this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Asklemmy

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the most egregious example I can think of is antiwork in reddit. Posters there love to rant against companies, but they also give good advice regarding laws in different states and is a good source to deal with micromanagers and toxic workplaces.

But it's like they simply don't think that reddit is making money with every post they write. It's like they're working for the enemy they so much despise, a large corporation.

It baffles me that people keep posting there. Is the fediverse alternative really that bad?

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[–] Sanctus 159 points 5 months ago (4 children)

It may be hard to believe for everyone here, since we made the jump. Most people just want to be where everyone else is. They get the most interaction there, from their point of view, so thats where they stay.

Also, we may be biased toward tech here. The average person probably loathes setting up new accounts and figuring out new websites.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Lemmy is largely nerdy, linux loving leftist early tech adopters. In a sense, we sit in an echo chamber until the platform becomes more widely adopted, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Oh it’s definitely an echo chamber in every sense; there’s no doubt that opinions that tend to be popular on Lemmy are not really representative of true public opinion. The important thing is that we maintain awareness of that and never let ourselves think that what we agree upon, society at large will also agree upon. That awareness helps inoculate against some of the worst effects of an echo chamber.

[–] HRDS_654 8 points 5 months ago

It's too late for some of the Linux Lemmys. lol

[–] TheMinions 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Hey! I’m a nerdy, windows hating, early tech adopter who is strongly considering switching his personal PC to Linux but has very limited time in which to do so.

[–] rockSlayer 8 points 5 months ago

Consider using the Debian version of Linux Mint if you want something user friendly that just works

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[–] platypus_plumba 7 points 5 months ago

I do love Linux. You got me there.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

It is also crucial that leftists be where the masses are in order to make whatever pushes that can be made. There can't be class awakening if leftist aren't there to speak-up, otherwise it is all just reactionaries and bootlickers spreading their lies.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Especially with the constant breakages. It's still very much beta version software (and Kbin is still alpha).

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 5 months ago (7 children)

antiwork on Reddit is a joke at this point. Honestly (and I say this as a pretty staunch leftist), fox news is right about something with AntiWork, that it is for the most part a bunch of lazy people who don't want to work.

Now that being said, before you downvote me to hell, I strongly do believe in workreform, and the new workreform communities here (and I assume on Reddit but I'm not there anymore) are much better at having a clear message of not being abused and workers rights. Antiwork may have once had that message, but now it's drowned in "I don't want to work at all I should be able to have everything I want for free" garbage, and it makes the entire movement look bad.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago

You have it backwards. Antiwork was always anti-work and was gradually rehabilitated into also including content about work reform.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

not wanting to work isn’t “being lazy”, you can do all sort of stuff if you didn’t have to waste 8 hours a day for stupid corporate crap (so that others will not need to work)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That falls under the preconception that working is only working if it's the benefit of capitalism. You can work for a better future. You can work to better yourself. You can work to spread peace and joy to the world around you. The problem is that work is tied to capitalism in social consciousness.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I agree wholeheartedly with you!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

lol. Yeah well, I'd love not to work either but I also want food, a home, and to do things I enjoy, so, hear me out, in our society I trade my skills and time for money to pay for those things.

If you want to talk about tangible, actionable items like how much money, or how many hours, or anything that can actually be done, then we can have a conversation. If your standpoint is "We shouldn't have to work" then to me that's not an argument. Very few people want to work - but I hate to be the one to tell you this but we aren't going to tear down 1000s of years of society in a couple of years. There's a reason Star Trek is set centuries in the future.

[–] rockSlayer 5 points 5 months ago

The modern concept of work is relatively new, and a product of capitalism. Being anti-work is being against the modern concept of work, not labor in general.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I agree with you. I don’t want to work, but I have to so I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t dream of a time where we won’t have to work anymore [for pointless, shitty, greedy stuff]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah that's my main realization over the years. We can't change the system just by being against it. We have to use the crappy system to change it incrementally over time.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I’m going to suggest a different take. The antiworkers all work for shitty companies and hate their jobs, and they cannot imagine that anyone else out there is in a different situation. It’s unfathomable to them that some of us might work for pretty ok companies, and do work that, while it’s not as fun as recreating, brings it’s own blend of challenge and fulfillment.

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[–] regdog 36 points 5 months ago

"Antiwork" does not leave because that would mean additional work. It is right in the title!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago

antiwork is filled with people who love to bitch but hate doing anything about it. Staying on reddit because of inertia is exactly the kind of thing that represents them.

[–] jacktherippah 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Anti-work can stay on Reddit. I'm sick of their bitching.

[–] Crowfiend 15 points 5 months ago

Yeah, antiwork was a low effort pace to cry about having to work for a living. Workreform was where all the genuine discussion about stagnating and/or shitty workplace practices.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Do you really find it that baffling that people are choosing to provide help and advice in a setting that has millions of active users rather than a setting that has some thousands?

[–] Gradually_Adjusting 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's a difference in priorities. People stay on Reddit because that's where the heat is. I hope that people go here because we understand the inherent dangers of for-profit social media. People can make their own choices.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Lemmy is still small and it doesn't have the crowd sourced discussion or reach that Reddit does.

Sure some people might be after the karma or attention, but it's bad to just lump everyone together with that assumption. People have different reasons for continuing to use other platforms, and it's not productive to throw around insults. I assume lots of Reddit users are aware of the issues, but continue to use it for other reasons. Some people may be using Lemmy / fediverse on top of Reddit.

  • People may read content relevant to them to get discussion that doesn't exist on Lemmy yet. That might include social causes, career pages, hobbies, etc.

  • People might post on Reddit to reach more people. When it comes to social causes / movements, reaching people is important wherever those people might be. I extend this to other platforms too. As annoying as it might feel, a lot of regular users are primarily on Instagram, TikTok, etc. and it's worth the effort to get the message to those people. Lots of people learn about social causes that way

For what it's worth, you can't get people to move to the Fediverse if they don't learn about it

[–] themusicman 12 points 5 months ago

Anyone with half a brain switched from antiwork to workreform after the moderation drama a couple of years ago. Doesn't surprise me that the remaining members are hard to displace

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because some people don’t infuse their political identity into everything they do

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

If I had to guess it would be the amount of engagement. I love Lemmy but I still use reddit for some communities that just aren't popular here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

I'm both here and there. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Reddit, I find, is better for getting more inputs. This place lacks that (hence this question is as askable as it is) but is good for getting more engagement for one's worth. Money isn't everything.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Sometimes you just have to work within the system that exists and promote change from within.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

it could be from lemmy having a much larger circlejerk problem than reddit, likely due to the lower population, and/or less diverse population (in some cases enforced, lemmy.ml being the biggest case of this)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Specifically for antiwork:

Because they are either generally not very well informed or politically well versed and just know that work sucks,

Or they do not have very much free time to follow meta news about reddit and are unaware of what is going on,

Or they just have not heard of lemmy yet,

Or they have had some kind of technical trouble trying to sign up for or use lemmy in the way they would want to,

Or they are not very not very tech savvy and do not understand the FOSS benefits to a discussion board or why or how thats relevant to capitalism,

Or they are basically hypocrites who prefer an echo chamber that is comfortable to a somewhat less echo chambery option and are really just into the whole scene superficially and do not really actually care for having non contradictory and inconsistent views + personal actions/behaviors.

Lots of them probably fall into different categories and many probably fall into more than one.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

antiwork

they do not have very much free time

Doubt

they are not very tech savvy

Pretty sure they are terminally online

they are basically hypocrites who prefer an echo chamber that is comfortable to a somewhat less echo chambery option and are really just into the whole scene superficially and do not really actually care for having non contradictory and inconsistent views + personal actions/behaviors

Bingo!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I would just like to point out that being terminally online has almost nothing at all to do with being technically savvy.

Huge numbers of people who are terminally online are really only adept at using tech at a surface level, and often confuse this /skill/ for things like knowing how back end programming works, understanding what software development entails, etc.

Actually technically competent people go to great, astounding lengths to make decent software very easy to use for the average person. UI/UX, front end devs, back end devs, database management, and I would say testing paradigms for possible bugs, but the industry seems to have largely abandoned giving a shit about that.

Even here on lemmy I often find myself in discussions which turn into arguments which turn into me finally realizing that the person I am talking to has absolutely ludicrous ideas about tech, the tech industry or a specific software.

Such people say and truly believe in obviously nonsensical things, or approach topics from a standpoint that makes it obvious they are really just power users of a particular kind of software, and have developed into basically superficially convincing fanboys or fangirls for it.

They reveal that they only have knowledge from a bit of experimentation and mostly just following a whole bunch of uninformed discussion about some new tech buzz word, and lack understanding of the important basic concepts, or actually relevant dynamics at play, which they likely would /not/ believe if they had ever actually worked in the tech industry, or developed their own software, or contributed usefully to some open source project.

A whole key thing about the tech industry is that it is dominated by reverence for impressive sounding tech buzzwords that promise some new and revolutionary feature, when in reality such things are nearly always minor, iterative improvements on something that came before.

A high number of people are easily bamboozled by such things.

Basically... you are not immune to propaganda?

Then tech world has: You are not immune to marketing.

A great example is the current craze over 'AI' generated content.

OpenAI, Stable Diffusion, these kinds of things?

None of them are capable of the vast majority of the kinds of processes that describe intelligence, but people will argue vehemently that they do, because they are not tech savvy, do not know anything about how the underlying tech actually works or what its capable of, or even what the word intelligence means.

It can do cool and neat things, and its branded or marketed as AI, so it is!

But, its not.

[–] theywilleatthestars 5 points 5 months ago

The Fediverse unfortunately still has less reach.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Some people drop-out whilst others infiltrate and take over…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They prefer a more polished UI? I know there are several mobile apps that improve on the default browser experience of visiting https://lemmy.world/, but you have to admit that the initial UX of Lemmy leaves room for improvement. This is the same reason many open-source projects gave up on IRC. The die-hard FOSS advocates raised the "but Slack isn't an open standard" argument only to be shouted down by a larger part of the community with "IRC's UX sucks and is a barrier to new contributors".

https://kbin.social/ has a lot of issues (like calling communities magazines and general performance/stability), but the UI/UX is so much better than Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

What? Lemmy UI is way better than redit's

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[–] hperrin 4 points 5 months ago

No, people just don’t like change. All those fake internet points are hard to let go.

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