Title basically. I was here at the very start of it all and really enjoyed it. However I felt it lost its uniqueness within a few months of mass migration and started turning a bit like reddit again so I deleted my old account. However Reddit has only gotten much much worse since, and Lemmy has stayed about the same. So here again.
Diversity has increased by a lot. It’s not just circlejerking about Linux anymore. Only positives in my book.
Yeah, I feel like when I first came here every third post was about Linux and every third post was about star trek. A lot of the remaining third was beans. Now only every tenth post is Linux and trek.
I find a lot of the communities can be pretty negative. Lots of people talking about how bad things are. It would be nice to see more positive outlooks. But maybe that’s just a sign of the times.
there are increasingly a greater number of nutjobs, spammers, and hostile/miserable/angry people. my block list is like 300+ now. 6-9 month ago it was like 12 people.
2 years ago it was mostly super nerds just nerding about.
I’m curious what your threshold for blocking is. I don’t block anyone. I appreciate dissenting opinions. I can totally appreciate that there are bad actors out here, but a blocklist of 300+ sound like a curated echo chamber.
Feel free to block me.
people calling me/others names, spamming agendas, or generally being hostile nutjobs pushing some extremist agenda and accusing anyone who isn’t in agreement with them as being the enemy, and that the enemy should be killed.
oh and people who personally harass you, like going around commenting on multiple unrelated comments you made to repeatedly call you names, and downvote you, of course.
Based on your description, it looks like you are visiting Lemmy.ml a lot.
I feel it’s changing positively, as instance admins and our tool-sets mature, and more and more people are becoming permanent residents as they’re either permabanned on reddit (so they have no alternative) or they recognize the value of a system that is not and cannot be controlled by a corporate entity and they US billionaire interests behind it.
However I’m also concerned that our yet small size has protected us from truly existential issues like dedicated spam and propaganda orgs, especially those who would utilize GenAI to be more covert. I’ve already published tools like the fediseer to help prepare for this, but I really hope to see more people per-emptively getting ready for this. I see way too many doe-eyed admins firing up instances without a care in the world, open registration, no captchas, no botnet protections etc and they either burn out and close shop after a few months of firefighting, or get defederated, or they have to re-learn a painful lesson the rest of us did.
This does give me an idea, we do need a more holistic “So you want to open a threadiverse instance” guide to give such pointers to new admins and way to get support from others. Hmmm…
It feels more like reddit now, but still is populated by a certain type of person that would seek out Lemmy. Mostly techy, left of center+, over age 30+, etc. I enjoy it.
techy ✔️
left of center✔️
over 30✔️
oh no. incoming targeted marketing
Heyy! Im not old ye…ahhh, who am I kidding, you’re right.
people here are mostly over 30? 😭
I meet all those criteria except that I’m an eight year-old dog. But nobody knows that…
I’ve been in fediverse since API debacle, I feel the same vibes as I do on Reddit, both the good parts and bad.
For example, same controversies on Reddit also exist here, and have the same talking points and flamewar nature. I had an opinion about Pitbulls (that an owner should be far more responsible than the average owner - I know, controversial take), which got me banned from that sub and several other furry related subs. Which is something that also happens on Reddit when you tick off a moderator of several subs
So for the most part, I’m just a lurker that comes here to get some memes. Sometimes I share my opinion if I feel like it. But I don’t necessarily feel that it’s an upgrade from Reddit in terms of communities.
Getting banned in communities you’ve never been to bc the admin disagreed with you in a public channel is keeping the Reddit pettiness alive.
Also, the lack of nuance is the same. If you have an opinion in a political comm, you basically have to write a novel describing your stance or people will take your brevity as an opening to attack you.
Still, there are some really great communities that respect diversity, are truly supportive, and kind that make me feel ok about the world.
Its gotten significantly less optimistic and more cynical. Its in my opinion more of a reflection of the state of the world than a Lemmy specific issue but it affects Lemmy users more because this isnt a space that allows people to live in ignorant bliss.
Same for the most part. There was a period of time where it seemed like every post and comment was angry. Silly fights over semantics. That still happens but it seems like less. I see more and more English speaking European influence. Still lots of angry Linux guys but Linux seems to be in a winning season so it’s chill.
Lemmy didn’t have much content at first so you would run out of things to read after a while. It felt friendly at first, but certain topics still set off people at lemmy to the point I thought about leaving. Then lemmy seemed to improve and I could talk about those topics again, but now there are more trolls (even ones that seem to follow you around since they troll each post or comment talking about something) and spam bots that weren’t there before. I think a lot of conflict on forums like this has to do with miscommunication, but sometimes people are just mean and there isn’t a fix.
My main gripe with mainstream Reddit now is the engagement baiting that people are falling for all the time. “What are you thoughts on [Controversial Topic]?” If there is a new exodus from Reddit coming, I really really really wish all the baiting to be left behind and moderators to remove it on the Fediverse.
Lemmy or Reddit?
Lemmy hasn’t changed much at all.
Reddit OTOH is pretty unrecognizable now.
(and before you ask: This is a different account than what I initially joined with because my old instance shut down)
I like it here, I only lurked on reddit. There isn’t much reason to comment when it seems that everyone was in a competition for “who can post the best zinger comment first”
Zinger? I hardly know her!
This deserves gold.
edit: you’re welcome!
Thank you kind stranger
deleted by creator
True but right now the amount of users made commenting worthwhile to me too
Doesn’t actually seem much different to me. Would be nice to have a few more people for the niche communities - but I do kinda worry that Lemmy becoming popular will lead to an influx of bots.
The bots are already here. They are the ones posting all the news articles. Also, it’s not that much different because both bases share the same users.
I arrived during the API debacle.
Some things are better, content and activity.
Some things are worse, spammers, AI proponents who harrass you despite the clear community-wide dislike of the plagarism machine, fascist chuds trying to mainstream rascism, misogyny, and ableism.
Basically each new wave is another usenet September equivalent, and it feels like we’re approaching the eternal september epoch as lemmy becomes more widely used. Soon we’ll have to deal with state actor bot-nets if we aren’t already.
Lemmy has become more friendly to otherkin and neopronouns. And now you can use PieFed, which is even more left wing.
On the negative side, dbzer0 has shifted more right wing over time, mostly due to influence from the tankie triad.
This user is dronerights an enbyphobic troll that has multiple usernames in pursuit of harassment and trolling.
This alt account (belonging to Carcosa) is used mainly to post pro-North Korea propaganda and to troll any non-tankie instance.
On the negative side, dbzer0 has shifted more right wing over time, mostly due to influence from the tankie triad.
Absolute nonsense from someone with an ax to grind.
Naa man, I’ve noticed it too. I think it’s because there are a lot of tankies realizing that they’re getting blocked by everyone else, so they jump to another instance to start all over. I have a lot more db0 users labeled as tankies, now than in the past.
There’s a lot of tankies on other instances as well. As you said, they jump to be able to agitate with other. Doesn’t mean that we’re “influenced” any more than most. Quokka is part of the FAF for crying out loud and they’re as anti-tankie (from the left) as it gets. I think y’all are just having cognitive bias by noticing only the times that tankies write, but not all the time we have anarchist perspectives. Literally some of our top posts are anti-authcom.
Honestly, most of this is driven by a few haters, who are salty we don’t ban every tankie on sight and a few haters who are salty we’re principled against Zionism and try to divide us from the rest of the threadiverse as a result.
We do get asked this question every week now, so there’s that.
Seriously though, once you block all the tankies and dweebs there’s about a dozen regular posters and a few hundred regular commenters.
I like it here.
I still browse reddit using redlib. Theres more content.
