I’m not sure have ever touched grass.
Yez I can, I’ll send you a few. My preemptive apologies for the delay, I have a busy day today
For me, I blocked the political subs and it helped a lot. But idk what content is bothering you. Are you looking at local to lemmy.ca? Idk anything about that instance. Lemmy.world seems pretty chill, it has the reputation of being the most mainstream instance
I typically browse All as Lemmy is pretty small and content feels limited. What surprised me the most was how often I see casual calls for violence and mass murder. Though as you mentioned, blocking political subs would probably help.
Yeah I remember getting in argument with someone who suggested violence/intimidation against everyone who committed the crime of…wait for it… driving a Cybertruck
I can’t fathom the mind of someone that cares that much about how someone else gets around…