[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

Technically speaking Lemmy's improved a fair amount since before it blew up in popularity (compared to pre-Reddit API shenanigans), but it's still lacking in a variety of other areas, e.g. moderation tools & lack of any sort of modmail to avoid having to coordinate off-site, user tools/settings related to privacy and federation such as hiding profile elements or the opposite like enabling a microblog-esque mode for federating with Mastodon/Misskey/etc., and some other odds and ends (like not being able to mute/disable notifications for posts/comments, sorry OP!).

Culturally speaking Lemmy has similar problems as other federated platforms in that to this day no one seems to have worked out a way to better communicate them so that they're more widely adopted and grow significantly beyond the early adopter Linux/techie crowds (Mastodon's very gradually been getting there though). Some people also much prefer that, which is part of why and how these platforms have remained that way, but they seem to forget that small communities can exist within larger communities, and with well-developed federated platforms, ideally one could better curate their spaces more than they ever could in more popular corporate platforms.

Also regarding content, it's in a weird spot. There's a decent amount of it, but part of the problem is that it's neither all that varied nor original. There's a glut of news, political/technology mainly, memes/shitposts, many of which being older and thus reposted, and some mix of technology posts in general, then there's kind of everything else. If we were to throw together BS percentages, I'd maybe guess at like 32/32/32 of news/memes/tech, with the remaining 4% being everything else.

The issue then is, much of that content you can easily find on more popular platforms with greater variety and also originality, with potentially timelier posting, so outside of principles, what's the draw of any of the Lemmy instances? I think there's greater potential with more topic-focused instances (e.g. programming.dev/ani.social/etc.) and original content. That is, compared to the corporate models of attempting to be everything for everyone but really no one, and in turn also opaquely barring/removing/demonetizing creative content due to some ambiguous advertiser/copyright compliance measures.

Unfortunately you hit a causal conundrum where there aren't enough people yet for others to justify contributing original material, and there's not enough original material to draw enough people here to justify creating it and on and on. Classic network effect situation, in other words, which in turn also affects variety and timeliness of posts, and leaves everything in an awkward limbo state until several somethings start to change.

It's about the same, but the lower pop moves the page at a glacial pace. One other major difference: less suspicious content. I left Reddit for two reasons. One, negative content experience crowding out the positive. Two, I loved rif. Since the APIcalypse I've bounced around a little bit looking to make a home somewhere. My experience is that tech is great but techies don't always share all the same interests as me. So it feels like there's just not enough diversity in interesting content.

I miss the tiny fan sub I used to run, but it would never take off here, on any instance. I could never go back- Reddit is broken. I just wish more of us left. I don't know that this place has matured, but where it's at right now is good enough to keep scratching my itch for sharing content and ideas online.

There's a lot of IT/software engineer here. I'm fine with it, especially since I'm a software engineer myself, but it would be better if there's more variants of people here.

Even more US centric. This means that all the political posts are too US-centric, I'm fine with political discussion, but damn, I don't care about that country too much.

It really is fantastic here. Lot’s of cool people with interesting nuanced perspectives. What I miss are the niche subs with solid activity and conversation.

It's super political and tech based. Feels like if you don't use Linux or Firefox you're an outcast. I still use it often just not as often as I did with reddit.

To be honest, it's not particularly great. But it sucks less than Reddit, so....

Its aight. It reminds me of old web forums and BBS style conversation. There's a lot of passion and intelligence but also incredibly one-sided takes and an unwillingness to empathize or see another person's perspective. I mostly stay for the Picard Maneuver memes.

I'm enjoying it somewhat. It's much more populated by people with similar interests to mine, e.g. Linux and D&D, but it's also more populated by aggressive and ignorant commenters who are all too eager to be contrary and smug.

I miss the content and niche communities of Reddit. Remember you can still be in both as long as you'd like. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Edit: I also am sad that big news events like the Superbowl don't have nice vibrant live threads. Hopefully we have more good content for non Linux peeps.

I like the smaller, early internet feeling, but miss the niche communities. Although Reddit is so damn huge that even the niche communities have so many comments that unless you catch something right when it's posted, anything you say gets lost in the flood.

Compared to Reddit, it's pretty empty still. On Reddit I literally never saw a post twice on my subscribed feed.

Now I'm subscribed to roughly the same number of communities and it takes 2-3 days for my feed to completely renew... Many of the subreddits I used to frequent still don't even exist on Lemmy, despite them being pretty popular over on Reddit.

General meme and news posts feel basically the same as Reddit. A lot more Linux circle jerking, probably a bit more left leaning. I do miss the days before I knew what ml's were though.

I actually appreciate the slower content on Lemmy. Keeps me from continually scrolling for that dopamine hit.

It needs to grow because right now its like 50% people who were banned from reddit because they dont socialize well

I like it but tbh I miss the NSFW Gifs/Videos. I also have learned some topics not to talk about. Like Windows/Linux, bashing furries, or anything that is not far left (gender stereotypes, guns, etc.).

I don't browse enough maybe to find active niche communities. Typically spend most of my time browsing all on top 6 hrs. Else I see the same posts for like 2-3 days.

It's a change but feels more like... I'm talking to real people instead of guessing who's a bot.

Very few women

I have noticed that many users are highly technical. I am not technical at all yet I am here because my technical friend showed me how to sign up and which app to use. I think people from marketing background should create guides / poster on how to use Lemmy for people like me who dont have a technical friends.

It's all right. But it's a ghost town compared to reddit.

I'm really happy with it. People here are mostly thoughtful, smart, and post interesting content. Less fighting, less toxicity, no shills in political discussions because it's not big enough, no corporate astroturfing (the closest we come to that is adderall spam ha ha).

It feels healthier to me than reddit, which I think I had probably been addicted to. Being on Kbin I never have to run out of content because of the "microblogs" section which has Mastodon, and my multireddit style "collections" (like this news one). But I also find it easier to put my phone down.

Also I find it hilarious that although I do still see occasional screeching about US liberals, over here it's because the poster wants "the libs" to be more left wing not more right wing.

I'm really hoping that the smaller communities dedicated to a topic start getting more traction, although I'm not doing much myself to make them grow

To me, it feels like old Reddit, so it's very comfortable despite all the differences and initial growing pains picking an instance. Like finding an old friend and meeting up with them for lunch after many years.

Honestly, not that great

It was really good at the start of the exodus, when I felt like I could write and be read, instead of missing the post by like an hour and being the 10,000th comment

And the community was good, too But now it seriously feels stagnant in an active way

I don't really know if it's because of Lemmy itself, or because "Eternity for Lemmy" was named after it's update schedule, but every day on this app feels completely identical to every other day Just politics, Linux, and bad memes That is basically the reddit experience, I will admit, but on here there are basically zero active niche communities, and basically deserts of fandoms

I think Lemmy did get a sort method to try and accommodate more niche communities, but like I said "Eternity" is the update schedule, so whatever that may be I don't have access to it

And I think that's a really big thing, actually My app of choice is abandonware compared to other clients, I've reported a bug that gets under my skin 6 months ago and there hasn't been a single update, so i have to live with accidentally opening posts all the time and I hate it

I really really like this client otherwise, but I might just move to a better client or a fork of the same project, I don't know

I also don't have instance blocking, either, so that's fun

I miss the hyper niche communities and fandoms but other than that I enjoy it just as much if not more

I really enjoy that in small communities I can come across usernames I recognize and develope an idea of what kind of people they may be or be able to continue a bit that I'd started in another thread.

I like it. It's a bit smaller, but that means I can actually read through most of the comments. It's very slightly left of me, which creates good food for thought as well.

It does run of the issue of having a heavier tankie and "both sides bad" presence, but that's preferable to the alternative. I also like that I recognize some users.

Most importantly? I feel like I'm contributing to a conversation here. On Reddit it was just like shouting my opinion into the void.

I'm trying to like it more but it's just way more depressing than reddit, and the depressing news makes its way into most communities. Maybe I just need to cater my subs a bit more but I wanted like a little bit of news and politics to stay informed otherwise I went on reddit to have fun and destress. Can't really say I can do that here the way it is.

It's good, but I really don't want to see as much circlejerking as much as I do.

Unless you want to reduce your feed to the bare minimum, you need to see the the trinity of political posts, Linux conversations and memes.

Under populated, but I come here often!

It’s like Reddit from 2007, if everyone were expecting it to be like Reddit from 2017. (E.g., creating fragmented, fine-grained sub-communities before the coarser-grained communities are saturated.)

Matured? Really? I guess you haven't had a taste of the defederation drama. Users are great, but discussion between admins feel like the constant bickering of small children. And I say this as an admin myself, who at times does take part in those discussions. I think we still have a long way to go, when it comes to being matured.

It sucks up too much of my time. So it's working. 👍

not a huge fan to be honest. the discourse has become very toxic, the reddit hivemind was silly but here don't you pretty much have to be an extremist or suffer all manner of rediculous replies. apparently taking a balanced view to literally any topic gives one the label of "fascist" around here, cheapening the word and killing legit discussion.

I liked it when it was mainly that picard dude posting memes

its not the site that's the problem. it's the "community"

Same. A bit more mature user base (but not too mature. Poop!, teehee....). Plus I like that it's generally smaller, and therefore avoids a lot of the negative effects of huge communities.

It certainly has its own distinct culture at this point, sometimes annoyingly so. Probably a consequence of the very skewed demographic still making up most of the people here. It also has less content, which is good for the comment quality but bad for scrolling.

Overall I like it here, though I often wish the memes were a bit better. Now I’m not a teenager myself but especially the more generic communities often have a distinct boomer and/or low effort flavor.

What is kind of putting me off Lemmy is the amount of tankies. I understand they are actually far left from Reddit who migrated, but they're just damn idiots and are simping for Putin (yes, I'm aware that some of them could be St Petersburg-based Russian trolls larping as tankies).

Comfortable, but a little meh.

There's a handful of users I see posting and commenting. I read the Everything feed, but most of the posts are US politics, technology (with a FOSS/greybeard bent), or centre-left political takes.

There was a burst of activity during the Reddit exodus, but everything seems to be slowing down. I feel like I see fewer Canadian posts than the summer/early fall.

I appreciate

• the handful of conservatives who are trying to build a community here. We aren't very forgiving to folks outside our Overton window, but it's nice to see other perspectives.

• the Star Trek communities. I don't know if they're posting OC, but it's new to me.

• PugJesus, the Picard Maneuver, and girlfreddy for their posts. Lemmy would be a quiet place without their content.

Less content but the quality/shit ratio is higher here.