this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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I imagine there's excitement for the increase of activity but worries about the potential toxic side of Reddit coming along too.

I'd especially be interested in the Lemmy devs' opinions.

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[โ€“] hamborgr@feddit.de 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I'm actually quite pleased at the new influx of users! There's finally a good amount of activity and real discussion going on here, instead of just posts with links to articles with zero comments and no real OC.

Aside from that, I have enough faith in the moderators and the structure of the platform itself that there shouldn't be too much of a toxicity problem. Honestly, my own biggest fear is just that a lot of the new users here lose interest and move on, returning the platform to its earlier days.

For now, I just hope that the servers don't go down in flames when the 12th comes around. I can't wait to see how this platform will look further down the road though!

[โ€“] Lets_taco_bout_it@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I literally just signed up and this is the first comment I've read. I feared we might be seen as outsiders so thanks. I've been banned from Reddit for quite some time but lurked on RIF. Hopefully Lemmy can scale in time.

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[โ€“] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 47 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm in Lemmy for, like, two years? Mostly lurking. I've been looking for alternatives for longer than that though.

I feel like the monsoon is mostly welcome. Content quality may decrease a bit, but the quantity will make up for it. And quantity is what has been missing IMO.

In special I'm hoping for specialised instances about some subjects that I enjoy. I like the Lemmy instance but stuff like anime and conlanging "feels" off-topic here.

[โ€“] CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In special Iโ€™m hoping for specialised instances about some subjects that I enjoy. I like the Lemmy instance but stuff like anime and conlanging โ€œfeelsโ€ off-topic here.

Do you mean for subscribing to the communities of these new instances, or would you completely switch to that instance (create a new account there)?

I've noticed some lags/asyncronity with non-home instance content. I guess it would make sense to be home wherever is the most and best fitting communities. But that would also mean leaving behind the stuff of the current account.

[โ€“] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

I'd be using those instances alongside lemmy.ml. I want to talk about anime, but I don't want to just talk about anime; and here I get some nice tech-related content.

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[โ€“] nutomic@lemmy.ml 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cant respond, too many notifications to read and problems to fix.

[โ€“] pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev 10 points 1 year ago

Let me clean my backlog of unfinished projects (now less with reddit API soon to be dead), learn rust and kotlin to start helping :)

[โ€“] alex@beehaw.org 41 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Well:

  • I'm annoyed at calling people who dislike an app and choose another website "refugees"
  • I'm happy that we're going to have more activity
  • I hope more instances will be built and maintained, because I don't think the large number of new members can be moderated effectively if they keep flocking to the same handful of instances
  • When in doubt, I hope moderators will be too strict rather than not enough, especially in the beginning to make sure the behavioural expectations are very clear
[โ€“] 7heo@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
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[โ€“] comfy@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Honestly, while most people here have been alright, toxic newcomers have been a problem and I consider this place ill-prepared to handle them in a bigger wave than this one.

There has already been an observable culture shift, and some nasty screaming when some newcomers used to being a majority are challenged in their views and shocked to find a nontrivial pushback. And I feel that lemmy.ml will undergo a similar event to /r/antiwork if there isn't staff action taken , where the place loses all its values and just becomes a sanewashed recuperated place that feels cheated when its founders keep saying what they said from the start. People largely just don't read rules or sidebars, it seems, and realize lemmy.ml explicitly says it isn't a general unthemed instance for everyone. It's broad, but not 'reddit' broad, nor (pretending to be) politically neutral. Relevant source

Edit: I realize this may come off as "why aren't other people doing more things!". I realize the staff/devs are overloaded, I'm not blaming them to telling them to drop things. But I regret how few moderating/admin staff were recruited, and we're seeing how many communities were made 4 years ago and have no active moderation, nor culture to avoid this becoming 'reddit but here'.

[โ€“] pleasemakesense@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know how to interpret "everyone should feel welcome here" other than it is for everyone. As far as culture shift, it really is impossible to maintain the more "fringe" leftist culture with an increase in users, marxist-leninist simply do not exist in large enough numbers. I don't really see why lemmy.ml shifting its majority political leaning would be something negative to you, since the only thing that would happen would be more discussion in the comments, and if discussion isn't something desirable, places like lemmygrad do exist

[โ€“] comfy@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

I'm not even talking about the M-Ls, I mean even as broad as anti-capitalism and tech/FOSS. There was a meta discussion a while back I started seeking clarification on what "leftist" in the lemmy.ml blurb means, suggesting something less vague. Because to the devs, it evidently doesn't mean 'progressive capitalists'.

This isn't just some preference, because these factors are precisely why Lemmy won't become another reddit disaster. And no, they're not niche groups. Even on reddit, these communities are substantial!

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[โ€“] Communist@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Been here patiently waiting for quite a while... this is what i've been waiting for, for reddit to finally fuckup bad enough that people move over.

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[โ€“] sub_ubi@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Love it, welcome everyone!

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[โ€“] FalseAerobics@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm one of the new ones, but I've been aware of and interacted with Lemmy and Mastadon for at least a couple of years.

For me, I liked what I saw but felt like they lacked enough of the network effect to convince my nontechnical friends to make the jump with me. That made me concerned that they would shrivel up and die. I'd recently been interacting a bit more though, Mastadon especially, since I'd say its gained a good amount of traction given Twitter's...cancerous CEO. Every couple months I found myself downloading Tusky and Jerboa to mess around, but hadn't made it a habit.

Reddit's API changes were a line in the sand for me though. I decided I didn't care about my friends following anymore, and I was ready for a smaller community again, with less rage bait and predatory capitalism.

Does that make me the wrong sort of refugee?

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[โ€“] lemmy_steve@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm an ex Reddit user. It seems inevitable that the Reddit admins will lock out third party access - I could be wrong but based on recent years, Reddit doesn't like to listen to it's community.

I hope that the toxicity stays away, but it's likely there will be toxic users at some point. My main gripe with Reddit was the lack of actual reading. Most mainstream subs were just memes / circlejerks / pics. I'd much prefer to learn something or read something of value over "lol-ing" at a pic.

I'm keen to see how Lemmy grows.

[โ€“] zipdog@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wanting to learn something hits the nail on the head. I recently came to the realization that I used to learn things on reddit, especially in the comments. Not sure when that stopped but it's why I had been wishing for an alternative for a while.

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[โ€“] tmpod@lemmy.pt 9 points 1 year ago

Yes, toxicity will inevitably appear more (it was already present in small amounts ๐Ÿ™ƒ) but I'm hopeful the lack of a karma system may help to mitigate some of Reddit's typical "bad behavior".

[โ€“] const_void@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago

It's good. This place was pretty much a ghost town a few months ago with only a few users posting.

[โ€“] cecirdr@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'm new here from Reddit. I was a former Digg user. Over the past few years, Reddit has gotten swamped with spam and low quality content. I was most at home there on the niche subreddits that were still earnest and not spammy. I hope things stay that way over here.

I've made a small donation to help Lemmy grow. It's not much, but scaling up to handle the escapees is a big deal. Having the money to grow and build robust processes to keep content thoughtful and helpful is important. While I love the funny posts and memes sometimes on reddit, it's really infested the popular subreddits to the point of being excessive. Ergo, I tend to hang out in smaller spaces where the dialog is more "straight up".

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[โ€“] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 24 points 1 year ago

It's fricking amazing. There is regular conversation and places that have been dead for years are reviving themselves.

[โ€“] SmokeInFog@midwest.social 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm excited to see new communities, more communities, more participation. I'm dreading the inevitable periodic and maybe frequent drops of servers as they struggle to cope with the influx and admins learn how to scale.

EDIT: oh shit, my eyes just skipped right over the whole of "before" in the title

[โ€“] cityboundforest@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I joined the Beehaw instance a bit ago with a small exodus from Tildes, another Reddit alternative. It's been nice to see the community grow and grow steadily as time progressed, and seeing the Reddit refugees makes me hopeful for the platform's strength going into the future regardless of what Reddit does with its API (or other features).

As for the toxic side of Reddit, I'm more concerned for the devs in having to deal with the reports, but as a Reddit mod myself, I don't think it'll be too bad. At least on Beehaw we have a supportive community and I'm reminded of a video talking about the userbase of the early UseNet and how they dealt with the first spammer (not necessarily their methods, but the fact that they rose up as a community to enforce a community rule). Hopefully we can see that here (i.e. "the report button exists").

Edit: a detail

[โ€“] jarfil@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

a small exodus from Tildes

I've seen Tildes being proposed as a Reddit alternative along Lemmy, what was the exodus about?

From what I remember, it had to do with the moderating decisions of the person behind Tildes.

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[โ€“] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 year ago

I'm just happy to see more users and more activity. I admin an instance, so I'm not too worried about toxicty, as I can dump any regular sources of trouble

[โ€“] shreddy_scientist@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago

I'm all about it! Great to see a platform take off when it's centered around being ad free and open sourced.

[โ€“] Jode@midwest.social 15 points 1 year ago

Oh no, we're the ones ruining lemmy. Sorry everyone haha.

[โ€“] samhaingrim@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hope the reddit echo box 'our way or the highway', 'everything is a pun' mentality doesn't transfer over as well

[โ€“] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Aww, but Reddit pun threads are fun.

[โ€“] ISOmorph@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago

To each his own I guess. To me it's too much of the same regurgitated over and over again like a meme that stopped being funny years ago

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[โ€“] MBM@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

When someone shares a personal story about his wife's struggle with cancer and the top reply is "I also choose this guy's dead wife"

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[โ€“] uthredii@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

I want more people.to.use federated social media. Lemmy and kbin are among the best federated social media they just need more users and content.

[โ€“] sexy_peach@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago

I am pretty happy about it. There's nothing wrong with more users!!

[โ€“] petrescatraian@libranet.de 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@Uncreativechap All I can say is I am hopeful that on the political topics there will be a more diverse set of opinions and more mindful discussions, beyond the level of If you don't agree with me, you're clearly a glowie who supports US atrocities or the likes. Not to mention having more intellectual voices promoted and discussed than the one of Noam Chomski for example (with all due respect to his work on documenting US Government abuses and not only).

Otherwise, there will be a switch from lemmy.ml is overloaded, use other instances instead to Every instance is overloaded, use lemmy.ml and lemmygrad instead (in the best case scenario).

Edit: now regarding Lemmy as a whole, I don't know, I hope this turns out to be a great Reddit alternative. I strive to go on a more digital minimalistic life, so getting rid of another account without me needing to create a different one is always welcoming for me ๐Ÿ˜

[โ€“] darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I fired up my own personal test instance so I can experiment with figuring out ways to reduce bottlenecks on the sysadmin/devops side - used to run the various PHP forums back in the day, so hoping to pass on some knowledge eventually.

I figure the toxic side(s) will gravitate towards instances that will tolerate their behaviour which is easier to deal with. Mods will be busy for a little bit though, and I wouldn't be surprised if registrations closed for a bit on some of the bigger instances so they can catch up if they don't just fall flat over on the heavy days. But, lots of smart folks trying to prep for this.

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[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

Pretty happy.

The place and platform is capable of growth and diversity ... on which, many should consider starting their own instances just to spread the load and allow people to find their moderation homes.

I've been wanting the fediverse to be more topic/group/community based than a twitter clone since I got here, so it makes sense to see some interest in these "Threadiverse" style platforms.

There'll be growing pains, and the current admins and devs are probably going through some pain now. Sorry! I just hope enough community leaders, former sub-reddit mods and future admins will see the value in distributing social media and help pick up the slack.

More broadly, for those who don't know, IMO, the fediverse has been suffering from an essentially oppressive dominance by Mastodon. Everyone thinks the fediverse is just Mastodon. Though that's completely untrue, as there are a number of alternative platforms, some of which are rather novel and interesting, it is numerically very true with Mastodon comprising >80% of fediverse users.

Generally, this amount of dominance is almost certainly bad for the future health of the fediverse and the values it seeks to promote (ie, interconnected platform and community diversity). Mastodon, at the moment, is creeping towards being just another centralised platform ... essentially an OSS non-profit Twitter in its own right, which isn't a bad thing at all, but not what the fediverse is about.

Enter the Threadiverse! Lemmy, /kbin (and even calckey a little with what will hopefully become its federated channels), and others. Not just platform diversity, but medium or format diversity.

At this moment, IMO, it is very valuable to the fediverse at large, that lemmy, /kbin etc grow and do well.

[โ€“] NataliePortland@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Let's get some content!

[โ€“] theNoob@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm a new user here and saw the influx of Digg users on Reddit. It did change the site and we got a mix of more less-thoughtful discussion but also a lot more content which was funny and interesting. I'm thinking Reddit might not survive this as a global forum, following in the footsteps of Digg

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[โ€“] sup@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

I'm excited, but at the same time worried about the technical side of things. How the load can/will be managed, what can we do to help, etc.

[โ€“] ganymede@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

excited to see more users

welcome :)

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