OK, let’s try this again. My post got auto-filtered. Maybe the image triggered something? Anyways, apologies if this isn’t the right sub for this. I wanted to get an outsider’s perspective on my experience on Lemmy.
Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere. I’m sick to death of it. Even though I agree with a lot of the sentiment, the erosion of the middle class, the concentration of wealth, the consolidation of media, the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality permeating the consumer space. In many ways that’s why I joined Lemmy, but dang it that doesn’t mean I want to talk about absolutely nothing else. Someone once defined a fanatic as “Someone who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject” and that fits the average Lemming to a T.
And the only communities devoid of politics are also devoid of content. I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff, and I’ve tried to make the worldbuilding community there more active, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only poster. Then I look at r/worldbuilding, and there’s a glut of really interesting posts showcasing people’s imagination and creativity, and nary a mention of Musk or Epstein in sight.
I understand that people’s political opinions are bound to show up obliquely in even unrelated communities, but I can’t overstate how monomaniacal Lemmings are about it. The pic I originally tried to post was a screenshot of a completely non sequitur post in an unrelated community (sorry for the vagueness I think the specifics may have also tripped the auto filter). And Lemmings are always “on”. If you go to mildlyinteresting on lemmy.world right now, you’ll see maybe one or two posts about things like yellow stop signs or three-chambered peanuts, you know, stuff that’s actually mildly interesting, and every other post is stuff like “French president explains the political consequences of AI”. Is that important and worth discussing? Absolutely. What it isn’t is mildly interesting.
When I bring this up on Lemmy, the response is always “Politics is everything and we should never shut up ever!” But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.
And then there’s the tech side of things. Hope you like Linux, cuz that’s all you’re going to see. And if you dare suggest that Linux may not be the right choice for your blind grandmother, you get eviscerated in the comments.
Granted, Reddit itself used to have a similar problem. It attracted a very specific type of user (neckbeards) and the experience wasn’t great if you weren’t one, but ironically the same popularization of Reddit that lead to its platform decay also solved this homogeneity problem. Similarly, Tankies and their ilk seem to flock to Lemmy, explaining the tone of the discourse.
Others have pointed out that Reddit alternatives tend to attract people who were banned from Reddit (remember Voat?) and I think that explains a lot.
In summary, Lemmy seems great if you’re a Marxist who uses Linux, but pretty much nobody else. Am I crazy? Should I try to stick with it in the hope it gets better?
so how do we get this guy on Linux? lol
I mean, he’s not too far off. Lemmy is not big enough to support the same amount of communities as reddit does. Right now Lemmy can support tabletop RPG but not world building
Fair in many respects but also I think he may be unaware of the ideologies that go unchallenged and invisibly by in his “non political” communities. Sorry we’re woke and notice things??
… if you dare suggest that Linux may not be the right choice for your blind grandmother, you get eviscerated in the comments.
Stopped reading here, this is just the view of someone who isn’t used to being in a community that treats windows as the few facto choice.
Seems right, except I don’t think that it’s mostly people who were banned from Reddit.
There’s too few users here to keep the niche communities alive. That’s why only politics gets discussed, because that’s something affecting everyone regardless of interest.
We also don’t have a lot of original content. Neither did Reddit originally, but they managed to get a massive userbase through the AMA subreddit giving users the possibility to ask celebrities questions. This often got picked up by the tabloid news which spread the word of it’s existence. It turned out that their AMAs was basically a one person job anyway. I don’t think they’ve done anything remotely useful since that to justify their userbase.
Anyway. I kind of like the slower pace here. I went to Reddit the other day after years of hiatus. I don’t know why anyone would want to sign up for that site anymore. Everything there seems to drown in advertising and generic shit. Even if Lemmy should shut down for some reason, I would not go back to the garbage piles on Reddit.
I use a local instance and I think they do a good job of facilitating debate and local insights on local news. I suppose that’s the main purpose of this kind of forum. All the other larger and more international instances are just entertainment to me. I could get by just fine without seeing another Trump meme ever again. Unless it’s really funny.
I’m pretty sure Lemmy does have potential to use these communities better. It’s a lot of clever people. I think if anyone can and wants to make more original content with Lemmy as a base, just for the sake of it, they should just go ahead do it. The admins and mods are too busy running the sites, so we shouldn’t expect them to it.
Understandably, artists probably want a larger market exposure for a start, but other kinds of projects might be suitable. I remember someone have tried making a group for game development on Reddit several times. It always fails, because they’re too big and not committed. I also participated in a sub for random users writing on the same book. That was mildly succesful, and a lot easier to do. Stuff like that might make sense to try.
Lemmy is split into four categories across two criteria:
Whether they’re banned or not from Reddit, and of they still want to be on Reddit or not.
The Anne Frank quote. Doesn’t it disprove the OPs point? If Anne Frank had spent a lot of time writing about her favorite fictional rock orbiting Pluto whose name was Jeremy the Rock, that would be a political topic like all other things in her diary because after she wrote that diary she was checks notes murdered for her ethnicity. The only children’s diaries that necessarily aren’t political are the ones we never read and the ones not penned by murder victims. Like you bitch about Lemmy culture all you want but you’re the one who brought up a murder victim’s last words, which are THE symbol of banal hatred of the innocent that people use to teach the tragedy of the Holocaust, BECAUSE what was written there was so completely innocent.
I guess I forgot how much redditors think, but never think about Anne Frank.
Find a Lemmy instance that heavily moderates political speech, then. That may be hard to find since Lemmy is full of people who expressed their political opinions on reddit and were banned.
The people coming here after the third party API shutdown, I’m sorry, but you made a political protest. You are doing the politics. If you don’t like what Reddit is doing as a company, you are engaging in politics. You need to stop expressing your personal opinions and views for Reddit if you want to claim political apathy. Otherwise, you are engaging in political speech, and that’s “bad” apparently, so stop it!
My main gripe here is the .ml people. It’s not that they believe in that system it’s that they refuse to have any conversation where they don’t hamfist it into the conversation and paint every other system as unfiltered intentional evil while completely excusing any critism of their chosen systems and government. Also the bot sock and alt brigades that seem to exclusively come from those comms.
in reddit ALL on old.reddit you can filter all the subs you dont wan to see.
Erosion of the middle class is a bad thing? What’s the class in the middle of 🤔
He isn’t wrong, but you also need to block/filter out the tankie instances.
Also there is a lot of trans persons content. I didn’t see thr OP mention that.
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They are far from the first person who has bailed on Lemmy because of the culture, and their characterization of it isn’t far off. I keep saying that Lemmy needs normies for longevity, because most people find constantly on politics incredibly exhausting and won’t want to join if they think it’s the lefty version of Truth Social.
I’m not saying people should avoid talking about stuff they care about, just that the platform could benefit from everyone being less hostile to wider perspectives and maybe also working on building up more content without a heavy political focus.
as a long time lemming i will respond with the standard lemmy response:
go back to reddit you fascist, child murdering, genocide supporter
i wonder why people get put off. when your active population might be up to 20% of rabid radicalized leftists how do you expect anything to do with current affairs to go
I keep saying that Lemmy needs normies for longevity,
Because if there’s anything the left should learn from the past 60 years, it’s to cater more to the normies…
Being less hostile overall would be a huge plus.
And I don’t mean that people can’t criticize or provide constructive feedback. But it can be disheartening to see an interesting thread, sometimes a “normie” thread, and every comment is just negative.
It’s fun to talk about stuff you like. It keeps people coming back.
I mean… it also sounds like someone browsing ALL or similar, without having taken the time to curate their personal feed. I don’t see that as a Fediverse-issue really, but a characteristic of most social media platforms, including Reddit.
Do zero work to set your account up (or don’t even have one), and you’ll pretty much get the shittiest browsing experience out of all possibilities.
I don’t even remember how I started browsing reddit, and later on participate. But I do know that somewhere down the line I subscribe to subreddots that I like and don’t ever browse all. So on my third attempt in Lemmy, I did the same thing I’m used to on reddit, and use piefed instead. Can’t stress enough piefed is really the concrete of my foundation staying here. The topics really do make it a bit less stale
OOP still has a good point about being the only poster of smaller less active comms though. I do sometimes comment but yeah I am not a really poster.
Well I am a Marxist who uses linux…
But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.
Such a banger line lmao. Honestly decent criticisms throughout, I’d love to see more active niche communities that aren’t politics related but unfortunately I only know how to shitpost
It’s just a problem of critical mass. Niche communities are, well… niche. They appeal to only a small subset of the population. For them to be populated enough to be active, the overall user count needs to massively grow. But sometimes it feels like that’s not what people on here want. I mean, even in this very thread there are people saying they don’t want “normies” here.
You have to start out with the whole feed and then just block things until it becomes your home feed.
This sounds like a technical problem to solve, rather than “it is what it is”
Yes it is a “technical problem” solved by the user. The user gets to pick what they want to see. That is the beauty of the fediverse - a higher degree of control. That is what all of us here signed up for. The user does have to click buttons from time to time.
The only “solution” on the platform side would be it trying to figure out what you would like to see, through statistics and guesswork on ingestion of our personal data. We’ve already seen how that turns out. Those kinds of machines are never satiated and cause orders of magnitude more harm than good. We don’t like it, and that’s why we’re here.
Or you could just have publicly curated blocklists that new users could enable.
This is a solution piefed offers. They have curated topics
Just pick any of the piefed based instances. I love their on boarding, at least in piefed.social
Choose topics you want and/or like, choose terms you want blocked, and off to the races to further trim and curate.
Sure! Crowdsource the button clicking! Make it meta!
The people who expect a fediverse site to deliver everything they like, none of what they don’t like, and with zero effort on their end are… frustrating. Big social media really did a number on the internet.
The funny thing is, the beginning of the web was also a bunch of nerds talking mostly about politics and free software.
True, a sports, AI, and porn blocker would have saved me a lot of time
Pitch in, however you can! 🤘🏼
This is just low population problems, with ten times the pop, we would have different challenges. I agree with you mostly, but even still memes here are just better. Whenever I take a dangerous peek back at reddit is like they opened the 9gag gates, wtf.
its mostly AI/ or bots posting the same thing multiple time over the months, sprinkle a little current news in between.
I think that this is accurate, but it doesnt make it not a problem right now. After all, you get more posts by getting more people by having enjoyable-to-consume content.
I think most people on reddit (ie, the 90% who don’t have an account) are simply happy to look at 9gag shit. “Bored. Look at reddit. Guy fall down funny. Giggle.”
Of people who make an account, 90% simply look at the default feed. They are the internet troglodytes who have no interest in having any actual discussion, but who simply feel a desperate need to say literally anything in a public space. “FIRST!!!”
And then there are the 1% of redditors like OOP, who have been on the site for years and who have found niche communities they like to hang out in. These communities have far less bot penetration, and tend to have higher quality posts in general.
OOP is the sort of person Lemmy could use more of, but is running into a bootstrapping problem with.
I opened reddit for the first time in like 6 months and the site takes 5 minutes to load, random ai trash, half the screen is “click on this you’ll find it more interesting!!” made it nearly unusable. Also the huge concentration of bots on reddit, lemmy feels like I’m talking to real people.
Original OP here. They muted and permabanned me from the sub. If I came off dismissive or angry it’s because I’m frustrated with the state of the fediverse. I want Lemmy et al. to succeed despite its issues. If I thought it was utter crap I’d just ignore it. I was trying to present my subjective experience in good faith and I hope it came out that way.
so how do we get this guy on Linux? lol
Make a screen reader and magnifier that actually work.
Might I offer you
an eggtrying piefed instances in these trying times?Sorry for assuming but if you don’t know Lemmy is just but one way to wrangle together the fediverse into a link aggregator style website. Piefed is another one.
What I like about piefed, and what made me stick, is the on boarding for new users. At least in the flagship instance, piefed.social, new users, up front, would have the option to choose topics you’d like to see, terms you’d like to block and then you’ll have a curated feed ready to go. And at least in piefed.social they keep updating the topics. I’ll say that in comparison, topics is llike multireddits. You can use the instance’s topics, and can make more yourself. IIRC. It works in lieu of the algorithm reddit has. Practically for me it is the algorithm for me.
Also don’t hesitate blocking communities and users. I just started blasting anything I am not interested into my block list.
Edit: another tip. I find using “Hot (Scaled)” sorting will bump up the smaller, lesser active comms’ posts more in your feed. Whether that be All, Local or Subscribed.
If you want technical niche comms, it’s dead. Or it’s overrun with people performatively whinging about AI.
In the last month I’ve just about had enough of it. I’m 3 years into the fediverse and I’m done with the drama.
Yeah, technical niches are what dragged me back to Reddit. I’ve been struggling with a very specific issue at work for months. The entire time I was like “You know you couldjust ask on the right subreddit and get an answer in 5 minutes.” But no. I stubbornly refused to make a new account. Two weeks ago I caved. Made an account and asked my question. Got an answer in 5 minutes.
The fediverse simply can’t achieve that depth of community knowledge if it refuses to let “normies” in.
They muted and permabanned me from the sub.
In my response to this post earlier, I mentioned that one of the problems (which unfortunately reddit shares too) is hostility to other viewpoints, and this is a good example of how that is perpetuated. When a culture on a platform is too homogeneous, disagreement becomes so shocking that it’s seen as “trolling”, “bad faith”, “offensive”, etc. I think it’s partially a symptom of the reddit-like structure of voting + active moderation, but it’s also very much the culture.
You presented your points well and fairly, and even if you hadn’t, I think we all need to get comfortable with the fact that normal humans sometimes interact in a manner that doesn’t sound like an HR mediation session, and that’s ok too.
it’s partially a symptom of the reddit-like structure of voting
Voting is a cancer upon social media. It was extra bad on Reddit because you had a cumulative karma score that was just begging to be farmed, and it’s only slightly less bad on Lemmy because there’s no global karma here. Voting encourages echo chambers because the top stuff is stuff that the majority likes and contrary opinions get buried. It also creates a Mathew effect by ensuring posts that are already popular get even more visibility.
It’s also terrible because IMO it promotes social media addiction. It’s way too easy to tie your self esteem to a number. Modern reddit is banking on this hard. Between the time I left in 2023 and returned a few weeks ago, they started sending you notifications every time your post or comment hits certain upvote milestones.
There’s exactly one legitimate use for voting systems IMO and that’s in practical or technical Q&A spaces (think Stack Exchange) where there are definitive right or best answers. Voting in this case allows people unfamiliar with the topic to zero in on what’s good advice vs what’s nonsense.
Yeah, and it encourages self-censoring too, on top of the punishing effect of downvotes.
It’s frustrating because I really like the readable structure of Reddit-style platforms and find stuff that follows the Twitter model chaotic and disorganized. The classic forum style is fair, but it’s also hard to keep up with high activity threads unless you spend time to read the whole thing in chronological order. I don’t know what the ideal setup would look like.
nodeBB is a classic forum platform that has threaded comments. It also uses ActivityPub. Of all the federated platforms I think I’d prefer nodeBB if not for how comparatively small it is. It predates the popularization of AP and only added it a few years ago so whether it’s part of the fediverse or not I suppose is up for debate.
I’ve heard the name before, but unfortunately I never really used those forums back in the day. If it’s still going, I might have to check it out.
I really want to see federated, non-corporate social media succeed.
So do I. I wouldn’t be complaining about its problems if I didn’t want it to get better. I think it needs three things to succeed. First I think is better messaging. We need to be crystal clear that you have to be your own algorithm, which is what most of the responses here and on the original reddit thread were saying. This starts by picking an instance that you vibe with, then aggressively filtering out the rage. Second (and possibly most controversial) is better moderation, especially on communities that cast a wide net. I know I pick on mildlyinteresting, but it really is a microcosm of what’s wrong with Lemmy. I think a lot of mods are either reluctant to come off as too strict, or just happy their comm has content at all, so noting gets regulated. Good moderation will help communities develop a distinct culture and identity instead of being slightly differently flavored rage factories. The third thing is a larger more diverse user base, which can only exist if the first two things are taken care of. If only Tankies hang out on Lemmy, than the Pokemon or metalworking communities are just slightly differently themed Tankie communities.
A lot of the issues you have with Lemmy is in large part because there’s less people here than Reddit. You really have to curate your subscriptions page to get that kind of algorithm treatment you’re used to from Reddit. There’s a lot of communities here that don’t hit the top posts in all but are still active.
You also kinda have to be the change you want to see and be stubborn about it. Keep posting things you find interesting, throw out those comments on posts even if there’s no other comments or motion. A new community isn’t going to get built up overnight.
lemmy lacks the niche content that reddit has, and people on reddit are unlikely to subscribe to here anytime soon, since most dont even known lemmy exist. often time when they get banned they look for ways to evade those bans instead.
I was trying to present my subjective experience in good faith and I hope it came out that way
It didn’t, it just sounds like astroturfing and/or being lazy.
If a completely new person went to reddit for the first time (before all the corporate sanitization that has happened in the last couple of years) they were going to see shit they didn’t want to see. They were going to have to put in some effort telling “the system” what they like and what they don’t. After you’ve done that, it was an interesting way to spend your downtime. Without it, it was just the void yelling back. Same is pretty true for Lemmy. If you don’t put in any effort to block the stuff you don’t like and/or subscribe to the stuff you do, you aren’t going to see any value. Yes, it is smaller than reddit - that’s how social media starts. There isn’t going to be 21 years of content chilling out on a platform that is 6 years old.
Also, bitching about hearing about Linux is just lazy. You’re on FOSS social media and get surprised when people there mostly don’t use corporate slop closed source OS’s on their personal machines? Okie Dokie.
Also, bitching about hearing about Linux is just lazy. You’re on FOSS social media and get surprised when people there mostly don’t use corporate slop closed source OS’s on their personal machines? Okie Dokie.
I want you to do me a favor. Any other Linux user reading this, I want you to try this, too. Turn on Orca and unplug your monitor. No, don’t just close your eyes, don’t just turn your monitor off, actually unplug it. Remove your monitor from your desk if applicable. Now, try to do the following:
- browse Lemmy using Firefox, chrome, or a derivative of either. Make a comment, post something, and vote on someone else’s post or comment
- check your email, and respond to any if warranted
- watch a few YouTube videos using Firefox, Chrome, or a derivative of either (yes we still say “watch” even if we can’t see it)
- write a document using LibreOffice Writer. Include formatting like headings and style changes. Be sure to check your spelling
- check the time, the status of your network connection, your battery percentage, etc.
- copy a file from one place to another
- Insert a USB device and verify its contents
- check the weather in your area using Firefox, Chrome, or a derivative of either.
- Using Firefox, Chrome, or a derivative of either, find the closest transit stop to you, how to get there by foot, and what buses/trains/etc depart
- Using Firefox, Chrome, or a derivative of either, read the wikipedia article on accessibility and bookmark it
- Do anything required by your job: write and debug code, print reports, research business cases, update documentation, use whatever tools your job would require you to use.
Once you’ve done all that, and before plugging your monitor back in, send me a PM detailing your experience. How many of the tasks did you successfully complete? Were you able to complete them in a timely manner and with a comparable amount of cognitive burden compared to doing it sighted? Were you able to perform your job duties? If so, would you be able to continue doing them this way for the remainder of your career? If you were in charge of hiring someone for your position, would you accept the level of work you did? For the more leisurely tasks like watching YT or using Lemmy, did you enjoy your experience? Was it relaxing? Would you willingly consume content this way.
Alas, you’re responding to something they didn’t say. You quoted something they said, then switched the topic to why you can’t use Linux instead of what was quoted.
Your complaint is totally valid, but the quote you uses add the springboard for it was not a good choice.
Yes, I realize it was a non sequitur, and I’m sorry. But it was kinda the straw that broke the camel’s back. Quoting from a comment I left on the original reddit post:
Honestly the militant Linux stuff is what really gets me. I’m legally blind, and rely on various assistive technologies like screen readers and magnifiers that simply do not exist on Linux or aren’t fit for use. I’ve been trying Linux on and off for sixteen years now. Mostly various *buntus but also things like CentOS (RIP) and Archbtw. Accessibility has only gotten worse with the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 and from X to Wayland. It’s nonexistent on KDE. A11Y is an afterthought even for billion dollar companies with the resources to devote to it, so I’m pessimistic that a loosely organized group of devs all working independently on their own little corners of the larger project that is desktop Linux will ever measure up to even that afterthought. But whenever I say that I’ve repeatedly tried Linux in good faith for over a decade and a half, that I will continue doing so, and that I envy those whose needs are met by Linux and other FOSS software but I simply can’t switch, I get downvoted to oblivion and told I’m the problem.
My dude, I couldn’t do any of those things on Windows or MacOS either. It is not a skill I have any faith I could even remotely pull off, even if the software was perfect and fantastic.
Feels like part of the problem is exemplified here though, someone mentions Linux and you replied with a novella about why you can’t use it. Yes, there are going to be people recommending Linux here, but it is a generalization to the masses. Not every comment about Linux is an attack against you personally.
The magnifier valve developed for the steamdeck probably works ok? I am not sure if that can be ripped out though.
Screenreader you’re on your own unless you want to run everything through emacs (you should, it’s cool and can do everything they needed to get to the moon and also play tetris)
