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.
Submitted 1 day ago by Zansuvobr@lemmy.world to [deleted]
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.
On the one hand, I find idle browsing on Lemmy to be a lot more enjoyable than reddit. I see more stuff that I’ve never seen before, and I see less unfunny, uninteresting stuff.
On the other hand: I drew a comic and posted it to what is basically the only Lemmy comic group. I wanted to give Lemmy an honest chance, so that was the first place I shared it. I figured it’d be a nice change of pace since the group is almost entirely reposts from reddit.
My comic started to get some traction, and then the only mod in the only Lemmy comic group removed it for profanity. The profanity in question was the word “balls”.
A few days later I mentioned this story on reddit. Someone asked to see the comic, so I posted it to r/comics, and a few hours later it hit the front page of r/all.
So in my opinion, Lemmy suffers from a lot of the same problems as reddit (like petty tyrant mods), and some of those problems are exacerbated by its small size.
like petty tyrant mods
i think that’s one of the big reasons why federation is a thing; a petty mod in one community in an instance has no say in the same community in another instance.
Yeah the mods can be annoying on here. Lots of times someone has replied to me and by the time I get to it it’s “comment removed by mod” without even an explanation. I wanted to know what that person had to say, even if it was a dumbfuck thing to say. These things only work with interaction, and if you’re stifling interaction on a platform that is starved for it then you’re not making it better, you’re making it worse.
The modlog shows the deleted comments. Example: sopuli.xyz/modlog/23366
Sorry for that. You should definitely report it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
It has been growing, but it depends on the community the people who are submitting posts of each community. It also depends on the engagement of the discussion and whether participation decays or is allowed to decay into toxicity.
I think Lemmy could be doing a lot more than Reddit, like showing who votes what, but people want the ability without the responsibility or transparency. It’s ironic because not only is it perfectly visible to the admins, but there are ways you can get a pretty good idea of who’s performing them as a normal . It would help not just in the sense of getting a better idea of why or where someone is coming from and prevent false suspicions, but it would also allow you to keep different groups of users whose recommendations might be something you would like to prioritize over other submissions or whose moderation you’d like to favor over the standard. Abusing the transparency would be easy to denounce and moderate, too.
In regards to the modlog, I don’t think it’s doing enough, the reason might as well be “word” and the transparency isn’t compensation for a process of resolution. There are still things like no notification of mod actions that affected your comments or your user, and some decisions, like allowing mods to ban you, delete some of your comments while allowing others to remain, shaping or serving a narrative without giving you the ability to delete or edit your contributions while the ban is in place. But it’s very slightly better than reddit’s, and there’s nothing like shadow bans here. There’s no way to contest modlog actions within the modlog, and the maturity of the people has been proven to be very, very questionable when they’ve been outed. Don’t feed your carnivore pet vegetables if you aren’t prepared to go all the way to seek and get an approved diet and dietary supplements for a bonafide veterinary. It’s funny to see all the anarchy people not have a problem with the present power imbalance between the users and the leadership within the current system, but then again, they have a nice instance with the label.
Overall, fuck spez.
There’s no way to contest modlog actions within the modlog, and the maturity of the people has been proven to be very, very questionable when they’ve been outed. It has also adopted reddit’s policy of obfuscating the moderator performing an action even though creating an alt is easier than ever and many of them already have them, which works against the supposed commitment to transparency.
!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com helps a bit with that
Current reddit is not like “reddit” anymore for a while… nothing is forever
I think Lemmy has steadily been getting better. For having a good conversation, I think this is the best platform, everyone here seems to lile actual people I would run into irl.
What I think is still lacking is a way to search up anecdotal evidence one something, I still heavily rely on reddit for. For instance if I type in google “french press coffee brew time” the only valuable results with the in-depth info I’m looking for are usually youtube videos, which are too long, or reddit threads. So I usually just end up adding site:reddit.com for all those type of search results.
But lemmy is getting good. I could see it replacing some info sources for the more tech-y niches I follow in the near future
it’s effective for wasting my time in a less frustrating manner, for whatever that’s worth
What do we mean by effective?
One might say that the effectiveness of reddit is its niche communities that allow each and every user to find somewhere they feel like they belong. Not only this, the complexity of niches gives rise to interesting information that bubbles to the surface and front page of the platform where more users have exposure. One might contribute this to the quantity of users on reddit’s platform, and also the discoverability of the platform itself.
Personally, I think Lemmy is decently effective now aside from the saturation in political and tech news and memes. I think things will get better as for-profit companies squeeze more and more people out of their platforms, and people look to alternatives rather than dropping their digital consumption habits.
I do think discoverability is still a downfall of Lemmy, from both internal and external views. I want to better find /communities from inside the platform and via a search engine should my use and value of Lemmy increase. Wonder how development has gone on this front.
Ultimately, the FOSS nature of Lemmy is one of its greatest strengths. It can improve over time, ripping features from the big players without the destiny of being killed eventually if not profitable. I think this characteristic alone gives rise to the potential of Lemmy to be very effective over time.
I do think discoverability is still a downfall of Lemmy, from both internal and external views. I want to better find /communities from inside the platform and via a search engine should my use and value of Lemmy increase. Wonder how development has gone on this front.
Yep that helps me find communities from within Lemmy. I just also remembered that Sync has this feature too.
External visibility and discoverability is still an issue
An effective alternative in every sense of the word to Reddit? Nope, not by a long shot, but that’s mostly a function of time and general awareness that the platform exists. For now, it’s a great place for better political debate than what Reddit offers, and in general the memes feel more intimate, like you’re viewing something that a lemmy user might have made rather than triple deepfried imgur vomit all over Reddit.
The on-the-fly meme-making by the Trekkies is positively inspiring.
I would say no to me it’s more like IRC. Its small enough to be not noticed by influence operations as much and each instance has its own personality just like IRC networks. It’s a great mix of local community and access to a wider view points.
“Am I ugly?” (Link to butthole pics on Onlyfans)
“Too the moon with this new crypto scam!!!”
Been on Lemmy a few months now and it feels like moving from shitty Digg to fresh Reddit. I had canceled my account on Reddit even before the last enshitification, and kept just reading. Lemmy feels good enough to participate in posting and commenting. Small is good.
If you pick a good, internally stable instance, it’s great. Local can be more curated to your tastes, All can be more general.
It’s feels to me like how the ancient redditors said reddit worked.
Some servers come closer to reddit like world which copied all the popular subs.
Others are definitely smaller communities, maybe a post or two a day and plenty of discussion.
I feel great about it all so far.
Definitely feels more like reddit used to feel - though with caveats.
Indeed. With no central control, it seems easier for a single individual/org to dominate any given discussion, but otherwise it seems close to what reddit originally claimed to be.
I’ve used them both the exact same way, which kept me away from a lot of the junk on Reddit until they killed my access via Apollo. Then I just switched over and subbed pretty much the same topics.
Yes, it has the vibes of pre-Digg 2.0 Exodus reddit, which is why I haven’t gone back (well, except for porn lol)
Less niche topics, but higher quality content
And whoa man is that a bigger deal that I realized. I still comment and snoop on Reddit infrequently but I’m active here. Less trolls. Minimal bots. Lots of high quality comments.
Yes I miss the niche at times but honestly? This is home now.
Depends on the topic. From what I can tell, Lemmy skews young and technical and towards certain personalities and interests, so there are going to be topics that go to those strengths, but also topics where the discussions get mired down in either discussing the basics or get stuck in a pretty unsophisticated understanding of the topic.
It’s obvious with the hyper local discussions (where should I eat in this city when I visit), because there just aren’t enough knowledgeable people to form a quorum for quality discussion. But it’s also true in many of the hobby/interest discussions, simply because there aren’t enough people to where good discussion encourages more high quality discussion in a feedback loop.
As much as I’d like it to be, it doesn’t have the network effect/popularity that Reddit does. It covers maybe 70-80% of my Digg+ needs, but there are many topics/subs I want that Lemmy just doesn’t have.
“Be the change you want to see” is always there: if a topic/sub doesn’t exist, you can always create it yourself. But no good deed goes unpunished, so you’re now the owner/moderator…
Also, !fedigrow@lemm.ee is dedicated to community growing
Nice. Thanks for sharing that.
Partially. I think it’s a good drop in replacement for:
It’s got pretty good coverage of certain topics:
It has a few pockets that work for very specific things:
And it’s just missing a bunch of things I loved on Reddit:
not in the slightest. But the apps are free
I just love it here. But I also know that while most communities are really nice, we rely a lot on two (2) individuals who provide a sizeable part of Lemmy’s content (Picard and PugJesus). We should all try to do our part!
Me, dreaming of the day when I am no longer a prolific poster
And FlyingSquid
@fossilesque@mander.xyz : am I a joke to you?
hell, you post all the time yourself, blaze!
And both of them indeed!
No. Lemmy posts are always left leaning. There is no right and no center. Thats disheartening. Next to that most communities are too small so no viable discussions follow. Most communities die in months.
Then again, reddit.com doesnt exist anymore because some schmucks have taken over, resulting in obtrusive ads, profiling and tracking.
I dont post on reddit anymore. Still follow some subs though because they just dont have an alternative.
I went from 1 source (reddit) to several(lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 9gag). And still it feels empty. Mostly because while some memes are nice, 4chan is filled with morons and 9gag… That’s a “racist app” according to its own users. But it doesn’t stop there. A lot of posts there are just vile. Not just right wing nut job, no, they are worse. And masto is mostly the same as lemmy.
Depends on the instance. Lemmy.world is liberal, ie right leaning, Hexbear.net is leftist, it depends on which instance you pick.
Tbh, Lemmy leaning strongly to the left is a big plus for me. I mean, it’s easy to find right leaning or centrist communities everywhere. A clearly left leaning space is a gem I’m happy to help preserve and nurture. I’m saying that without offense in mind. But I feel the majority of social networks / boards / microblogging sites lean farther to the right than Lemmy.
It helps that Lemmy is developed and maintained by Communists, so Leftists have a stronghold on Lemmy that won’t be able to go away.
Yeah on Reddit at this point it feels to me by bots for bots. Maybe the bots here are just better but it feels more human.
The only reason I use it is because Reddit killed the mobile app I was using. Lemmy is less useful to me by every metric, and I still use Reddit when searching for stuff on desktop, never Lemmy.
This biggest thing that helped me was putting the app icon in the same spot on my phone as my old reddit app
It reminds me a lot of Reddit in the first few years.
I initially joined Reddit because Aaron Swartz’s involvement convinced me it wasn’t going to go the route of other corporate social platforms, but I think Swartz would have been far more at home on Lemmy.
Nah. Lemmy is nothing like Reddit, it’s actually good.
In terms of design, I find Lemmy to be basically a 1:1 replacement for Reddit. It’s a link aggregator with communities, comments, and voting.
I like it a lot, even though the communities are smaller and there’s less content. It’s just a nicer communal experience for me compared to Reddit. I feel more pressure to actually comment since the communities are smaller and every little bit helps, lol.
It works for me because I’m into a lot of the stuff discussed on Lemmy. My biggest problem with reddit was that at some point they seemed eager to smoosh all the subs together into one big Basic Betty fest. For example having r/all be a mandatory sub and having a million default subs…It kind of felt like towards the end everyone was discussing the same stuff on every sub.
I know Lemmy kinda has some similar issues, but because the whole ecosystem is its own niche it still works for me.
kinda so-so, so far. shows promise but I’ve also run more immediately into what could be called ‘reddit rot’. For example mod behavior that resembles russian bot farms, etc.
Feel free to report it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Thanks! It was so blatant I was wondering if I’m just getting older.
I’m pooping on the toilet right now.
I switched from Reddit to Lemmy cold turkey, not willing to put up with that user hostile enshitification shiticane reddit was going through. There are a few communities that I really miss (/r/weightroom) but new Lemmy things (/c/tenforward) that give me joy. The Internet is getting pretty shitty but Lemmy is a great small corner of it that’s resistant
/r/weightroom
There is !fitness@lemmy.world, but it could be more active indeed
On r/, i only really followed my interests - cats, cannabis, crochet, etc. Those topics getting less action here forced me to follow more communities. It surprised me how much i enjoy the general ask, news, eli5, til, art communities that i never would have followed when i had more niche content.
Why do all your interests start with a c… :)
I was going down the list, got high, and forgot what i was doing.
Lemmy is fine, but less busy than reddit.
There’s the complete absence of u/spez being a cunt, so you have to adjust to the idea of your experience not being constantly downgraded.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It satisfies my social media addiction, but will be years before it shows up on many search results.