Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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IMNOTCRAZYINSTITUTION@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
it’s effective for wasting my time in a less frustrating manner, for whatever that’s worth

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exasperation@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Partially. I think it’s a good drop in replacement for:

Anything technology oriented, from software to hardware to what different open source projects are up to, to what tech corporations are doing, and various discussions around ecosystems (the internet itself, specific services like Discord or Reddit or LinkedIn, app stores, social networking, etc.)

Funny memes or other humor

It’s got pretty good coverage of certain topics:

Politics, at least on specific sub topics

Science and specific scientific disciplines

It has a few pockets that work for very specific things:

Specific TV show or movie franchises (looking at you, Star Trek)

ADHD or neurodivergent support/advice

Noncredible Defense is actually here. Love it.

And it’s just missing a bunch of things I loved on Reddit:

Sports, especially the unique culture of the NBA subreddit

Other specific interests in television, film, music, or other cultural interests.

Local things in specific cities

Finance and economics stuff

Lots of specific interests/hobbies are missing, or just aren’t as active.

Advice/support for career/work life, especially specific careers (in my case, the legal industry and life as a lawyer)

Advice/support relating to personal relationships, from parenting to dating to very specific support forums for things like divorce or cancer. Even what does exist here is disproportionately neurodivergent, so the topics of focus seem to be pretty different than what would be discussed in other places.
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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  television
  
  !showsandmovies@lemm.ee
  
  Film
  
  !movies@lemm.ee
  
  Parenting
  
  !parenting@lemmy.world
  
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VanillaBean@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I was a Reddit veteran for years, I hate Reddit now and don’t use it mostly due to getting random permabans. Lemmy functions well - much better than that dog shit site Reddit, but it’s not there yet in terms of communities and activity. There is very little local/regional activity that I miss most from Reddit. Overall, it’s still a small fraction of what Reddit is unfortunately.

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Kryptonidas@lemmy.wtf ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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Omgboom@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This biggest thing that helped me was putting the app icon in the same spot on my phone as my old reddit app

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bitwolf@lemmy.one ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Lemmy communities have the potential to be just as toxic.

That said, the broad majority of interactions I have are very positive.

It really depends on the community choice. I tend to choose Lemmy communities rather than “reddit refuge” communities.

I imagine that plays a big part in my personal experience.

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- Saledovil@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I figure with Lemmy having much fewer users, there’s less potential for toxic communities to form.
  
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  - Manzas@lemdro.id ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    And toxic instances can get defedarated
    
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- gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah, I have made the experience that most communities on the german-speaking feddit.de were great, but after that had technical issues and went down for 4 months (!), the content isn’t as good anymore and the users are more frustrating.
  
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AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
it’s perfectly fine but there’s not enough users

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- cicadagen@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  true but recently I’ve been seeing a slight increase in user activities… 📈
  
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rocky1138@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Lemmy is free and libre, but I sorely miss my world news and Ukraine updates.

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- blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  !ukraine@sopuli.xyz - obviously not as big as the Ukraine subreddit but there’s always new posts.
  
  What do you miss about world news on Reddit?
  
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- eleitl@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Try Telegram and the Moon of Alabama for that.
  
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  - grozzle@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    if you want the most demented conspiracy theories, sure
    
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Underwaterbob@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Not for science fiction literature, guitar pedals, and synthesizers which was primarily what I went to Reddit for in the first place. There was some effort to get those communities going here back during the mass migration here from Reddit, but they’ve never really thrived. It sucks, but I’m not going back. I take a peek at r/synthesizers on occasion, and really it’s just a gaggle of self-promoting synthtubers and umpteen iterations of “what should I buy?”.

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- zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah, there used to be an instance for mostly synthesizer related stuff but they shut down and no alternative community took off. There also used to be a relatively active sci-fi community but then some drama happened and it died down a lot.
  
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  - Underwaterbob@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Mine still exists, but no one posts there much. Including me. lemm.ee/c/synthesizers
    
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    There also used to be a relatively active sci-fi community but then some drama happened and it died down a lot.
    
    Interesting, is it documented somewhere?
    
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sircac@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Current reddit is not like “reddit” anymore for a while… nothing is forever

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KenTheEagle@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
14 year Reddit person and leaving was for the best. After the initial “what am I doing”, it branched to me checking out Mastodon, then pixelfed, and then Fediverse is awesome. My only real beef is the sports situation is not it. Outside of that I haven’t used reddit for a year and don’t miss it honestly.

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- wise_pancake@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Same here, was on Reddit since 2010.
  
  I remade an account because some of my communities aren’t big enough here. But the quality of interaction through the fediverse is much much better.
  
  For sports, Reddit has utterly ruined them because in the app they show the results for every F1 Grand Prix as soon as the race finishes in an unremovable “trends” tile. I often can’t watch live, and so I had almost every race this season spoiled.
  
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rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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Novice_Idiot@lemmy.wtf ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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

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secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
for me, yeah. Honestly much better

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Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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…

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Also, !fedigrow@lemm.ee is dedicated to community growing
  
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  - Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Nice. Thanks for sharing that.
    
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Stomata@buddyverse.one ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Not yet but i hope soon. I started to like lemmy

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Welcome here, first time I see your instance, seems nice
  
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wick@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Well ever since reddit died it’s the best thing around.

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LavenderDay3544@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The userbase is too small for now. But I hope more people start coming over from Steve Huffman’s hellhole.

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Boiglenoight@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yes. It’s different, but good.

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y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m honestly more afraid to offer an opinion or ask a question on Lemmy because there’s always some high and mighty jackass that thinks they are the final authority on whatever topic and rather than have a discussion, people seem to just resort to name calling.

At least, that has been my experience.

Otherwise I’ve enjoyed it. It can be a cool place once you figure out how to block the malcontents.

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helloworld55@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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

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zcd@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  /r/weightroom
  
  There is !fitness@lemmy.world, but it could be more active indeed
  
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Today@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- 1984@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Why do all your interests start with a c… :)
  
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  - Today@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I was going down the list, got high, and forgot what i was doing.
    
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auzy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I used to think it was better than reddit, but I hate to say it, I’ve started to notice facebook meme communities jump onboard. Science memes is amazing and isn’t affected (it seems to be all unique posts I’d never seen), but once those facebook repost meme communities jump onboard, you’re going to end up with all the people that makes facebook rubbish too unfortunately.

I’ve already seen an increase in dumb car meme posts which get reposted 3000x on Facebook (which brings along the same toxic anti-science people). We’re already seeing an increase in people who don’t seem to have much common sense

I want a community which is science and fact oriented, and I’m growing increasingly concerned that as we grow, we’re moving away from that.

But for now, its still awesome in comparison imho (last I looked, many reddit communities were overrun by nutjobs after the mods all left)

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- dragonfucker@lemmy.nz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Image
  
  We’re already seeing an increase in people who don’t seem to have much common sense. I want a community which is science and fact oriented
  
  Common sense is incompatible with science. Science is about testing our fundamental assumptions, assuming nothing.
  
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  - auzy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Well. Common sense is common sense because it can easily be disproven.
    
    Like Trump saying he’s going to be a dictator many times and displaying every trait he will. At this point of time, common sense as an example
    
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- OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You might want to move your account over to mander.xyz and then browse mostly by Local rather than All or Subscribed.
  
  In large measure what you are describing is considered by most people to be harmless - although it is actually not harmless at all.
  
  Anyway, the good news is that this aspect is mainly “contained” within the communities that actually want that. As opposed to e.g. Facebook where it is everywhere (one presumes - I left it even before the pandemic).
  
  There is an ENORMOUS amount of diversity on the Fediverse, more so than anywhere else I’ve seen, and nothing at all like Reddit unless you count the small niche communities, but even there… anytime a post would hit r/all people would comment like “brace yourself, the trolls are coming!”, plus people in those niche subs would browse all and become tainted by it.
  
  I was one of them. I started noticing how defensive my posture was getting, and becoming more snarky, and then even doing that irl at work. Therefore I left Reddit. I almost left Lemmy too, but I refuse to be that way. Us olds (or maybe you aren’t old and instead only mature - or at least talk as if you are haha! 😂) know that we can touch grass and read books - social media is a privilege, not a “right”, and not mandatory for my existence (although it is nice to keep up with things, other than having to use e.g. Google News, so I would have had to investigate finding a good RSS reader).
  
  Reddit started to devolve when the “kids” came in and drowned out all the longer-form, more in-depth discussions involving actual facts, and replaced them instead with “I know you are but what am I?”, “^This”, “I also choose this guy’s wife”, etc. Which don’t get me wrong - humor has its place in the world, it’s just that when here are TENS or even HUNDREDS of such comments, IN A ROW, and they get upvoted whereas someone who writes a longer response gets actively downvoted, plus receives demeaning replies (“hey, tell it to someone who cares <expletive>”), that is when I decided to quit Reddit. Whether I stay here or leave this too, I will not go back to Reddit. Or Facebook.
  
  And most of that I blame the platforms for encouraging people to talk while actively discouraging them from listening. Notice that ads appear between posts, but not between comments, hence they encourage - with their UI elements and such - people posting. One example is how poor their internal search functionality is - oh well, it’s easier just to post my question than to search for an answer. Another example is restricting pinned posts to merely 2 - when they could easily allow like 5 or 10 or something, especially if they allow a folder system. And then even the pinned posts would only show up as being pinned under certain conditions, which users of an app may not see. Omg and don’t even get me started on their official app… 🤮
  
  On Lemmy, it is possible to have good conversations. Make liberal use of the block button to curate what you don’t want though, bc moderation is in short supply, and what is there tends to be heavily biased, so e.g. a person behaving as a dick to someone else is likely to do so to you sometime later, so consider your future self’s mental health as a priority:-).
  
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ben_dover@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Is water an effective alternative to Soda Pop? yes i’d like to think so

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TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  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
  
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Resonosity@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  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.
  
  lemmyverse.net/communities
  
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  - Resonosity@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    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
    
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needthosepylons@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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!

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- Scolding7300@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And FlyingSquid
  
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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  @fossilesque@mander.xyz : am I a joke to you?
  
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  - match@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    hell, you post all the time yourself, blaze!
    
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  - needthosepylons@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    And both of them indeed!
    
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- PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Me, dreaming of the day when I am no longer a prolific poster
  
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