It's been around a year since a lot of us quit Reddit, myself included. I'm happy with Lemmy, but I still feel a bit lost online since leaving the old site. Discussion?

ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Reddit@lemmy.world – 507 points –

Been thinking of making a post like this for some time, apologies if some of this is not completely relevant: this community seems more like it's about Reddit the platform/product than Reddit the social "thing", but I'm sure a lot of people have similar experiences to mine. Maybe on some instances more than others.

Here's the one of the last comments I wrote as a regular Reddit user, on the eve of the blackout (almost a year ago to the day), under a post titled "Will your participation in Reddit change":

::: spoiler My comment

I will keep searching Google for Reddit help threads, but as a cultural and news aggregator I think this is the end for me. Maybe I will check it every so often. On desktop. On the old site. Until they sunset that too.
I wouldn’t be against using the first party app if it wasn’t so awful to use.
It’s a massive shame that we’ve all collectively agreed that Reddit is the de facto way to create open communities online. There were so many forums that could fill the void left by Reddit for things like tech and art and they’ve all shut down in the past decade.
I try not to be too negative about the evolution and constant growth of the userbase of the site and of the internet as a whole, but I’ve really felt like things are moving in a direction I can’t even be cautiously optimistic about lately.
I think of all the mod tools that will be defunct. The commonly cited example is that people who comment excessively on adult subs are automatically barred from commenting on the teenagers subreddit. Sure the admins can whip up functionality to do this, but this site was built on custom tools and custom CSS and all that. I think the API was one among the many secret sauces that give Reddit this staying power. These sites and forums I talked about - I used to hop from one to the next year after year. Until I found Reddit a decade ago.
I like that I choose my subs and that I don’t get algorithmically ordered sludge designed to game the algorithm on my homepage. Yes the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator redditors are gamed by people posting, but that’s (in my opinion) acceptable.
Frankly if they kept the old Reddit Gold pricing (4 bucks per month/30 annual) and gated unrestricted API access behind it I would have been inclined to finally give Reddit money. I use it a lot, I don’t mind paying now that I can afford it. But something about how it’s all going down really doesn’t fill me with confidence.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this for a while now, but I haven’t felt like it was relevant. Thanks for asking here
:::

Reading through this is a bit funny, in retrospect, seeing how Reddit-centric my understanding of the internet had become at the time. I am happy to report that I have checked the home page maybe a half dozen times since the blackout, instead of once or twice a week like I expected. I suppose the disgusting state of the heavily astroturfed worldnews sub was a big part of it as well: for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn't seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.

I do miss Reddit, I haven't been able to replace it outright. I'm from Lebanon, and Lebanese Twitter is (if you can imagine it) even more of a toxic cesspool than regular Twitter. I'm not on Facebook (also cesspool here), I'm not on Instagram - my point is I don't get anything about my country on ostensibly user-curated social media. /r/Lebanon was very far from perfect, but it was nice to get a trickle of local news with users who were more in line with my own politics. The local news outlets focus on a lot of irrelevant crap, the sub's news feed was a bit more interesting.

One thing I loved about that subreddit was that users with more mainstream views in my country (eg. transphobia-as-default) were allowed to spout their bullshit in the subreddit with little mod pushback (if it's just JAQing off etc, not harrassing people obviously). Then the regulars would dogpile on that user's post - very refreshing! And very validating I would imagine for anyone who is used to hearing this shit everyday.

I was applying to be a mod to help keep the sub moving, at one point, but hey. Maybe that headache was never worth it. Still, I felt like I lost one of my online homes.

More generally, I have enjoyed my first year on Lemmy, although the experience has been lacking in many ways. For one, while Reddit has a reputation as a meme cemetery, the memes here are generally a bit moldier. But that's okay. The fact that there's fewer posts I think isn't necessarily a bad thing either, I think we all preferred Reddit's slightly slower homepage in 2013 than the one we left in 2023, that would regurgitate more and more from the bottom of the barrel if you were willing to keep scrolling.

I've toyed with opening a Lebanon community here on dbzer0, having opened one on FMHY that nobody used. But it wouldn't be the same, and I wouldn't know how to populate it. I posted maybe 2 non-question posts on Reddit in my decade+ of being a regular user, but I wrote tons of comments. It also helped keep my English sharper, I think.

I've reactivated my old Instagram account and it's pretty ass out there. The ad/post ratio is just egregious, and they'll just serve you random posts from random pages. I want to see my friends goddamn it, isn't this what your platform is supposed to be for? For those of you who don't know, the app will also send you a notification once or twice a day suggesting you look at "today's top reels". I have never watched a reel of my own will, fuck off.

Point being, the main platforms people use online haven't been up my alley. I can only hope the zoomer dumbphone pushback keeps expanding, and that social media starts being seen as something for older generations. Wishful thinking?

This is just a post about enshittification, everyone's favorite word, but every time I think about it for more than 2 minutes I can't help but miss a simpler internet. Some part of me was hoping it would kickstart me "growing out" of spending this much time online per day (not everyone spends a ton of time online), but it hasn't.

Also every time I ask something longer than 20 words on Discord some middle schooler will reply "yap", even in the channels designated for questions. Discord has had its uses (yes I know there's privacy concerns), but it's hardly a replacement for Reddit, or forums. Both of which are/were searchable. But enough yapping from me.

Thoughts? How has the exodus been for you? Is this how Digg users felt?

187

Honestly I spend less time on it and that's a good thing. I read more news, blogs, use other sites etc

If I want to see stuff from my own country I'll read the local news

I don't treat Lemmy like some Omni platform like reddit was, but more of a niche platform like all the others. I don't use Twitter, Instagram kr anything either.

Reddit is dead and buried, what's left are bots and teenagers. Those yappy discordians now run the show, most of us 10+ reddit veterans either came to lemmy, or gave up on "the internet". I'm pretty sure you're not the only one who considered reddit to be the internet at that point.

Most power users, myself included, spent 5+ hours per day there, at times more so than at their paid careers. Especially the mods (I've been moderating 6 subs, two of which had over 1M and 5M users).

I do miss some of those communities. I don't miss modding. Leaving reddit showed me what ungodly amounts of time I sunk into that platform, now that I had to fill other means to close the gap. With Lemmy it's 20-30 min a day, often spread out over 5+ sessions since there's not much to say or see that takes me more than 5 min at a time.

I've stayed on some of the moderator discord channels since those are fine folks, and chat with them in the off-topic rooms. Which shows me that reddit has gone off the deep end once and for all. With many decent folks leaving, ads and bots exploding all over the place, only the die hard shitposters and radical opinion leaders stuck around. They might not have had a digg moment, but are going the way of tumblr, which is arguably worse.

What I'm trying to say is that while Lemmy isn't the arch we wanted it to be, going back isn't possible either since the harbor burned down.

Personally, I've started a PhD just about a year ago at the time I left, and it does plenty of filling the gap in my daily calendar...

on which topic you are doing PhD. just curious cuz I want to do it too.

Faculty of Business, and I'm doing it on Clinical Trial Protocol Development since I work in the medical device industry.

I much prefer the people on reddit, but hate the company, admins, and most mods. Ads and bots are getting worse, more and more communities are getting banned because advertisers don't like them, it's getting enshittified.

I love the software here, the whole open source federated system is genius, but the users are so awful. Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women. People say shit like "just ssh the root config distro" or whatever the fuck like it's just everyday conversation. Literally every joke has to be explained. Everyone here is either mentally a know it all teenager, or literally a know it all teenager. Don't you dare say any one thing that could be taken slightly the wrong way or some asshole will start attacking you over it, no matter how irrelevant it is to your main point. And don't even get me started on tankies.

I'm hanging around in hopes that there will be a wave of normal people at some point.

Just wanted to back you up on this. I'm also very outside the techy core of people on here and have been hoping for more diversity to join as well. There's at least two of us!

Three and I agree with another user about the people being sanctimonious, though I would use preachy.

I am a very “techy person” (in fact Y-Combinator’s Hacker News has been a partial Reddit replacement for me), but like you, I too cringe at Lemmy’s constant stream of shitty star trek memes, repetitive “this is what living with ADHD is like”, and posts with days-old news items from 3rd rate wannabe-journalism sites. I mean a quarter of this site is literally screenshots of Twitter posts.

The obvious answer to the shitty content here would be to stop complaining and just start posting the things I’d want to see. But there’s a sense of futility in throwing good things into what feels like a giant pool of detritus.

Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.

Anyway one of the great things about old reddit was that, overall, the site (or rather the reddit hive brain) did a decent job at pushing the good stuff to the top. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, that doesn’t seem to be happening as much here on Lemmy.

Discoverability of niche communities is pretty lacking. And I guess some people browsing All by New are turned off by the amount of news / memes content and don't vote the good stuff

Similar reason to why I've backed way off to mostly lurking. That and most of the subs I was on in like aviation, space, other technology and engineering things don't exist here. But I'm happy to give it time. Reddit took a long while to build those communities too.

I do feel like a lot of people here are on guard and that doesn’t make for the best vibes.

My wife was asking me the other day how my “shitty Reddit” was doing. I told her it was like someone rounded up all the little twerps that require you to add fine print to everything you say on Reddit.

Also if you post more casual things to a specific sub then you’re almost guaranteed to get downvotes from people just browsing the ‘all’ feed. Like who gives a shit about downvotes but it does make it harder to gauge if they’re from people in the community not interested or just randos.

I agree with a lot of this sentiment. My goal is to try to "be the change I want to see in the world".

So I occasionally challenge the dumb group think I see on here. Sometimes it well received but not always.

One thing Ive noticed is how reactionary and un-nuanced a lot of posts are. I guess it makes sense since a majority of the users here self-selected to leave a site in protest. There is a bias towards being "reactionary".

But the vibe feels off on Lemmy and I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I certainly don't feel like a lot of my people are here. Don't get me wrong, I love hearing different opinions and viewpoints but the way a lot of them are presented here feel very "well ackshually!" or sanctimonious. It's less like that on mastodon, but still there. Maybe less "fun" and hearted. It's almost too serious, but even the less serious stuff isn't as fun/funny.

Hacker news feels better. Almost reminds me of old school reddit or even forums.

I think the fediverse and Lemmy would have been better if it was designed where each "subreddit"/channel was an instance. Basically federate the small communities but don't make a bunch of small "reddits" where it's fragmented and watered down.

There could be hubs with curated channels or apps that let you curate channels but each channel is effectively independent.

Anyway, I don't know that that would even fix the vibe problem with the fediverse but I think it would help communities grow, evolve, and mature better.

Happy you're hanging around. As one of the post-capitalist space hippies, I'm probably awful, but I do value diversity.

Another normal person checking in. Sadly I don't comment much for all the reasons you mentioned. It is some comfort to know there are a few of us around.

Another normal person checking in. Sadly I don’t comment much for all the reasons you mentioned. It is some comfort to know there are a few of us around.

Smart. Commenting here on anything tends to get you harassed. Not threatened at least.

this is hands down one of the best things I ever read.

Yeah, it feels quite petulant and deconstructive at times.
But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.
I mean, downvotes and upvotes could be capped at -1 and +5, respectively, like on /. which has been going strong for more than 20 years with this concept, or there could be enforcement of some sort of netiquette, but that would put additional strain on the mods.

But a lot of what you wrote is just a feature of any small online community. Then you end up with these bitter types who, if you rubbed them slightly the wrong way, get up at 6 a.m., downvote everything you ever wrote and report as many of your contributions as they can get away with.

I mean, this is what got me to leave reddit, apart from the corporate stuff. I remember when I got sitewide banned for saying I let my cat go outdoors, and I was reported repeatedly for violence across many comments by some anti-cat nutbag who thinks I'm personally causing an Avian holocaust. My cat has never caught a bird... he mostly sits on the porch and lays in the garden and lets people pet him.

I was on reddit within their first year. It was very much like you just described the lemmy community. The posts were all linux, communism, libertarians, lgbtq, typical nerd media discussion (star trek/wars, dr who, etc), and fringe communities. However, when I started, there was no commenting. That changed a few months later, and there were no sub reddits so it was just like /all and that is it.

This type of community was exactly what I was expecting. Early 4chan was this too. It just seems that these are the people that adopt new social media, and websites, early.

The internet was such a different place back then I don't even know if you can compare the two periods.

nerds who want to be away from the normies, yep.

i started commetning on reddit in 2009. I was a evil normie invading their fun little space. left reddit because i'm not angry/lazy enough to enjoy it anymore.

there are a few of us here.

but 100% agree on the vibe here being angry teenager who is angry about Linux for some reason and loves white knighting on internet comments.

I don't notice the Linux stuff, but I find commenters to be fairly toxic generally.

There's no respectful discourse. It's all snarky "ima tell you how wrong you are" stuff.

I'm generally progressive, but I'm old enough to find the young, idealist progressives irritating.

I do not mind idealist progressives. It is nice to be reminded.

That said, it can be hard to get past all the “death to the investor class” hate for everybody that has saved up to buy a house for their kids to grow up in.

"landlords are evil!"

yeah, the little old lady who i rented from for 5 years and who never raised my rent before I bought... she was so evil. and not at all a wonderful person who i still help out from time to time.

same. i love discussion. and the ability to acknowledge the merit of someone's differing opinion and ideas.

that doesn't exist here. it's all insults and emotional dimwits who think zeal and ideological purity are what matters.

Everything is fucking star trek, linux, and communism. The only women here are trans women.

100% agree on this, and I guess it's because nerds are the first ones to discover and use new tech. It also gives a sense of real community since everyone speaks the same language. But of course this means that people outside the circle will wonder what the fuck is going on. :)

About teenagers and people attacking you, yeah, that's how some of them are. I get comments where they intentionally misunderstand something just to be able to copy/paste some default snarky response, because that's how they have fun feeling superior. :).

It's never original because they are not very bright, it's just quotes and oneliners they saw online and now they use them because they like them. Doesn't bother me, I just don't respond and continue in other threads instead. I honestly just smile about it and move on. You should try it.

You have to realize that lemmy is just entertainment and some people get entertained if they can make you upset and angry.

I wish I could be like some of the other commenters here and say that leaving Reddit has been good because of the time suck that it was, or that I’m self-hosting xyz, but I can’t. And I am truly jealous.

I’m still looking to scratch that itch and there’s…nothing. I’m just very bored now but I haven’t gone back because I’m so angry at the way it ended. I do like Lemmy a lot, and Mastodon since I also gave up Twitter, but for better or worse they were a big part of my life and I’m not doing amazing things and coming to wonderful realizations now that they’re gone. It’s just depressing all around.

I volunteer in disaster response, and hurricane season started today and Reddit and Twitter were huge resources for us. Do you know how much of a loss that is? That can’t be replaced…entire communities, regions, parishes, counties, cities, states…they aren’t going to magically swap from one service to another because spez and Space Karen are assholes.

I’m sorry for the rant but enshittification sucks and I am sad.

TLDR I agree with you, OP.

In terms of boredom, it's a healthy thing! Boredom is what pushes people to learn new skills, find new hobbies, and just generally do things. I think the demonization of boredom is very bad for society.

In terms of disaster relief, that sucks. If you have to use Reddit for that, then so be it. People getting the help they need in an emergency is more important than sticking it to spez.

It was the one thing that consistently relieved some of my ADHD boredom though, which is priceless lol

Haha ya, I totally get that. For me: I've been doing more little projects on my phone (designing games on my off time, researching work problems, etc), started carrying around a journal to write in on my bag, I downloaded the Shonen Jump app and started reading manga for anime I've wanted to watch but haven't gotten around to, and I listen to podcasts not just when I'm driving. Hope some of those suggestions help or kickstart your own idea.

I also want to start carrying a book around with me like I did when I was a kid, because I have such a big list to get through and I have lots of pdfs for rpg books I've downloaded but haven't read. I've tried to read them on my phone, and I succeeded with one book but the screen is so small lol. Maybe I need to look for a good e-reader that reads pdfs without straining my eyes, like I heard e-ink readers or something like that do, but apparently not with pdfs, I guess?

Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it! I can only listen to podcasts when I drive really, it’s the only time I’m able to focus on them. I can’t turn one on at home and just…listen. Maybe if I’m cleaning or something but I prefer music to do that for motivation.

I have a Kindle Oasis and I LOVE it! It’s the perfect size to slip in my purse, it’s thin, and I have multiple books with me at all times. I highly recommend it!

Thanks! I'll look for that one! And you can tell, I really want to avoid returning to my reddit level of online addiction I was at previously. I'm close with Lemmy, but there's not enough content for me to get there yet lol.

12+ years on Reddit. Walked away in disgust after the API fiasco and killing Apollo. Found Voyager here and that really helped the transition.

I miss the local subs, especially related to current events, and game day threads of local baseball team. Haven't found a good replacement (the Athletic has them but they're harder to navigate). On current events, unless it's a really big national news story, not much.

Between the loss of Reddit and Twitter, I feel like I'm getting less realtime news. But in retrospect, it didn't really matter. I'm actually fine reading about something two days later once the outrage has died down.

My daily usage definitely dropped, which is a good thing. I've been reading digital and physical books more instead of mostly a diet of audiobooks and podcasts. If there's some idle time, I dip into a book instead of reflexively checking social media.

FWIW, Lemmy has the same vibe as Reddit 10 years ago. I'm planning on sticking around and contributing more.

More like Reddit 15 years ago, but it's getting there and I think if we maintain a healthy core the next big thing will send another wave here. It's exactly how Digg died.

100% this. Reddit wasn't always what a lot of people know it as. Lemmy has extremely early Reddit vibes. And that is a good thing. We just need to keep growing and diversifying.

100% this. Reddit wasn’t always what a lot of people know it as. Lemmy has extremely early Reddit vibes. And that is a good thing. We just need to keep growing and diversifying.

Yeah but let's hope that doesn't just repeat the cycle and bring in more malignant/militant types who just want to cause internet drama to feel good about themselves.

I actually miss Reddit, I miss it when it was actually a useful site where you can engage with users on specific topics that barely anyone in my country gives a shit about. I left Reddit on 1 July 2023 (the day API access for third party apps got shut down), and after 11 months, I'm still not looking back. Lemmy really is my new home now, I'm called "Resol van Lemmy" for a reason. Let's be honest, Reddit nowadays is basically some buffalo trying to take a huge dump on a birthday cake, an incredible website that ended up being ruined by a bunch of shitty business decisions. I'm gonna say it again, fuck spez. He is not was Reddit is about, we Redditors are what Reddit is about. I don't even care anymore, fuck him. Lemmy might potentially be as good as Reddit one day, but I suspect that this day is quite far away from today, but I (and my fellow Lemminos/Lemmings/Lemurs/whatever) am working to make that day closer than ever.

I was on Reddit for almost ten years, still feels weird to leave it. But it’s like leaving a marriage or long term relationship - you are not leaving that person you were first with, you are leaving the person they became. Reddit today isn’t the Reddit it was even a year ago.

The place got infested with Boomers reporting people non-stop, the major Karma accounts that contributed so much almost all left. There are niche subs like the fountain pen subs, tipofmyjoystick, and a few others that I wish would move here. Sadly I think those places will be lost.

I haven't even bothered to subscribe to many communities. I almost exclusively browse all because there just aren't any niche interests of mine being talked about. In that sense, the gap that leaving reddit left has not yet been filled. That said, I don't particularly miss it.

The only thing that really sucks is the loss of game communities. I no longer get updates and spoilers for games I'm interested in on a forum. I've had to join like 30 different discord servers and have them all send updates to my own private server, but I no longer have a community to discuss these things with because I don't care for chatting with strangers in real time like you do on Discord. This has led me to become less interested in many games and, in some scenerios where the game is held up by an awesome community (Deep Rock Galactic for example), I've just completey stopped playing them.

With that in mind, I think I would consider my switch from Reddit to Lemmy somewhat negative, but at no fault of Lemmy. I realize I'm not exactly doing anything to help my problem, especially by only browsing all.

Lemmy is great for general shit... News, memes, generic hobbies like cooking that most people might do, etc.

I miss being able to go to /r/Game_Name and being able to talk specifically about that one title. The generic "Gaming/Games" communities are mostly just news about the industry as a whole, which doesn't really get discussion about the games themselves.

IDGAF though if nobody else uses it, come June 21st, I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy with stuff from the DLC as I play through it. Add "Lemmy" to the online group keyword thing in-game :P

Basically reddit stole a huge amount of soul from many communities that were convinced of its good intentions. It was just gathering and still is gathering data to train AI to then use it against us later. There's no room in my mind to ever go back to that shit hole.

This is literally the only reason I've kept using reddit. I hate reddit, but I love the communities I'm involved in and I want to give back to them. As someone that's at least a little recognizable, I can't do that on the fediverse, and that sucks. I'm doing my best to encourage people to move over to this side of the fediverse, as well as continuing to use it myself (granted, more mastodon than lemmy, given more of the communities I'm a part of congregate there -- anime fans, namely) but it sucks that the exodus wasn't as big as I'd hope. But i'm doing my best to contribute to the trickle of users over to a part of the internet that does actively feel more joyful than the wastelands of other services. It's a slow process, I just wish it wasn't so slow-going

I definitely will be practically spamming the only Elden Ring community on Lemmy

Please do! I try to keep !baldurs_gate_3@lemmy.world alive, not an easy task he he

I just realized the reason I don't see much activity in the one I was thinking of is because it's on lemmy.ml and I blocked that instance. I wonder if I could get mod access to the lemmy.world one and fix it up... 🤔

Edit: I did 😃

I miss the niche communities from reddit. Things like emulation, datahoarding, discussions of my local sports teams, etc just aren't as common here. Conversations are fewer and more far between.

With that said, the conversations here are generally higher quality and I haven't really seen many bots which is nice.

There are some pain points. The sorting could be improved, I feel like maybe they could have multiple post sort orders like a primary and a secondary. I want to prioritize the top daily posts with the most points, but that makes some smaller communities unusable because they only have one post every few days and all the discussion happens in there. Or, maybe per-community versus home page having different sort orders, something like that. When there's less content, it's important for it to be more discoverable. I tried out "Hot" sorting but I didn't really like it, so then I switched to "Active" sorting and that's what I've been using for the past week.

Have you tried "Scaled" sorting? It was added to lemmy a couple (?) months ago and tries to solve the problem you've described of big communities drowning out the smaller ones in a subscription feed.

I tried it just now, and it seems to kind of have the opposite problem. With scaled, I'm having trouble finding the most popular posts of the day/past couple days.

I feel like sorting is probably going to be something that will take years to get it to be quite right. Active does seem to provide a pretty good browsing experience though.

Bummer. It'd be cool if there was customization available on how exactly the sorting parameters work. I imagine, for example, if the weighting for a user's own sorting could be adjusted at their end, you could get Scaled (or something like it) to get you what you're after. Probably a pretty niche thing compared to just making sure most users are happy with the sorting most of the time though.

I like to switch between different sorts, because like you I haven't found the perfect one yet. I do think you should try scaled every now and then, though, just to help boost the smaller communities. It's fine way to find newer ones when I'm out of content from active or hot.

I've been preferring it actually! There's a sense of calm I get from scrolling through my frontpage and being out of posts at some point, usually like 20mins. I used to spend hours and hours on Reddit, just because it was so easy to keep scrolling infinitely.

At first I thought I should subscribe to more communities to have more content but it's actually kinda nice to be limited.

I also found a great female weightlifting guide over on hexbear, so I've been building muscle since November. Someone must really care to post guides here, so my confidence in it has been a lot better from the start.

And I recently took the plunge and opened a community for posts about Royal Pythons. I'm still the only poster, but it will catch on eventually, and I'll cultivate it to be better than r/ballpythons from the start. Some of the posts on that subreddit are simply scary haha

I miss some Reddit communities, to be honest. There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.

Another thing that has been bumming me out is that people are way more aggressive now. Lemmy was a very friendly and welcoming environment, even in the most toxic topics you could think of. Lately I find a lot of elitist comments where anyone that doesn't have the same opinion or needs is objectively an idiot.

On the positive side, I switched to Linux because of Lemmy! And I'm (still) learning Rust!

Make sure you dye your hair a fun color when you get to a comfy point with Rust, that way people know you're a serious Rust dev (/s).

There are no communities here for most of my hobbies and that brings down my enjoyment of the platform. Most things that spark joy in my life are not here.

Which kind of hobbies do you have? There might be other people interested in them too

I lucked out in this regard.

I was able to join up on sopuli, a local Finnish instance with a small but active number of users, who post about and occasionally comment on local things in !suomi@sopuli.xyz. It's still quieter that reddit in that regard, but I do at least get some local news.

I've also made a huge effort to bootstrap an active anime community here on lemmy, and luckily I've not been alone in that. !anime@ani.social has been growing steadily. Instead of getting my anime fanart on reddit like I used to, I upped my usage of pixiv significantly, and then translated that into several communities and activity on lemmy.

If you can, try and get your news from local outlets, and if you actually get into that habit, set up a community for your local area, and start curating articles worth sharing, and posting them there.

Anime and TV discussion threads are what I miss most about reddit.

So long as the anime sub doesn't overly gatekeep shit near to anime but refuses due to arbitrary FetchFrosh reasons then I'm good.

Stopping shit like Thunderbolt Fantasy or near Chinese /Korean anime from being discussed was absolutely ludicrous. But then they have anime best girl competitions constantly like wtf.

The amount of sidebar bullshittery just gets stupid.

Like animemes and animeirl should really all be combined for now until there's enough people here.

There has been some drama around anime because the largest communities used to be on .ml. But they made the bonkers decision to defederate ani.social, which then caused people to make new communities on ani.social in order move away from .ml entirely, in response.

The discussions over on !dungeonmeshi@ani.social are likely some of the most active, but the anime community also has them, though not every series has enough watchers to get comments.

For animemes !animemes@ani.social is the most active, ATM.

My problem with ani.social is that it's full of moe, and I HATE moeshit with a passion.

That's too bad, because I'm almost solely responsible for that particular genre of post on the threadiverse, and I don't plan on stopping.

A "passionate loathing" of a concept sounds like a 100% "you" problem.

Also, I list literally every moe community I run in each of the sidebars of every community. It'd take you less than a minute to find and block them all.

And if you're using "moe" to refer to anime in general, you know v19 introduced instance blocking, right?

Edit: I don't understand why anyone would bother downvoting me or any of my posts? Do you people think anime-fans will just go away or stop being anime-fans if you disapprove hard enough?

Just to prove the point, I commit to making ten more posts for every downvote I get. I'm up to over 600, configured and ready to go. If you don't want to see them, just block me already.

I like the idea of moe culture in theory, but on Lemmy, Moe is exclusively drawings of unrealistically busty young girls in provocative poses.

It's gross.

I block and I block, but there's always a new subforum on the front page.

I have no clue what you mean by "moe culture". And please look up what "exclusively" means. Your use of the word here is a bit too far beyond hyperbole.

The word "moe" refers to the attachment people feel for fictional characters, and as different people like different characters, it can be felt towards nearly any type of character. Japanese vtuber Oozaru Subaru used the word to describe how she feels about BT, a 40-ton three-story battle-robot from Titanfall 2.

In the case of the moe communities I run, that means neat character art. Various niches of such, depending on the community and explicitly the kind that doesn't go all the way to porn. Short of that, it includes the full range from completely platonic to full on implications.

What you think is gross could not interest me any less. The idea that arousal is off-limits in art is a view held by the narrow-minded, prudish and boring. It's as valid a feeling for an artist to set out to evoke, as any other.

Again, I list every community I run in the sidebars of them all, and the last time I set up three new ones was two months ago, but I'm so sorry I didn't DM the updated list to you for you to block.

Lemmy scratches the itch that reddit filled and I'm on my phone less. I left before the blackout and I won't be back.

Since the whole API fiasco and losing reddit is fun, I wiped my reddit account, downloaded my comment history and then used a bot to wipe all my comments and posts, doing so got me banned from commenting on a lot of subs, something to do with the speed that the comments were edited at or something. Either way, I don't really care.

I still use my reddit account for lurking, there are some niche active subs that still have good information/discussion that unfortunately haven't been picked up elsewhere, but I have those subs opened in old reddit on Firefox and I don't venture outside of that, and I'll never contribute or comment again.

I get that I'm contributing to their traffic still, but I was an active member for 12+ years, and I'm still pissed they fucked the entire community to profit from our fucking content. Definitely won't be contributing to their content again.

"downloaded my comment history"

But... Why?

Cause it's fun to sometimes go back and see what you were like at that point in time, just like photos

Lemmy is pretty much exactly the same as reddit, but without so much advertising and a much smaller user base.

Some people get pissed about that being said, but most users know it's true. There are still overzealous mods and instances pushing and controlling agendas. As it gets more popular, more ai bots will start spamming stuff. In the meantime, it's not bad. I've almost completely stopped using reddit after about 16 years. I still hop over if I need or want certain bits of information. It's easier to get info/advice from 100,000 subscribers than it is from 100.

For the most part though, I'm happy with lemmy and have no plans of returning to reddit. It is kind of a dumpster fire over there.

Holy crap! It's been a year and I forgot about the advertising I had to ignore every 3 posts. Thank you for reminding me lol.

I miss the sheer size of the site only because I can no longer find my niche. If I want to talk or read about a specific anime unveiling, there's maybe a few communities on Lemmy but they're completely dead. Reddit had the benefit of having a single sub for X thing be modestly active instead of as many communities as you like but nobody keeps up with them.

I'm very likely the only siren enthusiast on Lemmy. Even if I opened my own community about them, I doubt anyone would care enough to use it. On Reddit, there is a small but very active sub for siren enthusiasts, although lack of moderation has led to it being overrun by obnoxious kids.

I just post siren stuff on relevant communities here, but they're not explicitly for that kind of thing and I worry sometimes that I'm annoying people with my hobbies.

You post away. Don't stress about others not being interested. Some will be, some won't. The more posting that happens, the more posting will happen. It's a positive feedback loop and it's how Reddit grew to it's current size.

You make a very good point. The ball has to start rolling somewhere, right?

yup, if you can make just one post per day, even if it just to the void, it will be there, with recent posts, in case anyone else interested in the subject moves to lemmy

Like others, being on Lemmy dragged me away from the constant stream of endless gratification. I still check it a few times a day, at most, but much less than Reddit.

What Reddit still has over Lemmy is a huge database of answers. While many people have left Reddit or moved on, their comments stayed, and that includes many searchable and genuine answers.

It also has more communities. Game devs still use Reddit to host a lite web page (subreddit) for example. While the fediverse has many communities, alot of them are duplicates. Every instance has their own Memes community for example, which pollutes the feed sometimes.

In the last year, I've made less than 5 posts on Reddit, mostly asking questions. I don't browse it, I just end up on it from search results.

I wish the fediverse agreed on unique communities. It's cool that I can communicate with several different websites, but imagine if there was 5 reddit.com's and they all made their own memes subreddits. Either you have to subscribe to all of them and get duplicate memes, or you sub to one and miss out of 4x more.

Because those 5 reddits are all divided, so is the potential user base. I'm not saying we should go back to a single website, but rather that each website in the fediverse hosts one major community.

Alternatively, have an instance that merges all the other instances' communities so that all the meme communities appear as one, and all duplicates are filtered out.

I too miss reddit sometimes. Mostly because it had such a large userbase that there was always something interesting to find/read. If you had the right subreddits it was a very nice and friendly place. I like the fediverse (I'm on mbin) but there are still some hurdles to take. Such as finding nice magazines not on your home server. There are some lists and stuff, but I just want to search in the search bar of the site and find them. Also, there is still a 20 year gap of information. If you have a question it is most likely already asked at reddit. So searching on DuckDuckGo or Reddit will almost certainly give you an answer. Searching on the fediverse won't give you the same hitrate. Especially for more non-mainstream subjects. For instance: I have a specific kind of motorcycle, the magazine on the fediverse is dead. Not one post, no activity (so that's my fault as well). On reddit, there a couple of thousand threads. I just recently decided I wanted to interact more on the fediverse (hence this reply) to put in my effort to keep the fediverse alive, active and growing. I just need to find some subjects to start a relevant and interesting new thread.

I don't think lemmy/mbin/etc. will be as popular since it's too much trouble for the non-techies. I do think mastodon/misskey/etc. is quite active and interesting. It's better then twitter. And since I follow the right people I really like pixelfed instead of instagram. I think those are better, but it is an adjustment. Since you have to put in the work to find the right people to follow. And while I dislike the instagram algorithm, it did offer some very good, high quality photography. But I think it's going the facebook way. Facebook in it's early days was a great way to see what your friends and family where up to. Now it's just old memes, stupid jokes, fake news and advertisements. Instagram is becoming that as well.

I still use old because the technical scene here in Lemmy is not as good as Reddit. I unsubscribed from all /r/ in my account except for technical ones. I haven't used /r/all since RIF broke.

reddit it still useful for small-medium sized communities but large subs are slowly becoming botfests and not worth using at all

Same. I still have RIF on my phone hijacking Reddit links. It's a nice little interruption as if to say "can you really be arsed with Reddit?" and unless it's a discussion about an obscure technical problem or something my wife sent me, I always click the back button.

Conversation is usually higher quality, but there's not a high enough population to sustain niche topics. It's pretty easy to be exposed to obnoxious and unwanted topics, like man bear discourse, to an extent that Reddit would have filtered. Global news subs are thankfully not captured by warhawks

Yeah I'm having trouble filtering out the nonsense here and the extremist crazies seem to dominate the postings. So I comment on something I think is interesting and next then I know all the replies are harassing comments, not discussion.

I definitely miss old Reddit, but it's definitely dead now.

Used to be my go-to scrolling every day. After they screwed 3rd party apps I found Lemmy and love it. There was an obscure open source Reddit app that used scraping that was still working so I'd been using Lemmy and Reddit about 50/50. Nice thing was the Reddit app kept me logged out with no engagement so I wasn't feeding the beast.

The other day all those little scraping Reddit apps finally died. Just useless. So fuck em I guess. If I ever need a more real-time larger user base I can go on desktop for it, but there is no mobile Reddit option (including offical) that's even remotely usable now.

Can't believe how much better the Lemmy experience is, even with its shortcomings. My only issue has been that the desktop web access feels rough. It also stinks not having the benefits of centralized storage. With Reddit I could bookmark anything and everything of interest in something like Raindrop.io and go see it any time months later. With Lemmy things often seem to be gone in days or weeks, or an instance will just be formatted horribly on desktop.

Still more convenient than Reddit and I hope the dev efforts keep polishing things up! 👍

Feel lost still, very much miss the population on reddit. I browsed a lot of gaming subreddits, and the ones with dozens of daily posts there get maybe one per month(!) on their lemmy equivalent, and more niche subs don't even exist here. It sucks. Yes, I try to make posts, but I alone wont change things.

Dont use reddit for entertainment but still have to use it for tech support or product reviews, there is 0 competition in that regard. Tried using a site that searches through multiple reddit-esque sites for questions like this but gave up bcs 10/10 times the only answers were on Reddit.

Reddit has been a huge part of me growing up.

Watching the site self-destruct has been.. painful.

I divested myself of Twitter a couple of years ago (which is how I ended up on the fediverse in the first place) and then in the last 18 months or so, Reddit, Facebook and Discord have all been given the boot too (and for a bonus, Windows as well)

I've found replacements for all of them in self hosted and/or community ran alternatives. It's quieter, and missing content, yet at the same time, it's far more personal than the sites I left behind. In many ways, it feels like the old IRC days, with smaller communities, but where people knew each other somewhat.

I wish they were a bit more active, and that some of the niche stuff existed, but at the same time, I feel quite at home with my alternatives, rather than lost.

I'm currently serving a three day ban from Reddit because I was auto banned from a sub for being part of another sub that had been deemed a hate sub. I appealed and they told me if I unsubbed I would be unbanned, so I told them to climb a wall of dicks and got a three day ban for harassment.

At this point, I prefer the benign tankies on lemy to the power tripping fuck-whistle mods on Reddit.

I didn't voluntarily leave reddit I got banned for some random comment (I honestly don't know what it was) and the appeals process was bullshit. So I found Lemmy. Haven't been back to reddit since don't miss it.

I had to appeal a permanent ban there for something super stupid, like really dumb. Roughly, I said, that public figures should be very careful because there are crazy people out in the world who will take their words seriously.

They said I was provoking violence, when I was commenting on the mindset of violent people.

At least here in Lemmy I can just block the irrational mods and instances like lemmy.ml and move along with minimal impact.

I'm off Twitter and on Mastodon since November 2022. Mastodon is such a chill place once you've found people to follow and made sure the trolls are blocked. Staying off Reddit has been harder, but it's also a shadow of its former self. Lemmy isn't quite what Reddit used to be, but neither is Reddit these days. Too much noise, not enough signal

I go on Lemmy and mastodon and have had no reason to visit reddit. The content on Lemmy reminds me of how reddit was many, many moons ago - less content, but higher quality. I'm part of that "older generation" of the internet, with the "information superhighway!" posters in my local library when I was in middle school, so I get what you mean.

My wife still visits (logged out) to read bestofredditorupdates, it's all she really likes that's there, which isn't really here yet.

Personally, I really like the federation model. I think it has a long way to go still, but this structure makes sense to me. I'm interested in seeing where it goes.

As far as other solutions like discord, I don't use it much aside from a few niche things where it's the best place, due to the number of non-tech people involved. I think that will shift over time too, as federated solutions becomes easier for the typical user.

Personally, I really like the federation model. I think it has a long way to go still, but this structure makes sense to me. I’m interested in seeing where it goes.

Yeah, I like my feed having kind of random shit in it, instead of being stuff a site 'thinks' I want to see.

My experience on lemmy has been very similar to my experience working in a startup. I'm constantly concerned that I've picked a sinking ship, and concerned that the people I'm on it with are not the people I'd want to sink with. But there's excitement around being a part of something that's still playing out, and being able to influence the long term trajectory.

I don't think the small community is a detractor, though. I've felt for a long time that large social media circles quickly fill with the worst kind of content, and normalizes the worst kind of behavior.

Anyway, I think the thing that makes this worthwhile is the decentralization and the knowledge that it's (for now) safe from corporate capture. I'm happy to be contributing to an alternative to for-profit social media, and that makes all the worst parts of it worth enduring

Lemmy is missing the small communities and frankly, most of the medium sized communities that Reddit has. I don't find the userbase that toxic but of course there is the occasional twat to deal with, luckily the blocking system is more robust than Reddit's. Hopefully user growth will continue and people that still use Reddit will promote Lemmy and the Fediverse there enough to feed the exodus.

For me, Lemmy is a bit of a mixed bag, but I'm still not returning to being active on reddit. Lemmy is very tech centric and sometimes it's a bit much. While I am interested in tech, I am also interested in art, literature, history and sports. For those subjects there aren't many posts and no, I don't want to create and mod a community. I'm just not that type of person.

I do go on reddit sometimes, when I'm bored with Lemmy or when I want to know more about a specific subject that is non-existent or very niche here. But without user account. All in all it's ok here, and it's growing. It will probably slowly continue to grow, but it's probably too complicated to go mainstream, which is a good thing imo to maintain the quality of the platform, but a bad thing for content diversity.

I only miss the small communities, especially the ones for video games like r/stalker. Nowhere else to talk about these things.

I've been around the internet a long time and seen, and been part of, community growth. The general trend is that you post to the larger community until it has enough momentum to continue on it's own in a more niche space.

So talk away about stalker in the general sub is my advice. It'll grow and then there will be a specific community in time.

Like many commenters here, I am glad that I left Reddit because of the enshittification, but I do miss some of the communities that were there that didn't want to move. I don't think Lemmy has completely filled that void, but it's done a good enough job that I'm here to stay.

I've basically stopped using all other social media except for Mastodon (which I actually like way more than Twitter, even if there aren't as many users) and I feel like my life is better for it. I spend less time mindlessly doom-scrolling and more time doing things I actually enjoy. Since the Reddit blackout I've read 60 books, played more videogames, and spent more time outside.

TL:DR touch grass sometimes, it can help

What do you like more about mastodon than Twitter? I always end up bouncing off microblogging sites but I still haven't tried that one.

Sorry for the late response, I don't check my notifications very often.

To answer your question: I like that you can follow specific hashtags instead of people. For example, my feed is a combination of #nature, #astrophotography, #hiking, and #catsofmastodon. There are hashtags for just about any interest, and that's all you have to follow if you want.

That does sound like an improvement. Have you tried Bluesky at all? I dipped my toe into that one and was just curious how you thought it compares if you have.

I haven't tried that one yet. Heard of it, but Mastodon has kinda stuck with me so I haven't really moved on to something else.

60 books!!! That's good work. Well done. Gotta up my reading game it seems.

While Feddit.dk is still small compared to /r/Denmark, I'm quite happy with the vibes here. Most people are very well-mannered and reasonable. There's not as much complaining either - lots of people in /r/Denmark are constantly complaining about seeing a certain kind of post and you can't filter them out cause everything Danish on reddit is in that subreddit, basically.

The fediverse with a language-specific instance gives much more options for creating a good culture and splitting content into more categories when necessary.

So yea, while Feddit.dk is not at the same size as /r/Denmark, I'm quite happy with the exodus so far.

For the first half of my transition over to Lemmy, I found myself talking and commenting more, even if I got into fights with Tankies a decent bit. I thought that once I blocked enough tankies and their instances my experience would get a bit better, and for a while it did, but then as time has gone on, I have begun to see that federation kind of makes good moderation extremely hard and rare, and if I try to use general feeds instead of curated ones, the amount of rage bait articles making it to the top has steadily started to increase, and this is finally pushing me away from Lemmy, and unfortunately back to Reddit since someone suggested Dig at one point, and good god its UI looks like I am constantly being fed ad after ad. I may eventually transition back to Gaia Online since I'm not super happy about going back to Reddit after all the shit Reddit has pulled, but I'm missing having a source of random information gain, that isnt hardcore tailored to rage bait.

lemmy still is full of weirdos who get pissed off on one comment you made on one instance and community... and will follow you around to others to harass you until you block them. it's miserable and weird.

at least they can't get you banned site-wide like they can with reddit.

I used reddit is fun, haven't really been back outside the occasional Google search that links a post. It sucks and I do miss it, kind of like an old ex you look back fondly on but things just didn't work out. I used to spend HOURS on the site and while lemmy is nice for keeping up with general world events and memes it just isn't the same.

I like to rationalize that it helps keep me in the real world instead of spending most of my time on an app. Oh and sticking to a principle and trying to support those 3rd party app creators.

I simultaneously really like Lemmy and miss Reddit. I spend less time on Lemmy than I used to spend on Reddit, which is good. However, I'd like Lemmy to have a bit more users and activity. Well, maybe we'll get there eventually. In the meantime I'm trying to be the change I want to see and I'm much more active here than I ever was on Reddit.

I really miss only one thing. /r/PublicFreakout. Cops beating folks? Video would be there. Protests going on anyplace? Video would be there. Magas and Proud Boys up to their bullshit? Video would be there. Etc etc.

I know !publicfreakout@lemmy.world exists, but sorting by "hot" the top post is 22 days ago...

I do miss it. A lot of niche communities. One example is r/Slovakia. Sometimes it even gets Q&A posts from major politicians or other people like that. Here it's dead.

Also RF-related communities. On Reddit I had a separate feed for stuff related to that: https://www.reddit.com/user/lukmly013/m/radio_stuff/new/ (I haven't been there for a year, I don't know if the communities are still relevant)
I am not even a ham, I just liked to lurk around.

And a controversial opinion: r/teenagers. I joined Reddit when I was 14. Sorting by... whatever the default is did usually bring up dumb stuff, but sorting by new had some good posts. Lots of questions, others posting their art or photos they took. Usually not something worth posting on dedicated communities, but not bad either. The quantity of posts meant there was plenty of good ones too. Usually others there were nice, unlike in real life.
It partially reminds me of !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

But Lemmy has advantages too. While there's far less people, they're usually more active. On Reddit, most comments and posts received nothing. Doesn't tend to happen here.
Lemmy is also fairly technically-oriented. I feel like 70% of Lemmy user base is using Linux (desktop) at least a bit. But there's more aspects to it too like being privacy-oriented and anti-corporate, so I don't see stuff like "Just sign up for [data collection service], it's free." or "Anyone could be a billionaire if they tried hard enough." and "It doesn't matter, your [appliance] will be long obsolete before it needs a repair anyway."

But in the end, it doesn't matter as much. I joined Reddit mainly for the Linux communities. There's very much not a lack of that here.

for me Reddit was the one big online platform where the average visible user didn’t seem to be very misinformed about Palestine (at least not by default), and it was frankly very sad to see where it got in the past few months.

This was a really big one for me, it was the clearest indicator that something had fundamentally changed on that site.

Lemmy is only good for quality discussions. It's not great at trashy threads and nonsense posts with bots, unfortunately. So you'd have to still go to Reddit for that, to get your fix so to speak.

There is a smaller percentage of women on Lemmy. And seems like a higher percentage of sexists. So I block a lot more accounts here.

The AI porn advocating brigade is large on lemmy in my experience.

Huh? What does that mean?

It means I've bumped into a bunch of people that are pro non-consential AI porn, many that are even pro AI csam.

I feel similarly often, but I think it has started to push me towards growing out of spending so much time online. Lemmy definitely has not filled the same niche reddit did, in some ways it's better but I am often disappointed what I see here as well. Even things like youtube I have started to watch less lately. It all is just starting to feel like hyper processed slop, like what am I really getting out of this thing I feel attached to?

The only social I really still enjoy lately is mastodon and that's because it's possible to make real connections with people there, it's not about making viral posts that tons of people see. Though clearly I still visit lemmy, I find myself often wondering if it's worth it.

I feel better consuming less social media, feel healthier. I have read so many books over the last year, just last month I read 16 books though that is an outlier. Not just fiction too, though that is the vast majority, but also pure math books. Smoking a lot less weed, I use to smoke it every day, I was high every day for years and years but now im close to just giving it up completely I think. I have started to exercise and eat better too and I am more willing to just be alone with my thoughts. Sometimes its painful but I think its good for me.

I don't think it's all down to just less social media, but it has been helping for sure.

Part of me often feels like if I don't check social media im like doing something wrong, not participating in the world, like I /need/ to stay informed. But social media isn't going to save the world, i'm not actually helping anyone or anything by reading and commenting on posts. Its an illusion of participation, a honey pot that just sapps away my time and my mental health and doesn't give me the things I actually want like real human connection.

I miss some of the friendships I've formed over there. other than that, I hardly open the website at all, and when I do, it's via Redlib.

Looking back now that it's been almost a year, it feels like not a ton has changed for me with Lemmy specifically. I'm still generally not interested in the global feed (I wasn't often with Reddit's either) and mostly just poke around it in from time to time to see if my home instance has a community I should be contributing to. !games@lemmy.world is solid and probably the most "Reddit-like" out of the communities I follow. I'm still trying to help grow a couple smaller ones, but I guess at least it's good that there's still activity after a year?

The other places I've tried have been more interesting, in both good and bad ways. I first started in the Fediverse with Kbin, and it's far worse than it was a year ago. Squabbles seemed interesting for a little while until it got gross, and Tildes wasn't for me. I'm still getting my feet wet with Mastodon after finally giving up on Bluesky, and I've completely left Twitter behind. Leaving there feels good, but the best thing the exodus did for me was push me more into Discord. I'm very active there and joined on as a mod for my favorite server. I've started using the platform professionally as well.

Unfortunately, after recently discovering Revanced can patch Sync (my previous favorite Reddit app) into functionality again, I've been on Reddit a little bit more. I still haven't contributed posts or comments since I left, but sometimes I'll have to go on as part of my Discord duties. It also really doesn't help that NSFW Reddit is indispensable. A year later, I haven't found anything that comes close in that aspect.

I still poke around on there now and again, but not as much as I used to. The day they kill 3rd party apps and the old site will be the day I completely stop using it - namely because neither their app nor their redesigns are actually useable. I have no idea how people tolerate them - they are absolutely garbage. Their latest trick is adding a bunch of metadata crap in their search links completely breaking most 3rd party apps still kicking.

Next time you see a /s/ in a URL, just watch how much it expands when you visit it 🤢

The only thing I miss is /r/listentothis. I would open rif and vanced in split mode on my phone and sort by hot/month. I could then easily start playing a song on my TV and continually add songs to the que. Now they changed it so that posts with a YouTube video didn't even give you a YouTube link. It embeds the video in the Reddit post so you have to go into the post and then click play in order to open the video in YouTube. Way too many steps and I've never been able to figure out a way to quickly get a list of links to create a playlist on YouTube or VLC.

I haven't really been back either, and I also miss it in some ways. I think for me I mostly miss the broader user base. Lemmy skews hard into a few interest groups, especially tech-focused ones, and while I have overlap there, I wish there were more types of people on here with less techy interests.

I tried bluesky for a little bit, but I honestly just bounce off Twitter whenever I try it, and Twitter clones have the same problem I guess. They have such a strong undercurrent of outrage and smugness, and while reddit and Lemmy could be accused of having some of this too, something about it feels much worse to me on microblogging sites.

I also miss the culture of linking to other subreddits in comments. That was a big way I found new communities on Reddit over the years, either ones I joined or just funny things you can't believe exist. I think the lack of that on here really hurts the ability for me to find smaller communities. Thanks to federation I'm not even sure how you do it on here. I'm sure it's more complicated than L/whatever.

I actually don't mind Instagram, but only after revancing it. 🙃

I still lurk on Reddit for some communities like for my city, but I no longer engage

I wish everyone could embrace the idea that different communities will be found in different places.

You don't need all your things to be on Lemmy.

There might be a nice niche community on reddit, or some likeminded souls in a discord channel, cool memes on an old school forum, or a group of friends in a signal group, or god forbid - a place to sell old junk on facebook.

I recently found a community of bike repair enthusiasts in XMPP chat which has been invaluable.

Honestly, are we all really that lazy that we can't bear to open a new tab and switch to whatever other platform? The idea of having to be "on lemmy" and not on reddit is very 2023.

I would very much like to seek out a vibrant variety of different communities wherever they may be.

I still get on reddit, but not often because red reader is basic, and the reddit app is trash

This is a minor point but on Instagram if you press the logo in the top left you can pick Following and it shows you a chronological timeline of only those accounts you actually follow. Instead of the usual shitshow set of reels.

I couldn't give it up. My baby bump group and parents of multiples group are too valuable a resource. The general parenting sub on lemmy isn't active, much less such niche things. The main alternative to them is Facebook groups, which I'm even less inclined to deal with than reddit.

I have been trying to cut down my social media use. Leaving reddit was a big part of that. What actually happened was I spend time here and on YouTube, and occasionally I load up old reddit!

I'm trying guys, but it's hard.

I'm still using it for niche interests, via FreshRSS and RedditBridge, there's little alternative to that reach as I always hated Facebook (never joined curmudgeon) and never took to twitter. I keep ratcheting up the votes needed to hit my feed in many subreddits, but that never helps, should work out how to make it weekly, monthly, becoming a chore. Like it here, as a linux scifi etc type, but miss the diversity.

I don't miss Reddit....

I just wish my topics and engagement were relocated to a neutral place where you can have an opinion and not be banned by some coward with an empty title....I want Reddit to crash like MySpace.... over moderation is off-putting on any platform...... really aggravating.

Werid, I brought up the notion that I don't agree with transgenderism and was permabanned from Reddit admins. I didn't said hate or kill or die or insult them, just don't agree with it.

Ultimately building a community involves posting content so that people subscribe and then end up adding their own content. Maybe there is some advertising you can do elsewhere to increase the flow a little but in essence its about making a place people go to look for new articles daily and they find it.

I left reddit for good a year ago as well and I haven't looked back.

The only thing I miss are the creepy askreddit threads, but I found that a lot of youtubers love curating and making videos on them, so that's filled that hole pretty nicely.

If you're on Android, try Instagram lite. Still works without ads.

I used to go to Lebanon all the time. Now that I’m back in America, it’s hard to get back. I loved it there despite the political and economic realities.

Would happily settle there if it ever became stable.

just took a look at reddit, one of the top posts is some open racist shit, full of openly racist comments under post of a german police officer having died of stabbing by an extereme-islamist, good riddance of that shithole

For people missing small communities, maybe try starting them?

I miss it daily.

The discussions here always are the same, very leftist. There is only one side. Memes here are always overdone. Comics are always politicized. Everything is "eat the rich", lhgtbq cant do anything wrong and lets not forget: fuck the police. Eating the rich has been tried before guys, several times. It didn't work. People need leaders and these leaders will always benefit from it. Learn history before you try to make it. Or is it just jealousy?

Just because youre lhgtbq does not automatically mean you're right or have been wronged. Surely your identity is very important. As is mine. lets find some middle ground, ok?

Police does fuck up, a lot. Do you have a solution instead of "all cops are evil" or is that just a catchy easy thing to say? And that brings me to the next one:

The depth in discussion and the amount of objective (news) subjects here is lacking. Views are often shallow and if they aren't they are cast in stone. Lemmy is unfortunately not usable for sharing and consuming knowledge. The depth isn't there, the communities too small and it always devolves into you're wrong because i say so. Or, if its IT, the knowledge just isn't there or worse: people are not willing to share it, adding a you f-ing MS simp because why not. And that brings me, again, to the next:

It's also often a lot less cordial. Instead of discussing the "room" gets divided in friends and enemies. Name calling is normal. Its a lot darker here.

Most of the times I don't even check responses on my comments : I know what they say. Yeah buddy, fuck you too.

Anyway, its fine. I use it daily. The use case isn't the same though. And the experience is very different.

I wouldn't be here without Sync by the way. Without (stuff like) Sync the hassle would just not be worth it.

Just because youre lhgtbq does not automatically mean you're right or have been wronged.

Governments and people around the world are actively trying to repress if not outright kill sexual / gender minorities, I do think they're wronged on a daily basis because their very right to existence is not granted :(

yeah and? I'm not those governments or those people. it has nothing to do with me. and I'm sick of people on lemmy calling me a bigot for thinking lgbt+ are normal people, and not angelic saints that can do no wrong and if I get rear ended by a lgbt+ person I should pay for the damages because clearly I'm at fault for some shitty southern state's policies. Even though I don't live in that state and I live in one of the most pro lgbt+ states in the country/world.

lots of folks are oppressed. i was oppressed and beaten by my father because he thought i was gay... where is my lgbt+ oppression badge? oh right... anytime I tell anyone that fact... they tell me to STFU because clearly I'm lying and I'm trying to 'steal their oppression' or something... usually by some lgbt+ person who has led a luxurious and privileged life... and whose oppression is mostly that they aren't rich and famous and clearly I should give them my money to that end...

Most of the times I don't even check responses on my comments : I know what they say. Yeah buddy, fuck you too.

Admitting you don't even engage in the debate isn't a good look. You act as if you've already found the opinion that stands atop the most solid ground, but you're openly bragging that you refuse to look down.

That's like feeling the ground beneath you give way, and then thinking not turning to look will allow you to remain standing.

That's not what i meant. Replies are just more a cesspit over here and often not worth the energy needed to read them.

Often there is no room for debate.

And that's for sure hurting the platform.

You're not exactly putting out a "convince me otherwise, I'll consider what you have to say fairly"-feeling energy yourself.

My experience has been utterly different from yours, in fact your initial comment there is one of the least "cordial" comments I've seen. I'd posit you're seeing a response to the way you write your thoughts. People aren't interested in engaging with stone walls, but they will try to take a sledgehammer to the ones they think are in the way.

And that's before I address you suggesting there's a "middle ground" in the lgbtq+ debate. There is no "middle ground" when it comes treating people like people, and treating them in the way they need. That is, a way that doesn't make them want to end themselves.

"As is mine" is a harrowing line in your initial comment. You are not under attack. In any way whatsoever. You are not being asked to give up, a, single, thing. The core argument is that people want to exist, and they want to be happy. That costs you nothing, at least in terms of "identity".

It displays a seriously concerning lack of understanding of the changes that the sane people in the debate want enacted, or more charitably, that you've mistaken the insane ones for the ones that are considered reasonable.

If I ask for water so I can live, you don't respond with "but how much do you really need". You give me as much as I fucking need.

I will agree that there are lgbtq+ individuals on the fediverse that are far away from reason, because the world has severely damaged them with what they've been put through. And there's more of them here because the fediverse has several corners that caters to them.

Remember, this is the group of people that has the highest suicide rate among any demo. Even among the ones that are alive, a lot of them are not gonna be ok. In response they can have overconsructed coping mechanisms, strenuous relationships with reality, etc. They can go off at the most innocent things because when the whole world feels like an enemy, its easy to assume that every person that gives you trouble, also wishes you dead. Even when they really, really don't.

Hence you can't look at these people and interpret all your interactions with them in aggregate. A lot of them are angry, but not really at you specifically. They have very good reason to hate "normal" society, because by default normal society treats them in a way that makes a significant portion of them choose non-existence over bearing it. And then people like you walk in and mention a "middle ground" like this isn't an immediate matter of life and death, that needs solving ten years ago. Yeah. You're gonna get some shit thrown your way.

Lgbtq+ people are being hurt all over the world. The ones that aren't, almost certainly have been, and are still healing. But no-one who is thinking clearly is asking you to take their every word as absolute truth, or throw them a perpetual pity-party. If they are, they are almost certainly among the hurting.

Obviously no-one can demand the whole world treat them with special coddling, but it's also not at all weird to see people who have been treated unfairly their whole lives, have trouble with finding where the line of "fair" actually lies. Or need a bit of extra kindness because they are in a place where they'll interpret disdain even when none is intended.

When someone who can't tell an actual enemy apart from someone who is just trying to change their mind on something they are wrong about, it's better to just make sure they know you aren't malicious. For someone like that, it's more important to show them not everyone who disagrees with them about something, also wants them dead. In fact it kind of has to happen in that order. For your point to get through, they first have to trust people enough not to close up and stop listening the second they sense trouble. One way people become like that is when words have been used to hurt them, a lot, and often.

And honestly, reading your wording, you don't exactly seem innocent on that front. To me, you read either intentionally unkind, or carelessly dismissive.

there is no point in engaging in debate with someone who is not arguing in good faith or thinks insults and harassment are 'debate'.

Fair enough.

But you can't know whether someone has a salient point if you don't at least read, and even more importantly, make the effort to comprehend, what they have to say.

you can if they are spouting cliched nonsense... but also who has the time to waste listening to partisan nutbags whinge and circlejerk?

I'd rather spend my time actively learning about shit in the world by going to the source material rather than listen to idiotic hearsay from some internet nutbags comments. but sadly, I'm in the minority there. most folks get their info from social media now.

Are comprehension and disagreement mutually exclusive to you?

No part of understanding what someone is saying prevents you from then dismissing them if they are full of shit.

But it kind of has to happen in that order. People are not full of shit, because they disagree with you. You disagree with them, when and if they are full of shit.

You can't be sure someone is wrong, until you can explain why. And yeah, sometimes that's as easy as going, "well this person is completely insane".

At the same time, the sane ones, are only going to disagree and engage with you, if they've determined that you are full of shit.

Do you have to listen to every nutcase that walks up to pick a fight? Of course not.

But if you do regularly get accosted for holding some view or other, it doesn't hurt to take a closer look. Even if the people bringing it up with you are being dicks about it.

i could give every homeless person I meet 10 bucks.

doesn't mean it won't solve homelessness. and it would leave me with about $250 less each week.

Wait.

Are you suggesting that listening to every person that disagrees with you is like charity? And that while charity works, it still isn't worth it?

Holy shit. Are you just a horrible person?

i'm saying i have limited resources and that i'm not going to waste my time listening to shitty arguements from idiots. that's what i'm saying.

i'm not going to listen to some lemmy leftist spout how UBI will solve all problems in the world. I am going to listen to a professional economist who has studied the issue and done studies on it talk about it's benefits, limits, and possible negatives, however.

let's not even touch the irony of some leftist idiot demanding i listen to their nonsense, while they 100% refuse to listen to a MAGA person. because to both varieties of idiot 'horrible person' is anyone who disagrees with them and their respective delusional ideologies.

You can't possibly be reading and comprehending what I'm saying, exactly what I'm saying you need to do in order to have a healthy relationship with reality and not make a fool of yourself.

Because I already mostly agree with what you think are "comebacks" to an argument I'm not even making.

...

So then which part of what I've said do you disagree with?

You keep making up scenarios as if I'm asking that every nutcase and their claims receive several peer-reviews, when I've literally suggested no such thing.

Generally, if you believe something untrue, and someone tells you otherwise, they're the one trying to do you a favour, not the other way around.

And did you not even read what I had to say? Because it's like you're retorting an argument I didn't make.

Do you have to listen to every nutcase that walks up to pick a fight? Of course not.

Although I disagree that the main problem is politicization, a lot of what you said otherwise concurs with my experience. The depth just isn’t there. Maybe it’s a numbers thing. You’d see many simplistic takes left and right on Reddit too, but given the sheer volume of contributors, more often than not someone would have some true insight to share, a well thought out rebuttal, a reasoned argument, or just some humor to lighten up the conversation, and that would rise to the top. So top comments were usually guaranteed to be worthwhile and low effort comments would become easier to ignore. At least in the better subreddits. Not so much the case on Lemmy. A lot of low effort sarcasm, political slogans, and tribalism in the comments. I do like Lemmy on the whole though, so sticking with it for the time being.

You refuse to learn LGBTQIA+, yet argue that other people are too simplistic? I mean, even LGBT is easy enough for most people.

ACAB isn't an attack per-se it's a commentary on the prevalence of police brutality, nearly ubiquitous, while a large swathe of the public says, "Most of them are good people." Well then, why are "good people" tolerating the bad? The only logical answer is ACAB until they police their own.

Thank you for once again doing what i was railing about. You've proven my point once again. The room is divided, I'm an simplistic asshole and you're the righteous dude. Congrats. Next stop: I'm a racistic bigot.

Lhgbtwdxyz I don't care, bud. I really don't. Do what you like, don't do what you don't like. Be who you are. Live life how you want. It is as simple as that. And let me do the same, ok? I will never get all the fuzz. Be gay. Dont be gay. Be bi. Dont be bi. Be nothing: also great. Be everything : good for you. Be the other sex or none at all: it's your life. I don't care and neither should you about what I do. Just love people and you choose who. Express yourself however you want. That's not a new message.

Police : solutions. Not anarchist bullshit. ACAB is bullshit and leads nowhere.

100% my experience on lemmy as well.

empty angry phrases... no actual substance on these issues. and no specifics. no meaningful discussion about how policing should be done... just 'police are bad and should not exist and crime will magically disappear without them!'

You're the one polarizing the discussion. You're literally the only one actually drawing a definite line, thereby excluding the possibility of you crossing it. So, if you aren't a "racist bigot" why engage in this self-deprecation? Why lament the inability to engage in good-faith discussion, by actively doing the opposite? You could be being "the bigger person" by ignoring any perceived fallacies. Instead, you're throwing a tantrum by being the most condescending person in the "room".

It's not anarchist bullshit. The point of ACAB is to pull attention to the fact that if there were lots of good cops, they should be doing something about all the bad ones. But they aren't.

Hence the solution needs to be far more drastic than most precincts and politicians are prepared to consider. That's where ACAB leads.

It is not for the public to invent the solution. That's literally what leaders and legislators are supposed to be doing. All we can really do is keep rejecting all proposals that won't actually solve the severely entrenched systematic problem.

Hence: ACAB.