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?
I’ve been discussing this on Mastodon too, but more focused on features and limitations related to federation rather than people being dumber in one place or the other. But I also want more open conversations, which is one of the things I believe ActivityPub helps with.
So instead of voting for Lemmy I’ll go ahead and say I prefer Kbin since I’ve found it easier here to interact with posts from other fediverse platforms.
Just read carefully the rules of each group/magazine/community as everyone is free to tidy up their spaces as they wish, reasonably or not.I found I had to block a large number of communities from my feed that were very narrow minded. Once I did some diligent editing, however, Lemmy has become my daily browse and I’m happy with the change. I still use reddit for some of the niche communities that don’t have a counterpart here, but the larger topics (news, memes, technology) are well covered and open to discourse.
You, I don’t know you, but I like you.
Thanks for curating your feed instead of reporting everything you dislike, fighting or harassing people.
Peace
Feels like early internet here, enjoy it while it lasts. Good chance this place will blow up and the normies will come in.
I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned
From a subreddit or from reddit as a whole?
My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song
If from Reddit as a whole, unless the admins have changed a LOT in the last year, that sounds weird. They usually only banned accounts over calls to violence and promoting piracy blatantly.
I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom
wat. was a small personal sub? That’s just a random suspension.
deleted by creator
Got banned site wide for using the R word. Got banned in different subreddits for one reason or another, some were deserved, others not at all. My friend got banned sitewide for calling her mail carrier a moron in the mailcarrier subreddit. In my last few months on reddit I saw a bunch of accounts I was interacting with get banned mid conversation.
deleted by creator
Haven’t received a ban yet but I have been piled on by leftists
deleted by creator
Unless it is outright hate speech comments should never be banned. Call out mods when they do this. Maybe we need a group specifically about this.
In strict technical terms, yeah it’s okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.
There’s still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they’re in an odd spot.
The first of these you’ll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.
PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.
The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.
All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.
Lemmy isn’t a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.
Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it’s arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.
Nevertheless, it’s possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn’t suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.
Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:
- Kbin, flagship site: Kbin Social
- Mbin. No flagship, check list of instances.
- PieFed, flagship site: PieFed Social
- Sublinks. No flagship, still in-development as drop-in replacement for Lemmy.
- Discuit. Not federated, but open source.
- Lobste.rs. Not federated, but open source.
- Raddle. Not federated, built on open source Postmill.
- Tildes. Not federated, but open source.
One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I’d recommend visiting:
!moviesandtv@lemm.ee
!movies@lemm.ee
!music@lemmy.world
!casualconversation@lemm.eeHonestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.
Thank you for thé communities list!
Welcome to Lemmy.
One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you’ll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.
I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.
I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can’t be found here, or just don’t have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like “Stealth” to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I’ve been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.
You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.
Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn’t display any downvotes.
You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.
As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won’t get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.
Just note, if you pick one that’s too small there’s a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.
One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here
They are? Can I ask how? I can’t even find my own votes like I could on reddit. I used to use that to show a friend of mine good posts and comments.
They are. It’s not shown on Lemmy itself, but anyone who federates with another instance gets to know who voted on what, and sometimes that information is made public to their entire instance (this is the case with kbin).
So, for instance you can look at this particular post through kbin’s eyes: https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.world/t/1031138/Is-Lemmy-a-good-alternative/votes/up
Go to any post/comment, then click on “more” -> “activity”.
“Favorites” are upvotes, and “Reduces” are downvotes.Edit: And if you want to view your own votes I would suggest an app like Voyager, since that is one of the features.
I see, thanks!
As for Voyager, I’m not finding that anywhere.
Instance admins can see your votes, not just local admins, but remote ones too.
I personally don’t check those that often, but it’s sometimes useful to investigate harassment, astroturfing, etc.
It’s similar in a lot of ways and this is still an echo chamber and the echo chamber we have here has a lot of overlap with reddit… but, while reddit mostly just leaned left… Lemmy… just leans anti-west. As mentioned, there’s a lot of overlap there, we’ve got a lot that is shared, but the parts where those two groups differ can cause some serious wtf moments if you’re used to the reddit community. As far as over policing, moderation logs are mostly public and there have been some controversies, but mostly people just stopped caring or left. If you stick around long enough, you will notice policies being applied unfairly if you’re on the ‘wrong’ side and it’s a lot easier to be in that category here.
All that to say, you’ll likely have some moments where you think… Maybe that old echo chamber wasn’t so bad.
Idea: Try exclusively using Lemmy for a week.
If you love it, switch. If you hate it, don’t. If you miss Reddit, use both.
I use both. I like both. But I also want Lemmy to become the norm.
I like using reddit is fun app. So I’m hoping for a Lemmy is fun app.
I’ve heard Sync for Lemmy is a bit similar.
I’ve been using sync for Lemmy since the 3rd partocalypse of 23, and I haven’t been back to reddit since. It’s been enjoyable being on Lemmy, and the folks are usually pretty awesome here. I can second the niche interest thing though, but I’ve always used reddit in a curated general content fashion, so Lemmy is plenty sufficient in that regard.
Small but great!!! Once I’ve blocked Hexbear (the proud boys pretending to be far-left), everything is pretty fun and respectful.
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
-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
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.
no rich history to comb through
WDYM? We have
- No poop guy
- Beans
- Jeans
- Me
- Defederation Drama
- Uh…
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?
If you block sufficient leftist/marxist instances and communities, you might not notice that this is essentially a socialist fanboy wannabe utopia.
I’d suggest to browse Lemmy by new, block a lot, refresh a couple times, and then eventually arrive at a curated, sanitized feed.
But Lemmy is far from unpolitical, merely a different color.
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
Try some of the kbin/mbin instances. I find the interface much more similar to old reddit. But welcome to the fediverse! kbin.social and kbin.run (mbin) are pretty good.
You should also check out the Lemmy third party apps like Mlem or Voyager as they’re gorgeous.
https://alexandrite.app is nice for the desktop.
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 reasonally 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.
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.
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.
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 think it’s the same echo chamber here, but it’s smaller. People block instances they don’t like, and are in favor of moderators removing controversial things, specially around communism and tankies.
I just like that it’s not run by big tech. Just discussions, no companies or ads. I think most users are tech people.