New here. Migrated from Reddit. Still trying to figure out Lemmy - what’s everyone’s experiences like coming from Reddit and does Lemmy serve as a good alternative? Pros and cons/differences?
I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. I mostly followed music pages like r/TheBeatles and loved to just rant about Beatles albums, Paul McCartney’s latest tour, discuss new releases from other artists and also movies/TV shows. I can’t think of any other website that offers that kind of forum-like discussion other than Lemmy?
I really did always hate that Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber. The way the system works with upvotes and downvotes, if I said anything people don’t agree with, I’d get massively downvoted. I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom… it really felt like I was treading on egg shells. My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song. Really petty.
I’ve always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
Lemmy is significantly smaller. Because of this:
+Trolls are easier to spot
+Interactions tend to be friendlier and more wholesome/respectful
+Far more originality shining through
-less engaged communities
-fewer niche communities
-no rich history to comb through
The modlog transparency is honestly my favorite part. I get so much enjoyment out of the “zomg the mods are just as bad here as Reddit” posts because you can immediately highlight their bad behavior, or alternatively see when the mods actually are power tripping.
Trolls are easier to spot, except for the fact that lemmy.ml is the default instance for many users and communities eventhough the entire setup of that instance is very politically influenced. You could be in for a bad experience when you try to post a fairly reasonable comment on any slightly political post there.
-Fads aren’t as easily called out/quashed, there isn’t much push back on the meme of the minute, wait I just described social media in general…
Lol yeah that’s true of reddit too
First of all, welcome.
Depends what you’re after, really. I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.
If your opinion is considered garbage, you’ll probably be downvoted for it, but banned is another thing; You can find an instance more to your liking, for example if you post tankie stuff on lemmygrad, you’ll probably only get praise from there.
It mostly comes down to how a platform with many people tend to naturally operate - garbage people get treated at such by the rest. So whatever your leanings might be, I suggest you find an instance that is somewhat reasonably close to share your values.
Other than that, one of the main differences from reddit is the content quantity - Smaller user base means less content. And I’m perfectly fine with that, as I can keep up with the feed without scrolling for hours.
Also, here I can say that I don’t give two shits about neither Zelda nor Link, without fear of backlash. At least yhe contemporary games - Everything since Link II for NES has been kinda meh in my book.
And if you want to filter out politics, blocking lemmygrad takes away most of the tankie-spam.
I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.
This is true once you’ve blocked Lemmygrad and Hexbear, which are as much echo chambers as r/The_Donald ever was.
The thing I find most perplexing about those communities is that although they themselves support marginalized communities, they also defend highly authoritarian regimes (Russia, China) that actively persecute said groups. It’s very strange to see that horseshoe wrap-around effect where at times they have the same things in common with the right wing but for entirely different reasons.
I haven’t blocked hexbear (yet). As annoying as I find their views, they do produce some funny shit now and then.
You’re fine as long as you don’t decide to jump in and offer a contrary opinion.
Yup. They claim to not have downvotes in an attempt at forming a diversity of opinion, but as soon as there’s an attempt at voicing a hint of such diversity, the ad hominim is engaged by a swarm. They started creeping through my comment and post history to find something damning, but only came up with a meh of a nothingburger, so they started to claim my opinion as invalid because I was on feddit.nl (lol?) instead, never refuting my original claim. I honestly don’t remember what the topic was about at this point. I probably called out something verifiably false or misleading.
I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. … Is Lemmy the answer?
That’s really going to depend on you. What sort of “controversial” comment?
If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you’re going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you’ll probably be fine, with some exceptions:
- There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
- Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
- There’s a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we’re trying!).
- You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you’re posting. Individual instances (kinda like “reddits”) have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don’t expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
- It’s important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
- There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don’t be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We’re generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.
If you’re good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there’s a good chance that you’ll have a good time.
From what I gather, the “controversy” was about his preference for one Zelda game over another. I think he’s going to be fine.
What sort of “controversial” comment?
Looks like it was really just another rando-ban. A mod having a bad day.
Thanks, all really good feedback. I’ve managed to find a few ‘somewhat’ active communities to join like for my local city which has about 1000~ subscribers. Not as bad as I was expecting to be honest… that’s enough user base for me to give Lemmy a shot I think.
I guess every social media platform has its politics
Lemmy needs to figure out a way to “group” similar communities from different instances. That is the biggest flaw by far.
And maybe it’s just my app but I keep seeing the same posts over and over from different groups.
I moved over to it after the initial Reddit exodus and haven’t really looked elsewhere. It’s not quite a full replacement in terms of content and engagement obviously. It’s good for broader stuff like memes, politics/games/movies/etc in general, but not so much for the specific. There are quite a few games I used to spend a lot of time discussing on their subreddits, but they’re basically ghost towns here for a lot of them.
There are also some more specific community leanings. You’re gonna see a LOT of Star Trek and Linux related stuff.
But overall, I’m happy enough with it knowing it’s a non-privatized space to talk.
For general browsing, news, technology, mainstream topics etc… it’s much better than reddit, less toxic, better vibe.
It’s very small though, so I’ve found two areas where it is just not a replacement:
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Specific, smaller niche interests, they might have a community here but it is often empty and quiet or just non existent.
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Sports, specifically a place to chat during live events. There’s not enough people to support that.
So it depends what you are looking for and how niche your interests are.
I’ve mostly stopped using reddit and am in here now. But I still end up there occasionally. Not much these days though.
spot on
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I really like it. Tech comminities & some others are very bouyant & interesting but niche communities really struggle. Even direct replacements of big subreddits struggle. Hopefully this improves.
One tip from my own experience. I use Voyager & blocked a load of US politics keywords.
And another, I subscribed to as many interesting Lemmy communities as i could then browse Home feed in the main & occasionally All to see if any other interesting communities crop up that could be worth joining.
Welcome & enjoy.
It’s the best I’ve found, but I wouldn’t call it a “good” alternative myself no.
Many others have commented on the small communities/lack of niche communities so I’ll simply say I agree with the takes in this thread there.
Personally though, I generally find Lemmy to be far less tolerant of any dissenting opinions across most communities. And man do I mean any. There’s a plethora of topics that aren’t even worth trying to discuss here because if you introduce the slightest bit of nuance to a hardline take you’ll be downvoted, insulted, and ignored.
A quick example that comes to mind are services such as Spotify/Youtube. To make a long story short, I find that I use Youtube often enough that I don’t mind paying for Youtube premium. They need to make money somehow to continue providing that service and I can’t fucking stand ads so hey sure it’s worth the monthly payment to me. I’m a pretty satisfied customer all things considered.
Try offering that perspective in any related thread and you’ll be called bootlicker and made to feel like you’re propping up Satan himself for daring to pay for Youtube and be happy to do so.
There’s other, similar topics. Some are easier to avoid, like the FuckCars community. I was a pretty big fan of that community on reddit but on Lemmy most threads seem to truly believe we need to go 100% no cars at all and there is no middleground damnit. Other topics manage to work their way into damn near any thread. Biden could literally pull a child and puppy from a burning building and there will always be comments about how he’s still a genocidal maniac and basically evil. That entire war is basically just not worth talking about here imo.
And then there’s little stuff. For example, don’t ever say you use Windows here lest a whole horde of people jump in to call you an idiot for not having switched to Linux I mean really what’s wrong with you using the most popular OS in the world by a large margin. Stuff like that.
So I guess to summarize my feelings here, I personally believe the echo-chamber is far worse on Lemmy than reddit and that’s primarily due to the smaller community. A lot of likeminded people came to Lemmy and we’re missing a lot of middleground opinions that come naturally with a larger, more diverse population. Too many people view everything as black and white and if you sit in grey both extremes are against you.
There are absolutely exceptions; I have seen respectful discourse on the site. But the general trend I perceive here is that the echo-chamber is far worse.
yeah. extremism seems to be the norm here. and you will be harassed and insulted and told your a POS if you even mildly disagree with the extremist narrative. most of the content seems to be angry leftism idealism that reads ‘young idealist’ who thinks ideological purity is the solution to problems and is incapable of acknowledging a complex and pragmatic approach to any issue at all. and generally people who are totally detached from the average person’s perspective/experience, as per your windows comment.
it’s just people being people. people don’t like anyone who disagrees with them. it hurts their feelings. so they act out.
i will say at least the mods don’t ban you for disagreement or injecting a dose of reality into a simplistic ideological narrative about the world… which is why i gave up on reddit.
Interesting points. I feel a bit let down then and not sure I’ve found what I’m looking for.
One question… Say a new season of your favourite TV show just dropped, where do you go online to discuss it? I’m surprised that in 2024 it’s difficult to find somewhere online to just talk about topics. I do love Instagram but that’s more picture based, X/Threads are just random shouts into a void, Facebook is Facebook… I struggle to think of any options other than Reddit, sadly. But I’m open to suggestions and just curious to know where people would immediately turn - to see what other people are saying about the show.
I think the poster above is right in most ways, but it’s also pretty easy to see around the negatives.
Give it a try for a month and see what your experience is like. Block a couple servers/communities and you might find it’s rather nice here.
My reply was a lot wordier, so I just wanted to say I 100% agree with pelotron here. They have the right of it IMO.
I focused pretty hard on the negatives because many other posters here have already hit a lot of the highlights and I felt they left out the negatives. It’s certainly not all bad. Absolutely try it out.
Just to start off: I would recommend experiencing it for yourself first. A lot of people hold a very different perspective from me, even just in this thread. Maybe it’s the specific communities I frequent that are like this, I dunno. But it certainly is worth giving a chance if nothing else. Costs you nothing more than however much time you decide is worth investing into seeing if the site is a good fit for you. And also, I truly believe Lemmy has the potential to grow into something greater than it is currently. Which is why I’m still here checking it daily. I don’t find it’s a good replacement right now, but I have hope that it has the best shot at becoming a good replacement.
I hate to say it, but generally if I want to see discussion around a new game/TV show/book/whatever I find Reddit to still be the best place to do that. IMO, Reddit’s overall quality has dipped quite a bit (browsing /r/all) but the smaller communities are often still good. Of course, all it takes is one shithead mod to ruin that, but I suppose I’ve gotten lucky.
I took steps to distance myself from reddit with the 3rd party app fiasco. I never bother browsing /r/all anymore, I don’t use reddit on mobile anymore, stuff like that. But I hopped into Old School Runescape recently and, well, just look at the OSRS community on Lemmy. The top posts are 9/10 months old. So I browse r/2007scape in order to discuss the game.
There’s a great silver lining to Lemmy being so small though: one person can make a large difference. I believe with enough effort it’s possible for one person to grow communities on here and that’s pretty cool. I don’t have the time/energy to do that, so I go to where others are already gathered to discuss things But, if you’ve got the mind for it, there’s opportunity to be the change you want to see. It’s just not going to be easy and it’s going to be slow.
For example, don’t ever say you use Windows here lest a whole horde of people jump in to call you an idiot for not having switched to Linux
Just copy Linux Mint onto an USB stick. No need to boot it, you hang it around your neck like a cross, and display it to raging pinguinoids to pacify them.
I am using Debian, in case you were wondering.
First welcome a lot of the users here are ex reddit
Lemmy is young it doesn’t quite have the traffic reddit does BUT it also has less of the crap.
Unfortunately it’s not quite there in terms of numbers. Many niche communities that exist on reddit simply don’t here or have very low activity. The ones that do are typically better than on reddit though.
There are instances or subs here that will delete your comment or ban you simply for posting something that disagrees with the predetermined consensus they are going for. And no, I’m not talking about racist or abusive comments, just generic shit that may not perfectly align with their narrow personal Overton window. I’m not going back to Reddit, but I wouldn’t say there is a robust and diverse discussion here either. A lot of groupthink, or perceived groupthink…because dissenting opinions get straight up deleted.
Hello fellow Reddthat user!
because dissenting opinions get straight up deleted.
You should call mods out when that happens as a public service. If I learn this happens a lot on certain subs I will stop using them even if it didn’t happen to me.
Lemmy is basically an parallel universe of Reddit. There’s less people here, which means smaller but also less toxic communities. Since this is a segment of the fediverse, people also tend to talk about Linux and free open source software, while also trashing on Windows, Google, and any other product by what I like to call “Big Tech”. People are much more liberal here, there’s more tolerance for the LGBT community, there’s basically lots of hatred for cars, people praise the European Union. Ok some of these are bad examples of liberalism, but still, it’s all found here. Enjoy your stay. If you don’t like it, you’re free to bid us farewell.
Lemmy is smaller and more… particular. Users here are more respectful, and more sensitive. Politics seem to bleed into everything more than at reddit. Lemmy is absolutely an echo chamber, but of a different flavor. More “kill the rich” and less " the narwhal bacon’s at midnight"
You can still get nuked arbitrarily for annoying a mod.
I say try it out, but use the ban tool liberally the first few weeks. Block instances like hexbear, lemmygrad and possibly ml if you aren’t interested in leftist discussion, and in for former instance’s cases, trolling and dogpilling. (Or keep em, if you like that 😁)
After a few weeks of banning users and instances I have a generally palatable but still pretty left leaning time-dump / memefeed.
Yeah blocking users is pretty useful. Whenever I see a user post something horrible or massively annoying I look at their last few comments. Usually those are equally bad so then I block them and go back to whatever I was looking at.
Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber
Lemmy is a way bigger echo chamber, it’s as “no matter who vote blue” as it gets tbh (with very few exceptions).
Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
Nope, it’s the opposite if anything.
I’m constantly getting attacked with ad hominem (my favourite one - getting called a fascist) here despite voicing opinions as respectfully as it gets, as well as providing sources for my claims whenever people ask.
Gotta have really thick skin if you are not left-leaning, but if you are - you will feel right at home :)I would agree with this.
