Comment on Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit?
Corgana@startrek.website 4 weeks agoI 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.
FlyingCrow@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Forgive my ignorance, but what’s a zero-reply guy?
Corgana@startrek.website 4 weeks ago
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 (that engagement is typically someone telling the reply-guy to fuck 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.