Just found this space, I’m trying to play around with this platform. Can anyone help to explain?
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’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
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 tags, 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.
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.
Oh. It’s you.
OH!! ‘tis ye!
R2D2 it is you it is you!
(insert random squeaks)
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.
That’s where we need to get back to is 2010.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-
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.
Preventing power tripping mods
I wouldn’t say it prevents them, but it does contain them to their own little fiefdoms.
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 😂
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
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.
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 mean, posting a video just works.
As of 2023, Reddit still didn’t have fully functional video.
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
Thanks for the explanation and for the link!
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.
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.
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.
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):
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
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.
No one on the platform side is incentivized (or capable) of controlling things, which is nice.
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
