this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
280 points (89.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26996 readers
1653 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Did Reddit get massive because of Digg users making a beeline towards them or were they already big before that?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 148 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Why is everyone in such a hurry to make lemmy into a Reddit clone?

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 237 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For more interesting and easily discoverable content. Really that's what people want at the end of the day.

[–] decadentrebel@lemmy.world 81 points 1 year ago

Exactly. I hate Reddit more than most people here (I'm a mod on a sub that has more than a million subscribers and felt disrespected by spez), but the fact of the matter is they're the gold standard of quality answers and discussions.

I would want Lemmy to get to that level, not immediately, but that's the dream.

[–] mecha_pope@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I want lemmy to become popular just so you can be quoted in news articles. User "fist eye mouth eye fist" wrote that...

Or just have 🤛👁️👄👁️🤜 appear in reputable news outlets.

[–] fy8d6jhegr@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By the way why are people able to do that? I see that person's username is mojo by hovering over it but at a glance it's just emojis.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mojo is my account name but you can change your profile name at any time in the settings so I used dumb emojis lol

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago
[–] Skepticpunk@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[–] ShadedCosmos@lemmy.world 86 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would just love to see more users in the communities I care about! I loved Reddit for that reason alone. Here I can find the memes, news, and opinions that I care about, but none of my hobbies. I really miss it to be real with you.

[–] Gray@lemmy.ca 94 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I get annoyed at the people acting like this place is perfectly fine as it is. It isn't. It lacks content. It has repetitive posts. And as far as I'm concerned, growth will iron out those problems over time. It doesn't need to be all at once, but I am looking forward to it. 60k active monthly users is nothing. Reddit has 450 million active users. It's hard to overstate how much larger Reddit is. Even if you're a hipster opposed to Lemmy growing to a Reddit size, it isn't even remotely close to being that large yet. And as far as I'm concerned it still hasn't reached the mass it needs to turn it into a super engaging community just yet. I'm rooting for it to become more engaging and I'm doing everything I can to increase that engagement, but we really don't need the smug in denial "it's perfect right now" attitude.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Reddit has 450 million active users.

Yes, but how many are bots? Trolls? Bigots? Spammers? Antivaxxers? There is some content that lemmy is better without.

I'm wondering if it's possible to get the same level of broad esoteric discussion without also welcoming the same toxicity that made reddit the superfund site it is today. Is toxicity a function of size, or is it a function of an environment in which toxicity is encouraged?

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to moderate a fairly large subreddit and I think I can answer the bots question. There are millions. We'd get hit with multiple spam campaigns with thousands of bot accounts that were seemingly prepared for months in advance to get around our account age restrictions. Most users would never see any of it because we managed to catch most of them. It also happened under almost every post that hit /r/all.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish more subs were run like how you described yours. In my experience, too many mods were willing to overlook obvious bot accounts (new to the sub, just older than the account age cutoff, no history, all showing up to the sub for the first time on a given thread and saying the same thing) as long as the bots were sayin' stuff they liked.

It's why I was so happy when lemmy became popular enough to sustain conversation. I hope the mods here and on other instances don't engage in the behavior I described, as I consider it principally responsible for the toxicity that ate reddit.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

The bots we had were mostly karma-farming to appear legitimate in other subs or were spamming links to phishing sites and such. Lately we've had some that were trying to write actual comments but due to our subreddit language being German, it just came out as garbled english-german nonsense. It was a humor/meme-based sub, so we were an easy community to target.

[–] Dark_Blade@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Is toxicity a function of size, or is it a function of an environment in which toxicity is encouraged?

Both.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

For me what made Reddit great was not the big wildly popular communities. It was the small niche communities that were (IMHO) only able to form in their shadow and you need a critical mass of people before you can have that.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't want the r/funny people to invade this place, but quality middle sized to niche subreddits don't yet have their active equivalent on Lemmy.

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re not getting one without the other.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] oce@jlai.lu 3 points 1 year ago (14 children)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] heeplr@feddit.de 20 points 1 year ago

if mastodon is a federated twitter clone, what else is lemmy than a federated reddit clone?

[–] eldavi@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

because reddit has all of the content and ease of use while lemmy has neither and we want to see lemmy succeed.

[–] Barack_Embalmer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is succeeding just fine right now.

Reddit's "content" is way more rage-baiting, fake AITA stories, culture wars both-sideisms, publicfreakout schadenfreude, and basic-tier iFunny memes, re-posted by waves of bots. All reddit is "succeeding" at is being a firehose of diarrhea.

I prefer Lemmy's slant towards technology-related news, and polite discussion in earnest without painfully unfunny "and my axe" responses.

[–] kratoz29@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me it is not a clone, it is a replacement/improvement.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Riccosuave@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[–] TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Was Lemmy not designed as a reddit clone? Community/post/comment system with upvotes and downvotes, volunteer moderators, generally the same sorting filters, crossposting - hell, they even display your date of join as a "cake day". The influence is obvious.

That's not a bad thing, take the good and leave the bad, but if anything I think Lemmy needs more unique features that Reddit never had.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Its a really great Fark.com

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want lemmy to be like Reddit, you’re not getting the bad without the good. When it grows in number, it grows in trolls, bots, fascists and pedophiles.

Take your pick.

[–] TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yes, it will have those things, and in fact already does. There are trolls, bots, fascists, and even pedophiles already. This is an extremely sad and disturbing reality of online spaces. The only thing we can do about it is ensure moderators and instance admins have the tools to deal with it.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Stanwich@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Because I'm tired of reading the same stories all day long. I like the latest news and lemmy is slow.

To add to what everyone else is saying, Lemmy is by definition a federated Reddit clone. It's in the documentation and the initial commentary about this service, this place is meant to emulate Reddit to some extent so it makes sense that the two would be compared frequently.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

Bigger than right now would be nicer to fill out the niche communities.

[–] TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

So we don’t have to move again.

[–] HiroNase@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

So that I can use site:lemmy.world instead of site:reddit.com when I'm googleing things

[–] sparky678348@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Is that a real question? Because more than half of this websites user base is people escaping from Reddit and looking for an alternative. That seems extremely self-evident

[–] sebinspace@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Idk, for people that left their ex, y’all are sure obsessed with your ex.