this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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It makes sense.
Most people who came here two months ago did so because they explicitly wanted to leave Reddit, but not because of Reddit content or the site culture. It was because admin decisions on third party apps and the API.
They still wanted Reddit, just with different Admins and different apps. Ideally, they'd have wanted communities to fully migrate over.
lemmy.world specifically became basically a lifeboat, having been linked to from original third party apps.
Yes, it was created and had the technical and resource requirements to keep up with the new influx of users without constantly crashing (in the beginning), but nonetheless, that meant it got the largest influx of the migration.
It's honestly a bit strange for me to see people in here with two month old accounts saying "oh yeah the culture has just changed so much".
You all were the change. It's that influx of users that basically brought Reddit here.
Anyone who came here before the API changes did so either because they had some kind of issues with Reddit, whether it was the dominant culture or what, and wanted an alternative or because they were interested in the open source and federated nature of the project regardless of Reddit's own decisions.
Though tbf, pre migration, this place was basically dead. Posts would have a handful of comments at best and it was mostly Lemmygrad users and also FOSS enthusiasts. Hexbear was the most active Lemmy instance and was a chapotraphouse lifeboat formed in 2020 but it didn't federate so it was really mostly just Lemmy.ml as a general instance and Lemmygrad unless you explicitly knew and cared for Hexbear. Neither was very "toxic" in their own communities and there really wasn't much inter instance fighting, even if there still were people on lemmy.ml who didn't care for grad, as far as I remember. I honestly mostly lurked and didn't participate often.
The apps also were much worse.
Things started picking up as the API announcement happened. That's probably when we had the best balance of positivity and user growth.
It exploded when the API changes went into effect and voila.
Still, I would say it's mostly still a bit better than Reddit and there's more effort in commenting for the most part.
I don't think I've seen a pun chain or a "he's not your buddy, guy" or anything like that.
And that's only the first migration. Expect a way bigger one once Reddit sunsets the old reddit interface.
This is exactly what happened to Reddit with the Digg shitshow and then gradual public adoption. Reddit used to have thoughtful conversation and was where I could go to get interesting perspectives. Eventually enough people joined that the quality went way down.
Always depends on the community/sub though. Niche subs specific to the subject will have good discussion. Big subs that tend to be a bit more generic content will have the generic subs.
I don't think it's a Lemmy/Reddit thing and more of a small/large community thing.
Oh, I agree completely. As the masses arrive conversation generally gets less nuanced and less thoughtful. Group think becomes more obvious too.
Tbf many of us, myself included, had had a problem with the general reddit culture for a very long time (in my case dating back to 2011)
The API change and Sp*z's libelous lies (egregious even by his abysmally low standards) finally gave me the motivation to leave, and I'm genuinely happy that I've never checked back on my old account (which is still up, but has been mostly scrubbed of content)
I didn't come here to find more reddit. In fact, I tried switching back to tumblr at first before learning more about the potential of the fediverse
I changed my account to reduce traffic on my my former server when the Reddit refugees came
And no Schnoodle guy either! No more annoying pseudo-emotional poems followed by celebrity worship, which didn't add anything to the conversation, except for making threads long and wasting screen space on mobile devices.