Just found this space, I'm trying to play around with this platform. Can anyone help to explain?
Reddit feels like a corporate advertising driven hellscape where fear and rage is encouraged.
Lemmy feels like 2010 when the internet world was a lot more simpler and you could actually talk to people.
Yeah Lemmy feels a lot like Reddit from 10-15 years ago. Mostly cordial conversation on a wide variety of topics, the biggest difference I see is the lack of activity in certain communities, which is a bit of a shame. But I guess that's a trade-off.
Give it time. Better to grow organically.
That's where we need to get back to is 2010.
Steve Huffman isn't here, so that's a huge plus.
Nah he’s here. It’s the guy downvoting all the anti reddit posts
No, that's me. I don't care to see Reddit, Twitter, Threads, etc posts.
Steve Huffman? Former moderator of r/jailbait and current CEO of Reddit? That guy?
Self-proclaimed future leader of an apocalyptic survival compound, and obvious Elon wannabe? That Steve Huffman?
steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”
...
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
There are some other funny bits in that article, like Spez having "large blue eyes" and once was a competitive ballroom dancer.
Two things that come to mind:
Lemmy's protocol is open, so anybody can make 3rd party apps to work with it. Third party Reddit apps used to be popular when Reddit had an open API, but Reddit destroyed that on purpose.
Because Lemmy isn't run by a singular company, you don't get the same restrictions. Reddit admins had a whole host of rules on what a sub could or could not contain. Many of which were heavy focused on making Reddit more advertiser friendly.
The funniest part of killing 3rd party apps is they cut off a widely used method if collecting more commenting data from the average user. I guess they figured audience style interaction on the official app is worth more.
The official app purportedly has a shit ton of interaction tracking. I can't find the link anymore, but somebody on HN even claimed what they wanted to track was so invasive that he walked out of a job interview for Reddit.
What I can say for sure is that the new Reddit "shreddit" website is absolutely fucking full of tracking. I reverse engineered it for reasons, and every interaction with UI elements was reported back before the actual interaction was allowed to take place.
They definitely gain more value out of user data from interaction tracking than they do from their comments.
Tracking clicks on links with JS is pretty normal. I always implemented that with Google analytics for my e-commerce sites.
It helps you track things like downloads of files, email links, exit links, etc.
As a former web dev, I know it's normal industry standard stuff, but it's really hard to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt here.
Their tracking is completely ingrained in the webcomponent-based SPA itself, beyond what's reasonable for anonymized analytics. Disabling cookies even broke loading content, despite being logged out.
What did you used to program in?
In a professional capacity, it was React with TypeScript for front-end, Node for backend with Nginx to serve static assets. At the end of the day, it wasn't really for me. I enjoy web dev for hobby projects, but working with it day after day ruined my intrinsic desire to keep doing it.
Oooooh this is relevant to my interests!! After 20yrs doing web dev I crashed out of two jobs in 6 months completely hating coding. Can't even bring myself to look at code nowadays.
What did you go into after quitting web dev?
What about old.reddit; would that have tracking? If not it would explain why the new Reddit UI seems so slow on browser
And for point one, I use Voyager, which was heavily inspired by Apollo for Reddit, so Voyager makes this place feel more like home.
You can also use Voyager on Android! If you squint real hard, you can pretend Apollo finally released on a non-Apple device.
Interesting, for point 2, I thought having restriction in subreddit make it harder to advertise?
Oh, there were plenty of ads. You just didn't recognize them as such.
3rd party app support...
There are many other reasons, but let's be real. A lot of us ditched reddit because they dropped support for third party apps. Having an interface that isn't trying to constantly milk you for all sorts of monetization schemes matters a lot, as it so happens. Enough to say goodbye to a lot of familiar and large communities with otherwise good information.
There’s many communities I miss, but without third party apps that place became unbearable. The equivalent ones are not as active, but i can actually read and participate in discussions here.
You can see the number of up votes and down votes.
The API is much more open to third party apps.
The people are generally nicer.
Features are not paywalled.
Code is open source, so anyone and everyone can contribute.
It's kinda cool to go to pretty much any post and go "hey! I know almost everyone in the comment section!", but that's a bit of a double edged sword
Haha, yeah. Luckily it's more "Oh, it's you" and less "Oh, it's you". lol
Though I do tend to block trolls very quickly.
Oh, it's you!
Oh it's you
Oh. It is you.
Oh, it IS you.
R2D2 it is you it is you!
(insert random squeaks)
Oh. It's you.
OH!! ‘tis ye!
Some apps (like Boost) even let you add tags to people's names.
I always get so confused until I remember the context
Interesting, I use boost and didn't know about that. Like client side flairs, neat!
Lol that sounds cool
It can be. Once you get to hyper specific niches, you'll start seeing communities where it's more or less only a single person posting, if anyone's around at all. In more general communities it depends what's going on. There's a few people in the memes and shit posting communities who I swear make just about every post that ends up high up on top/day, and are in half the comment sections too. In communities like ask Lemmy it's usually different people posting, but the same few people replying
Only downside is when you DO finally have an, "Oh, it's you" moment, you'd better hope they're not one of the few people doing the posting.
For starters, Lemmy -- which uses open source ActivityPub protocols -- is decentralized and comprised of thousands of independently-run servers, so it's theoretically impossible to take down Lemmy completely. If lemmy.world goes down today and never comes back, the "Lemmy" network will still be online because of the other servers like lemmy.zip and sh.itjust.works that use Lemmy server software (which is currently at version .19 or around there).
Worth nothing: Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, which is an umbrella term to describe all ActivityPub software types. Yes, other software packages also use ActivityPub protocols to communicate... for example, Kbin (the "main" site is kbin.social, it's sorta like their lemmy.world) is a news aggregator like Lemmy and interacts with Lemmy almost seamlessly. There's also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
In short: it's kinda complex at the moment, and many parts of the Fediverse (which Lemmy belongs to) don't interact with each other directly because they provide different services, but it's important to note that it's really hard to take it down completely because the Fediverse is independently owned and run by different people in different parts of the world. Contrast with Reddit, a service that does have many servers but is owned and run by a single company in America.
Edit: I was wrong, Mastodon users can post on Lemmy instances, but Lemmy users can't post on Mastodon instances. Thanks Baku@aussie.zone for the info!
There's also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
They can interact with us though, and then we can interact back. We can't really "post" there, but if a mastodonian makes a post in a Lemmy community, us lemmings can see it, and then we can reply to them. But we can't do twitter style posts on their forum
The biggest telltale sign you're talking to a mastodonian rather than a lemming is that you'll see them @ everybody in the entire thread in every single reply, since that's how replies start on twitter and mastodon. I've never actually received a notification for the @'s, I think it's functionally closer to just linking to your user profile than an actual mention, but once you get deep in a thread you'll see every comment starting with 60 different @'s.
It might actually be an idea to treat your own profile like a community, isn't that something that reddit had too? Like you could post to r/importantcommunity or to u/goodusername
Yeah, my last post on Reddit was actually to my profile redirecting people here. Don't think we have that here yet, although it could be useful.
I never really saw it used for anything useful though, it was primarily used for spam in my experience. But it would probably improve compatibility between us and mastodonians
Ah ok, I didn't know they could post here, that's really cool. Thanks for the correction!
No worries! Here's an example of a post by a mastodon user on a Lemmy community (another telltale sign is that virtually no lemmings use hashtags):
There isn't a Lemmy network, there's just ActivityPub or more colloquially the Fediverse :)
I think it's mostly subjective or anecdotal, but what comes to mind:
The community generally is more friendly. Absolutely, there are still jerks or trolls around, but the ratio of jerks or trolls feel way less than reddit.
I feel more active here myself. This one I can't explain. The community is smaller, so maybe I'm not subconsciously worrying about being drowned out by other comments? On Reddit, I'd average about 1 comment a month at best. On here I usually leave a few comments a week.
This point might not mean much if you didn't join reddit when it was younger: I joined reddit when it was still young. I think back in '08? Lemmy feels like a young reddit, back when I enjoyed it most. Again, I can't really explain this since it's just a feeling, but one example of what I mean by "young reddit" is community wide memes. Wayyyyyy back in the day, everyone on Reddit was ravaging about "The narwhal bacons at night" or something like that lol. There were also a bunch of dickbutt memes.. if you know, you know. Well, my first week on Lemmy everyone was posting beans for a good couple of days. No reason. Just beans. A few weeks ago there were a bunch of "Taylor Swift going to Australia," Taylor Swift taking a swim," "Taylor Swift spotted at the airport," titled posts, but all those posts were pictures of airplanes. The rotating meme right now I think is Jeans??? Idk. This is just a symptom of a younger community, and why I like it more, but there's more to enjoy about it than rotating memes. This place just feels more genuine as opposed to artificial if that makes any sense.
I feel like I'm not missing out on anything on Reddit and I have a healthier relationship with social media on this site than with reddit. Every once and a while, I log back onto Reddit to see what's going on. Most of the "Big news" that's posted on there is also posted here, but the experience now feels more bloated compared to here so I don't stick around as long. As for this site... Yes there is less content. Yes there is less to scroll through. At the same time though, you can scroll for a very long time if you really want to. This eventually led to me being on my phone less and being somewhat a little more productive as opposed to doom scrolling.
Lemmy absolutely has better third party support for well, anything. Sure, it doesn't have official apps, but go to the app store and count how many different Lemmy apps there are vs reddit. Nearly all of these apps are better than the reddit app IMO. Most of these apps are also FOSS; they're free with no ads. Yes, there are still few paid apps as well if that tickles your fancy. I know Sync for Reddit came over to Lemmy as Sync for Lemmy as an example. This shouldn't stop at apps though. I wouldn't be surprised if there are browser plugins.
You have more say in your experience here. Again, with the smaller community, your voice is louder. On top of that, is your server's admin doing something you do not support? Your instance is doing something you don't like? Create an account on other instances! Lemmy is federated, so most of what you see should be the same as in other instances, but you aren't under the rule of one toxic CEO anymore. I myself have like 4 accounts on 4 different instances lol.
Piggy-backing off of the previous point: if reddit is down, it is down. If your instance is down here? Sign into another instance!
On the opposite end of the spectrum, does some instance have a bunch of members or just communities you don't want to see? Lemmy might not have native tools out of the box, but some Lemmy apps will let you block entire communities.
One fun thing I like about Lemmy is you can post pictures in comments!
If anything, the only reason why I still use reddit is for smaller, niche, communities. To that end, yeah Lemmy is smaller, thus the smaller reddit communities are even smaller here. If I find myself wanting to make a post on a given niche topic, I typically post on Reddit AND here. Sometimes, my post on Lemmy will somehow get more comments than reddit still though. Reddit posts seem to fall off after a day or so, that's not typically the case for Lemmy if you do trend something.
At the end of the day though, this is just a social media platform, and the enjoyment you get out of it comes down to you. ☺️ One tip I do have though is to sort by "Top of 6h" or "12h". I don't like the "Hot" sorting on here that much.
I don't think this is definitively "better" than reddit. The functionality of the site is more bare bones. No big hidden features or anything like that. What you see is what you get as far as interfaces go. But I am enjoying it. It reminds me of a much younger Internet and much simpler times. I am loving that Lemmy servers are run by your average joe who just wanted to start up a Lemmy community. No single CEO who only cares about how profitable a site is.
By being federated and decentralized, Lemmy makes it impossible for one idiot billionaire to ruin an entire platform.
In order to "take over" Lemmy, they would have to take over more than 1,300 Instances, in many different countries, instead of one instance in one country.
Hey, hey... Millionaire. Don't inflate him.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that for a village to thrive, the creative people (the artisans, the musicians etc) must move in first, they form the roots, then the rest of the village follows them.
The creative people moved from Digg to Reddit. That's what made Reddit Reddit, not the brand, or the UI, or some genius exec.
The creative people have mass migrated to Lemmy, & hence Lemmy will thrive. How do you know - see where og memes originate. Genius is not the domain of AI, & hence Reddit is Deaddit. We're now just waiting for the rest to follow.
I've yet to see artists migrate here. The artists started on DA, Newgrounds, YT, Tumblr, etc. The professionals moved to Twitter.
Reddit started from geek & tech culture, not creatives. Its ability to foster discussion extended well to not just techies but to everyone. Most creatives I've seen shy away from Reddit.
Creative people in the Reddit/Lemmy village are the geeks & intellectuals
This makes sense. I wonder if it's different now, since reddit has became such a big platform.
Reddit, especially the bigger subs - feels really, really stupid lately. And I hate to say that because it sounds so insulting, but it really does feel like the average “IQ” on the site has gone from being this kind of tech/nerd culture of reasonably well educated people to like… old ladies complaining about their ‘entitled’ DoorDash drivers. It often feels like Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong, Lemmy isn’t 100% geniuses or anything and there are some smart people on Reddit, but on Lemmy I’ll actually have back and forth conversations with people and it feels like more people are acting like human beings
It might be insulting, dunno, but I think that it's completely true. In special, verbal intelligence and logic reasoning are extremely low there.
Ohhh. Logic reasoning is extremely low indeed! I see so many fallacies there, it's crazy.
Eternal summer hasn't hit here yet. Eternal August? Whatever the term is.
It’s funny, the “zoomers”/teen audience is not even a bother to me - I genuinely feel like it’s a lot of the more 40-50s demographic which makes any form of conversation a nightmare.
In terms of the more populous instances, I think Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit before the site went mainstream, minus the jailbait, incest-posting, rampant racism and other degenerate shit that Reddit used to be known for.
By default? A nicer UI. It still pales compared to classic Reddit, but having things like keyboard shortcuts built in is nice, and it doesn't bog down/fire up a bunch of pop-ups like neo-Reddit.
Last night I made a post on c/asklemmy and that post now has 200 upvotes and a bunch of engagement.
On Reddit, that post would've been removed for some stupid reason or no engagement whatsoever.
Reddit also has a stupid algorithm thing and I could never find the posts from communities I subscribed to on my feed leaving many posts lost.
Serioulsy, Reddit has a moderation problem. Posts get removed all the time by powertripping mods.
Gotta third this. I had actually forgotten how bad it was till this was mentioned because it never happens on Lemmy. Love that. I had a few posts removed for accidentally missing an obscure rule on Reddit. Do not miss.
Unfortunately, it still happens even here on Lemmy. I don't think we see it as much because most communities here have far fewer mods than adjacent Reddit subs on average, but occasionally you'll find a mod here who thinks they know better than their community and does whatever they feel like.
I really enjoy the variety and diversity of federation. There are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences each instance brings. It’s refreshing.
Not force you to use the shittiest client ever created on mobile.
The accuracy of the votes (lack or vote fuzzing) and the ability to view the split of upvotes and downvotes individually, as well as who voted for what
The latter point can be seen as a kind of disadvantage though. I don't like the fact that anyone who is an admin on any instance can go to another instance and see the identity of every voter on any post.
You can view who votes for things? I think that's a kbin thing, isn't it?
It's honestly a big downside. I can see it being useful for admins on their own instances to detect brigades or vote manipulation coming from different servers, but I don't like that they are public, because it could discourage people from voting honestly on topics where they could potentially be harassed for engaging
I can see it being useful for admins on their own instances to detect brigades or vote manipulation coming from different servers, but I don’t like that they are public, because it could discourage people from voting honestly on topics where they could potentially be harassed for engaging
Well, if someone gets harassed for voting then the harasser should be banned, just as if you get harassed for any other reason. So it's not any different than posts or comments in that way.
Thanks
That's interesting, I thought you could only see votes for communities from instances where you are an admin.
Way easier to block sub forums you don’t care about here!
Bloody hell, there are a lot of people that like Japanese cartoons 😅
Ohh, I haven't found many active subs, lots of quiet ones like the football (soccer) one, sadly. Cartoons though...
Ooh yep absolutely this. You can block users, but also communities and even entire instances, it's amazing.
Now I just need communities and people to block 😂
Being normal? Reddit has become such a toxic dump lately, Lemmy feels like a walk in the park compared to it.
I have quite the opposite experience.
I've seen both very passionate tone deaf communities and very inclusive friendly communities. Steer a course and you might find calmer waters.
These days my Lemmy experience is listing through main page which accumulates god knows what. Even though I do curate a list of desired communities. Perhaps I should start filtering content I interact with.
You can mute specific instances. For example, not saying you should, but if you would happen to find all people from Hexbear insuffurable, you could make that instance disapeaar. Again, I'm not saying this specific community is filled with cocky asshole, but I'm not saying it's not either. I really can't as I haven't seen any of their content since a long time.
Yeah, I got nothing against other people having different political views but that was the first instance I blocked.
Thanks!
No ads
Nice interface that I don’t even mind using the browser
User Content isn’t being used to push lemmy as a stock value.
Allows me to actually use an interface which isn't awful
Link/comment karma isn't tracked so karma whoring is lessened. This doesn't stop the "meme of the week" stuff or the same basic (but big important) article from 30 sources getting posted to communities, but it helps a bit
As servers are federated, you can block them wholesale. Ones that become infested with shitters might see others defederate from them.
Superior layout, or at least notably better then new reddit... maybe on par with old.
up and downvotes visible and unfuzzed.
Withiut the karma incentive the meme of the week is just the stuff people want to share. Like the recent jeans thing was just people having fun with the meme because it was fun.
Ironically, the only jeans posts I saw were people complaining about the jeans posts. I don't know whether I've just blocked all the communities or people that were posting them or what, but it was the same story with the beans thing
It's big in the shit posting communities.
I think it's a huge plus that it's not run by big tech corporations. How many such things do we have today?
I've encountered far fewer Nazi shitheads here than on Reddit. That's a point in Lemmy's favor.
You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.
For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don't find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.
There's no "algorithm" per se, so you can actually discover new things in your feed, rather than just being fed what they think will keep you scrolling.
Also, you can use whatever app you like (I like Sync personally, but that's because it was my client of choice for Reddit) instead of using their RSS reader stapled to a Wish.com TikTok clone.
There’s no “algorithm” per se, so you can actually discover new things in your feed, rather than just being fed what they think will keep you scrolling.
Well, there is an algorithm but currently they are quite simple. Certainly not taking any kind of personal data or advertisement data into account, which is nice.
More advanced sorting algorithms could be made in the future to sort more personally, maybe based on the communities you follow or things like that. But the key point is that for Lemmy, the algorithm will always be open source and transparent, while the Reddit algorithm is a black box and you have no idea how much personal info its using.
What I'm trying to say is, algorithms aren't bad. Opaque, closed-source, privacy-invading algorithms (or anything else) is bad.
Modlog, able to insert multiple picture/gif in comment without having to use the app, able to talk with people from another platform(like Kbin or mastodon, though limited), no ads, no tracker, animated profile picture, able to turn off downvote, no arbitrary shadowban(or no shadowban), plethora of apps to choose from without forced to use the clunky reddit official app.
It's been a long time i didn't touch reddit so that's what i can remember.
No one on the platform side is incentivized (or capable) of controlling things, which is nice.
You can choose an instance that gives you like-minded people and an intentional community (like feddit.de for a German instance, or programming.dev for all things development and programming related, or ani.social for anime communities, or beehaw.org for a more vetted signup and member approach for a more social and healthy userbase)
Lemmy is federated meaning despite this separation into instances users can read and participate in communities and posts of other instances
Instances can choose to not federate or to block other instances according to their choices (another reason to choose your instance according to your intentions and expectations or usage pattern)
You can link posts, add text to the post, and edit post titles after posting
Those are probably the most obvious and usage facing differences. Additionally:
Lemmy is a platform of free and open source software, open to customizations and collaboration
Lemmy instances are run by groups and individuals, it's open to people and groups joining with their own instances
As such, both in software source and platform, Lemmy is a community project whereas Reddit is a private company (soon a public company owned by shareholders)
Lemmy has an open API allowing for custom client, bot, and other integrations
Lemmy uses the open ActivityPub protocol, so it can interact with many other platforms like Mastodon, KBin, etc
In many other ways, it is similar to Reddit. Like having upvotes and downvotes. Lemmy is still young, so it will improve in terms of functionality and annoyances.
I mean, posting a video just works.
As of 2023, Reddit still didn't have fully functional video.
Jerboa app is amazing
Star Trek memes. I didn’t even come here for them, but they’re everywhere, like the Picard manoeuvre.
I particularly like how the Threadiverse dev's and server hosts don't count our posts and the work of mods as their value.
disclaimer: i am not a web developer or a programmer, so if the language use is semantically incorrect, i apologize—I am merely trying to provide a layman’s explanation.
it’s just a bunch of little “reddits” (general discussion forum websites) that are independently hosted, but have the ability to cross post with one-another (so long as they are “federated”).
lemmy is the underlying technology that lets that happen, not the top level entity (like how reddit is the name of the website that is the forum host). so what you have is a bunch of different independent websites running lemmy that users individually create accounts on, and a lot of those individual websites communicate with each-other to create cohesive “fediverse.”
on the front end, whatever lemmy website someone signs up on, they are able to see all the content created and posted across all the separate websites that have federated together with the initial website the user signed up with.
so in short, you may have signed up with Lemmy Server 1 that has 800 individual forum topics (communities/ or subreddits) but you can also post in and interact with Lemmy Server 2, which is separately hosted and a very specific forum that only allows forum topics about bunny tossing so there are two topics: /BunnyTossing and /BunnyTossingMemes. So long as lemmy servers 1 and 2 are federated you’ll see content from Lemmy Server 1 (your home server) and Lemmy Server 2 (rad tips on bunny tossing).
if in the future your home server defederates with another server, you will no longer see content from that server or be able to interact with it as your user profile from that home server (in this instance Lemmy Server 1). in this situation however there is nothing stopping you from creating a user account on Lemmy Server 2 and continuing to see rad tips on bunny tossing by logging into lemmy server 2 directly.
Preventing power tripping mods
I wouldn't say it prevents them, but it does contain them to their own little fiefdoms.
Inline photos in posts. But that’s about it.
Yeah... seems like most of the people here are of the younger under 25 crowd, where on Reddit that was still the case but there were a lot more adults to have full adult discussions with. I still check Lemmy but less and less.
it isn't yet saturated by corporate and other agenda minded shills.
it isn't controlled by a board of directors or single owners.
although it is vulnerable to quite a bit.
info mining, misinformation campaigns, etc.
It allows anyone to host it themselves and still integrate with each other, which is radically more fair and empowering. It's a difference in quality.
I find higher meaningful engagement and much less toxic culture here.
It takes time to cultivate your community list here, just like it took time to build my followed subreddits back when I first started with Reddit, but I get posts that I care about and am interested in in my “Subscribed” list. I’ll admit that not every one of my interests are represented, but I’m still happy here.
The engagement is far better here for sure. Almost every comment I make has some form of reply. It’s especially good when you’re the first comment. People seem to respond well to that.
after lemmy i would definitely check out the products that can explore more of the fediverse, like mbin. it cant interoperate with lemmy and allows intercommunication with the 'microblog' side of the fediverse, which lemmy is incapable. https://moist.catsweat.com
Beans and jeans!
First you eat the beans. Then you go through the no poop challenge. If the worst comes, you'll need to wash the jeans.
You can create a post with link, image and content all at once.
The government can send simply send (backdoor) directives for censorship on certain issues that they can do with big companies.
I was just perma banned for saying...
this, to the New York Times being down voted.
A top level comments on an AMA that isn't a question? Yeah that'll be a paddling
Super eye opening story. This should have way more awareness.
They'll ban you because of your opinion. If you disagree with the wrong user or mod, you get banned from the subreddit or the whole site.
Fuck r/cordcutters and fuck r/news
Note that you can get banned from specific communities or instances, just not from Lemmy itself, as long as you are on a permissive instance or your own instance.
I dared to question how Nazis were still alive; instant permaban to my 10+ year account. They are more interested in defending Nazis than they are removing them.
Well there was a video on r/news where a group of cops beat sonebody pretty bad, body cam footage I think.
I commented "I hope those cops get what they deserve" you know like criminal charges of some sort. Oh no, reddit was perfectly fine with cops being bad cops.
That was my secondary account oh well.
And any recourse/appeal is not guaranteed a response, nor will you know if it is ever looked at. Nuts, especially since there are subs which I was on and had built a large reputation for trading, one of which no new users can register on. Fun loss of earnings from that day forward.
I was never really worried about reputation or virtual points. I just tried to contribute to conversations and be respectful. But Reddit has gone down hill. Soon it'll be dead like MySpace.
Mine was for trading, which was profitable for me. I needed that reputation/review score for people to trust me. Oh well.
I haven't been banned yet?
I can be a bit abrasive when I'm annoyed. And I think lethal force can be a legitimate answer to some (few) problems. Reddit didn't like that.
Censorship
You thought Reddit mods had a stick up their asses? Lemmy ones have a fucking log instead.
But, unlike reddit, you have a lot of options here. If you don't like the way a community is moderated, start your own. If you don't like the way a server is moderated, switch to a different one or start your own. The platform is no longer tied to a particular instance and the whims of whoever manages it.
Can't anyone in a sub delete posts made to it, or am I confused?
I don't think anyone can delete posts except for the poster and the moderators.
How do moderators work if there are subs which are hosted on multiple platforms?
Any given sub is only hosted on one instance, although moderators can be on other instances. I don't know how moderation changes propagate across other instances. I hope someone else will explain that.
The tl;dr is there's a set way of saying these specific users are allowed to send actions such as delete on these specific posts, and software that implements groups (communities, to lemmy) ideally implement it in the same way. Of course, someone could always make a software that denies all remote moderation actions for instance, so it's always up to those implementing the AP spec.
Lemmy has a large userbase, so generally probably gets to decide a lot of these things, such as how moderators are listed when getting information on communities, and other software will have to choose to follow along to be able to work with the large userbase or raise concerns/give feedback if needed
That only applies to specific instances, or even specific communities. Just switch to a different instance or community, or make your own. If you don't like lemmy.world, try out either exploding-heads or lemmygrad, depending which way you swing, and vice versa. Somewhere out there is the community and instance for you, and if none of them are to your taste, nothing's stopping you from making your own - that's the beauty of the fediverse.
Setting up an instance is not a resposibility that I want to have. I don't wanna have to deal with trolls posting illegal shit that I will have to take care of.
And even without that, my instance could be defederated by yet another fucking moron with a log up his ass.
You thought Reddit mods had a stick up their asses? Lemmy ones have a fucking modlog instead.
Fixed that for you!
I'm half-joking. Being completely serious now, I don't think that censorship here is worse than in Reddit, just more visible due to features like the mod log, and lack of features like the automoderator (it's harder to detect if you've been silenced if it happens automatically, based on keywords).
There's no spez.
Fuck spez.
If you're the tankie type, you might appreciate how tankie-heavy it is.
I feel like that trope doesn't really ring true these days, as most of the "general purpose" instances are pretty moderate. Back when Lemmy was still just a small handful of instances, that was definitely the case, but I think the wider adoption has balanced things out a bit closer toward center, overall.
It may be more balanced than it was before, but there are a lot of accounts which come across as heavy-handed propaganda and/or radicalized teenagers.
No changes will ever be forced-in to appease "the boss".
Doesn't have a single owner. It's a free software, build around a free-protocol. If at a moment, some developpers do not agree with Lemmy's main-dev, they're absolutely free to create a Memmy platform based on lemmy with their feature enabled. Just like at a point Libre office split from open office. Even better, Kbin/Mbin runs a fully different code-base and is still (fully) compatible with Lemmy. It's the magic of free software.
With instance I know, you don't give a commercial licence to re-use your content like you do on reddit. For example, Lemmy.world team cannot sell your comments to train an AI, or re-use the photo you post te sell T-shirt. On reddit (but also meta, tik tok and others) they'll do.
Have you noticed that you don't find these big GDPR cookies/tracker consent form ? Well, when you don't sell your user data to ads company, and don't put tons of trackers, GDPR compliance isn't complicated. Look at your instance privacy policy for LW it's there and compare it with reddit term of use it's crazy what we accept on reddit.
That said, please note that privacy friendly instances run because some people pay for it, if you like it, and can afford-it feel free to make a donation to your instances or the main developper.
At the moment it's a relatively small community, and you'll see the same nick-names everywhere, which means that in general the communities are nice and well behaved. There is a couple of instances which want to put politics everywhere and are annoying, but it's the exception not the norm.
Federation and fediverse works. From Lemmy, I've interacted with persons on Mastodon, have seen some of my Lemmy comments being retooted in Mastodon, have seen Mastodon/Firefish user posting on lemmy from their account there. And of course, you can exchange with people using lemmy on different instance.
With instance I know, you don't give a commercial licence to re-use your content like you do on reddit. For example, Lemmy.world team cannot sell your comments to train an AI
It's worth noting that although nobody has a licence to steal your content, this is the internet, and the nature of the fediverse makes it easy to siphon if somebody really wanted to.
Sure, that's a violation of your copyright and completely disrespectful to you as a person, but do you or your instance have the resources to take action against whatever multi-billion dollar company decided to copy everything you've ever done?
Less stuff, less time waste/addiction
No ads and the ability to filter to only unread posts (at least on Memmy.)
When they call you "queer" and "a CCP stooge" on Reddit, it's a flame. On the Fediverse, it's a sign of love and camaraderie, if not an outright cost of admission.
Well said, you CCP stooge.
If the goal is just better, then moderation is better. Reddit obviously has better/more content, users, etc. But the mods can and do make the whole experience. It could be zero interaction, no problem, or it could be a permanent ban of a subr or the whole ecosystem for no reason and you have zero insight or recourse.
On Lemmy the same can happen and I'm convinced many mods here are just are bad. But there is a public log. You still can't do anything about it, but it's something.
Which comes back to the real question. Both suck. The best thing about Lemmy is that I went from using reddit as my only social media for years, to boycotting it and coming here. And it sucks here, so now very little social media presence at all. It works great as a digital detox.
Fester a cesspool of social justice warriors and armchair generals who talk out of their ass in hopes of provoking some reaction so they can feel important for the day.
This is a very negative comment but also funny. Have upvoted.
Thank you. :) Also true to a degree. There are toxic people everywhere but it seems I've been running more often into them lately.
Lemmy is heavily astroturfed. There is no way Lemmy instance admins have the time or resources to do the kind of subversion detection reddit did. That's if the astroturfers aren't already running larger Lemmy instances to build them up.
Here is one of many from reddit. Hopefully some OSINT groups start doing research on Lemmy and outing the bot networks that operate here, because it's election season in the US and it's showing.
For example, I don't think the lemmy.world admin has the domain knowledge to detect customized Lemmy docker code that allows a hacking group to hide their accounts from admins/mods and go undetected for a very long time, until it's noticed on accident.
Interesting. Didn't know Reddit was vigilant with moderation that much. Thanks for providing insightful information.
Reddit feels like a corporate advertising driven hellscape where fear and rage is encouraged.
Lemmy feels like 2010 when the internet world was a lot more simpler and you could actually talk to people.
Yeah Lemmy feels a lot like Reddit from 10-15 years ago. Mostly cordial conversation on a wide variety of topics, the biggest difference I see is the lack of activity in certain communities, which is a bit of a shame. But I guess that's a trade-off.
Give it time. Better to grow organically.
That's where we need to get back to is 2010.
Steve Huffman isn't here, so that's a huge plus.
Nah he’s here. It’s the guy downvoting all the anti reddit posts
No, that's me. I don't care to see Reddit, Twitter, Threads, etc posts.
Steve Huffman? Former moderator of r/jailbait and current CEO of Reddit? That guy?
Self-proclaimed future leader of an apocalyptic survival compound, and obvious Elon wannabe? That Steve Huffman?
Uj/ wait, what?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
There are some other funny bits in that article, like Spez having "large blue eyes" and once was a competitive ballroom dancer.
Two things that come to mind:
Lemmy's protocol is open, so anybody can make 3rd party apps to work with it. Third party Reddit apps used to be popular when Reddit had an open API, but Reddit destroyed that on purpose.
Because Lemmy isn't run by a singular company, you don't get the same restrictions. Reddit admins had a whole host of rules on what a sub could or could not contain. Many of which were heavy focused on making Reddit more advertiser friendly.
The funniest part of killing 3rd party apps is they cut off a widely used method if collecting more commenting data from the average user. I guess they figured audience style interaction on the official app is worth more.
The official app purportedly has a shit ton of interaction tracking. I can't find the link anymore, but somebody on HN even claimed what they wanted to track was so invasive that he walked out of a job interview for Reddit.
What I can say for sure is that the new Reddit "shreddit" website is absolutely fucking full of tracking. I reverse engineered it for reasons, and every interaction with UI elements was reported back before the actual interaction was allowed to take place.
They definitely gain more value out of user data from interaction tracking than they do from their comments.
Tracking clicks on links with JS is pretty normal. I always implemented that with Google analytics for my e-commerce sites.
It helps you track things like downloads of files, email links, exit links, etc.
As a former web dev, I know it's normal industry standard stuff, but it's really hard to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt here.
Their tracking is completely ingrained in the webcomponent-based SPA itself, beyond what's reasonable for anonymized analytics. Disabling cookies even broke loading content, despite being logged out.
What did you used to program in?
In a professional capacity, it was React with TypeScript for front-end, Node for backend with Nginx to serve static assets. At the end of the day, it wasn't really for me. I enjoy web dev for hobby projects, but working with it day after day ruined my intrinsic desire to keep doing it.
Oooooh this is relevant to my interests!! After 20yrs doing web dev I crashed out of two jobs in 6 months completely hating coding. Can't even bring myself to look at code nowadays.
What did you go into after quitting web dev?
What about old.reddit; would that have tracking? If not it would explain why the new Reddit UI seems so slow on browser
And for point one, I use Voyager, which was heavily inspired by Apollo for Reddit, so Voyager makes this place feel more like home.
You can also use Voyager on Android! If you squint real hard, you can pretend Apollo finally released on a non-Apple device.
Interesting, for point 2, I thought having restriction in subreddit make it harder to advertise?
Oh, there were plenty of ads. You just didn't recognize them as such.
3rd party app support...
There are many other reasons, but let's be real. A lot of us ditched reddit because they dropped support for third party apps. Having an interface that isn't trying to constantly milk you for all sorts of monetization schemes matters a lot, as it so happens. Enough to say goodbye to a lot of familiar and large communities with otherwise good information.
There’s many communities I miss, but without third party apps that place became unbearable. The equivalent ones are not as active, but i can actually read and participate in discussions here.
You can see the number of up votes and down votes.
The API is much more open to third party apps.
The people are generally nicer.
Features are not paywalled.
Code is open source, so anyone and everyone can contribute.
It's kinda cool to go to pretty much any post and go "hey! I know almost everyone in the comment section!", but that's a bit of a double edged sword
Haha, yeah. Luckily it's more "Oh, it's you" and less "Oh, it's you". lol
Though I do tend to block trolls very quickly.
Oh, it's you!
Oh it's you
Oh. It is you.
Oh, it IS you.
R2D2 it is you it is you!
(insert random squeaks)
Oh. It's you.
OH!! ‘tis ye!
Some apps (like Boost) even let you add tags to people's names.
I always get so confused until I remember the context
Interesting, I use boost and didn't know about that. Like client side flairs, neat!
Lol that sounds cool
It can be. Once you get to hyper specific niches, you'll start seeing communities where it's more or less only a single person posting, if anyone's around at all. In more general communities it depends what's going on. There's a few people in the memes and shit posting communities who I swear make just about every post that ends up high up on top/day, and are in half the comment sections too. In communities like ask Lemmy it's usually different people posting, but the same few people replying
Only downside is when you DO finally have an, "Oh, it's you" moment, you'd better hope they're not one of the few people doing the posting.
For starters, Lemmy -- which uses open source ActivityPub protocols -- is decentralized and comprised of thousands of independently-run servers, so it's theoretically impossible to take down Lemmy completely. If lemmy.world goes down today and never comes back, the "Lemmy" network will still be online because of the other servers like lemmy.zip and sh.itjust.works that use Lemmy server software (which is currently at version .19 or around there).
Worth nothing: Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, which is an umbrella term to describe all ActivityPub software types. Yes, other software packages also use ActivityPub protocols to communicate... for example, Kbin (the "main" site is kbin.social, it's sorta like their lemmy.world) is a news aggregator like Lemmy and interacts with Lemmy almost seamlessly. There's also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
In short: it's kinda complex at the moment, and many parts of the Fediverse (which Lemmy belongs to) don't interact with each other directly because they provide different services, but it's important to note that it's really hard to take it down completely because the Fediverse is independently owned and run by different people in different parts of the world. Contrast with Reddit, a service that does have many servers but is owned and run by a single company in America.
Edit: I was wrong, Mastodon users can post on Lemmy instances, but Lemmy users can't post on Mastodon instances. Thanks Baku@aussie.zone for the info!
They can interact with us though, and then we can interact back. We can't really "post" there, but if a mastodonian makes a post in a Lemmy community, us lemmings can see it, and then we can reply to them. But we can't do twitter style posts on their forum
The biggest telltale sign you're talking to a mastodonian rather than a lemming is that you'll see them @ everybody in the entire thread in every single reply, since that's how replies start on twitter and mastodon. I've never actually received a notification for the @'s, I think it's functionally closer to just linking to your user profile than an actual mention, but once you get deep in a thread you'll see every comment starting with 60 different @'s.
It might actually be an idea to treat your own profile like a community, isn't that something that reddit had too? Like you could post to r/importantcommunity or to u/goodusername
Yeah, my last post on Reddit was actually to my profile redirecting people here. Don't think we have that here yet, although it could be useful.
I never really saw it used for anything useful though, it was primarily used for spam in my experience. But it would probably improve compatibility between us and mastodonians
Ah ok, I didn't know they could post here, that's really cool. Thanks for the correction!
No worries! Here's an example of a post by a mastodon user on a Lemmy community (another telltale sign is that virtually no lemmings use hashtags):
https://aussie.zone/post/7464977
And one of those deep mention comment threads (though I've seen deeper):
https://aussie.zone/comment/4629969
There isn't a Lemmy network, there's just ActivityPub or more colloquially the Fediverse :)
I think it's mostly subjective or anecdotal, but what comes to mind:
If anything, the only reason why I still use reddit is for smaller, niche, communities. To that end, yeah Lemmy is smaller, thus the smaller reddit communities are even smaller here. If I find myself wanting to make a post on a given niche topic, I typically post on Reddit AND here. Sometimes, my post on Lemmy will somehow get more comments than reddit still though. Reddit posts seem to fall off after a day or so, that's not typically the case for Lemmy if you do trend something.
At the end of the day though, this is just a social media platform, and the enjoyment you get out of it comes down to you. ☺️ One tip I do have though is to sort by "Top of 6h" or "12h". I don't like the "Hot" sorting on here that much.
I don't think this is definitively "better" than reddit. The functionality of the site is more bare bones. No big hidden features or anything like that. What you see is what you get as far as interfaces go. But I am enjoying it. It reminds me of a much younger Internet and much simpler times. I am loving that Lemmy servers are run by your average joe who just wanted to start up a Lemmy community. No single CEO who only cares about how profitable a site is.
By being federated and decentralized, Lemmy makes it impossible for one idiot billionaire to ruin an entire platform.
In order to "take over" Lemmy, they would have to take over more than 1,300 Instances, in many different countries, instead of one instance in one country.
Hey, hey... Millionaire. Don't inflate him.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that for a village to thrive, the creative people (the artisans, the musicians etc) must move in first, they form the roots, then the rest of the village follows them.
The creative people moved from Digg to Reddit. That's what made Reddit Reddit, not the brand, or the UI, or some genius exec.
The creative people have mass migrated to Lemmy, & hence Lemmy will thrive. How do you know - see where og memes originate. Genius is not the domain of AI, & hence Reddit is Deaddit. We're now just waiting for the rest to follow.
I've yet to see artists migrate here. The artists started on DA, Newgrounds, YT, Tumblr, etc. The professionals moved to Twitter.
Reddit started from geek & tech culture, not creatives. Its ability to foster discussion extended well to not just techies but to everyone. Most creatives I've seen shy away from Reddit.
Creative people in the Reddit/Lemmy village are the geeks & intellectuals
This makes sense. I wonder if it's different now, since reddit has became such a big platform.
Reddit, especially the bigger subs - feels really, really stupid lately. And I hate to say that because it sounds so insulting, but it really does feel like the average “IQ” on the site has gone from being this kind of tech/nerd culture of reasonably well educated people to like… old ladies complaining about their ‘entitled’ DoorDash drivers. It often feels like Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong, Lemmy isn’t 100% geniuses or anything and there are some smart people on Reddit, but on Lemmy I’ll actually have back and forth conversations with people and it feels like more people are acting like human beings
It might be insulting, dunno, but I think that it's completely true. In special, verbal intelligence and logic reasoning are extremely low there.
Ohhh. Logic reasoning is extremely low indeed! I see so many fallacies there, it's crazy.
Eternal summer hasn't hit here yet. Eternal August? Whatever the term is.
It’s funny, the “zoomers”/teen audience is not even a bother to me - I genuinely feel like it’s a lot of the more 40-50s demographic which makes any form of conversation a nightmare.
In terms of the more populous instances, I think Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit before the site went mainstream, minus the jailbait, incest-posting, rampant racism and other degenerate shit that Reddit used to be known for.
By default? A nicer UI. It still pales compared to classic Reddit, but having things like keyboard shortcuts built in is nice, and it doesn't bog down/fire up a bunch of pop-ups like neo-Reddit.
Last night I made a post on c/asklemmy and that post now has 200 upvotes and a bunch of engagement.
On Reddit, that post would've been removed for some stupid reason or no engagement whatsoever.
Reddit also has a stupid algorithm thing and I could never find the posts from communities I subscribed to on my feed leaving many posts lost.
Serioulsy, Reddit has a moderation problem. Posts get removed all the time by powertripping mods.
Gotta third this. I had actually forgotten how bad it was till this was mentioned because it never happens on Lemmy. Love that. I had a few posts removed for accidentally missing an obscure rule on Reddit. Do not miss.
Unfortunately, it still happens even here on Lemmy. I don't think we see it as much because most communities here have far fewer mods than adjacent Reddit subs on average, but occasionally you'll find a mod here who thinks they know better than their community and does whatever they feel like.
The one about regret buying, right? I've seen it.
It would be worse: people would assume that you're a Nazi because you're criticising consumption.
I really enjoy the variety and diversity of federation. There are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences each instance brings. It’s refreshing.
Not force you to use the shittiest client ever created on mobile.
The accuracy of the votes (lack or vote fuzzing) and the ability to view the split of upvotes and downvotes individually, as well as who voted for what
The latter point can be seen as a kind of disadvantage though. I don't like the fact that anyone who is an admin on any instance can go to another instance and see the identity of every voter on any post.
You can view who votes for things? I think that's a kbin thing, isn't it?
No, it's on Lemmy too
As part of the mod log? Or somewhere else
It's just an option on every post
https://i.imgur.com/j5ZB8vi.png
On the regular Lemmy UI you can see the option if you're an admin (on any instance, not just the one the comment was made on)
I've never seen that before. I wonder if it's an instance dependent setting?
It is limited to admins
And anyone can be an admin. You can just make an instance and appoint yourself an admin. So in practice it's not limited to anybody.
Having a look at your screenshot again, upvotes are indeed visible (they are using Kbin too for every user).
Example for this thread: https://fedia.io/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/583932/What-does-Lemmy-do-better-than-Reddit/favourites
Is it the same for downvotes?
Yes
It's honestly a big downside. I can see it being useful for admins on their own instances to detect brigades or vote manipulation coming from different servers, but I don't like that they are public, because it could discourage people from voting honestly on topics where they could potentially be harassed for engaging
Well, if someone gets harassed for voting then the harasser should be banned, just as if you get harassed for any other reason. So it's not any different than posts or comments in that way.
Thanks
That's interesting, I thought you could only see votes for communities from instances where you are an admin.
Way easier to block sub forums you don’t care about here!
Bloody hell, there are a lot of people that like Japanese cartoons 😅
Ohh, I haven't found many active subs, lots of quiet ones like the football (soccer) one, sadly. Cartoons though...
Ooh yep absolutely this. You can block users, but also communities and even entire instances, it's amazing.
Now I just need communities and people to block 😂
Being normal? Reddit has become such a toxic dump lately, Lemmy feels like a walk in the park compared to it.
I have quite the opposite experience.
I've seen both very passionate tone deaf communities and very inclusive friendly communities. Steer a course and you might find calmer waters.
These days my Lemmy experience is listing through main page which accumulates god knows what. Even though I do curate a list of desired communities. Perhaps I should start filtering content I interact with.
You can mute specific instances. For example, not saying you should, but if you would happen to find all people from Hexbear insuffurable, you could make that instance disapeaar. Again, I'm not saying this specific community is filled with cocky asshole, but I'm not saying it's not either. I really can't as I haven't seen any of their content since a long time.
Yeah, I got nothing against other people having different political views but that was the first instance I blocked.
Thanks!
No ads
Nice interface that I don’t even mind using the browser
User Content isn’t being used to push lemmy as a stock value.
Allows me to actually use an interface which isn't awful
Link/comment karma isn't tracked so karma whoring is lessened. This doesn't stop the "meme of the week" stuff or the same basic (but big important) article from 30 sources getting posted to communities, but it helps a bit
As servers are federated, you can block them wholesale. Ones that become infested with shitters might see others defederate from them.
Superior layout, or at least notably better then new reddit... maybe on par with old.
up and downvotes visible and unfuzzed.
Withiut the karma incentive the meme of the week is just the stuff people want to share. Like the recent jeans thing was just people having fun with the meme because it was fun.
Ironically, the only jeans posts I saw were people complaining about the jeans posts. I don't know whether I've just blocked all the communities or people that were posting them or what, but it was the same story with the beans thing
It's big in the shit posting communities.
I think it's a huge plus that it's not run by big tech corporations. How many such things do we have today?
I've encountered far fewer Nazi shitheads here than on Reddit. That's a point in Lemmy's favor.
You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.
For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don't find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.
There's no "algorithm" per se, so you can actually discover new things in your feed, rather than just being fed what they think will keep you scrolling.
Also, you can use whatever app you like (I like Sync personally, but that's because it was my client of choice for Reddit) instead of using their RSS reader stapled to a Wish.com TikTok clone.
Well, there is an algorithm but currently they are quite simple. Certainly not taking any kind of personal data or advertisement data into account, which is nice.
More advanced sorting algorithms could be made in the future to sort more personally, maybe based on the communities you follow or things like that. But the key point is that for Lemmy, the algorithm will always be open source and transparent, while the Reddit algorithm is a black box and you have no idea how much personal info its using.
What I'm trying to say is, algorithms aren't bad. Opaque, closed-source, privacy-invading algorithms (or anything else) is bad.
Modlog, able to insert multiple picture/gif in comment without having to use the app, able to talk with people from another platform(like Kbin or mastodon, though limited), no ads, no tracker, animated profile picture, able to turn off downvote, no arbitrary shadowban(or no shadowban), plethora of apps to choose from without forced to use the clunky reddit official app.
It's been a long time i didn't touch reddit so that's what i can remember.
No one on the platform side is incentivized (or capable) of controlling things, which is nice.
Those are probably the most obvious and usage facing differences. Additionally:
In many other ways, it is similar to Reddit. Like having upvotes and downvotes. Lemmy is still young, so it will improve in terms of functionality and annoyances.
I mean, posting a video just works.
As of 2023, Reddit still didn't have fully functional video.
Jerboa app is amazing
Star Trek memes. I didn’t even come here for them, but they’re everywhere, like the Picard manoeuvre.
!tenforward@lemmy.world for all your Trek meme needs. O'Brien must suffer!
I particularly like how the Threadiverse dev's and server hosts don't count our posts and the work of mods as their value.
disclaimer: i am not a web developer or a programmer, so if the language use is semantically incorrect, i apologize—I am merely trying to provide a layman’s explanation.
it’s just a bunch of little “reddits” (general discussion forum websites) that are independently hosted, but have the ability to cross post with one-another (so long as they are “federated”).
lemmy is the underlying technology that lets that happen, not the top level entity (like how reddit is the name of the website that is the forum host). so what you have is a bunch of different independent websites running lemmy that users individually create accounts on, and a lot of those individual websites communicate with each-other to create cohesive “fediverse.”
on the front end, whatever lemmy website someone signs up on, they are able to see all the content created and posted across all the separate websites that have federated together with the initial website the user signed up with.
so in short, you may have signed up with Lemmy Server 1 that has 800 individual forum topics (communities/ or subreddits) but you can also post in and interact with Lemmy Server 2, which is separately hosted and a very specific forum that only allows forum topics about bunny tossing so there are two topics: /BunnyTossing and /BunnyTossingMemes. So long as lemmy servers 1 and 2 are federated you’ll see content from Lemmy Server 1 (your home server) and Lemmy Server 2 (rad tips on bunny tossing).
if in the future your home server defederates with another server, you will no longer see content from that server or be able to interact with it as your user profile from that home server (in this instance Lemmy Server 1). in this situation however there is nothing stopping you from creating a user account on Lemmy Server 2 and continuing to see rad tips on bunny tossing by logging into lemmy server 2 directly.
Preventing power tripping mods
I wouldn't say it prevents them, but it does contain them to their own little fiefdoms.
Inline photos in posts. But that’s about it.
Yeah... seems like most of the people here are of the younger under 25 crowd, where on Reddit that was still the case but there were a lot more adults to have full adult discussions with. I still check Lemmy but less and less.
it isn't yet saturated by corporate and other agenda minded shills.
it isn't controlled by a board of directors or single owners.
although it is vulnerable to quite a bit. info mining, misinformation campaigns, etc.
It allows anyone to host it themselves and still integrate with each other, which is radically more fair and empowering. It's a difference in quality.
I find higher meaningful engagement and much less toxic culture here.
It takes time to cultivate your community list here, just like it took time to build my followed subreddits back when I first started with Reddit, but I get posts that I care about and am interested in in my “Subscribed” list. I’ll admit that not every one of my interests are represented, but I’m still happy here.
The engagement is far better here for sure. Almost every comment I make has some form of reply. It’s especially good when you’re the first comment. People seem to respond well to that.
after lemmy i would definitely check out the products that can explore more of the fediverse, like mbin. it cant interoperate with lemmy and allows intercommunication with the 'microblog' side of the fediverse, which lemmy is incapable. https://moist.catsweat.com
Beans and jeans!
First you eat the beans. Then you go through the no poop challenge. If the worst comes, you'll need to wash the jeans.
You can create a post with link, image and content all at once.
The government can send simply send (backdoor) directives for censorship on certain issues that they can do with big companies.
I was just perma banned for saying...
this, to the New York Times being down voted.
A top level comments on an AMA that isn't a question? Yeah that'll be a paddling
Spank me, daddy.
I'm amazed anyone openly dares to say they work for New York Times now that everyone knows they are fully controlled by israel
Super eye opening story. This should have way more awareness.
They'll ban you because of your opinion. If you disagree with the wrong user or mod, you get banned from the subreddit or the whole site.
Fuck r/cordcutters and fuck r/news
Note that you can get banned from specific communities or instances, just not from Lemmy itself, as long as you are on a permissive instance or your own instance.
I dared to question how Nazis were still alive; instant permaban to my 10+ year account. They are more interested in defending Nazis than they are removing them.
Well there was a video on r/news where a group of cops beat sonebody pretty bad, body cam footage I think.
I commented "I hope those cops get what they deserve" you know like criminal charges of some sort. Oh no, reddit was perfectly fine with cops being bad cops.
That was my secondary account oh well.
And any recourse/appeal is not guaranteed a response, nor will you know if it is ever looked at. Nuts, especially since there are subs which I was on and had built a large reputation for trading, one of which no new users can register on. Fun loss of earnings from that day forward.
I was never really worried about reputation or virtual points. I just tried to contribute to conversations and be respectful. But Reddit has gone down hill. Soon it'll be dead like MySpace.
Mine was for trading, which was profitable for me. I needed that reputation/review score for people to trust me. Oh well.
I haven't been banned yet?
I can be a bit abrasive when I'm annoyed. And I think lethal force can be a legitimate answer to some (few) problems. Reddit didn't like that.
Censorship
You thought Reddit mods had a stick up their asses? Lemmy ones have a fucking log instead.
But, unlike reddit, you have a lot of options here. If you don't like the way a community is moderated, start your own. If you don't like the way a server is moderated, switch to a different one or start your own. The platform is no longer tied to a particular instance and the whims of whoever manages it.
Can't anyone in a sub delete posts made to it, or am I confused?
I don't think anyone can delete posts except for the poster and the moderators.
How do moderators work if there are subs which are hosted on multiple platforms?
Any given sub is only hosted on one instance, although moderators can be on other instances. I don't know how moderation changes propagate across other instances. I hope someone else will explain that.
In the end it's mostly an agreement on how moderation actions should and are allowed to propagate for activity pub groups, which you can learn more about here https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1b12/fep-1b12.md#group-moderation
The tl;dr is there's a set way of saying these specific users are allowed to send actions such as delete on these specific posts, and software that implements groups (communities, to lemmy) ideally implement it in the same way. Of course, someone could always make a software that denies all remote moderation actions for instance, so it's always up to those implementing the AP spec.
Lemmy has a large userbase, so generally probably gets to decide a lot of these things, such as how moderators are listed when getting information on communities, and other software will have to choose to follow along to be able to work with the large userbase or raise concerns/give feedback if needed
That only applies to specific instances, or even specific communities. Just switch to a different instance or community, or make your own. If you don't like lemmy.world, try out either exploding-heads or lemmygrad, depending which way you swing, and vice versa. Somewhere out there is the community and instance for you, and if none of them are to your taste, nothing's stopping you from making your own - that's the beauty of the fediverse.
Setting up an instance is not a resposibility that I want to have. I don't wanna have to deal with trolls posting illegal shit that I will have to take care of.
And even without that, my instance could be defederated by yet another fucking moron with a log up his ass.
Fixed that for you!
I'm half-joking. Being completely serious now, I don't think that censorship here is worse than in Reddit, just more visible due to features like the mod log, and lack of features like the automoderator (it's harder to detect if you've been silenced if it happens automatically, based on keywords).
There's no spez.
Fuck spez.
If you're the tankie type, you might appreciate how tankie-heavy it is.
I feel like that trope doesn't really ring true these days, as most of the "general purpose" instances are pretty moderate. Back when Lemmy was still just a small handful of instances, that was definitely the case, but I think the wider adoption has balanced things out a bit closer toward center, overall.
It may be more balanced than it was before, but there are a lot of accounts which come across as heavy-handed propaganda and/or radicalized teenagers.
No changes will ever be forced-in to appease "the boss".
Doesn't have a single owner. It's a free software, build around a free-protocol. If at a moment, some developpers do not agree with Lemmy's main-dev, they're absolutely free to create a Memmy platform based on lemmy with their feature enabled. Just like at a point Libre office split from open office. Even better, Kbin/Mbin runs a fully different code-base and is still (fully) compatible with Lemmy. It's the magic of free software.
With instance I know, you don't give a commercial licence to re-use your content like you do on reddit. For example, Lemmy.world team cannot sell your comments to train an AI, or re-use the photo you post te sell T-shirt. On reddit (but also meta, tik tok and others) they'll do.
Have you noticed that you don't find these big GDPR cookies/tracker consent form ? Well, when you don't sell your user data to ads company, and don't put tons of trackers, GDPR compliance isn't complicated. Look at your instance privacy policy for LW it's there and compare it with reddit term of use it's crazy what we accept on reddit.
That said, please note that privacy friendly instances run because some people pay for it, if you like it, and can afford-it feel free to make a donation to your instances or the main developper.
At the moment it's a relatively small community, and you'll see the same nick-names everywhere, which means that in general the communities are nice and well behaved. There is a couple of instances which want to put politics everywhere and are annoying, but it's the exception not the norm.
Federation and fediverse works. From Lemmy, I've interacted with persons on Mastodon, have seen some of my Lemmy comments being retooted in Mastodon, have seen Mastodon/Firefish user posting on lemmy from their account there. And of course, you can exchange with people using lemmy on different instance.
It's worth noting that although nobody has a licence to steal your content, this is the internet, and the nature of the fediverse makes it easy to siphon if somebody really wanted to.
Sure, that's a violation of your copyright and completely disrespectful to you as a person, but do you or your instance have the resources to take action against whatever multi-billion dollar company decided to copy everything you've ever done?
Less stuff, less time waste/addiction
No ads and the ability to filter to only unread posts (at least on Memmy.)
When they call you "queer" and "a CCP stooge" on Reddit, it's a flame. On the Fediverse, it's a sign of love and camaraderie, if not an outright cost of admission.
Well said, you CCP stooge.
If the goal is just better, then moderation is better. Reddit obviously has better/more content, users, etc. But the mods can and do make the whole experience. It could be zero interaction, no problem, or it could be a permanent ban of a subr or the whole ecosystem for no reason and you have zero insight or recourse.
On Lemmy the same can happen and I'm convinced many mods here are just are bad. But there is a public log. You still can't do anything about it, but it's something.
Which comes back to the real question. Both suck. The best thing about Lemmy is that I went from using reddit as my only social media for years, to boycotting it and coming here. And it sucks here, so now very little social media presence at all. It works great as a digital detox.
Fester a cesspool of social justice warriors and armchair generals who talk out of their ass in hopes of provoking some reaction so they can feel important for the day.
This is a very negative comment but also funny. Have upvoted.
Thank you. :) Also true to a degree. There are toxic people everywhere but it seems I've been running more often into them lately.
Lemmy is heavily astroturfed. There is no way Lemmy instance admins have the time or resources to do the kind of subversion detection reddit did. That's if the astroturfers aren't already running larger Lemmy instances to build them up.
Here is one of many from reddit. Hopefully some OSINT groups start doing research on Lemmy and outing the bot networks that operate here, because it's election season in the US and it's showing.
For example, I don't think the lemmy.world admin has the domain knowledge to detect customized Lemmy docker code that allows a hacking group to hide their accounts from admins/mods and go undetected for a very long time, until it's noticed on accident.
Interesting. Didn't know Reddit was vigilant with moderation that much. Thanks for providing insightful information.