Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go "Lemmy is getting worse and worse," or "I'm leaving Lemmy," or worse, "I'm leaving for Beehaw."

If you're using Beehaw, then you're using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don't like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don't get our terminology right.

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[–] quinten 160 points 2 years ago (16 children)

Lemmy feels as a aplha/beta product that we ar all testing right now. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, I like Lemmy more then Reddit. But you cannot expect everyone to love it right now.

For Reddit its clear: you sign up, you search for a community and you subscribe.

Here, you sign up (if you don't get the spinning wheel). You search for a community. Oh, it is on another instance. What is a instance? Then you browse and see different Lemmy websites. You get confused, you heard something about Fediverse but what is it?

Also, there is no karma what important is for many users. Mod tools are extremly limited and all the apps you can use on mobile are in alpha/beta/in development.

There should be a easy to understand welcome page upon sign-up and I think this needs to be prioritized if we want to welcome (more) mainstream users. The post that explains how Lemmy works on c/lemmyworld doesn't cut it.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (20 children)

Karma is important? The only "use" for it is to do what? users farm it so adding karma or something similar would just make this place worse

[–] carl_dungeon 19 points 2 years ago (5 children)

it can be used to differentiate troll accounts from people that make generally liked comments
it gives users a rush and encourages participation
it can help with ranking

Now, that said, there are ways to game those things too, but that’s the concept and some of the bigger benefits.

[–] hatter 70 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I still receive PMs every once in a while from random people on Reddit thanking me for comments that I've posted years ago. Those comments have less than 20 karma combined. I also have a comment saying "Nice." which contributes nothing and is sitting at almost 3000. Karma is meaningless.

[–] TheTeaMonster 60 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nice.

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[–] Aceticon 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A picture of a kitten in the appropriate general forum or a statement agreeing with the general opinion on a top comment on some politcal forum will get many times more Karma than a post on an expert forum that took 30 minutes to validate and write and is anchored on a decade of domain expertise.

Beyond it's utility (for commercial social media sites) as a gamification element (a score, which incentivises people compete with each other in producing easilly digestible content that pleases the general population in a forum - which, note, doesn't mean its correct, well researched or anchored in genuine domain knowledge), Karma, at least as done in Reddit, is near useless.

Maybe some kind of per-forum Karma or just a per-forum summary of the reception of past posts for a user might be useful, but "score"-Karma just indicates the ability to produce lots of content (so, produced quickly, hence almost certainly not validated) which is popular in large forums (which are invariably the generic ones).

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[–] dot20 45 points 2 years ago

Lemmy feels as a aplha/beta product that we ar all testing right now.

It is an alpha product. That's why the version number starts with a 0.

[–] BigJim 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To be fair Reddit felt like a beta product for it's entire lifespan too

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I like the sh.itjust.works lemmy because of the name.

Also, apparently they're run with 99% renewable energy which is pretty cool.

[–] AbsurdityAccelerator 44 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I actually hate it because of the name. I can't be the only one.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The name is the reason I picked it. Just for the lulz. And apparently the name was picked by the community, which puts it in the same category as Boaty McBoatface, so I'm not too surprised it's rather silly.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago (7 children)

in the past 10 minutes i have had so many mixed emotions towards you.

I have come across your comments about 7 times and each time I either feel like fking you up or giving you a hug.

It's interesting how opinions of different people may differ or align depending on the context. Wars don't really matter if you think about it this way..

I propose a truce

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

Fuck war, it's hell on Earth.

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[–] timelighter 75 points 2 years ago (4 children)

where am I right now?

[–] Piers 43 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Lemmy.world. Which is ONE example of a Lemmy instance. Lemmy instances don't even need to have Lemmy in the name.

Lemmy is a system that allows anyone to create what is essentially their own Reddit. Each of those are called instances. Lemmy.world is one of those, Lemmy.ml, is another, Beehaw is a third. Each of those Lemmy instances are run by different people for different reasons. Each of them have their own communities. A community is like a subreddit. The post you commented on ("PSA: Lemmy.ml is not Lemmy") was posted to the "Fediverse" community on Lemmy.world. Lemmy.ml could (and possibly does) have it's own Fediverse community. That would be separately run with separate content to the Lemmy.world Fediverse community.

Where it gets a little confusing, is that users in each of those different instances, can access and participate in the communities in each other's instances. IE, if you set up your own Lemmy instance called TimeLighter.IsCool and created a community called "Timelighter appreciation society" I could potentially join that community using my Lemmy.world account (assuming you allowed it.) I wouldn't need to create an account specifically on the TimeLighter.IsCool Lemmy to access it. If I did though I'd still (in theory) be able to use it to participate in the communities here at Lemmy.world.

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[–] ToastyWaffle 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!

[–] CannaVet 23 points 2 years ago (5 children)

THAT'S MY PURSE

I DON'T KNOW YOU

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago

why am I right now?

[–] klyde 32 points 2 years ago

Lemmy.world

[–] Jackolantern 52 points 2 years ago (20 children)

Why, what’s wrong with lemmy.ml? Can someone eli5 me?

My account actually lives there but I also made a lemmy world one.

[–] linearchaos 28 points 2 years ago (6 children)

It seems to me that community choice in Lemmy is far less important than community choice is in Mastodon. In Mastodon you subscribe to some people or maybe some lists but you're largely dependent upon what types of local traffic are happening. I couldn't reliably fill my feed with interesting people in Mastodon. With Lemmy, I'm filling my feed with interesting communities, while the content with a lot of these communities is still kind of light It's at least enough to keep me relatively interested. I don't have to rely on the local splarg to keep me entertained.

Maybe a third to a half of my lemmy subscriptions are remote I've only blocked a handful of idiots. The experience thus far as better than Reddit honestly.

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[–] porkins 20 points 2 years ago (28 children)

In the lead developer’s GitHub, he sympathizes with Marxism including those that committed atrocities.. He apparently censors lemmy.ml with this in mind. Since it is open source though, I can trust that other instances might be better maintained. There is no way I’ll use any personal information in my signup because this all probably is going to China.

[–] BenHouston 28 points 2 years ago

my signup because this all probably is going to China.

China is sophisticated enough that it can vacuum up all the information it wants about without any involvement of a Lemmy.lm admin.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Just a remark: "Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid" admins or lemmy.ml ARE the devs of lemmy software. Moreover, they developed lemmy because they where thrown out of reddit for did something "stupid".

[–] woelkchen 42 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I just had a look at Lemmy's GitHub. Of the web interface alone, the second biggest contributor only joined two weeks ago. And there are many others. Those are new developers. So in essence: lemmy.ml admins are some of the software developers and are actually now in the minority, unless I missed something very obvious.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (1 children)

At the same time though since it's all open source, if things on the software side get out of control the software can fork.

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[–] solrize 42 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (19 children)

I actually haven't seen much mention of tankies on any Lemmy except as a joking reference here or there. I'm on lemmy.ml and the signup there said explicitly that it is a free software community. The signup had no particular reference to other politics, though I have no idea what is present in the admins' minds. There is also lemmygrad.ml which is explicitly socialist.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I've said it before but I'll say it again, when account migration is delivered, it'll be easier for people to grasp.

Also I'll say this to anyone that stumbles across this post before joining Lemmy. Look for a small instance with room to grow as opposed to a massive instance. You'll find your user experience a lot nicer.

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[–] Shadywack 34 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It feels like this is more aimed at outing admins or mod teams that people will disagree with. I have no issue with any other Lemmy instance, because I'm not a member of their instance. The community will have some things to figure out as far as easily relating the nature of instances and the fediverse, which it looks like will take some trial and error.

There's things users will pick up on just fine, while the main complaint is "too many communities" where people desire a centralized system to replace Reddit with. It's my personal opinion that people only think they want a centralized system, and given the situation with Reddit, it highlights how beneficial of a concept the Fediverse and Lemmy itself is over a centralized system, but I digress.

Lemmy.ml's stances on Russia, China, and "tankies" is great....for them. I have no issue with how any other instance is run or what their community prefers for a style of moderation. They are free to run it as they see it. It's telling that it went from the largest instance to taking a backseat to many others though given the word got out prior to this post, and that's fine. I won't begrudge them over their instance's nature. It just makes me love Lemmy as a whole.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago (23 children)

Just out of curiosity, what did the devs do that was stupid?

[–] porkins 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The devs hold extreme political views. They are on board with the Tiananmen Square massacre being necessary and shit like that. Like this post says though, there are plenty of instances that are totally run by normal people. Additionally, the Lemmy server code is open source, so that helps to ensure that it isn’t doing anything nefarious behind-the-scenes.

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

Source: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579

Text:

Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/

"The Uyghur genocide is as real as white genocide."

Here they are again denying it:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/

"The holocaust was a genocide that actually happened, with all the evidence that goes along with it. There is no Uyghur genocide."

"Do you believe in anything as soon as the word "genocide" gets attached to it? What about "white genocide"? Are you a white genocide denier?"

And just so nobody can deny that parentis_shotgun is a Lemmy dev: -

“I’m one of the devs of Lemmy” https://i.imgur.com/5kp9BP0.png

Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user’s profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it’s quite interesting.

One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/

Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it… perhaps because they’re in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

https://lemmy.ml/post/1167199

More details in the link above, here is the introduction:

"My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.

Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors."

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[–] _kato 25 points 2 years ago

I feel like for most people who aren't that into technology the concept of a decentralized network can seem a little overwhelming given most of them are used to social media that is controlled by one company.

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