this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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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?

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[–] Stamets 93 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

As someone who used to be vehemently anti-lemmy, it's a few different reasons.

  1. It's something new. Honestly is as simple as that. Most redditors are straight up threatened by new features, new looks, new anything. New Reddit is an example of that. To be fair it is hideous but it's also drastically underused according to reddits own metrics. This just stays consistently with everything. People prefer old subs to new, prefer old users to new, old memes to new. Why? Dunno. Could be as simple as just that they know it so it's comforting.

  2. The propaganda that reddit put up against Lemmy was pretty insane. The first few mini-migrations set people up with weird expectations and a lot of them bounced back to reddit with weird notions. Some of it was based on shitty admins or shitty servers (cough lemmy.ml cough) but other things seemed to be almost coordinated against Lemmy. By the time that the big migration from Reddit killing off third party apps/API use a lot of people had heard one or two things and just started spreading it. Redditors often don't source material and just kinda spread rumors or 'feelings' or upvote one idiot who seems like he knows what he's talking about while blatantly lying. This has never gone away. The same idiots keep whining and being dismissive.

  3. Redditors are hateful. Not purely hateful people or anything but the atmosphere encourages hate and division. I still browse reddit occasionally and I'll check the comments out about a post. It's always so bitter and angry, snapping out at one another. When every crab in the bucket is pulling you down, you get stuck in that habit too. Until you break free of reddit you don't realize just how bitter it's making you. Lemmy doesn't have those vibes and it can be really off putting to someone still in that bitterness. Kindness and people getting along almost comes off as stupid and naive so you just kinda dismiss the entirety of Lemmy as a whole.

  4. This is a conspiracy but I'm positive that Reddit admins are purging a lot of references to Lemmy that don't show the site in a positive light. When the API shit was happening people kept pointing out that certain communities that were supportive of Lemmy suddenly got locked behind a NSFW curtain that forced users to be logged in to read the community. A lot of people talked about how certain posts and stuff were being removed, especially ones critical of Spez. I don't think they stopped that campaign and I think they still try to demonize the hell out of Lemmy. Could be because China has a significant hand in reddit now or it could be because Spez has a tiny dick and a tinier ego. Dunno. But I think they're weighting the scales.

[–] drmoose 62 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Reddit 100% was censoring and shadow banning any kbin or lemmy mentions.

I wouldn't even be surprised if reddit actively promoted or even creates negative comments. There was a precedent of people abandoning Digg so they were clearly very aware and afraid.

At the end of the day it's impossible to tell with these incredibly opaque networks. It's even hard to confirm comment visibility as Reddit employs data fudging and shadow banning.

Just another reminder that nothing any closed source social media says should be trusted, ever.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, what made you change your mind and give it a chance? Any breaking point on Reddit's side, or just boredom or a sense of adventure?

In regular migration studies there's always talk of puah and pull factores; reasons for wanting to leave where you are, and reasons for wanting to go to the destination. While I personally like it here, I guess we are currently depending more on push factors than pull factors to attract people from Reddit.

[–] Stamets 19 points 2 weeks ago

Star Trek.

It's not even remotely a surprise to anyone that I'm a dedicated Trekkie and have been for quite some time. Also not much of a surprise to those aware of the Trek fandom that sometimes it can be kinda bitter towards shows that don't fit a certain trend. I happened to like one of those shows and was looking for a place to talk where it wasn't just constantly being bitched about. I was just googling around and found Startrek.website so I set up an account on lemmy.world to watch stuff over there for a couple months before eventually joining that instance. My original account still exists on lemmy.world and it's fairly early in the run of a lot of things. I've also gotten a few messages to that account simply because it's a single first name that other people wanted.

Anyway I started posting Trek memes to Risa and it went overboard. Before I realized people were making memes about me and I just sort of stuck around. Startrek.website showed it's administrators to be flagrantly abusive of not only their power but also of just people so I set up Stamets on this instance. Rest is history.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] TheTechnician27 45 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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').

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Eldritch 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Just gonna put this out there. The devs push their stance plenty. Within their scope to do it from their echo chamber. Other than stopping development there's little they could currently do to impact growth in any way. And there have been issues with their development focus that have negatively impacted growth. Recalcitrance to focus much on moderation tools for instance. As well as at least reported issues difficulty contributing to the project by others. Though that at least is hearsay.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I think it helps to think of it this way: WE are using THEIR platform.

They don't need mod tools that work for communities and users located on a different instance as much as say Lemmy.World since the devs/admins simply use the instance-wide ban hammer for their own space. Hence that is not their focus. You can go to the trouble to learn Rust, and then fight with them to get your modifications accepted or...

Actually, I need to modify my statement above: YOU are using THEIR platform, but for those of us on Mbin, PieFed (which I'm on right now, and two new instances just opened up including one now in the USA), and soon Sublinks will come too (January was at some point a target iirc?), we have already moved on. None have reached feature parity yet tbh, though even so there are a lot of features that exist that Lemmy itself lacks, so there's that, and being written in common languages should help enormously with them catching up.

So whether these are "as good as Reddit", well, beauty is in the mind of the beholder. It's not a clear win either way, but they are getting closer to being comparable.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Threadiverse refers specifically to the subset of the Fediverse with threaded conversations, like Lemmy and Mbin.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Sounds too much like Threads, the invasive corporate thing which can get fucked. Never going to market for them.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

don't let them change the meaning of our words then

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

The instance I first chose straight up disappeared, so yeah. It wasn't an easy migration.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[–] _bcron_ 62 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

Lemmy has a toxic puddle problem. If your first experience with Lemmy is sauntering into a community and getting chased out for not agreeing with someone hard enough, something like that, you'll probably just go back to Reddit and say 'that place is full of whack jobs'.

And the default sort, kinda hard to dodge

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

My experience is a little better with comments sorted by “top” instead of “active”. “active” seems to promote controversial comments because they get the most replies.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

What is the default sort on Lemmy.World btw - is it Local, or All?

For me without an account, it is All. Which means that they'll see all the tankie stuff, and most will immediately want to nope out (I'm currently sitting at 100% of every person I've ever told about Lemmy irl).

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On the bright side, PieFed adds a warning label to messages on communities located on Beehaw (about their differences in moderation policies), and surely could do the same for lemmy.ml - in fact I saw such a message this morning (sth sth warning do not criticize China or Russia or you are likely to be banned - quite neutrally yet helpfully worded, very much to the point), though now can't seem to reproduce, so perhaps it's in testing.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

It's very hard to convince people that fedi is a healthy place when the default servers are incredibly toxic. I wish they would at least advertise it as such, maybe hide the default from the number one spot. There are several servers up there that accept users that are way more chill.

Also for new selfhosters making it easier to say "these are some problem instances that are commonly blocked, if you want to start out with them". I know that starts a new problem of "but then who decides" and it causes more splintering, but for a lot of posters it's overwhelming the firehouse of vitriol that comes in at first.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Pretty sure that's only true about Lemmy. There are other threadiverse apps. The mistake is people calling the threadiverse lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yep, though the alternatives are not quite there yet software wise, but MBin and Piefed aren’t that far behind..

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Almost everyone in the linked Reddit post seems to be supportive of Lemmy, or even Lemmy users. Even the people who tried it and stopped seem generally warm to the idea and just think it needs polish.

I'd say that this comment section is way more vitriolic than that one lol

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[–] IntergalacticTurtleFucker 27 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] FlyingSquid 10 points 2 weeks ago

100%. That's why it took me until the end of June to join Lemmy even though the blackout was on June 12th.

And I was already hating Reddit before the blackout. But FOMO made me stay and I feel bad about it.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Doesn't [email protected] have like 40k subscribers? Top ten Lemmy community by sub count, iirc.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

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.
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[–] Ithorian 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Because people off Reddit hate everything that its not reddit

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

No idea, quit Reddit over a year ago for fedia/lemmy. Never used x/twitter either, i use mastodon.

[–] Sam_Bass 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

we are like their penal colony in revolt, maybe

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The feel of Lemmy communities is a little different than Reddit, even if the software features are mostly analogous and there are many Redditisms used.

Your average commentor/poster will stand out more in a small community, there's less of being able to post and then slink away.

People have gotten used to a lot more comforting features of modern Reddit, Lemmy in both the users and in the software has more of a "Reddit 10-15 years ago" feel to it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

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.

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