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It takes some time to block out stuff to make Lemmy usable. So much anime, bots and dumb American politics.
It's nice there are a bunch of apps for Lemmy, but using it without an app is not very welcoming. It needs a lot of improvement (e.g. manually compose urls to subscribe to communities on other servers).
I dislike that Lemmy is such a left-wing echo chamber. Reddit had a much wider variety of opinions being voiced openly; on Lemmy, there’s almost none. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s acceptable to say here and what isn’t. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting because it can make you feel like the opinions of the average Lemmy user represent the wider population when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Also, there are almost no blue-collar workers here, and most discussions revolve around office jobs and big city life.
EDIT: and the extreme levels of cynicism.
Likes: the small community, traditional forum vibe. No ads, no oppressive corporate hand to keep things advertiser-friendly. Interests and views tend to align, but I can have a healthy disagreement on many issues with most users here. Only a few famous borderline trollish users that aren't fun to chat with, most overt trolls are quickly dealt with.
Dislikes: heavy use of downvoting simply unpopular opinions (a mild annoyance). Difficult to pick between posting in a rarely active niche community and a very active but general community (sometimes I just crosspost). The threat of centralization, with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml having by far the largest communities (I would like to see more active communities spread across sites, though I make an effort sometimes to comment on different servers). Some big features I'd like to see that still seem far from implementation, such as multi-communities.
needs more porn
Dislike: every post inevitably has someone complaining about capitalism, Trump, police, Musk, …
Like
Editable titles
"All" here vs other social media is much better
It's more likely that arguments are civil. There are still quite a few venomous arguments but I've noticed that it it proportionally less.
On Reddit or Facebook, if you didn't like a group you left and made your own. If you didn't like the admins, tough shit. Here, if you don't like the admins, you can use a different instance.
Likes and dislikes are separate, and are in some cases viewable who submit them. I feel like this keeps people a little more honest.
I like the modlog and transparency. It's so much easier that when someone complains about unfair mod action, to see if they are in the right or exaggerating.
There is an "end" to Lemmy. There isn't just infinite content to scroll through.
Dislike
Smaller user base means that niches that Reddit filled just aren't here.
There is an "end" to Lemmy. There isn't just infinite content to scroll through.
Neutral
The types of common negative personalities here are different from that of Reddit. Reddit has more misogyny, classism, antinatalists, and obnoxious atheists. (As opposed to the chill atheists.) Lemmy has quite a few people that are pretty shitty to those that are disabled or cannot get out of some situations. If you cannot work towards the greater good without any rest, can't escape a bad situation, or can't just extend yourself further, you are trash. There are also more fringe beliefs here. I do like it because of the different perspectives, even if I very strongly disagree. (It makes me think!) Unfortunately we still have the dumbass arguments about generations but you can't have it all.
Like: Long-ass posts. Mastodon has a ridiculous character limit; lemmy doesn't seem to have any. Dislike: Long-ass posts. Jesus people, the rants and drawn-out arguments.
I was going to quote you saying arguements are civil, and then mock argue with you in an absurd way. But then I thought it wasn't clear that I was being absurd and joking, and you might think I was actually toxic argueing with you. So I turned up the absurd.
Somehow this ended with me giving you a lapdance as I insulted you. It made ME laugh, but I think instead of coming across as funny, it was just confusing.
........also erotic.
Now I am hard. Goddammit
The mods: self-important, dense, and often pushing their own agendas.
Like: decentralization and a renaissance of the old- school dream of what the Internet should be.
Dislike: media bias fact checker bot spamming every damn post. Power tripping mods.
I'm still unclear what the purpose of that bot is, and why everyone hates it. It always just says bias checking is unavailable right now.
I hate it because it shows up everywhere and adds nothing of value while displaying busy formatted text. If it lately shows even less meaningful content, that barely seems possible.
Might i ask which mods you feel are power tripping? You don't have to answer if you don't want, no pressure.
I’d rather not. Not sure if you can view the mod log for other people’s accounts, but if so it’s easy to spot from mine.
I’ll say that I have some sympathy because dealing with internet randos is painful soul-sucking work and it’s easy to default to the ban-hammer, but…
My experience has been the opposite. I'm unclear what you are posting, but MY posts exist almost exclusively to entertain me, by saying my weirdst inner thoughts, and seeing how people react.
I regularly insult the concept of linux. I don't insult the people who use linux. I insult linux itself. And people have.....opinions......on that.
I CONSTANTLY call George Clooney a smug bastard.
And I've never been banned here. That being said, I avoid lemmy.ml. I hear they ban anyone with a different opinion than themselves.
Now downvotes? I'm unclear if I have more upvotes or downvotes! People don't like it when you insult their precious wittle linux!
sucks on a penguins mamas nipples for milk
Decentrilization is both a blessing and a curse.
If there's an issue you can make your own community with blackjack, and hookers.
But at the same time these communities never seem to get super big (minus a few) and if you're subscribed to both there's not a good way to deduplicate the posts. So 5 communities post the same thing (or one person posts them in 5) sometimes you see all 5 side by side.
Dislike: there is still no way to group communities into sub feeds, apart from subs, local, all. (and the work around some do of having multiple accounts seems silly to me)
Oh yes, I remember when Reddit came out with multireddits. Loved that, and I miss it.
The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that's amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.
Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
Dislike: Tankies.
Been wondering... what is a tankie?
The 14 year olds with "big brain" takes.
Like or dislike?
Some people here take themselves way too seriously. Not every conversation needs to be an argument.
Well, I completely disagree! Taking things seriously is the only way to have meaningful conversations. If we don’t challenge each other’s views, how will we ever grow and learn? We need the "battleground of ideas"!
/s
Like:
Decentralized system that limits abuse
Great customizaion
It works (unlike much of the competition)
Dislike:
Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)
Generally very pessimistic userbase
Lacks polish and features in many areas
Currently trends towards extremist echo chambers - the fact that .ml (an instance known for banning criticism of violent, racist, authoritarian governments) is one of the biggest instances, is a good example of this.
tends to be extremely hostile to any sort of monitization, regardless of the quality or cost to produce content
I genuinely cannot express how much it annoys me that I cannot have a blocklist for keywords.
Most of the things I read are from my subscribed communities, which i'm very happy about generally, however given the overall state of life today, half of the posts in completely unrelated communities end up being one of the following:
I really just don't want to see any of those things
On browser you can put this onto your custom filters
lemmy.world##div.post-listing:has(span:has-text("/musk/i"))
Connect app for Lemmy actually has this feature, and it really is a gamechanger. I mean, it makes Lemmy kinda into a desolate wasteland of posts, but its better than seeing most of the garbage I don't care about and don't want to interact with.
Granted, this also relies on users putting said keywords in the title of their post, so I still end up seeing stuff I don't want to, but it is drastically decreased.
Like:
Dislike:
I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.
I don't like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation. The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years. This Lemmy account has only been around for about 1/10th of that.
One of the biggest strengths of Lemmy is also one of its biggest curses. Due to its federated nature, anyone can create a new instance. The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don't like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc. They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.
"I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example."
Oh yeah that seems an excellent way to keep a power balance between users and moderation. Hadn't used reddit all that much, but heard of the nightmarish moderation abuse.
"I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation."
Sadly is a big issue with many platforms where politics is used for excuse to mental flex, invalidate, clout motives, and flat out bully. So i try to avoid politics or deflect and avoid people who just looking to argue for the sake of argueing to assert dominance. Too many headaches online deal with.
"The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years."
I might do the same tbh, i can see there are quite a bit of users needing filtered out on lemmy. Can also see some get angry knowing that people would rather just block em' and not engage with them because then they can't fuel their clout driven ego 🙂
"The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc."
Perhaps this could be resolved by implementing a user follow list and making it so users can only be interacted with if the user approves the follower who is trying to follow em'
"They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically."
Imo i think lemmy could just do away with a voting system, it would reduce cognitive bias by not giving them a sense of popularity contest to determine if it's worth reading a user's post or comment. People should judge for themselves rather than having others do it for them.
You seem a a reasonably decent person btw.
I encourage aggressive blocking. Without it, the assholes drive the decent people away over time.
I'd be fine without voting, too. I am glad they at least got rid of karma.
The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.
That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.
All the trolls.
The people. For both.
Like: pretty much everything
Dislike: wish there was more activity in the D&D comms
I like that it's moderated fairly lightly but reasonably. Often I can have an actual discussion with someone who doesn't agree with me without either of us getting banned by a mod who likes one side or the other. From what I see generally a user needs to be very obviously abusive/racist/violent before a mod steps in, even if the content is controversial.
I dislike that I've needed to heavily restrict my use for my mental health until after the election. A lot of people (not all by any means) believe it's ok to bully and abuse other users because their cause is righteous - it's already shown up in this thread. E.g. the daily posts and comments, with a lot of upvotes/support, that label anyone who disagrees with or criticizes Kamala (used to be Biden)/Democrats a bot, idiot, worse than useless, foreign agent and so on. I'm not talking about downvoting which is just expressing disagreement - I'm talking about outright insults and upvoting those. The attitude of "vote with/support me or else" has no place in a democracy founded on free voting without persecution, even if the bully is sure they're right. If I didn't mention it, perhaps even though I have, we might see a version of "but it is actually ok this time" and reasons why. It's happened before.
Guess what? Very few "policy bullies" think they are evil - they're positive it's justified. Christians demand abortion bans, Muslim deportation, religion in schools/government and so on because they truly believe they are saving eternal souls. I was raised in that environment. That a sizable amount of Lemmy users believe it's correct/admirable to insult others into "proper" behavior makes them very similar in character to those religious extremists IMO. Apparently when the issue is really important abuse is ok.
I'll end by saying Gaza/Palestine is incredibly important to me - I am legitimately very upset frequently by the stories and media. However, Bernie Sanders convinced me to support Biden and then Kamala. Bernie laid out his argument with logic and facts and did not once insult my position. I also doubt the aggressive posts/comments are winning over undecideds. "I wasn't sure if I should vote Democrat until I was called a harmful idiot and had my concerns dismissed as being in bad faith".
The assholes who pretend to argue in good faith but just spout stupid bullshit.
Oh, and the idiots who block everyone they don't like.
But what do you dislike?
Lol, you got me for a minute.
I think it’s the best at what it does. That problem space doesn’t have a lot of good options.
I've been impressed with the number of people who understand this pretty esoteric and fundamentally game-changing bit of technical voting system knowledge:
Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
About first past the post and third parties for those who aren't going to watch. But do watch! Required viewing for everybody!