Is anybody else more active here then they were on Reddit?

rosa666parks@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 676 points –

When I was on Reddit I felt like my opinion didn’t matter. But here it just feels more open and free.

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Every comment I would make on Reddit seemed to get challenged by someone looking to start a long-winded argument as they were, in fact, the main character of the universe.

I like it here because so far, people are nice. It’s like the first day of high school and everyone just wants to be friends and meet people.

No karma competition here. It has a bigger effect on behaviour than you'd think.

It’s like a little trophy or a symbol of validity to some people. You’d see big edits addressing downvoted as if people got personally hit in the head with them.

I don’t blame people though because viscerally, these things are little tokens of “approval” by others at large.

Reddit gamified participation, and the result was an addiction to trying to say things that people would click the updoot for. Here, the comment / post score is used purely to determine the relevance and value of the individual comments and posts. I think the result is clear: people feel less compelled to post the meme, the shitpost, the expected something and are more likely to express a thought they have, or think is valuable to the conversation.

The result is less stuff, but the stuff is more nuanced, interesting, and engaging (even if the engagement metrics are lower). It's also a less stressful environment to interact with, and is just kinda all around better since no one is trying to profit

God, I love this place. Instead of having to navigate through a mob of idiots to express an opinion or have a discussion, it's simply informed, quality discussion from top to bottom. What a good feeling, almost gives me hope for humanity

Cherish it now haha. If this place ever gets a lot more popular, you’ll start seeing all sorts of dumb takes and behaviours again 🤪

That's why I'm feeling a lot better about the steady rate of growth here. At first I just wanted to get everyone over from reddit ASAP, now I'm like okay, I could get used to the small town vibes with a bunch of cool people.

It's going to be an amazing journey as this place continues to grow. Just remember to laugh at the inevitable drama and cry at the bad memes. Never the other way around 🙃

Small town vibes is exactly how I’d put it haha. I tend to recognize a few posters here and there. Just like at my town’s post office 😂

I recognize a lot of people already but that's probably because I'm terminally online 😅

Votes have a bandwagon effect, both up and down votes. Sometimes it just felt like arguing with an army of mute downvoting zombies; no reply, just downvotes. I completely understand some communities on Lemmy disabling downvotes, even if that means there is no mora a "controversial" vote.

My only fear is that as Lemmy gets bigger, the same botting, brigading and mindless bandwagoning, will also come here.

I feel like your characterization of Reddit users as long-winded and contrarian is inaccurate and frankly offensive. Let me write you several paragraphs about why you’re wrong, sprinkled with thinly veiled personal insults and outright harsh commentary about you as a person.

Sorry, just trying to make it feel like our old home :)

Lmao this was good. You forgot to comb through my post history to see if you can make your comment even more hard-hitting by referencing a personal problem I have that was highlighted in a post or comment from 6 months ago 🤪

They're here. I got banned from no stupid questions for asking in the comments why an incredibly small group of people gets to define how I use language.

What’s the context? Sounds vague.

If I remember correctly I was arguing that "gender assigned at birth" already had a word for it and it was sex. Somebody asked about intersex people. I said I didn't see the point in altering my language for such a vanishingly small group. Then a week later the powermod decided to look through my comments and came to the conclusion that I was breaking "rule 7" which is some vague shit about being nice or something. That was one of the things that made me abandon lemmy.world. Old reddit mindset. I left reddit 8 years ago because of that crap and never went back.

I say powermod because they have a over a dozen subs started basically all mirroring reddit ones.

Ya you absolutely deserved to catch flack for that.

You are saying that gender is the same as sex and they’re categorically different things. It’s very easy to learn the difference so if you insist on arguing against facts, you’re damn right people are going to butt against you.

You’re arguing against treating people with kindness by pointing to the fact that they’re a minority. Lmao that’s the definition of a bigot.

If I'm having a conversation with an intersex person that actually cares, which with their prevalence I doubt it will ever happen, I will respect them. Why should I have to change the language I use outside of such a rare situation? We have terms like Biological Sex which mean something, and then we have bullshit like "gender assigned at birth" which on purpose mean nothing. Stop trying to make language intentionally tiring.

You did it again.

  • Sex is the physical plumbing
  • Gender is the self-perception
  • Sexual orientation is the partner preference

Just because someone got born with X plumbing and everyone just assumed they would feel like X gender since birth, does not mean they will. That's what "gender assigned at birth" means: an uninformed assumption.

It looks like you agree with me. You basically have the right terminology for sex, so why should we have a second term to use instead?

People who care about the difference between some things, tend to use different terms for them. Insisting on disregarding what they consider important, tends to make them feel insulted, which in this online setting, currently translates to getting blocked, reported, banned, or defederated.

‘Gender assigned at birth’ is a field in most electronic health care records for real healthcare based reasons. It means very specific things and is called out separately from legal sex and genetic info for real life-altering reaons. The vocabulary exists for far more serious reasons than to annoy you online. Frankly, it’s not even about you.

Please explain to me how gender assigned at birth is different from sex. Aside from the extremely rare intersex cases where it may have been mistaken they should be the same. Gender is your expression, but sex is genetic.

I completely agree with you. Now defend your point, which I've definitely attacked by replying. 🤺

As the antagonist of this thread, I would have to disagree with this statement. I was, initially, very dismayed to see that no one had taken issue with this comment. Alas, here I am, to set things right. Being that most online communities seem to revolve around my person, I thought that I’d share these thoughts that so many of you had been patiently awaiting.

No but fr, huge fan of these communities. The voices that search out an argument don’t seem to gain quite as much traction on fedi (yet, at least). Probably due to them having a larger overall audience on reddit to feel validated by. Hopefully it stays that way!

As the antagonist of this thread, I would have to disagree with this statement. I was, initially, very dismayed to see that no one had taken issue with this comment. Alas, here I am, to set things right. Being that most online communities seem to revolve around my person, I thought that I’d share these thoughts that so many of you had been patiently awaiting.

This killed me 🤣

Another big difference is the lack of vote fuzzing. It's more obvious when people are abusing the upvote/downvote function, and it feels more meaningful when you know each vote directly represents a real person.

On kbin you can even see publicly which user made each vote, but idk if that functionality is planned or possible on Lemmy. It's quite useful for combating brigading.

I like I can say the words Tiannamen and Square and not feel like bots are out to get me 🙂

The misinfo on Reddit is wild. Just shows people don’t understand federation and how the views of one instances’ moderators doesn’t impact what people can say or do on other instances.

That literally couldn't be further from the truth /s

Reddit comment: “Well actually…” straightens fedora

I‘m way more active here. I want that place to survive and become the new home for former redditors.

Same here, forced me out of my lurker shell. 😅

Alright! How was your day? What did you do?

My day was good. And I posted on Lemmy a few times! Like this one!

Weird. I immediately deleted my comment after posting it. Two hours later, you still could answer it (and probably still can see it).

As an actual answer: I’m happy you had a good day!

Yes. It’s far less hostile here and I don’t fear getting downvoted to hell for asking a question.

Excellent point and I totally agree.

Or, to translate your comment to Redditese: "This." ;)

Mostly lurked on Reddit, trying to comment here and there on lemmy.

Yeah and lemmy still shows upvotes even if you get downvoted. Also it doesn’t automatically hide your comment if you get negative votes which I find annoying on Reddit

Deleted My reddit account , tried all of the fediverse before but always went back to propriety for same reason as anyone else. Everyone is there. With the Reddit exodus I feel this will get the push it needs

I'm more active here. You can actually post comments without idiots being toxic about it for no reason. You can actually make posts without them getting removed for no reason. It's great.

When I joined Lemmy I decided I wanted to engange with the community here on Lemmy, since I on Reddit I just lurked, so I'm much more active here.

It feels like you can join in later. There are not thousands of replies in the first few hours. So commenting or participating was a waste of time before in many bigger subs. Noone would ever see your answer anyway or interact with you, so there was really no point.

Here it feels like you are actually participating in some way. I really like it.

That’s true - Lemmy displays new comments above “top” comments, allowing them to be seen by everyone.

You can change the sorting, I actually have this post sorted by "top" right now.

Yeah, the default sorting behavior contributes quite a bit.

Posting on reddit felt kinda like lurking most of the time. Here it's indeed different, as people tend to answer questions etc. that are made in comments.

I'm not only commenting more (because I'm not afraid people will bite my head off for everything I say) I'm also reading a lot more comments in general. I think it's for the same reason, the comment threads seem to involve actual constructive discourse. It's funny that I read fewer posts here than I did at Reddit but I spend a lot more time per post.

because I’m not afraid people will bite my head off for everything I say

How dare you! This is an atrocious thing to say and you should feel bad /s

Yeah, this place sort of just has a better spirit right now. I hope it's able to hold onto this vibe as it grows.

Oh, don't worry. There's still plenty of people who will bite your head off or call you a "concern troll" for genuine opinions that go against the hive mind. Things are just slower.

I am because I feel it's great to be a part of the growing numbers of the platform. Everything is a bit rough around the edges and it gives it a 'far west' feel

Reddit comments just get washed away by millions of other users. Where as in this place it's not as competitive so yea I understand what you mean.

Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. There's no point posting something in the big Reddit subs most of the time because someone else will have already posted the same thing.

To get noticed you have to be early and/or say something witty or superficially inciteful. There's no room for nuance.

It just becomes a competition for karma, and if you don't play you're screaming into the void.

I feel the lack of (public?) karma will at least help with the repost bots here. That is, if you buy the "bots needing karma to look legit" or the "needs to gather karma to post in some subs" arguments. I've always found those to be very weird as no sub I've seen needs several thousand karma to post and most bots still look like bots.

Competition for karma sounds like more of the same problem with bots: lots of low effort posts to rise those numbers

Yeah, that will probably help. But I also feel like it just trying to get upvotes makes people compete to post popular but not necessarily good quality stuff. Getting a highly upvoted post is a big dopamine hit in itself.

Upvotes are not so important here, part due to no karma, but partly just because it's quieter. Hopefully, if activity does pick up, the federated nature of Lemmy means some of that can be avoided. If you're interested in a topic, you can choose between a very popular community on one instance, or a quieter but more thoughtful community on another instance.

I posted a showerthought mostly to try how posting works. It seemed to be at the top of... is there a /r/all equivalent here?

Anyway, it was visible enough my sister found my account. It kinda feels like moving from a giant metropolis to a village.

Still trying to “find my place” here but I am enjoying the whole thing. Lots of awesome discussions popping up and great conversation here.

Reddit comment threads are currently just full of groupmind wankery. I like being on a platform where I don't 100% agree with everyone and I don't have to hold "sanctioned" opinions that are approved by a mod team of 3.

Reddit was so American too, all the arguments and things seemed to be through their world view. The fediverse should allow much more diversity, and be a bit more multicultural

Americans are the largest English speaking group, as long as we're in the English part of Lemmy, Americans will still be the largest group.

Reddit unironically gives me 1984 as it’s about to get worse from here on out.

Yea. Literally every reddit comment I posted resulted in someone replying to me in a toxic way.

I've only blocked one person on lemmy and that's because they were replying to me in a toxic manner. That's the first reply I've had that's toxic, and I nipped it in the bud. I don't care to have fighting matches back and forth.

Have you noticed if you go to Reddit and click on any thread, usually within the first comment thread, someone will be hating on another person? Fuck that.

I'd honestly suggest everyone block anyone who is being toxic. Not to mention, others don't want to see your drama while looking through comments.

Furthermore, it's great that you can block someone without reporting them here. You can just kinda look at a comment history and be like “None of this is rule breaking, but you're just a jerkass, and I do not care to associate with you.” Further, you can block communities without that being a damnation of that community. Don't know German? Just block the German communities and they won't show in your feed. It's not because they're bad subs, and you want them to go away. You just don't care about them

There's a setting that let's you see English only without having to block i think. I know if you post in English and select "post language" as English only those who set English see and German set language will not. :)

I've set that, but a bunch of them have their language set as undefined. That's fine. I don't mind it. It's just nice to be able to easily and quickly filter out my feed to the set of posts that I can literally make sense of and that my brain doesn't register as impossible to read mystery language

Hm, I'm using Jerboa and just realized there seems not to be a way to choose any language, anywhere. Does this comment appear as English, or undefined?

I also can speak several languages, and read a few some more, wonder how would that need to be set. There was also supposed to be an option to automatically translate stuff, I think?

I don't see any language tag on this comment, so i assume undefined, but idk how to easily tell

I also hate how every post you make you would instantly have an automod comment saying the rules.

That could still come to Lemmy, if posts start being seen by hundreds of thousands of people, particularly if they come from instances which don't share the same netiquette as the one the post is made on. Of course there's defederation to fight that, but I feel like it can only go so far.

Gonna have to buck the trend and say, no.

I had good experiences on Reddit, I was active in a few different communities and had good engagement without the 'avalanche of toxic responses' some people here are describing.

I'm leaving Reddit due to the changes at the top, not because of problems at the grass roots.

Same here. Of course there was always the occasional troll looking for a fight, but mostly acceptable to pleasant interactions.

The grass roots are also wilted, though. All communites decline, unless painstakingly maintained. Not many want to keep doing that on a proprietary, hostile platform. So the overall degeneration is obvious.

I made two post on Reddit in like 2008 or something. One day I’ll have made ten posts here.

Lemmy still feels really easygoing, kind of feels like Reddit in 2011.

I want to comment more but I often don't have much to say. I've made it a goal to comment more though, because I want to see this platform succeed.

I love the enthusiasm in this thread but if we the mass migration of reddit users that I am hoping for, the toxicity and annoying reddit behaviors are probably coming along with them. I am hopeful that this place will at least stay much more open and free.

Toxicity is good it encourages people to argue which is more content for Lemmy. I've only recently joined but I want to make an active attempt to be toxic and spark engagement.

Stupidest shit I've ever heard. The goal should be to create a more positive environment that encourages real discussion instead of the toxic dumpster fire that reddit has become. Just engage positively instead. If you have something interesting to say people will respond and that will provide content for Lemmy.

I am definitely more active on here than Reddit. I’ve had the same experience as you but I’m tired of gawking at those know it all cockbags. They’ll be here at some point but yeah, it’s a nice community here.

I find myself commenting much more here than I did on reddit. I think that is because I want this to be successful and I want to be able to be done with reddit.

I used to be pretty active on Reddit and I kinda became more and more "sour" and unfriendly over there, because the whole community just dragged me down for some reason.

Here, it's like a breath of fresh air and most people are actually quite nice. Topics have finally become more interesting and there's no such thing as an echochamber. Critical thinking seems to be possible here, as well.

So yes, I became way more active again since I'm on Lemmy. Also, I host my own instance and I put a lot of effort into it, so I want it to be in good standing with other instances. Participating in friendly conversations will help with that.

Been trying to go out of my way to be more active on here. Help the platform grow ya know?

I usually lurk for months at a time then comment once or twice a year on any forum.

Here people actually react to what I post and write. And they react to the best possible interpretation of what I wrote, not the worst. And even if we disagree, we can still have a nice conversation.

Does anyone have a good theory about why the threadiverse is so much friendlier? Is it only because it's smaller? Is it because of the kind of people a new platform like this attracts? Because there is no karma? Maybe something else?

My theory is that it's a combination of a few factors:

  1. Smaller communities mean you're likely to interact with the same people. Even if people don't consciously think about it, they don't want to be known as "that guy"

  2. The first wave leaving Reddit were those most dissatisfied with how it worked, and are more committed to making this place work

  3. Honeymoon phase. People are being far nicer and more considerate as it's a new platform

If we can keep maybe 1/4 of that as the platform grows and changes, I'd take that as a win.

I was a straight up lurker on reddit, I feel like this environment makes me wanna be more active, reminds me of the old days before websites were a cash grab and there was true communities

I never posted or commented on Reddit. Trying to get in the habit here. This community seems like a better one to be involved in.

After the reddit apolcalypse and blackouts. I became less active over there. I still check some subreddits from time to time. But, my activity is low. I only have time to be active in one social network at a time. I chose lemmy.

I need some more time, I am pretty shy both irl and online and I kinda liked hiding behind tens of other users. But maybe I will grow to like this

Yes. Got to the point on reddit where I almost never commented because of the ackshually types.

Agree. Also i submit a lot more from my feeds. Stopped doing that on reddit because Mods would just constantly remove things for inane rules. Like "no Apple articles unless its sunday" type stuff..

Still going to stick to tech and space feeds and steer clear of op-eds and anything that could be perceived as political.

Oh man, so many arbitrary Byzantine rules on subs like that. "The word count of replies must be a prime number."

I feel like I can contribute more since the communities are smaller, but I haven't had much of value to say. Haven't really found my niche yet like I had on Reddit.

I was a lurker on Reddit. I had less than 500 Karma when I deleted my 12-year-old account a couple weeks ago.

I've already been more active on Lemmy than I was my entire time on Reddit. Everything here just feels more genuine.

I surprise myself that I'm more active on lemmy than on reddit.

I've been spending more time here. Could be the newness factor or maybe it's just more engaging. It's going to be a lot different only because of the smaller population. I think Reddit may have been too big for its own good.

I'm not as active as I was on Reddit, but to be honest, I like it. I went from spending 5/6 hours scrolling on Reddit, to 1 hour a day on Lemmy.

Really? 5-6 hours? That's a hefty lot, dude!

Agreed, the work I do allows me to just have a tab open and browse it in between, so yeah, been wasting quite some time a day on there.

Might be a case of "grass is always greener." I feel like more eyes and engagement happens for my posts and comments on Reddit. Over here it feels empty yet full, which is weird.

Really? For me it's the opposite effect. You usually don't get crazy amounts of engagement like on reddit where a post can have hundreds of upvotes and comments but on average, I feel like I'm getting more engagement and more valuable engagement.

I think this might be due to the algorithms for sorting comments since there always seems to be too many meaningful comments but low upvotes to signal quality to others. More specifically I think it's harder to go viral here.

Current Lemmy feels a lot more like early reddit. At the same time I don't think it has hit its Eternal September moment. The site is still primarily the domain of early adopters and people who care about the community.

I was a 10 year lurker on reddit. Now I have my own Lemmy instance

I used to use Reddit through throwaway accounts. Was never a regular user, and moved away from it over a year ago now. Just stopped posting to socials a lot.

Mental health has gotten better, and I've been more active here than I ever was on Reddit because I just enjoy the vibes the place gives me overall.

I'm certainly not as depressed after scrolling here as opposed to redditt. The magic pixie wranglers at Lemmy don't seem to be as centered on eyeballs on the screen sucking your soul while you're doom scrolling. I'll take it as a win.

Reddit's winning formula: repost, repost, Trump, repost, fight video, repost, repost, social media drama

I've noticed lately that it's just trying to raise the temperature in the room. It has become facebook

Yeah that's true. I get that US politics can be entertaining and lead to funny tweets, but the content inevitably makes you feel worse than before. It's all so gloomy and brings out the worst in people. Doesn't help that seemingly everyone is somewhat of a lunatic.

I also don't get the fight posts. Sure you can block them for yourself, but just having them constantly on r/all for the entire platform to see can't be good for the general climate.

Uplifting News is also often more fit for the Boring Dystopia subreddit, which I quit after a few weeks because the constant stream of negativity was slowly affecting my views and just worsened the experience for me.

All these types of content exist because they showcase a part of life, but the intensity and frequency are significantly elevated above the everyday norm. I wouldn't want that content to be restricted, but I also think platforms need to make sure they create mostly positive places of community. I feel much more inclined to contribute if the overall feeling of the communities is inviting and open-minded, not overly cynical or divided.

Emotional and negative content simply gets tons of views and engagement and it's therefore often in the best interest of platforms to push it to the top for everyone to interact with.

My silent hope is that that might be different for lemmy and that we can keep a more positive attitude among each other because of it.

The issue with reddit is that it turns everyone into know it all assholes. The discussion is absolutely horrendous over there. Here it's so much better and more sensible.

Make no mistake, it will also happen here over time. Unless admins and mods work hard to prevent it. Some instances will do better than others.

Same thing here, half my comments on Reddit attracted shallow arguments, the other half hour ignored. Less than 1% lead to real discussion.

Here, half my comments get ignored, the other half lead to real discussion, i like it!

I am, absolutely, less intimidating. Remember there are literally dozens of us.

Yeah I'm easy more active here that on Reddit, though I was very active when Reddit was younger. It just got too big and lost that feeling of taking to actual people and contributing to the overall experience.

I feel like the nays will be underrepresented bc of selection bias so I'll be one.

So far I have not had the same engagement. But I am convinced that is bc I have yet to get used to the jerboa UI/UX. I am more active once I feel at home, was the same for reddit, is the same for lemmy.

Its great that you feel more impactful on lemmy! I think on reddit you either feel the way you have or are constantly being called a slur (say "tankie") and removed/banned left and right.

So far lemmy seems way more authentic to me. Less capital interest, PR companies, bots, astroturf, think tank/gov-adjacent hacks. I like that.

Alos writing this made me realize my mode of commenting is still very much a reddit one

Yes. I'm looking forward to more original content rather that all of the reposts from reddit. I'm not sure when that tipping point will be, but I hope it doesn't have to do anything with poo.

Oh, absolutely! I did a lot of consuming on Reddit, and only participated in a couple specific communities.

Here, I feel far more inclined to actively participate.

This is me.

Definitely part of it is wanting to see Lemmy succeed, but it's also just kind of fun being involved in such a rapidly growing social media platform

I was only active on certain small subreddits, here I am active in more different communities.

Me too, but mainly because my favorite small subreddits (hobbies and local) just don’t exist here. :(

Or at least I haven’t been able to find them.

Yeah that is indeed true unfortunately. I think small communities will be around eventually, it just takes time.

I'm generally less active here right now, but I feel like I'm more free to speak my opinion, overall the community here just feels friendlier

Yes! English is not my first language, so commenting on Reddit made me nervous. I find Lemmy to be more forgiving (if that makes sense?) as well.

For what it's worth, I posted once on Reddit in the last year (and that was related to Sync shutting down) where as I've posted 4 times so far here.

I'm generally a lurker but perhaps the newness of it makes me feel that my posts won't be drowned out so it makes it more worthwhile taking the effort.

Yes because we need to drive the content machine here otherwise this place looks stale

i feel most of the people that actually made the jump to lemmy are the more mature and calmer crowd as compared to your average Redditor

This is an incorrect assessment of the facks. I believe it to be the same people that hate reddit for banning them....and me. You know... Good people 😁. People who like and say weird shit. People who find useful ways to use reddit....and then reddit finds out it's useful and replaces you with a bot or someone else.....

Reddit's modo should be "build our communities! And get the fuck out! They're our communities!"

I am the former admin for r/keitruck and r/Seattlegay. One day I started to notice hate messages. I might have replied. Then I noticed a deluged of that until one morning I got a message saying I was banned. I spent all my fun pandemic free time building those two places. So fuck reddit.

key word there was most

Tip for when Lemmy becomes bigger: Find a niche community that's big enough you get seen, but small enough you get noticed.

About the same, however engagement here seems to be easier and better all around. Have only run into 1 or 2 pedantic assholes as opposed to reddit being like 80% pedantic assholes.

100%. I've always been a lurker but on lemmy, and I don't know why, but I feel more comfortable interacting and making comments. Haven't made a post yet. Maybe one day

Im more active when I'm here and I spend less time online overall. I spend less time angry.

Although probably here still a bit too much. I should go touch grass but to fair it's over 110 F outside and I have to be near my laptop for work so, here I sit.

1 more...

Yeah, it's fun being part of a smaller community.

I'm definitely trying to be, which isn't difficult considering that my last comment there was a year ago, and I only made 5 comments that year.

I'd been on reddit for 11 years, and I was more active back then, but I sort of started to just lurk more as time went by, probably because there was an ocean of comments in every post

In the 13 years I've had a Reddit account, I made 40 comments, and 4 posts.

In the 15 days I've had a Lemmy account, I've made 28 comments and 1 post.

Now I wouldn't want to be one for extrapolating from data of different timescales, but...

I think so. I feel the camaraderie is much higher here as well, since we’re all refugees together in a sense, but also part of a great new thing.

It's a numbers thing and it's why empathy tends to diminish as population swells.

Here it feels like community, like one's opinion is appreciated. Reddit became a place to hope you get acknowledged at all, where swaths of the community came solely waiting to shout others down and win a fight.

Unfortunately, for all of Reddit's faults, that wasn't a reddit thing, that was just a glaring, crippling defect inherent to humanity. As numbers increase here, that old familiar reddit apathy and antagonism will return. Just play the game of what would you be willing to do, not just rhetoric, for a random person in your circle of friends vs someone from your town/city vs the world. Psychologists call it psychic numbing.

I have not been on reddit since the protest, but I didnt post or comment a lot anyway so probably not much of an impact

I am definitely feeling more motivated to participate here. It feels like a very welcoming environment so far.

Absolutely, I'm way more active on here. Reddit is so oversaturated, it's impossible to comment on a post before it already has hundreds of comments unless you have time to sit in New and comment as submissions come in. Here, I feel like someone will actually read what I write. Thanks for reading!

Yes, absolutely. I'm still not sure if it's because the whole community is smaller here, the people are better, no Karma competition, or a combination of all the above

no Karma competition

EDIT: THANKS FOR THE DOWNVOTES YOU IDIOTS.

EDIT 2: LMAO LIKE I CARE ABOUT DOWNVOTES, KEEP THEM COMING

EDIT 3: YOUR DOWNVOTES FUEL ME

...

EDIT 99: comment removed by user

It's always funny, because they will be at -1 and cry like they don't care, but then delete the comment because they want it to stop lmao.

Funny the is, the instance i an on or that this is posted on has no down votes only upvote, forever positivity mwuahahahahahaaa!!

On Reddit I was afraid to comment or post because of the inevitable onslaught of users who would try to start a keyboard fight on the most trivial of topics. It hindered me from just sharing any kind of opinion or cool accomplishment to the point where I would just comment with a one-word or one-liner in hopes it's not petrol. Getting shit on turns you in to a lurker. I've engaged more on Lemmy in the past 2 weeks than I have on Reddit in years. I like it here.

Yes, to put my money where my mouth is.

In early 2022, a few months prior to the first rumors Elon Musk might acquire Twitter, I left both Twitter and Reddit for the Fediverse, making it a point to contribute a tiny bit of the content and interaction that help platforms reach critical mass.

In case you're wondering, I left Twitter because the algorithms had made me essentially invisible. There was no point posting or interacting there.

Definitely. I'm both posting and commenting way more. I need to do my part to make sure this thing really takes off!

Me, by far.

In Reddit: dropped mod position years ago. Used uBlock Origin to remove the voting buttons, as they're pointless. The only threads that I've created were in r/RedditAlternatives, near the end. Create account, comment as I feel in the mood to comment, shred its content, repeat every ~3 months. Extremely rude tone towards anyone showing the smallest sign of shallow thinking, wishful thinking, or similar character flaws. Scaling up arguments for the sake of why not.

Here: moderating three comms. Actively voting. Creating threads fairly often, specially in the comms that I mod. Trying to keep a polite tone and contribute as long as I can. I've only got a single potential fight (against an extremely trashy user - assumptive, with poor reading, but still screeching like he was in Reddit), and even then I simply told myself "meh, why bother".

This place feels more relaxed and open, while reddit felt absurdly competitive and suffocating at times. It used to just be a place to talk to other people about specific topics (and it still is in some places), but now so much of it feels like a competition for the most upvotes and awards.

I feel more obligated to contribute here because I want Lemmy as a whole to be more active. More content = more users.

Same, but I'll admit I'm trying to enjoy my last remaining days on Reddit to the fullest.

Lemmy just feels better to comment/interact with. I just feel more motivated to be active on here.

The smaller the community, the bigger the impact of your opinions.

For example, just on my own, I can reach a good 50% impact on anything I say unless my wife says something different.

I feel like I am not yet, but I will be. Some of the subs I have on Reddit aren’t here yet, partly because they’re either niche or liked by a lot of people that are less tech literate including their maintainers.

I have gone trough some instances before deciding on my current one and I like the stance of most that are for an active discussion, against mindless downvotes and for overall more communication than social media consumption.

The fact that there is next to no automated account making will also help in the long run I think. It makes it an less attractive target for the bad kind of bots imo.

Those niche communities you are missing? Recreate them here, and invite people over there to join.

I would if I had the time to get things off the ground and moderate in the beginning. I wouldn’t want to throw up an instance and then just leave it on its own.

I am not sure if my current server allows for instance creation, since I did not prioritise that when choosing it.

Most of those I am missing are also very picture heavy, now that I think about it. Like constant streams of pictures rather than text posts, which might not be the best for lemmy right now? I imagine it would increase load way faster than text posts do.

I will check through the community finder again later and see which topics might have gotten an instance in the mean time. It has been two weeks since I last checked.

Not yet. My niche communities don’t exist in the fediverse yet like they do on Reddit, and I do not have the bandwidth to start new communities right now. Excited to watch it grow and continue to contribute where I can.

This is my second comment since joining this morning, so yes, significantly more active.

Most of my Reddit commenting was done on threads for people looking for advice in one of my hobbies. I generally had a good experience giving feedback here since most people in the subreddit were level headed. Sometimes you got the occasional asshole parroting the usual online "best way to do something" that goes against some people's actual real life experience that is being shared.

I didn't really make any meaningful (non joke) comments outside of this subreddit since I didn't feel like getting some dick in my notifications trying to start a fight over whatever I posted. Sometimes I didn't mind battling the dicks in the hobby subreddit since people lurking can actually learn or get a different perspective from "No, you shouldn't take what's in a listicle as fact. Here is my experience with this."

My local cities daily thread is more active than it what's left on Reddit, despite the Reddit community having 600k subs. 410 comments on the Reddit thread, 480 on the lemmy community thread.

It's been like this daily.

Depends, I was mainly active on small subreddits that were focused on things I was interested in. Here those small subs don't exist yet (or are very inactive), but the lower overall user count means I'm interacting with a lot more communities than I would on reddit.

For me it was always difficult to be active on R so the atmosphere here is much more pleasant.

Yes because:

  1. I want to see it take off and want to do my bit
  2. It feels like a more chilled environment in which to participate

I'm not sure it matters more TBH... but I basically stopped Reddit for 2 days, and now just get drawn back to read the occasional post - but don't bother commenting.

With the downtick in Reddit, I remembered that I hadn't read a book for a month or two, so I headed over to Annies Archive and grabbed a bunch to add to my Kindle...

So I now downloaded 3 versions of 'Great Expectations' and am reading that book before watching them - but also have "Welcome to the MonkeyHouse" by Kurt Vonnegut and "The Book Thief" grabbed from Annie's Archive.

Basically now I'm spending less than half the time on net than I was before.

My level of activity on Reddit has been wanting. I was / am still fairly active in some niche subs, but I used to be pretty active in AskReddit, askmen, and several other spaces.

I've made a concerted effort to be more active here, and it feels nice! Feels a lot more human

Yes, I am significantly more active here than I was on Reddit (at least recently, my decline on posting/commenting on Reddit started a few years ago).

I have not touched reddit since this debacle... I added a bunch of subreddits to my RSS reader, but I'm honestly not looking at it.

Unfortunately searching for information often brings me to a reddit post, but I'm trying to avoid it and so far found the information elsewhere.

Nah. Thankfully my mindless scrolling time has taken a dive, which is an issue I had been meaning to address regardless.

I am more actif here than on reddit. There was a time on reddit I stopped even upvotes and down votes when I noticed they are changing philosophy. Here I post more stuff and wrote more comments. Sometimes to add value to discussions and sometimes just for the sake of commenting and getting activity rolling.

I’m making myself be active here. I’m learning to build my own lemmy instance on a VPS.

I want there to be a sea change in social media. I want an authentic intellectual conversation. I was in college during the usenet era and found it easy to find mind expanding stuff there with a minimum of toxicity.

My hope is the community and software mature steadily together until it is ready to handle a significant influx.

Let’s not reward toxicity. We need to steer the conversation and the software development to reward quality engagement over quantity.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about hosting your own instance. I'm by no means an expert, but it would appear that I have successfully deployed my own.

I certainly do! Reddit was just too loud in every way.

Yes, definitely. Maybe I feel like my contributions matter more since we are all trying to make this a viable platform? I dunno, but it's definitely more fun interacting here than on reddit.

Oh for sure. It definitely seems like people are more level-headed over here, and are less likely to find the most nitpick-y thing to jump into an argument with you over.

(Which, to clarify, I don't mean someone correcting information I've posted - of course, if I've posted something incorrect I'd like to know - but even then, there is always a tactful way to go about doing so)

I think you mean "nitpicky"; the hyphen wasn't necessary.

Yes, I didn't have an account and I always browsed via a proxy (Teddit). I didn't want to be manipulated by the algorithm.

I've never been much of a poster (not even 2 posts/yr for the almost dozen years I've had a reddit habit), but I was a regular commenter in various specific-interest subs.

I am, as a rule, no longer contributing content to Reddit, since they've made it clear they plan to finish their transition from "hosting communities" to "extracting value from users." Frankly, it's not as much of an imposition as I feared, because many of those communities seem to be broadly taking the same attitude.

I'm actively trying to comment heavily here to to try to help establish communities. If I had a little more free time I'd do some posting and/or try to help spin some successor communities for my interests.

Just started today, but as my reddit activity is going down to zero …. Yes lol

I think the biggest difference here is that I keep getting surprised by how civil most of the discussions are.

Yes. Smaller community, and generally more intelligent, or at least more capable of having a meaningful discussion.

I think it's something that happens when you throw a larger group of people together, like reddit, where people act a bit different ime

Even I am less toxic, and more positive. Something about reddit messed that up.

Atp, I'm here more for discourse than any specific content, and that's something I really missed about social media.

back to a level of activity i would call my "normal". hasn't been like this in almost a decade.

I haven't browsed Reddit since a couple of weeks now. I am definitely more active on Lemmy.

I'm a lot more active then I was on Reddit.

I was very active in the subs of the games I play (I'm even r/CSRRacing2 mod) when I started there, but I'm getting tired of the hate, stupidity,...

Have recently made the jump from Reddit. With a brilliant 3rd part app - go figure!! I expect to be more active here.

I think I'm about as active here as I was on Reddit. Always was more of a reader.

Honestly, I'm trying to be more active in here. The whole defederation thing going around has me confused about where my account lives and replicating what's on it. Makes it hard to stay active if I don't know what's going to happen haha

I hear ya. Thats why i just setup my own instance....

I definitely am. I may have more comments and posts here than on Reddit already and I have only been here a fraction of the time.

I’m so glad to finally join! Signup was tricky and finally got Memmy working for ios. Happy days

More active here, i never got onto the idea of reddit, always made me uncomfortable for some reason.

I did use 3rd party apps like slide or infinity to read reddit posts and follow sibreddits i liked.

So far trying to find my old communities I would run with, can’t seem to find all of them.

I did once find /r/FeedTheBeast on lemmy but no longer can find it on here!

Once I get my rotation I will def use this way more.

Agreed - stopped posting and sharing on Reddit a while ago. I engage more and find this place more engaging. It’s good!

Undoubtedly! I was always more of a lurker, but I think I've posted as many comments here in the last couple of weeks as I did in 11 years of Reddit... Lemmy is, somehow, much more inviting.

I've found myself commenting here more because there's less people. Which means they're way nicer and it doesn't feel like I'm just screaming into the void.

Yes. I gradually disengaged over the years. I will become less active once the pump is primed. Perhaps turn to more technical aspects, as maintaining my own instance. Or be more offline in general.

I'd mostly comment on shitposts, and there's less here so I feel like I comment less

I feel no difference, I still comment as much as on reddit with the difference that people are more open here and more welcome.

I have been posting more than I ever had on Reddit. Mostly because I got my news from Reddit, but over here I have to bring the news to Lemmy.

Reddit quality has markedly deteriorated in my opinion.

Maybe it’s just my imagination.

Basically everything works but the content is less engaging!

Absolutely. As much as I loved Reddit, I always felt drowned out due to the large user base and was hesitant to share my opinion. Thanks to Lemmy and its (currently) smaller communities, I feel like my voice has wider reach or, at the very least, less aggressive competition.

1000%!

I actually created a community for a hobby of mine, and have been trying to post and comment more.

I'm not very active yet as there are only a few subs that match. Once there are more...

If you miss something here, create it.

I have been trying to post content but I don't see any option to create a new community

Your instance might not allow it. E.g. I don't see the option on lemmy.ml but there is one on lemmy.world

And Lemmy.world apparently can't be logged in to

Works for me. Perhaps transient load or code upgrade issues. I should start running my own instance when the code base has settled down.

That's coz communities are still small and growing. lets see how you feel in 18 odd years!

I never posted on Reddit. Every time I did it was a bad time. I could post the most innocuous thing imaginable (The sky is blue. Water is wet), and without fail have at least a few people telling me I was stupid, naive, woke, a Nazi, whatever. There is a ton of extremist energy around here too, but the radical left is much easier for me to stomach than the radical right.

But the water isn't wet dude, it's humid.

(Oh sht, I have been lurking a little and apparently my comment is the kind people is tired of. Please confirm me I'm not that guy)

I’m trying to be more active. It doesn’t come naturally as I’m generally a lurker. Good vibes help though

Only reason I visit reddit now is to see how the dumpster fire is going

To some extent, yeah. It feels like a more tight-nit community here.

Equally. Try to get used to this and to subscribe to topics I follow.

100% Lemmy content is just so much more up my alley

Looking forward to becoming active in the community

Absolutely! There's some feeling of ownership now that I can host an instance of my own - I want this platform to succeed, I want to give something back to the open source community, even if it's only a small server.

Yup, way more active. I used to mainly lurk on reddit. Now I'm commenting more and have actually posted a couple of times.

Yes, by far. I wouldn’t really comment on Reddit. Here I do

I've been surfing more on Lemmy than on Reddit now, but that being said, the niche subs that I was "most active in" are just not available/big enough in any of the Lemmy instances I've found, so I end up not really commenting much here compared to on Reddit.

I wouldn't say I'm more active in terms of posting and commenting, though I wasn't too active on Reddit the last few years to begin with. Though the fact I haven't logged into my Reddit account of 10 years since checking out Lemmy speaks to how at-home I feel here, even after basically giving up one of the sites I used the most in the past decade or so.

Oh yeah, I was telling my wife this exact thing. I feel like I can comment and post way more than I used to and get in discussions cause my comments won't be drowned out as much and when I do see a post it doesn't already have 3k comments on it already like in reddit. A lot more intelligent conversation too which is a nice change.

Edit: sorry about the second comment, my instance isn't updated and is having issues. Tried deleting the second comment but it won't let me lol

I had a burst of activity on Lemmy and then slowly wound down to mostly lurking.

Not sure why. Maybe Apollo dying tomorrow will kick me again to participate

I have been forcing myself to interact to get used to the interface for about a week now. The death of RIF is also what prompted me.

My reddit account was soft locked for months barring me from any interaction, just lurk.

I never fixed it because i was wasting to many hours on debates. Yesterday i told my wife i was going to come downstairs after finishing my reply. It took 30minuts.

Lemmy is great and i love interacting with it but honestly i wouldn’t mind a bot that helps me to stop now and then. This cant be good for my mental health in the long run otherwise.

I empathize with this so much. I can sink hours into a forum, especially one that's open ended like this and reddit.

There are apps that give you notifications for when you've been using an app for a continuous period, as well as using your phone in general. I don't use them, but I have been considering it.

There's simultaneously too much time and not enough time. I just feel like I don't know what to fill my day with on an individual level, and then that there aren't enough days. We only get what amounts to a few thousands and then we die.