I was just reading this post https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ and many barely see the fediverse as an alternative and they seem to have a negative bias towards it. Super ironic when it comes to the self-hosting community. Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views. But it doesn’t really matter when it’s federated and FOSS. I think it’s clear-cut that the selfhosting community on Lemmy is a perfect alternative to reddit. Why is there such a negative bias?
I can conjecture some things, though I can’t be 100% sure on either:
First, maybe it’s fanatics/fanboys that don’t like competition making their platform less relevant. Second, it’s paid actors complaining. Third, it’s robot accounts making posts. Fourth, as proposed in the OP, people are getting the wrong impression due to noisy and problematic bubbles. Fifth, people being scared of leaving their comfort zone. Sixth, a mix of either some or all the previous possibilities.
And seven, seven, n-n-n-n-no tomorrow
Honestly, in my experience since I fully moved to Lemmy:
Almost any subreddit is more mature than any Lemmy channel.
This isn’t just number of users (but that’s a huge problem that has been mentioned here a lot), it means that the chance you’ll run into a mod who is a tinpot despot is pretty high, and there is nothing you can do about it if you’re not willing to sit alone in aghost townalternate community.there is nothing you can do about it
You can just post from a different lemmy instance.
That doesn’t remove the toxic mod.
How many alts and sock puppets do you think the average person should have? This doesn’t sound healthy
That doesn’t remove the toxic mod.
There is no way to remove toxic mods. That’s why you have to work around them.
How many alts and sock puppets do you think the average person should have? This doesn’t sound healthy
You only need one at a time. I use to spin up an entirely new reddit account whenever I got a ban on any sub. That’s what you can do on Lemmy.
Yeah, like I said, that doesn’t sound healthy
Number 1 comment is
Reddit ain’t going anywhere fast.
If r/selfhosted has to rely on reddit as it can’t be fucked selfhosting, what chance do other subs have.
I have found Lemmy selfhosted communities excellent, they are not a large as Reddit but there are plenty knowledgeable people, often seflhosting their own little reddit.
The irony of a self hosted community refusing to self host…
Honestly back during the API fiasco I was honestly expecting the mods their to make their own instance together. The fact they didn’t blew me away
Us vs them too. It’s different, people hate change. So now there is a them and an us…
Anyone still left on Reddit is either too ignorant about the alternatives to Reddit to even have an opinion or is actively trying to keep people on Reddit for Reddit.
I left reddit after a cyberbully situation because I defended a nonbinary person in a post in the sega dreamcast subreddit.
Gender is not inherently sexual, you’re the one making this weird.
@ayyy Need to look up the term gender dysphoria in the DSM. Stop mutilating children so that they have no reproductive potential as adults.
Interesting choice of words…
Almost everyone in the linked Reddit post seems to be supportive of Lemmy, or even Lemmy users. Even the people who tried it and stopped seem generally warm to the idea and just think it needs polish.
I’d say that this comment section is way more vitriolic than that one lol
@PeriodicallyPedantic @Yingwu This is what I meant by Reddit being more tolerant of opposing views than lemmy.
Seems to me most people in that thread seems relatively open minded? The people dismissing Lemmy completely appears to be downvoted, and people seem to have a nuanced understanding that it’s a better platform in theory but sadly less active.
I’m sure they’re right. I’m a slow person who thinks there’s plenty of activity over here, but if you’re used to the adrenaline of Reddit it must feel a little small town-y.
To be honest except on things like sports and politics, reddit kind of feels like a ghosttown too. So many posts with huge amounts of upvotes and like 2 bot generated comments. The power commenter types seem to have left after the exodus and been replaced by lots of people who scroll and like but don’t really venture much into comments.
The biggest point is tankies and the toxic “left” people here and that Lemmy has some major problems regarding stability and the ability to effectively moderate.
Another point is that Lemmy has in may places worse moderation than reddit.
Lemmy has in may places worse moderation than reddit.
yet this is exactly what the fediverse was designed to work around. giving the power back to the users. when .ml decides to block a bunch of shit due to butt-hurt mods, communities can be moved elsewhere without everyone having to make new accounts.
These many places tend to be the biggest and most popular places…
agreed that we need to work on scaling out horizontally. i think that ironically poor moderation will help with this over time. it took reddit 20 years to get where it is.
Lemmy instances are a pain in the ass to keep working, most people with a life won’t do that and people without a life are usually extremists.
sounds like a lot of conjecture to me. i think there is hope in groups owning, operating and funding their own instances. software platforms will get better over time. funding pathways will get better over time.
i dont think we should just toss our hands up and say ‘nope, too hard. only jerks need apply’
Yeah there are clearly some toxic people who won’t tolerate anything different than them. They can be leftists or rightists who are gonna hate you for whatever reason.
I didn’t have this feeling on reddit to be honest.
And it’s a shame because I’m censoring myself because of this on some subject where I could bring another point of view.
I haven’t seen a single “right” person on Lemmy, except when you count the Stalinists as right (wich they kinda are)
And I hate that there are so many of them.
Yeah to be honest it’s true that I’ve only seen lefties. I’m sometimes on the left side and sometimes on the right side, but it’s crazy how you can’t really express an opinion without being insulted or other things…
You can’t say anything without people hating on you. I’m a actual social Democrat and therefore the worst enemy of tankies and Stalinists.
I don’t care what they say about me, I care when they are in charge of anything and ban people for other opinions, wich happens a lot.
The people you are probably referring to exist on like, two instances. Everybody always ends up on the “.ml” ones for their first experience and is immediately horrified by the hardcore tankie content. That’s because those specific instances are run by actual Marxist-Leninists.
Well it happened to me mostly in technology communities where my job as a police man in a country without too much corruption was giving me a different point of view than people who were seeing a corrupt government spying on them all the time.
Some of the communities are fine, but make sure that you never EVER talk about politics in any way. And even then, why support such a place that has such a reputation? Most communities - though not all - have counterparts elsewhere. Judge for yourself, though it’s nice to at least know that you have options:-).
In fairness, people outside of the instance may legit be receiving the brunt of their more extreme members coming out from the echo chamber and talking shit elsewhere. Then again, why choose to be inside that echo chamber, even if the toxicity is dialed way down?
And there are answers to that question that may depend on your circumstances: e.g. !Firefox@lemmy.ml is by far the largest Firefox community across the entire Fediverse. Also the ire of people inside Lemmy.ml is mostly directed at the primarily democratic capitalist Western society, but you may not feel impacted by such as much, as e.g. they make fun of the USA.
Only you know what will work best for you:-).
.ml is mostly a linux-centric hub. anything else is just a distraction
Most lemmy.ml users and communities are perfectly fine. I didnt notice a higher number of problematic users from ml than from other instances mine is federated to. I think hexbear and lemmygrad and a bunch of nazi instances are defederated.
I block all .ml communities that pop up on my feed. Somewhere between 200-300 on my blocklist by now (not all exclusively from .ml of course, but most of them).
Why not block the entire instance in your settings?
Because that isn’t an option.
It is. Go into your account settings -> blocks and at the bottom is a section for blocking instances.
I’ve got Lemmy.ml in there. You’ll still see comments from their users and posts from users in other communities but you shouldn’t see any of their communities in your feed.
It’s not. I’m not using Lemmy.
Ah right fair enough.
Actually it is. I don’t have an Mbin account but supposedly if you go to https://fedia.io/d/lemmy.ml then you should be able to accomplish it from there. It’s quite hidden though, isn’t it!?:-P More details in this post: https://piefed.social/post/307636.
I’d be interested to hear how it works out for you - like on PieFed if you do that, it blocks the users but not the communities, and in Lemmy it blocks communities but not users. I don’t know what it will do for you, beyond blocking users - but like, is it similar to a full defederation in blocking the communities as well?
No, that just blocks direct links to said instances. So it basically does nothing.
That was the first instance out there, so amany early adopter communities are hosted there. I’ve blocked a handful problematic users and all the communist stuff and other topics I don’t agree with or care about, but by and large it’s alright.
Hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml are instances I’ve blocked altogether.
For some reason after reading this (because I’m very new to Lemmy), your post made me feel like that squiggly thing / slime inside the box that wanted freedom, then the moment it takes a step outside, got punched back in and now is happily being inside the box, even if its cramped.
I think it was a meme too.
Yeah, but I do feel that way (after taking a look there)
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Also; tribalism.
100%. That’s why it took me until the end of June to join Lemmy even though the blackout was on June 12th.
And I was already hating Reddit before the blackout. But FOMO made me stay and I feel bad about it.
Because people off Reddit hate everything that its not reddit
People on Reddit. We’re the people off Reddit :)
I was a redditor for 13 years, I now hate reddit. There is hope
Doesn’t !selfhosted@lemmy.world have like 40k subscribers? Top ten Lemmy community by sub count, iirc.
Bingbingbing!
The people still exclusively on Reddit are on Reddit because they don’t like the Fediverse or they’re unwilling to change their habits. Had they liked it and been genuinely open for change they would have made the switch, or at least used both platforms.
This is not so much true for the average user, as they might not be aware of the federated alternatives at all, or they might think it sounds too hard. But it’s absolutely true for the self-hosting community.
No idea, quit Reddit over a year ago for fedia/lemmy. Never used x/twitter either, i use mastodon.
I am pretty sure most people are for idealogical reasons so lack of things is a nothing burger for them.
Normies only care about ease of use and network effect. Until fediverse brings usability, we aint even compete for the network.
Normie here, Lemmy is pretty easy to use imo. I think the transition is happening now kinda like the Internet in the 90s or online dating in the 10’s.
Ofc I just got here and I’m using Voyager.
A theory I have is that everyone who hates reddit eventually left leaving the milk bags brains. I was mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and left when I saw my mod queue get exponentially worse. My friend told me it was because the decent people left for Lemmy.
Now I’m mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee and it’s sooooo much easier.
I was mod of r/mapporncirclejerk
I used to lurk, thank you for your service 🫡
Idk I find Lemmy easier to use. I go to Lemmy site -> I use site
I go to reddit -> I get asked to turn of my VPN -> get asked to login -> get asked to download mobile app -> accept cookies -> I finally use site.
Damn reddit is so much easier
@secret300 @sunzu2 Odd, I just use it from Firefox on my desktop. It does want me to accept cookies, that is how websites maintain a login session since otherwise http is a stateless protocol.
well you need an account to shit post tho…
so you need to log in
if you want to login you will get in VPN bullshit or your browser is hardened. if they can’t track you, they essentially don’t want you to use their slopware.
but yes, you can read reddit old, that’s what people should use when they do research IMHO
-> I get asked to turn of my VPN ->
Yes 🐸
secondary reason why i left reddit, they don’t respect a person who respects him or her self… not long after i learned that’s corpo’s MO and that’s how i become radicalized linux enjoyer haha
Speaking from a third-world country, there are 2 main weaknesses the fediverse has for us:
- selfhosting is not easy or cheap for us, so we can only use what it’s already there… And it’s basically all in english, so most people are out.
- meta has everyone grabbed by the balls and people are happy like that (for some reason), anything new or different is met with endless excuses.
There used to be a mexican instance called Mujico, but they were forced to use a whitelist by constant troll attacks… But they also federated with grad so I can’t feel bad about it. I don’t know if it still exists but the last time I checked it had zero activity.