Submitted 2 days ago by sho@ani.social to [deleted]
My only gripe is it is EXTREMELY left leaning in general, and if anyone has a less polarizing opinion about something the hive mind reacts.
Not to mention you can’t talk about anything political without someone bringing up how my political views promote genocide.
I dislike that Lemmy is such a left-wing echo chamber. Reddit had a much wider variety of opinions being voiced openly; on Lemmy, there’s almost none. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s acceptable to say here and what isn’t. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting because it can make you feel like the opinions of the average Lemmy user represent the wider population when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Also, there are almost no blue-collar workers here, and most discussions revolve around office jobs and big city life.
Not really, liberals here tend to overpower and speak over leftist voices. Any time a Leftist disagrees with Kamala or points out a legitimate concern swarms of smug liberals say “erm akshurally what about trump you Russian bot”.
(Liberal =/= left-wing)
Personally don’t like the constant echoing of political positions or takes but that’s in my experience equal on both platforms.
I cba. The thing I like more on Lemmy is slight more civilly discussions or what’s being shared.
Just hate how its always have to be polarized to what side you lean on ot emphasis on.
Defaulting on the American aspect of things as well.
As always ofc, but I feel like less so here. Though the Western aspects are still predominant for sure - UK & EU as well as USA.
The US has a left lean (“left” by US standards). What I mean by that is it’s not an even split. The majority of Americans lean left. The only reasons the right has any power in this country is due to the first past the post voting system, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the electoral college.
I meet Trump supporters everyday. I see signs on the lawn in every town. I hear them speak in media regularly.
I like that it’s not reddit in terms of toxicity and powerdrunk mods. I really like the apps accessing Lemmy and the general tone in comments and discussion. As a German the community ich_iel is most of the content I need.
I dislike how long it took me to filter out the words „Elon“ and „musk“ because every second post on c/technology is about that man. Phew, my life is better without it. (I really like being able to filter)
What I like: flexibility for clients,nice people,etc.
What I dislike: not every community is here and some of the communism here
I like the relatively sane moderation compared to Reddit.
I dislike the heavy far-left/communist presence here. I’m a lefty myself, but a lot of people here are extremists in my opinion, little better than the far right.
I’m also a lefty and often find myself going against the extreme grain here. The narratives about everything being a scam designed to steal your balls, the generational hatred, the cynicism and fatalism…
Please tell me which subs you go to find extremist leftists
They’re all over the place, but I suppose I encounter them most in the news and politics forums.
I mean iunno about subs but for instances hexbear is largely known as the tankie instance. For the other kind of extreme leftists, the anarchists seem much more spread out even than they were back on reddit
Ah yes, gotta love our little tankies
“Can’t complain!”
No Ads. No corpos. No infinity scroll. No hate. Different opinions. Cool people. My daily bread.
I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.
I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation. The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years. This Lemmy account has only been around for about 1/10th of that.
One of the biggest strengths of Lemmy is also one of its biggest curses. Due to its federated nature, anyone can create a new instance. The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc. They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.
“I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.”
Oh yeah that seems an excellent way to keep a power balance between users and moderation. Hadn’t used reddit all that much, but heard of the nightmarish moderation abuse.
“I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation.”
Sadly is a big issue with many platforms where politics is used for excuse to mental flex, invalidate, clout motives, and flat out bully. So i try to avoid politics or deflect and avoid people who just looking to argue for the sake of argueing to assert dominance. Too many headaches online deal with.
“The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years.”
I might do the same tbh, i can see there are quite a bit of users needing filtered out on lemmy. Can also see some get angry knowing that people would rather just block em’ and not engage with them because then they can’t fuel their clout driven ego 🙂
“The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc.”
Perhaps this could be resolved by implementing a user follow list and making it so users can only be interacted with if the user approves the follower who is trying to follow em’
“They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.”
Imo i think lemmy could just do away with a voting system, it would reduce cognitive bias by not giving them a sense of popularity contest to determine if it’s worth reading a user’s post or comment. People should judge for themselves rather than having others do it for them.
You seem a a reasonably decent person btw.
The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.
That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.
I encourage aggressive blocking. Without it, the assholes drive the decent people away over time.
I’d be fine without voting, too. I am glad they at least got rid of karma.
Here’s a hard that when I noticed it, improved my experience on the Fediverse enormously. Enough to convince me not to leave it outright as I nearly did. Pay attention to what instance someone is from. It’s no 100% guarantee… but it’s not useless either. This is like 1000% more relevant for someone on an instance other than Lemmy.world, but it still helps for you too.
The aggressiveness also varies by community, so likewise, some of those are just straight up worth blocking (so that you don’t keep forgetting and end up replying in it yet again and again) and finding alternatives for.
Like: It’s not Reddit.
Dislike: The userbase is too small and there are way too many circlejerks in some communities and you get bashed to hell if you dare to disagree with them.
I’m not sure about the circlejerk thing. I am vehemently anti car and would like to circlejerk on one of the many “fuck cars” communities, but any post that gets some attention gets filled by comments of people not from those communities.
So I very often see posts where I agree with the content but the discussion and the comments are all over the place, from car apologists that are like “but IIIIIIIII live in the woods therefore public transit is not feasible for anyone”, and it makes “circlejerking” difficult.
Like, if you have a community about mushroom and want to have enthusiasts discussing mycology, it’ll be fine until a thread becomes popular and fills with users not from that community, asking what is mycology and why they should care.
To be honest, I had the same issue on reddit too and that’s a major reason why I stopped going there.
I’ve got no problem with the communists. I like having a part of the internet that isn’t completely commoditised and filled with ads and people trying to sell side hustles. I hate the search function.
Like
Editable titles
“All” here vs other social media is much better
It’s more likely that arguments are civil. There are still quite a few venomous arguments but I’ve noticed that it it proportionally less.
On Reddit or Facebook, if you didn’t like a group you left and made your own. If you didn’t like the admins, tough shit. Here, if you don’t like the admins, you can use a different instance.
Likes and dislikes are separate, and are in some cases viewable who submit them. I feel like this keeps people a little more honest.
I like the modlog and transparency. It’s so much easier that when someone complains about unfair mod action, to see if they are in the right or exaggerating.
There is an “end” to Lemmy. There isn’t just infinite content to scroll through.
Dislike
Smaller user base means that niches that Reddit filled just aren’t here.
There is an “end” to Lemmy. There isn’t just infinite content to scroll through.
Neutral
The types of common negative personalities here are different from that of Reddit. Reddit has more misogyny, classism, antinatalists, and obnoxious atheists. (As opposed to the chill atheists.) Lemmy has quite a few people that are pretty shitty to those that are disabled or cannot get out of some situations. If you cannot work towards the greater good without any rest, can’t escape a bad situation, or can’t just extend yourself further, you are trash. There are also more fringe beliefs here. I do like it because of the different perspectives, even if I very strongly disagree. (It makes me think!) Unfortunately we still have the dumbass arguments about generations but you can’t have it all.
Like: Long-ass posts. Mastodon has a ridiculous character limit; lemmy doesn’t seem to have any. Dislike: Long-ass posts. Jesus people, the rants and drawn-out arguments.
I was going to quote you saying arguements are civil, and then mock argue with you in an absurd way. But then I thought it wasn’t clear that I was being absurd and joking, and you might think I was actually toxic argueing with you. So I turned up the absurd.
Somehow this ended with me giving you a lapdance as I insulted you. It made ME laugh, but I think instead of coming across as funny, it was just confusing.
…also erotic.
**like: ** people are nicer here!! it also still has the old forum/chatroom vibe, and if the admins suck on an instance you can just. join another. and still subscribe to communities from the old instance. modlog is also pretty cool, allows for transparency between mods and users. i also cant doomscroll because like the other person said, there’s an ‘end’ to it.
dislike: niche communities are hard to find, and the ones that do exist are usually empty. also some of instances’ ui/css is extremely fugly and i physically cannot use it (why i left the fediverse before) (also the nice css was one of my reasons for joining dbzer0). also the tankies, but at least they’re contained within hexbear, .ml and lemmygrad.
Dislike: every post inevitably has someone complaining about capitalism, Trump, police, Musk, …
The 14 year olds with “big brain” takes.
Like or dislike?
I don’t mind the kids themselves, I might have been a teenage embodiment of edge too, but it sucks how many adults get pulled into childish fighting about nothing, instead of having a teaching moment.
It makes the platform seem immature and childish.
I wish I could filter communities by language.
Also one thing I like is the open war we have with memes with censured bad words for fucking fuck’s sake
I think the problem is that people think the memes are created by the person uploading, as if they chose to censor it.
Someone is just sharing a funny they saw on Instagram, there’s not much more to it.
Yup I know, some people uncensor the memes before posting and that always makes me laugh
Like:
Dislike:
It takes some time to block out stuff to make Lemmy usable. So much anime, bots and dumb American politics.
It’s nice there are a bunch of apps for Lemmy, but using it without an app is not very welcoming. It needs a lot of improvement (e.g. manually compose urls to subscribe to communities on other servers).
Honestly I’ve been raw doging Lemmy. I chose an instance that doesn’t block anything and I haven’t blocked a single thing. I just scroll past the politics and usually sort by new comments. I don’t see many bots at all
Dislike: the daily post from someone asking where they can find “non-political” or “centrist” communities, which is a dog whistle that they’re tired of being yelled at for their shitty views
Or that they just want to get away from politics for five minutes.
Just want to browse cat pics for a while? Believe or not, centrism.
“which is a dog whistle that they’re tired of being yelled at for their shitty views” 🤨 you’re trolling right? Like @Jackthelad@lemmy.world says “they just wanna get away from politics” … not everyone cares to have a political opinion and likely just wanna avoid the hostility or nuances that comes with politics discussion. I myself would rather see to much more pleasant things that isn’t just abunch chaos and steam. Wouldn’t you rather enjoy your time than to be a salty bitter lad?
Likes: the small community, traditional forum vibe. No ads, no oppressive corporate hand to keep things advertiser-friendly. Interests and views tend to align, but I can have a healthy disagreement on many issues with most users here.
Dislikes: heavy use of downvoting simply unpopular opinions (a mild annoyance). Difficult to pick between posting in a rarely active niche community and a very active but general community (sometimes I just crosspost). The threat of centralization, with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml having by far the largest communities (I would like to see more active communities spread across sites, though I make an effort sometimes to comment on different servers). Some big features I’d like to see that still seem far from implementation, such as multi-communities.
Btw, both Mbin and PieFed have “categories” of multiple communities, so that you don’t have to sign up to or explore each community entirely on its own.
Also, you may find it interesting: lemmynsfw, lemm.ee, and sh.itjust.works each have significantly more active monthly users than lemmy.ml. Though lemmy.world does have something like 80% of them on just that one. lemmyverse.net/?order=active_month
Until 0.19.6 comes out of beta and Lemmy.world upgrades to it, it’s actually hard for any other instance besides it to remain up to date with content.
I genuinely cannot express how much it annoys me that I cannot have a blocklist for keywords.
Most of the things I read are from my subscribed communities, which i’m very happy about generally, however given the overall state of life today, half of the posts in completely unrelated communities end up being one of the following:
I really just don’t want to see any of those things
Connect app for Lemmy actually has this feature, and it really is a gamechanger. I mean, it makes Lemmy kinda into a desolate wasteland of posts, but its better than seeing most of the garbage I don’t care about and don’t want to interact with.
Granted, this also relies on users putting said keywords in the title of their post, so I still end up seeing stuff I don’t want to, but it is drastically decreased.
On browser you can put this onto your custom filters
lemmy.world##div.post-listing:has(span:has-text(“/musk/i”))
I have loved my time with Lemmy so far. I feel like people are much kinder here compared to Reddit, it feels like a genuine community of people that are willing and able to help one another out and chat and talk, without the people of Reddit that just bully and make fun of for no good reason other than just because. I think that’s the biggest reason I prefer lemmy over Reddit, along with the benefits of being decentralized and federated.
But I miss the near infinitely larger user base on Reddit and the things that come with that. On Reddit I can find a community for pretty much anything I can imagine. I’ve always loved using Reddit as a tool to help me learn, because regardless of what it is I’m learning I can find somewhere that I can ask any question I could think of, and 9/10 times someone out there out of the millions of Reddit users can give me a decent competent answer. That’s my favorite part about Reddit. That is, if they don’t just call me stupid and tell me I’m an idiot or something like that.
But I feel hopeful that Lemmy can get to a similar point some day.
The people. For both.
Dislike: Tankies.
Been wondering… what is a tankie?
Authoritarian communists, especially those not native to such a state.
Currently it’s mainly the folks who believe China in particular can do no wrong. Historically it refers to supporters of the USSR in Britain
Specifically, it was used to distinguish [CPGB] party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
More recently it’s applied online especially to people who are knee-jerk anti-capitalist or anti-US, “if the US/‘west’/capitalism is wrong then anyone who opposes them must be right”
More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support “militant opposition to capitalism”, and a more modern online variation, which means “something like ‘a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.’”
Asshole (but left wing)
Its just another meaningless pejorative term usually used at leftists.
All the trolls.
Like: decentralization and a renaissance of the old- school dream of what the Internet should be.
Dislike: media bias fact checker bot spamming every damn post. Power tripping mods.
Might i ask which mods you feel are power tripping? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want, no pressure.
I’d rather not. Not sure if you can view the mod log for other people’s accounts, but if so it’s easy to spot from mine.
I’ll say that I have some sympathy because dealing with internet randos is painful soul-sucking work and it’s easy to default to the ban-hammer, but…
I’m still unclear what the purpose of that bot is, and why everyone hates it. It always just says bias checking is unavailable right now.
I hate it because it shows up everywhere and adds nothing of value while displaying busy formatted text. If it lately shows even less meaningful content, that barely seems possible.
Are you not able to block it? I’ve blocked the entire community so I don’t see it much. You should be able to just like any other user… I would think?
You can but it bothers me that it exists, shitting on everything.
Like:
Decentralized system that limits abuse
Great customizaion
Dislike:
Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)
Generally very pessimistic userbase
Lacks polish and features in many areas
Currently trends towards extremist echo chambers - the fact that .ml (an instance known for banning criticism of violent, racist, authoritarian governments) is one of the biggest instances, is a good example of this.
tends to be extremely hostile to any sort of monitization
This is a good thing, seeing as how monetization has ruined other things, the web newspapers in particular.
It absolutely can, but doesn’t always. For example, Gamer’s Nexus is well respected for their thorough and unbiased research and journalism. It would be extremely difficult for them to do so without ads and merch sales, as any products reviewed must be purchased, testing equipment needs to bought, and experts need to be hired to use said equipment. Until capitalism ceases to exist, most people who make stuff will need to find a way to fund their work, from paint brushes to high-end testing equipment.
The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.
Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
more mature and can actually discuss complex topics
I mean… well okay, more than Reddit yeah, for sure, in the sense that here at least it is possible at all.
Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
How so? Genuinely I’m wondering lately if I’m causing issues. Generally that phrase presumes that the “witches” do not exist (I … thought?), but e.g. tankies (literally: those who deny that the Tiananmen Square massacre ever took place, like with actual fatalities rather than being staged or some such) actually do exist. Anyway, I wonder if it’s a natural reaction to the contentious atmosphere that has developed. Like all it takes is one person to walk into Chapotraphouse unawares, and bam, now you have radicalized someone against the bullies on the Fediverse.
Oh, or you might mean the overzealous modding of certain instances? Though I think that predates the Rexodus, so it’s not “becoming a problem” so much as it was here long before most of us that are now here came over. e.g. here’s a post from 3 years ago with a very familiar tone: lemmy.ml/post/206994. But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.
Anyway, the Fediverse has a lot more technical work to get done before it can be more palatable to most people, without HEAVY blocking - as that 3-year-old post shows, the issue isn’t going away anytime soon, hence the friction between mutually opposing ideological constructs (e.g. “people in the USA should just die”, vs… not that) is only going to spark more conflicts. We’d best settle in and get used to it.
I know, the maturity standard isn’t too high, but I still think that Lemmy is going rather well given where the userbase is from.
By “witch hunting” I mean “to claim that someone, a group, or a piece of content belongs to a socially undesirable group, without rational grounds to do so.”
Here’s a made up example. Let’s say that Bob uses a picture of Richard Stallman as his avatar. Alice sees it, and…
Alice here is witch hunting. Alice has no grounds to claim that Bob is a paedophile, but she’s still doing it.
The “witches” often do exist, mind you - they’re racists, bigots, sexual offenders, paedophiles, incels, transphobes, fascists, so goes on. They are socially undesirable, and need to be kicked out. Even then, witch hunting should not be tolerated in online communities: what they do is intrinsically unjust, it makes their target feel like shit, it makes the whole community walk on eggs (because anything that they say or do might get distorted into “witch behaviour”), and it numbs people against the issue with the actual witches (just like the boy who cried wolves unwillingly protected the wolves, witch hunters unwillingly protect the actual “witches”).
I saw this plenty, plenty times in Reddit. But here in Lemmy it’s surprisingly more common, given the smaller userbase.
But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.
Fighting back is good. Punching random people isn’t. Witch hunters do the later, not the former.
What I like: The effort and persistence of the developers What I dislike: The ActivityPub protocol.
The assholes who pretend to argue in good faith but just spout stupid bullshit.
Oh, and the idiots who block everyone they don’t like.
But what do you dislike?
Lol, you got me for a minute.
Simmillar to me i hate the assholes who accuse you of arguing in bad faith while symultaniously calling you a moronic asshole fascist.
Reddit 2.0 lol
Dislike: there is still no way to group communities into sub feeds, apart from subs, local, all. (and the work around some do of having multiple accounts seems silly to me)
Not on Lemmy proper but both Mbin and PieFed have that already. e.g. visit piefed.social, click 3 horizontal bars -> Topics.
Oh yes, I remember when Reddit came out with multireddits. Loved that, and I miss it.
scarabic@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I like that Lemmy doesn’t have stupid levels of auto-moderation happening. And I like that threads don’t constantly get locked merely because people are engaging with them.