Now that a lot of the commotion has subsided I’m just curious to know how y’all are finding the Lemmy experience in general and whether you use it regularly like you did reddit?
Still not as good as Reddit as a platform despite the apps are getting really good. I haven’t discovered interesting /c/ and my frontpage is filled with memes and tech news only, it gets boring. The local regional /c/ is pretty much dead. No one bother posting or start a convo.
Not very good. Many communities are just too small for any meaningful stuff, the UI is ugly, the software’s buggy, and Lemmy (and tbh, the whole Fediverse) sometimes feels like a political echo chamber, only favoring a certain side.
I’m on Voyager (via the app store) and it is wonderful (and free)!
I agree that some communities are quite empty, but I found that the techn savy communities are quite large and well maintained (selfhosted, linux and such).
Although the read is arguably shorter, i have more time in my day as a result of that. Not missing reddit at all ATM.
I like the ui myself, and some of the apps are absolutely beautiful, I get you on the lack of engagement though, I’ve actually gone back and opened up a reddit account for this reason, I still love Lemmy and I’m certainly not giving up hope yet, but sometimes I just need more…
It started off okay, but I’m about to give up on Lemmy after a couple months.
My main problems are:
The comments here are hit-or-miss. Every big thread deteriorates into pedantic arguments. It’s seemingly a worsening trend and is on-par with the bullshit you’d see on Reddit.
Lack of comment moderation in larger communities. If a thread devolves into off-topic arguments or name-calling, the mods should step in.
The default active post sort is pretty terrible in so many ways. It’s much too slow to change and you’ll often see repetitive content. Smaller communities tend to have no visibility, but instead I see 5 posts from the same large community.
The comment sort is bad as well. If the community self-moderates through downvoting, then why are downvoted posts near the top? I think this leads to toxic threads and pointless arguments.
Lack of any content. I wouldn’t mind a bot reposting an RSS feed or something into a community just to start discussion… But many are vehemently against that idea (leading to small communities dying completely). I’d argue the reason !technology hasn’t died out yet is because of the l4s bot.
Way too many politics. I’m so tired of seeing political discussion online—but here, you’re just bombarded with it, even outside of political communities. Better moderation might help keep things on topic.
Users tend to browse All. While this gives people an opportunity to see new content, I think this might harm smaller communities in the long run. This is similar to how threads lose quality once they reach the front page on Reddit.
Maybe I’ll come back after a year and see how things are. But as of now, Lemmy provides nearly zero value to me.
I have completely replace Reddit with it. (Save for looking for when I end up there due to trying to solve technical problems). Yeah it’s janky and doesn’t have as much happening but I feel like the userbase overall is much less toxic so more enjoyable to engage with.
I also feel like Lemmy is less toxic and therefore more enjoyable. On Reddit I would never browse the default front page or r/all because it’s a cesspool, but I can browse All on Lemmy and it’s quite enjoyable. That’s actually how I found this thread 🙂
Niche communities aren’t taking off as well as I’d like, but I’ve enjoyed these past few months on my different accounts.
However, I’ve recently noticed an increase in the kind of behaviors that made me quit Reddit in the first place (more trolls, brigaders, smarter/holier-than-thou types, you name it…) If this trend doesn’t pass, or worsens, I’ll have to expand my blocklist or just be more active on my accounts made on instances blocking those I see as problematic. That’s a good point for Lemmy when you think about it; just having to jump ship instead of abandoning sailing altogether.
I’m liking it so far. But given this is a federated replacement of Reddit, how does replication of communities work? Cuz there are multiple Technology or World News communities in different instances. Which one do we follow?
I prefer Lemmy, it’s a smaller community and I like the fact that you don’t need karma to make a comment or post. I still lurk Reddit every now and then, but only for information about my interests, I don’t comment or post.
Too left wing, too much circlejerk. One sided discussions that feel AI generated. Controversial comments will get you banned in many cases. Worse mods than reddit easily.
It started out ok but is just a pointless echo chamber everywhere I look. Maybe I’m weird, but I WANT to view opposing viewpoints. That’s how you learn things.
There’s a LOT of extremist left wingers but it’s ok because there’s a down arrow and block buttons. Oddly enough I haven’t seen much extremist right wing stuff plus I don’t have to care if someone doesn’t like me here so I’m less concerned about being honest.
I think a distributed, democratically oriented platform that makes no effort to rank people in a hierarchy or score their performance naturally appeals to a lot of leftists. Can’t say I’ve seen much I would describe as extremist, but I haven’t looked so it seems plausible.
Of course there’s nothing actively stopping right wing instances from spinning up, so I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before one blows up.
I have almost completely dropped reddit. I’ll check it once every few days on old.reddit for a few niche subreddits, or as I do regular online research on a topic, because it still has a long history. In the end, I never liked Reddit as it’s just a silicon valley-based social media tech company that is designed to track users.
Lemmy itself is going great. I, for one, am happy that there are way more socialists here as a proportion of the population, and it makes me more comfortable as a user. And ever since Reddit killed 3rd party apps + ever since the lemmy web UI dropped websockets, actually visiting the Lemmy page feels much better. I didn’t create an account on Lemmy for years because I really hated that websockets thing and seeing posts just appear randomly while leaving the site open.
My wish for Lemmy is a common sentiment: I would like to see more people with an easier way for them to get started. And I’d like to see less defederation. Lemmy.world performing preemptive defederation from Hexbear was a really bad move, IMO.
Someone mentioned how Lemmy draws a tech enthusiast crowd, and I think that’s true. But that was also true for Reddit in its early days, as well. I think so long as the posting quality here is good, more people will eventually find their way in. If I can start seeing some cool home DIY stuff (to inspire the fortunate future day where I can finally be a homeowner myself), that is when I know Lemmy as a social platform has made it. I don’t have the heart of a true poster, but I hope that if I have useful information to share and post that I’m doing my part in helping the community grow a bit larger.
I think it’s fine but I admit I don’t think it’s very fun with one centralized Lemmy instance. Feels like reddit all over again. The idealist in me wanted a distributed network instead, with popular communities spread out across hundreds of instances run by volunteers.
But on the plus side, we can talk without corps being involved and that’s really, really nice. I don’t even use any big tech sites anymore except github.
It’s pretty much inevitable that people will cluster on a few larger, proven services.
Look at email. For most people, email is Gmail, or one of another small handful of giant services. But you can still get email from smaller providers, or run your own, and play ball with everyone else.
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