Do you interact more in Lemmy?

Vincent Adultman@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 473 points –

I have noticed that I interact a lot more in Lemmy than I ever did in any social media. Let it be Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter... I am used to be the lurker, but here for some reason things are different. Wonder if more people feel like I do.

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I feel like you are more encouraged to interact here. Like you're helping the fediverse grow. The other thing for me is that people seem to be much more civil then in other places. So yeah I feel the same.

Like you're helping the fediverse grow.

It feels like a civic duty.

From what I see, Lemmy is just at the edge of "not enough content". So many communities have one or two committed posters. So I comment as much as I can and post when I see something interesting.

For me it's the gonewild subs... Once you start getting regular content there and they expand out to gonewildcurvy or bdsmgw or 30sgonewild etc you'll really see lemmy take off.

They've had some issues with that though. lemmynsfw was heavily defederated from others over concerns about CSAM being federated, and after that lemmynsfw had much more mild porn.

Personally, I think that as long as porn is still freely available via old reddit without logging in, then it won't take off much. Also, we're in the post-Only Fans age, so it's unlikely lemmy will ever get that "pure" gonewild feel that reddit had, as almost every user that posts their own porn is now doing it for money.

That's the thing I find so surprising. There are so few NSFW posters. Porn pushed a lot of technical and economic innovation online. If Lemmy can't get traction on adult content, we're in bad shape.

/s (mostly)

This is how I see it, and it seems like comments are better received here, too, which encourages me further.

Yea I’m pretty much of the same mind, anything that can encourage content on here the better

Exactly this. I never bothered to do much interacting on Reddit. Either comments were trolled or downvoted "just for shits and giggles" or they were buried in no time under all the snarky oh-so hilarious comments that instantly killed all real discussion.

With reddit having way more people and being only a casual browser, I would never make it early enough to a post to contribute in a meaningful way. Whatever I would have said would be commented dozens of times before I got to the thread. At best my comment wasn't made yet, but I'd be sure someone with more knowledge on the subject would've contributed in greater depth soon.

Here I see plenty of posts hours old with no comments. There's a greater chance whatever I might say won't get buried or overshadowed.

Because a lot of stuff is fresh you get a lot less of "This was asked last week, next time use the search bar" kind of stuff too

Funny enough, this question is asked every few days it seems.

Oh yeah but I would rather have this versus condescending Redditers jerking each other off

Agreed. What you say matters here. Your post won't be buried with only you for an upvote.

I do, and it's not for entirely altruistic reasons either.

When I'd open a thread on reddit, if I wasn't there within the first hour of being up or first dozen or so comments, it was almost guaranteed that whatever I said would get buried and the effort I spent formulating my comment would basically be wasted. So there was very little incentive to engage with meaningful discussion just for the sake of discussion. On Lemmy, most posts struggle to get over a hundred comments at most, and even more struggle to get past ten. So, if I spend time developing my reply, I have a higher chance of that comment getting seen and other people in the community engaging with me, which is the entire point of leaving comments, IMO.

Agreed. Comments here are more meaningful for being rare. Even comments disagreeing with OP or replying from a different point of view are often well thought out and meaningful.

On Lemmy, the algorithm is also more prone to show newer with less votes comments, when sorting by hot. So it gives more value to those low votes comments.

And also generally, with those 2000 comments threads, someone's bound to already have said the same thing so you upvote it and move on.

Lemmy feels very different to me as well. People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn't totalitarian. Plus Reddit really seemed like it was controlled by moderators with an agenda. I'm not a flagrant asshole (I think), yet I was banned from a few subreddits for not following seemingly arbitrary rules. For example, I was banned from my city's subreddit for making a post asking a question that wasn't directly about the city, it was more about the state's culture/history. I just wanted to know what my neighbors thought. Apparently someone decided that wasn't what the subreddit was for.

People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn’t totalitarian.

You've finally found the right echo chamber for you!

Kidding, kidding. But really, I don't find people on Lemmy that much more mature or skeptical than Reddit, and I've had fewer productive discussions (though those have also been rare on Reddit for several years now). It's definitely more left-leaning, though.

Moderation seems more friendly, though, I agree with that.

You've finally found the right echo chamber for you!

It's been a very, very long search, lol

I also have found the discussions more mature, usually, even in some cases where the other person is to my right or left on the political spectrum (I am in the progressive / social democrat range). Of course there are always some that post in bad faith but it seems like the ratio of those to others is lower here, thankfully.

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You want an honest answer?
No. No I don’t.

I comment and share links at about the same rate as I did when I was primarily on Reddit. I’m less interested in Reddit these days and probably split my time 50-50. I’m pissed at what they did and continue to do, and the quality of the content has clearly taken a hit across the broader Reddit community but it’s still SO MUCH BIGGER than the entire fediverse that there is hundreds if not thousands of times the people and content.

I’ve tried to get a couple of groups off the ground, but I’m just not that guy and wasn’t on Reddit either.

I am not commenting on Reddit much anymore tho, due to the aforementioned behavior by Spez et al.

that's honest.

i miss reddit, too. been 3.5 months since leaving and i used to spend 12 hours or more at a time scrolling and reading. it was like a good friend or partner.

but i really NEVER posted there. and i do here, sometimes.

Hey, thanks for being honest about it.

You're right, the sheer size of Reddit means it's hard to deny that the variety of discussion topics is much greater than on Lemmy. The decentralized servers model also means it's slightly more difficult to find and grow small communities.

What I like though is that in general, posters on Lemmy, even the ones that repost old memes from elsewhere, try to genuinely engage with other commentors.

I certainly do. Most social media algorithms feed you content that it thinks will generate interactions. Lemmy does not do that which results in whatever you decide to post having more meaning because there's no stupid and/or manipulative machine deciding wheter your post is or isn't worth seeing

I findyself upvoteing way more on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit.

I have read so many thoughtful comments on this thread that made me say to myself "Yes, that. Exactly that's the reason I mostly rarely bothered formulating a comment or opinion on Reddit." The whole atmosphere on Lemmy seems so much more mature, considerate and genuinely interesting to read. I really hope we can maintain this as Lemmy is (hopefully) growing.

I've seen it fairly often by now; many people seem to enjoy posts with moderately long comment sections. I believe this is what contributes to a more wholesome experience.

Similar to how groups meet a natural breaking point when they grow too big and people cannot know each other anymore, I imagine huge comment sections create a sense of being meaningless and unheard. This discourages sensitive voices, and may appeal more to people who don't care anyways, which isn't exactly a great attitude for social encounters.

I can further imagine large comment sections create FOMO for the reader, and can overall be more stressful, which leads to aggression.

Just guesses and impressions. No idea if true. Also no clue how to foster that environment in a growing network.

That is probably a part of why I do comment more here, I would see comment sections on reddit sometimes already with hundreds of comments and just felt like I was trying to slip into a convo that had already been well established or whatever, here I feel more likely to comment because the sections will be sparser and my comments will actually get replies from the users in the thread.

Yes, definitely by a huge margin

Partially because I feel like people will actually notice, partially because I feel more a part of a community due to the smaller size and seeing the same people multiple times

Absolutely! Less trolls, real people with real opinions make for a far more interesting community to be a part of.

And less people make it feel more comfy.

I was on Reddit yesterday to remind myself how bad it was. There's no way I'm reading hundreds of comments especially when most are inane or insane or toxic.

Here, the comment quality is far better (higher signal to noise ratio so to say). And I finally recognize usernames that show up regularly. I feel most folks are commenting in good faith so I'm not constantly on alert looking for right-wing propaganda bots (or trolls or whatever they are). It's all so much more relaxed and cordial. Hopefully we can keep it that way for a good long while.

I am interacting about the same amount but I am trying to comment with a little more thought and substance though it doesn't always work out that way.

Agreed about the less people makes it more comfy. The whole instance is your community too, I guess being able to choose what you want from a instance makes everyone more comfortable. You don't get overflown with people with different objectives when it comes to browsing Lemmy.

On R×ddit, I wrote about a scary experience I had and posted, not thinking much of it. Weeks later, someone in a server I frequent sent me a YouTube link and asked "isn't this you??", as they recognized my R×ddit username. It was a video of someone reading out my post and giving it much more exposure than I would have ever wanted.

It spooked me to realize that R×ddit is now just a content farm. Posts will be picked up for videos, news articles, Facebook fodder, etc. Most of that shit is 20000% fake anyhow. What's even the point?

Give me a smaller community any day. The moment people start farming Lemmy for content to read out in their YouTube videos? That's the moment I bow out.

That's an interesting perspective that I really hadn't thought about much but you're totally right. Glad I was always more of a lurker there.

Dp you think Lemmy would not be one if they were as popular as reddit.

How naive.

The best you can do is using different alts to avoid recognitions with your main username.

A LOT more. It's also in part because I'm not being stalked by Nazis which I was on Reddit, but I feel so much more comfortable talking here in general.

Heeeey, nazi stalkers. Not bad bruh.

What did you do to get that kind of attention?

So I have a fake white supremacist Facebook account where I befriend white supremacists and then I would take their photos and put them on r/beholdthemasterrace. It was absolutely glorious to mock those inbred hooded motherfuckers, but then some of them found out their faces were put on Reddit, and they complained to the Reddit admins who opted to permanently ban me as a result. Yes, Reddit took the side of Nazis.

But before my ban they were all messaging me telling me why the white race was superb and all their usual kind of bullshit.

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Nope, I'm a lurker by nature. Back to my hideyhole I go.

I'm both. sometimes I comment alot, most of the time i lurk...there are some good contributions from some peeps that i like to keep encouraging them to post (pug jesus) because it is interesting content...thats what im here for anyway.

I think the reasons I'm more inclined to interact on Lemmy/Mastodon are because, firstly, the fact that we were all attracted to the fediverse means we instantly have something in common in addition to whatever subject matter our chosen instances and communities focus on.

Secondly, the communities are a lot smaller—for now. This could be a temporary thing if Reddit continues hammering nails into its own coffin, or the fediverse might be niche enough that it never becomes as massive. But right now, posting a comment on Reddit feels like shouting into the void whereas Lemmy is like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean. Neither are great for communicating, which I have always felt is the biggest problem with this format compared to classic message boards; but at least the message in a bottle is more likely to wash up on a shore where it might be seen.

Yes, definitely. I'm more willing to share my honest opinion. For me, the fear of downvotes was real. I also sorted Reddit posts by Hot, and I rarely felt motivated to connect on a post that already had 1000 comments.

Keeping up with all the comments and the fear of being repetitive made it impossible indeed

Yes and no. Reddit has more niche interest groups that don't exist here.

I am far more interactive on here. I was almost exclusively a lurker on Reddit.

Yes.

I've always disliked the current state of social media, because it always felt like everyone is shouting at each other rather than talking to each other. That's why I like having penpals to writing letters back and forth and shoot the shit on whatever, and I've blamed Facebook and Twitter for killing that.

I lurked reddit anonymously but I don't comment much, because it felt like the only place that you can discuss various topics with random people and learn cool things. But part of it is that slowly, it made me miserable, the hivemind with all the arguing and smugness and unfunny one-liners and most of all, the cynicism.

This place is a bit different I think, I really didn't expect to get as involved as I am, but it kind of brought back that feeling of writing back and forth to random people and having a conversation again.

I've made it a goal to read and write more and talk to more people when I have the time to spare right now.

I was mostly a lurker on reddit for many years. Before that was a forum board user, moderator, and even setup a few for sports leagues. Despite being sports centric there was usually off topic sections for politics and other off subject debates. Often these sections became more popular than the sport.

Then it would became drama filled and once a year there would be complaining about all the new summer users once kids were out of school. They would flood the forums with newbie stuff and people would leave the forum and find a new home. Seems like this pattern repeats to the newer socials too.

With FB etc the forum boards seem to lose a lot of that daily traffic over time. FB and other Socials delivered that quick dopamine hit and it didn't even need to be in the niche the forums were. For those that wanted the niches, FB groups came on the scene.

For me with Reddit it came on one of my early Android phones which was great for reading with. I didn't comment much as the threads were usually fairly deep with comments and sort of done by that stage. It didn't have that small town feel like the old forums so I wasn't as inclined to add much. Still there was plenty to read, perhaps too much as books began to be replaced by socials too. Since I was only a mobile user, the API changes were a great reason to get off reddit and read books again. Still working on that.

I'm finding myself commenting more on Lemmy but like the life cycle of the forums and reddit, it's only a matter of time when the users reach the tipping point and the feel of the place will change.

So I'm trying to enjoy things as they last these days. Hopefully get some books in there now too...

I miss having pen pals, social media really ruined that for me as well. I still remember when my, then, close friend moved over to Facebook. Our usual bi-weekly exchanges slowly changed into her posting updates and dozens of followers writing simple replies. No longer having the time to write individually. I still don't know how exactly, but we just drifted apart after that. Still hurts a little when I think about it.

Anyway... That was about 15 years ago and until now I haven't really been vocally active online, just spend my time lurking like so many others. I really had to make a conscious effort to get more interactive and I took the move to Lemmy as my excuse to do so. People were already complaining that no one commented and only upvoted, so I'm trying to be the change I want to see :)
It's not like the old interactions I had with my pen pals, but I do like the human connection I sometimes get with others.

Compared to reddit, yeah, kinda. On reddit it often feels like it's not worth it commenting on a post if it's popular and 14+ hours old. On Lemmy I will see new comments with the default sorting of comments.

not really, I mostly interacted with niche communities on reddit that haven't made the switch

I interact less on Lemmy compared to Reddit, mostly because people here seem to be very vocal and polarised, so every time I have a notification in Lemmy I start groaning "oh god what did I say this time?"

But still, Lemmy is the cradle of humankind and wisdom, compared to Instagram and Facebook.

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Yes.

Sometimes it's corny or a little bit flamey though, but that actually feels like I'm discussing with real somewhat (we're on Lemmy after all) random people.

100% would discuss again.

Not yet! A lot of my interests aren’t as easy to find on Lemmy yet, but I’m definitely on here more than Reddit. I’m not really a community leader type but I can definitely be in the hype squad.

Yeah, folks are super reasonable compared to other social media sites, for the most part. The occassional nutter isn't propped up by some PR company bot net to drive engagement so they just end up downvoted into oblivion.

It's refreshing.

Way more. There's lots of genuine posts on here and not karma farming bots. Also, my posts in c/lockpicking and c/balisong actually got replies fairly quickly. On reddit, I would've been met with downvotes or people who don't even interact with my posts.

There are fewer people at Lemmy who only exist to blast threads with tired old jokes and memes so there is room for well thought-out comments to get more visibility.

I come here for discussions and so far most of the posts seem to welcome it, leading to more desire to engage.

In my decade of using reddit, I very rarely posted and maybe commented a couple times a week. I was a certified lurker. In the months of using lemmy, I became a mod for a community, comment nearly every day, and have far surpassed the number of posts I ever made on Reddit. Lemmy is just a nice place to be, and I like interacting with people here

Dude, yes. I feel more comfy here than in the corporate hellscape of centralized social media apps

I don't. Not much less either, I don't interact much with social media. Not that I don't want to, but I rarely have anything of worth to contribute. To make matters worse, Lemmy is mostly missing the communities that I'm interested in, of if they're there, they have little engagement. On reddit it was a little better, and Facebook is just insane in comparison.

But mostly I don't have anything to say, and if I do it's mostly stupid. My primary means of helping Lemmy is to not interact (much).

Nah not really. I only ever used reddit and YouTube. I'm not the kind of person for social media. When u/spez had his fit and the subs went on strike I quit reddit, because I don't like to be pushed around and getting screwed by some greedy corpo prick. Also, privacy. I rarely ever post something myself. I mostly write comments. But the amount of commenting is the same here as it was on reddit.

I just heard about LibRedirect, so that's the next step to give less data to Google.

Less. There's less developed community in my interests. Heck, even the football channels are quiet today.

Yup, the people here are cooler

I try not to interact in political posts as people are very toxic but other posts it's been good.

I used to be a lot more active on Reddit. But I forbid myself from downloading the app, so as for now, Lemmy is the social network where I interact the most.

I'll jump in under your comment because it's the same. Refuse to download Reddit app so my usage there is way down. Over 13 or 14 years I was fairly active. Here, I'm moderately so, but due mainly to my feed being probably proportionately inactive.

Yeah if Lemmy ever hits whatever saturation point is needed that niche communities are more relevant my participation will increase. As it is I'm honestly having to visit reddit occasionally to get answers from those niche type communities because they are simply non-existent here. There is nowhere but reddit to interact with these groups, as much as I hate that.

I'm with you. But I also don't see the level of infiltration by undesirables (bots, mainly) in the niche subs, an so they stay to an extent as they always have been. But it is a when not an if they decline. Hopefully Lemmy picks it up. Or maybe I grow up. One is definitely more likely.

I've been reading that there are ways to roll your own version of some of the old 3rd party apps using your own API key. I might look into it, if only so I am not relegated to using the shit web interface when I do need to check a few things on reddit. I refuse to install their official app though.

Yes, even though a lot of my opinions are considered controversial here. On Reddit, unless you sort by newest posts, you're going to get buried in the comments section.

I have always been a prolific commenter on Reddit. I'm doing the same over here. Hadn't been to Reddit in a couple months. Went over there earlier and explained to someone on r/electricians how an AC to DC transformer works. They permanently banned me, even though my answer was entirely correct, especially for the given problem. Heil spez, you can keep your shit show.

Why TF did they ban you? Fuck Spez.

Apparently I violated rule 8 about being involved in diy discussions. Well why the fuck was a diy post allowed in the first place? Truth is, you can't get schematics on most store bought electronics. You have to know color codes and troubleshoot shit backwards.

That's ignorant. You're better off without Reddit though. Really and truly. It's trash.

Definitely.

A) Posts don't have thousands of comments already by the time I see them, eliminating the feeling that commenting would be meaningless.

B) Engagement helps us grow, and I want to help us grow.

most posts i stumbled here are completely irrelevant to me, politically and socially, but reading comments here are better than reddit.

plus, margot robbie is here.......

That's Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie to you!

i wish nellie laroy still alive today, to share her stories from her generation, her fame, and her contributions to cinema.

She had the choice to escape and live, yet she choose to dance back into to the fire, and she burned.

She is me, yet I am not her, and you're not her either.

Don't make the same choice, we will see the sunlight again.

I don't remember did I do anything else than lurk when I initially created my account in Reddit.

I was more active before I stopped creating stuff (and shortened my time of interacting with) in Reddit, and that activity level carried in here.

However, since I think that Lemmy is a smaller place than Reddit and I really want this "seems-better" system to take off, I am trying to contribute some extra resources of mine here to help the cause! (I think Lemmy is the only social media I use)

Yes. I was afraid that how my parent's thought on my comments and posts on mainstream social media, like Facebook, in the past, because they have have their own account too.

Now I have one less thing to worry about and interact more here than the days when using those mainstream social media.

I've noticed that the lack of content and poor arrangements is pushing me back to reddit

It's pushing me to the real world instead of Reddit, so a great success overall.

I'm back on reddit, but I only browse and never post.

Lemmy is much more limited in content but I post more here.

When i had an account on both reddit and lemmy, i askedd questions on lemmy because I got actual answers

I comment far far less here than on Reddit. Reddit was much much better at showing communities I actually cared about and sprinkled in cat pics or memes. And most posts already had a little bit of engagement.

Lemmy's just throws garbage new posts at you with no comments, no interactions, and it was posted 30 seconds ago. It also groups together posts when someone crossposts something to 30 other communities so you just get a block of 5 posts of the same thing.

As it's matured more I think it's gotten better, but it's not good.

I think I got a double push - I've reached a point in my life where I finally have something to say as well as Lemmy not drowning out my posts/comments.

Also hosting a publicly open server drags me in even more; I love that stuff.

Yes. I'm trying to remember it's okay to be another randomer in the conversation, and not get hung up on whether I've answered things perfectly.

I use it less. I find the user-base a) very hostile to diverse opinions and experiences, b) very American-centric, and c) very leftwing and authoritarian.

I also have difficulty with discoverability. If I can’t find good communities, I can’t interact with them.

Yeah I tend to agree on this centiment and I'm generally quite left wing leaning myself the userbase reminds me alot of tankie subs such as r/greenandunpleasent I come here to shitpost not to see posts about the evils of capitalism on the main meme sub I can deal with the American centric posts I think that's fine just not the hostile userbase Jesus christ there all miserable bastards

I mean for christ sakes my first shitpost got raided by angry conumismist vegan mob you can check it for yourself if ya want

That was basically my first foray into Lemmy too. Angry mobs of activists doing everything they can to ensure Lemmy never becomes popular. Then my Lemmy.ml account got temporarily banned for claiming the Xinjiang genocide is real. They don’t like criticism of China on Lemmy.ml.

There are loads of good and great communities within the Fediverse and Lemmy. Maybe the spaces you're seeking have been defederated?

Same as reddit but stopped using reddit after the spez BS

It's night and day. I would comment on reddit here or there, but I would never post. I make an effort to do so here.

Not as much as on reddit but still more and more. Just like with Mastodon over X it's not a perfect replacement (sadly, maybe) but still I feel more resilient. If somehow alternatives are too toxic or unusable I find confident I could invest more time participating here in few different ways. Reddit/X not dying is a double edge sword.

I dislike feeding an algorithm, knowing my interaction will be monetized in all sorts of ways and helping companies profile me. This is less of a concern here.

Same for me, I maybe replied 4/5 times in many years on reddit and I feel I've engaged with more conversations in the 3 months I'm on lemmy. Maybe having a smaller community leaves out the "someone else will comment" attitude.

I think less people makes it harder to get lost so it’s worth commenting. If you sort Reddit by hot, there’s already thousands of comments and most likely no one is ever going to see your post. So why bother? Most of my posts on Reddit are in small subreddits for pretty much the same reason I comment more here.

I only used Reddit and none of the others and so far Lemmy has been a decent replacement but I'm nowhere near as active. I had a nice curated setup and it's just not possible yet to have the same experience on here.

Same here. One of the biggest issues is that Lemmy is currently terrible at surfacing content from niche communities: no weighted activity, no "multi-reddit-syle" community grouping - pretty much any main view mode is dominated by a few large communities only. This makes the death of the small communities a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The next version of Lemmy is making some very tepid improvements in that regard, but it's nowhere near enough.

With larger communities I just bookmark them instead of subscribing now because , like you say, the main feed just becomes useless. Also the amount of cross-posting doesn't help.

I'd say less. Still finding my place here but the comment section seems more polarised than on Reddit. The recent Australian referendum for example. Any nuanced discussion is impossible (only in some instances I'm sure) because alternative opinions make you a racist according to the average (most vocal at least) commenter. It's sad because as in that instance and regardless of politics, it often means a bunch of white people dictating what is/isn't, true/false, wanted/needed... important.

I had intended to interact more when I joined Lemmy. But given that this is only my 4th comment ever since I joined 4 months ago, that obviously didn't happen. I've always been more of a lurker on most sites anyway, so I guess it's no surprise that I'd end up being a lurker here too.

Definitely comment more than I did on Reddit. I feel like if I comment on Reddit post that has been up for a couple hours, my comment will never get seen -- haven't seen that here

Yes. I dont feel comfortable contributing to closed corporate ecosystems.

I interact a bit more just to support the community. I don't have much to say though, so that's all I can contribute 🤣

Definitely.

I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I'd just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.

Not any more than I have since first getting online in 1991. My entire reason for being on the Internet is to talk to other people. The memes and shitposts are just topics of discussion (or vehicles to make jokes about) to me.

A lot more. On other platforms with more users I always feel like I am just commenting into the void on a post with, idk 400 comments / replies. If it only has 0 to ~150 comments it feels less so.

Yeah mainly because threads have less than 500 comments

i doompost here more than normal, yes.

lemmy is the least bad of all the alternatives atm and it think it should thrive

Same here. Never could be bothered to make an account on Reddit in all my years of lurking there, but here I am.

So for years I was similar on reddit. Then I realized I could use my account as a bookmark organizer for subs I was interested in.

Never posted anything however. Here I have alts with post history. Interacting is still taking some getting used to.

Definitely, there are less posts here that I feel if I comment its just going to end up going south - especially if I have a differing opinion. Which isn't to say that doesn't happen here on Lemmy, there are certainly topics where if you go against the grain, the exact same thing will happen (some of those topics make sense and are worth "fighting" for, others not so much).

Honestly not much. I interacted a lot more with people on squabbles before that went to shit, but now I am a bit like the friendly pink blob that gets punched back into its box and swears to never come out again...

I was definitely more active on Reddit, since it had the niche subs I wanted to discuss on. Lemmy has more "generic" content, since it doesn't have the user base to grow those niche communities.

About the same as my reddit activity before I left.

I don't have Instagram or Twitter and Facebook is just a glorified birthday reminder that I check every other week. You could probably count the number of my replies on public posts on Facebook on one hand.

Yeah, I feel more up for interacting on lemmy. Right now the vibe feels more sane and friendly than reddit and less uptight than mastodon, so maybe it's where I feel most comfortable.

I was quite active. But less and less as time goes on, sadly.

The content is drying up, the only really active communities are either tech or political, and my main interests either never left reddit or have a home elsewhere. The nail in the coffin for me will be when my instance dies, which is looking increasingly likely given that the admin is AWOL.

It's ok here, but it's too fragmented to be a full replacement for anything else.

Definitely more. A lurker too. Idk, I feel like I'm less afraid of being judged here.

Yes. And you don’t get the snarky clownshoes responses that are probably just bots anyway.

No, I interact more on Reddit. That's where the community conversation is. Ideally, it would be on Lemmy, but the difference between our ideal state and reality isn't bridged by wishing it to be the same. There'd need to be practical drivers that push the two into meeting and those drivers don't exist for Lemmy to reach kind of critical mass that would allow it to be a replacement for incumbent social media platforms.

Lemmy is for people who don't want those social platforms, or an "also-ran" platform that exists in parallel with them. The federated model which gives it survivability and freedom is also the reason that it won't have the broad appeal that would allow it to scale to incorporate input from all of society.

Many will rationalize that it's good to keep the rest of society out of Lemmy too, and I'm not getting into whether or not that's good, but either way it means that Lemmy will not have the broad adoption that makes the big social media platforms interesting to most people.

Not really. Reddit was mostly fine, but I do at least feel that as there are fewer users on Lemmy it's easier to interact with others than just posting to the void.

I feel like because Lemmy is smaller, I get more responses. So I like interacting on Lemmy more, but I don't think I do it more frequently.

A little less than Reddit as threads have less to respond to

I would actually say I interact less, but the things I say on here tend to be more meaningful outside of the dumb jokes and references. Like I have more of a tendency to have an actual discussion on here and write out my thoughts versus on Reddit where I would say low-effort shit or something purely for the dopamine rush of getting those sick upvotes.

Definitely posting more than I used to on Reddit.

I'm currently the most active on Lemmy, followed by Mastodon, Tildes and Hacker News.

It's a great place to vent/rant. I'd rather be an asshole online and get it out of my system than to take it out on someone irl.

Significantly more here. I never really liked Reddit, but a couple of my hobbies had communities there so I felt like I had to use it. I stayed away from anything that wasn't a niche personal interest and avoided the bigger subreddits and front page. Here I check out the front page frequently and am pretty generous with upvotes. It feels more like an investment in a community I want to be successful, and not like there's anything intrinsic to Lemmy that encourages it.

I like the unmodded and unrestricted nature of Lemmy, or at least how much more free it feels, but in reality there's significantly less interesting content here. So I still visit Reddit from time to time to read on world news or see details in some live feeds. I don't interact there at all. That said, I decided never to go back on Reddit but not because of price gouging or something similar, but because I caught myself spending too much time on stupid stuff there. Life is too short to dig through whole of internet.

Same amount as I was on Reddit, far less than any other social media though.

I've interacted more hopefully. There are less truly bad faith actors here I think.

I go through cycles of activity and lurking, but generally interact more than I did on reddit.

The other side of this is Lemmy is the main social media platform I interact with (including lurking) period these days. For anything else I either don't use it or my profile's a ghost town.

Not yet, but I plan to. I'm slowly tapering off Reddit, I'm forced to use the main app, I even managed to remove the ads off it, but I still hate it. It doesn't show the posts that the third party apps always show, the ordering is off no matter how you change it. Hard to explain.

No. At least not in ways I want. I mostly purged the mainstream meme subs from my reddit experience and stuck to my nitche interests, but I haven't really found active replacements for those yet.

Lemmy is pro-humanity Reddit is pro-fascist

They are both filled with very ill informed people. I guess that's all of the Internet though. People who have no clue are the first to give their opinions. The topics that are started by "low information voters" are often most popular with other low information voters.

Me too, people are more forgiving and give the benefit of the doubt more oftenthabn not. I appreciate that

I try not to. This place bans you for "not being nice", which is an arbitrary metric that changes from mod to mod and let's all be honest, being nice is exhausting. Ask anyone working in retail.

The comments here are correct though. As long as you focus on your niche and it's relatively active, then stay away from propaganda media, Lemmy can be an useful place. The default All is worthless in anything but lurking and you need to find the communities about your interests or make them yourself if they don't exist here yet.

Edit: That was close! I almost commented on some dumb take in a doubly dangerous post that involved both current wars. That's a definite no-no. Just don't get involved, it's not worth the trouble.

Reddit bans for not being nice, Facebook, hell even 4chan does. What are you looking for, a place where people can be assholes and "correct"? You don't want that at all

Well, this ain't any of those sites. Why would anyone want it to be. Also, your imagination of what i want and my imagination of what i want are likely very different imaginations. So let's not imagine either of us is "correct" while the loser by popular vote gets banned in the process.

This place bans you for “not being nice”, which is an arbitrary metric that changes from mod to mod and let’s all be honest, being nice is exhausting.

Lemmy is many places (individual instances with individual moderation policies). If it's important to you, you can find a server which matches your expectations, or host your own.

Even though i used different words, i believe i said pretty much the same thing in the part of my post you're not quoting. Or perhaps we've been taught different kinds of English. Might explain the lack of understanding around here.

Ah, my mistake. I wrote communities, you wrote instances. Yes, the difference is immesureable. My apologies.

I don't think we were talking about the same thing. You're talking about restricting your behaviour, "focus on your niche", "stay away from propaganda media". My proposal was to use an instance which makes it unecessary for you to restrict yourself to certain areas, if their moderation policy aligns with your default behaviour.

Of course it ultimately comes down to similar things, since instances which do not care wether you're nice aren't allowed in all places which require you to be nice. The key difference is still that you don't have to be wary yourself. It sounded as if you would not like that.

Yes, we might be talking in parallel. It's true i might be on the wrong side of the fence since i expect that even the hateful deserve their chance to speak, at least until they become irremediable. And i do disagree with this safe space isolative behaviour. Perhaps you are correct and i should instead visit those, and i'm paraphrasing, 'bigotry-infested phobic hellholes' for a while and see what's what.

Thank you.

I'm pretty abrasive but nothing happened to me IDK what you're talking about

Yes, well, you have your experience and i have mine, else we would not be here, would we?

Nah. If you say anything positive about Windows or non-foss software you're downvoted to hell.

Makes having conversations about anything not to due with Linux impossible.