I was just reading this post https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ and many barely see the fediverse as an alternative and they seem to have a negative bias towards it. Super ironic when it comes to the self-hosting community. Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views. But it doesn’t really matter when it’s federated and FOSS. I think it’s clear-cut that the selfhosting community on Lemmy is a perfect alternative to reddit. Why is there such a negative bias?
Honestly, in my experience since I fully moved to Lemmy:
Almost any subreddit is more mature than any Lemmy channel.
This isn’t just number of users (but that’s a huge problem that has been mentioned here a lot), it means that the chance you’ll run into a mod who is a tinpot despot is pretty high, and there is nothing you can do about it if you’re not willing to sit alone in aghost townalternate community.Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views.
I mean that’s basically the crux of it. That, and some moderation drama, and the software being very buggy a year ago giving people a bad first impression, and Lemmy still being susceptible to spam.
It’ll take some time before Lemmy (and the Threadiverse as a whole) improves its reputation and moves on from the “it’s a tankie website” take. That said, a lot of people in that thread are making the case for Lemmy, so it’s mostly just people worried it’s not as popular.
I definitely avoided Lemmy the first go-round with the API fuckery because it seemed from the outside like basically just a tankie protest Reddit in a similar way to how Voat was just a neo-Nazi protest Reddit. To the Lemmy devs’ absolute credit, they don’t push new users toward any of those, though.
I thought one day after having had a Mastodon for some time that I might not have given Lemmy a fair shake, so I went back and ended up finding that most instances are basically normal Reddit fare but honestly less shitty than Reddit proper (there’s a trade-off that posts are less frequent and that small, niche communities can attract unwanted attention by having their posts almost immediately show up in ‘all’).
Yup, things have definitely improved, especially with more extremist instances like lemmygrad being defederated and phased out. I do also want to give a shoutout to the devs for not pushing their stance and letting the platform grow naturally.
The last 2 reddit userbase diasporas were wildly more different than all of the previous ones combined.
When voat became a thing everyone already knew ahead of time that it’s ranks would be filled with facists; but it took a while for lemmy to earn its tankie stereotype and I’m also glad that lemmy’s design helps ensure that it’ll have more stamina that voat or any of the other reddit user digital refugee camp platforms that came before it.
The instance I first chose straight up disappeared, so yeah. It wasn’t an easy migration.
Even if it’s not as popular, I’d say the community might still be more solid in some cases. And that people are more responsive, especially with quality answers. I’ve noticed you’re chastised way more on reddit if you ask a “stupid” question.
In contrast to reddit, whos leadership never made any controversial decisions. /s
Threadiverse
Fediverse
Threadiverse refers specifically to the subset of the Fediverse with threaded conversations, like Lemmy and Mbin.
Sounds too much like Threads, the invasive corporate thing which can get fucked. Never going to market for them.
don’t let them change the meaning of our words then
that is a personal problem, not a general protocol based one.
Likewise the heroic nerds of the Threadiverse coined the term months before Threads was even announced, and they would be hard pressed to give it up to some scumbag billionaire.
It’s an epic culture war being fought between two largerly agreeing parties.
Number 1 comment is
Reddit ain’t going anywhere fast.
If r/selfhosted has to rely on reddit as it can’t be fucked selfhosting, what chance do other subs have.
I have found Lemmy selfhosted communities excellent, they are not a large as Reddit but there are plenty knowledgeable people, often seflhosting their own little reddit.
The irony of a self hosted community refusing to self host…
Honestly back during the API fiasco I was honestly expecting the mods their to make their own instance together. The fact they didn’t blew me away
Speaking from a third-world country, there are 2 main weaknesses the fediverse has for us:
- selfhosting is not easy or cheap for us, so we can only use what it’s already there… And it’s basically all in english, so most people are out.
- meta has everyone grabbed by the balls and people are happy like that (for some reason), anything new or different is met with endless excuses.
There used to be a mexican instance called Mujico, but they were forced to use a whitelist by constant troll attacks… But they also federated with grad so I can’t feel bad about it. I don’t know if it still exists but the last time I checked it had zero activity.
We are having a great time over here in the Fediverse, and they are jealous. So we will continue to have a blast, just to piss them off.
I mean, read the post? They explain themselves pretty well there. Or are you linking it with hopes we’ll brigade or something?
Lemmy hate comes down to two or three things: they don’t like communists, or they’re confused by it. Or they’re waiting for it to be bigger.
Devs are allegedly Marxist-Leninists.
Redditors dont understand that devs dont exactly have full control of open source software, that different instances are not operated by the devs.
Edit: Lemmy devs to be specific
I don’t get the hate against the lemmy devs tbh, they have their (perhaps controversial) political views but they leave everyone that’s not on their site alone and it feels like they develop lemmy pretty impartially
sure they might ban you off ml but that’s their site and they get to do whatever they want with it, just like every other instance
i mean network effect is a thing i guess but that’s not as important on lemmy where there are usually similarly large communities about generic things on most major instances
Exactly … it’s also a double standard because reddit is basically a capitalist model of the same digital system but no one ever complains or criticizes it.
The socialist digital creators built something and shared it freely with everyone and also don’t exert control over anyone.
The capitalist digital creatures built something and locked it up, monetized it and are using the user’s efforts as the basis for the business only the owners make money on and have complete control over everything.
It’s amazing because it’s a fantastic metaphor for the two platforms.
Calling them “socialist digital creators” is misleading at best, if not an outright insult to socialism.
They are marxists-leninists who whitewash the crimes committed by the USSR and CCP. They support the genocidal invasion by Russia, a country that is neither socialist or democratic; it’s an authoritarian capitalist oligarchy.
There is no double standard. You don’t see the CTO of reddit running a subreddit dedicated to whitewashing the Pinochet regime and/or western colonialism in Africa or Asia.
Reddit is run by sketchy and corrupt individuals, it is possible that in a just world we would even call them criminals. Lemmy’s marxists-leninists are openly supportive of genocidal actions and brutal authoritarian leadership. There is no comparison.
Could provide a link to a comment or a quote where the devs whitewash the crimes or support genocides?
My man, the head developer of lemmy is the admin of lemmygrad. He has a fucking Mao picture in his profile!
Don’t even try to weasel your way around this. This is not going to work with me.
I hate these people. Pathetic larpers living in democratic countries while supporting authoritarianism and genocide. And when I say hate, I don’t mean it in the internet slang way (“hater”).
How should I put this without breaking any rules? I genuinely wish they meet the same fate as “Donbas Cowboy”, Russell Bentley:
Bentley, 64, was a fixture in the low-level Russian incursion in Ukraine dating back to 2014. Calling himself the Donbas Cowboy, Bentley became a popular figure on Russian propaganda networks for his criticism of the U.S. government.
Bentley’s wife, Lyudmila, then claimed that Russian soldiers from a tank battalion abducted him.
According to the Investigative Committee, Vansyatsky, Agaltsev, and Iordanov tortured Bentley on April 8, and he died shortly afterward.
Vansyatsky and Agaltsev are suspected of blowing up a car with Bentley’s body in it and ordering Bazhin to get rid of what was left of his remains.
My man, the head developer of lemmy is the admin of lemmygrad
No, he is not. Check admins section on lemmygrad.ml, which profile do you think belongs to dessalines? He is only admin of lemmy.ml.
He has a fucking Mao picture in his profile!
It’s a controversial figure, but it doesn’t mean that the dev supports crimes or genocides.
How should I put this without breaking any rules? …
You judge people who support genocide, I get it and I here with you. But wishing death upon others because of their opinions? That’s just hypocrisy.
No, he is not. Check admins section on lemmygrad.ml, which profile do you think belongs to dessalines? He is only admin of lemmy.ml.
Are you sure about that? Why does this page state that:
Lemmygrad was created by dessalines and Farmer Heck.[a] It has over 34,000 posts and over 360 active users.[2]
With a further clarification that Muad’Dibber (who is currently an admin) is dessalines
Currently known as Muad’Dibber and Black Tulip, respectively, on Lemmygrad.’
Is Muad’Dibber not dessalines?
It’s a controversial figure, but it doesn’t mean that the dev supports crimes or genocides.
Controversial figure? Mao was a brutal dictator that directly caused an inordinate amount of deaths and suffering. He is no better than Stalin, Pinochet, Hitler or Pol Pot.
Since he runs lemmygrad, he most definitely supports the genocide of Ukrainians in the occupied territories. Before you start acting out, I’d like to see you and your family try and speak Ukrainian in the occupied and try and publicly oppose russian occupaiton. I think the example I provided with the “Donbas Cowboy”, Russell Bentley, should give you an idea of what life is like there.
And then there is also their support for the genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
For you this is just random internet drama. I am not going to tolerate any degenerate LARPer shilling for russia and the CCP.
You judge people who support genocide, I get it and I here with you. But wishing death upon others because of their opinions? That’s just hypocrisy.
These are not mere opinions. These scoundrels wish me, my family and my fellow citizens harm in the most pathetic way possible; by LARPing online as marxist-leninists. It is reasonable to want them to end up like “Donbas Cowboy”, Russell Bentley. This a just and fair end for Western LARPers who whitewash genocide.
Alledgedly?
Marxist Leninst is a nice way to put it, they support Putin, Xi. Zhedong and Stalin.
Thankfully as you say, it’s FOSS with free federation and defederation. Admins only have control over lemmy.ml.
Also there are plenty of alternatives. Both PieFed and Mbin are perfectly fine platform with, as far as I know, no tankie developers associated with them.
Pretty sure that’s only true about Lemmy. There are other threadiverse apps. The mistake is people calling the threadiverse lemmy.
Yep, though the alternatives are not quite there yet software wise, but MBin and Piefed aren’t that far behind…
I’m on a pretty old version of mbin (I have some modifications I made for federation issues back when it was kbin). I need to spend a weekend to pilot an upgrade and make sure I can run it safely live.
But even then it’s better in some ways already and I never feel like I’m missing something from lemmy. But I think just calling the whole thing lemmy puts off people that are seeing things through a political lens.
yep. as an mbin cheerleader, i evaluated both and kbin was better looking and perfectly functional from the start. no app required. no custom user-land css.
but what really bothers me is the conflation of lemmy and fediverse. theyre used almost interchangeably. other platforms get lost in the discussion.
Mbin isn’t
Doesn’t !selfhosted@lemmy.world have like 40k subscribers? Top ten Lemmy community by sub count, iirc.
Bingbingbing!
The people still exclusively on Reddit are on Reddit because they don’t like the Fediverse or they’re unwilling to change their habits. Had they liked it and been genuinely open for change they would have made the switch, or at least used both platforms.
This is not so much true for the average user, as they might not be aware of the federated alternatives at all, or they might think it sounds too hard. But it’s absolutely true for the self-hosting community.
Because people off Reddit hate everything that its not reddit
People on Reddit. We’re the people off Reddit :)
Besides other factors mentioned in this thread, there’s also
- selection bias: people with a positive view of Lemmy already migrated, so the leftover is bound to have more negative views
- older userbase: older people use language in a different way, talk about different topics, and dig into those topics in a different way. That often makes younger people throw a tantrum.
- group identity: for those “AS A SNOO” we’re basically apostates.
- edit: personal drama between higher ups is more visible here than in Reddit.
Older userbase makes this place a lot more useful, outside of politcs and news subs you are dealing with who can provide good information, ie how reddit used to work.
Drama has its place… it is provocative and it gets people going… we need more engagement! We are deff getting there too, meme subs were spamming all 1 year ago, now there is enough threads to keep a reader busy without fluff memes.
I agree with you that both things have their upsides; and frankly, I don’t even think that we should be pandering to the immigration leftover wallowing in Reddit. Growth is good, but growth should never come at the expense of the community that you’re trying to grow.
However I feel like those points help to explain why the “lol lmao” crowds hate this place.
Removed by mod
My concerns about the “immigration leftover” is not their opposing views, but their behaviour. I don’t want to deal with the “waaah the world revolves around my belly, why are you too stupid to understand that?” crowds and their incessant whining.
Removed by mod
I would never support banish anyone, just to be clear. I know that sentiment is popular around here and reddit.
Everyone within reason should be able to express themselves here that’s entire point of fediverse being the front page of the internet, a proper one!
Younger folk do seem to self select out of place that won’t an echo chamber but that ain’t a young folk thing…
Just check politics on lemmy.world 🤡
No idea, quit Reddit over a year ago for fedia/lemmy. Never used x/twitter either, i use mastodon.
Main reason is people are too lazy to change their ways and don’t want to feel like they’ve been making the wrong choice all along.
Seems to me most people in that thread seems relatively open minded? The people dismissing Lemmy completely appears to be downvoted, and people seem to have a nuanced understanding that it’s a better platform in theory but sadly less active.
I’m sure they’re right. I’m a slow person who thinks there’s plenty of activity over here, but if you’re used to the adrenaline of Reddit it must feel a little small town-y.
To be honest except on things like sports and politics, reddit kind of feels like a ghosttown too. So many posts with huge amounts of upvotes and like 2 bot generated comments. The power commenter types seem to have left after the exodus and been replaced by lots of people who scroll and like but don’t really venture much into comments.
I am pretty sure most people are here for idealogical reasons so lack of things is a nothing burger for them.
Normies only care about ease of use and network effect. Until fediverse brings usability, we aint even compete for the network.
Idk I find Lemmy easier to use. I go to Lemmy site -> I use site
I go to reddit -> I get asked to turn of my VPN -> get asked to login -> get asked to download mobile app -> accept cookies -> I finally use site.
Damn reddit is so much easier
-> I get asked to turn of my VPN ->
Yes 🐸
secondary reason why i left reddit, they don’t respect a person who respects him or her self… not long after i learned that’s corpo’s MO and that’s how i become radicalized linux enjoyer haha
@secret300 @sunzu2 Odd, I just use it from Firefox on my desktop. It does want me to accept cookies, that is how websites maintain a login session since otherwise http is a stateless protocol.
well you need an account to shit post tho…
so you need to log in
if you want to login you will get in VPN bullshit or your browser is hardened. if they can’t track you, they essentially don’t want you to use their slopware.
but yes, you can read reddit old, that’s what people should use when they do research IMHO
@sunzu2 @secret300 @Yingwu Unfortunately, some people, if not held accountable, abuse things and other people.
Normie here, Lemmy is pretty easy to use imo. I think the transition is happening now kinda like the Internet in the 90s or online dating in the 10’s.
Ofc I just got here and I’m using Voyager.
A theory I have is that everyone who hates reddit eventually left leaving the milk bags brains. I was mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and left when I saw my mod queue get exponentially worse. My friend told me it was because the decent people left for Lemmy.
Now I’m mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee and it’s sooooo much easier.
I was mod of r/mapporncirclejerk
I used to lurk, thank you for your service 🫡
The higher-score comments there don’t seem to be particularly hostile to Lemmy. They talk about legitimate concerns like whether Lemmy as it exists now could deal with a Reddit-size volume of data, The top comment at this time speaks favorably of !selfhosted@lemmy.world.
Of course people who are still using Reddit are more likely to view Reddit as favorable or acceptable and alternatives as problematic, or not quite there yet. I’m actively Fediverse-first in my use of social media, but I still end up on Reddit quite a bit for niche interests because that’s where the most people are.
its a chicken and egg thing. the fediverse cant scale if we arent pressured to fix scaling issues. we need users to highlight the pain points so we can fix things that allow those users.
