Asklemmy

It's good but the lack of people and interaction sucks. One of my favourite things about Reddit is reading the comments and discussions, but there's almost none of that here.

I usually really like seeing the little number pop up when I get a response on my comment, instead of dreading it's someone trying to pick an internet fight. People are nice here. (Usually)

But it needs more original content, that's how Lemmy and the entire fediverse can grow.

Everyone on the fediverse is a white male tech nerd. Obviously, not everyone, but it really feels that way. There is a distinct lack of voices from outside that demographic, and it's super obvious. Reddit had this, too, but it's way worse here.

It'll get better in that regard, but it'll take a decade to get there.

Pros: generally friendlier communities and discussions. Sufficiently shitty communities are defederated rather than tolerated until they gain the attention of advertisers. There are no advertisers, communities are voluntarily supported through donations.

Cons: Reddit is still about 100 times larger and therefore has more content. Sometimes posts/comments dont federate. Gatekeeping is still fairly common.

My experience is only with Lemmy.

Pros:

• My app functions

Cons:

• Significantly reduced amount of content
• Most of my content from Reddit is not available here or has an incredibly small community
• A tremendous number of posts are polarized to the point of being aggressive
• A disturbingly large number of openly suicidal comments (Eg. "I see no reason to live except..." )
• Seemingly every climate-related post has someone stating "eat the rich" as a solution to the climate

Overall, mostly negative, but since the alternative for me is nothing (my Reddit client of choice doesn't work), it's still better than nothing and is something to scroll through briefly while on the toilet.

People really seem to hate farmland and cars.

I love it. Don't have to bend over and take it from the corpos and shareholders.

If we don't like how one host runs their server we can fuck off elsewhere or run a server ourselves.

I agree with the points being made here, but for me personally, my favorite thing is that I'm not constantly being corralled into some corporate trap like other social media - especially lately. I'm being treated like a user again, instead of a statistic in some dickhead's CPM chart.

Very positive on mastodon. Mostly positive on Lemmy. It has some of the same problem with trolls and stuck-up/rude posters that Reddit does but for the most part. 90% of my interactions are positive. Probably closer to 95%

I think I just realized after reading this thread that I've posted more threads on here since I started a few months ago than in all my time on Reddit. Part of that is genuinely missing the niche communities I liked there and helping to build ones for people with similar interests here (and I'm finding new ones in the process).

Another part is my long-standing interest in decentralization in general. Ruthless efficiency has centralized everything, from where I shop to where I hang out. There's something civic lost in that somewhere. Things don't have to be as efficient as possible, and good jobs and honest opportunities for socializing are created when it's not all striving to place offerings at the altar of stock dividends. It's why I don't mind seeing the duplicate communities on the Fediverse. The sociologist in me is fascinated to see how it all shakes out in a place where the forces shaping these things aren't all sociopathic.

That said, I do wish development was more active. I imagine there's some hesitancy for users to literally buy in, but they really do need more funding for developers.

Pros: Moderation quality, app ecosystem, no corporations or ads.

Cons: Small community, wayyy too much duplication of 'subreddits' on Lemmy across different servers (inherently not an issue on Mastodon).

I think it’s incredible, just needs some more love from users and developers to get it to a stable place. It truly feels like something we’ve all built together. I think the pros outweigh the cons by far

I like the flexibility and freedom.
I dislike all the duplicate stories clogging the feed

People actually get to my posts because there are fewer posts, and I'm happy my efforts are being looked at.

A lot of people comment that they don't like the lack of content/comments. I personally see it as a plus. I curate the communities I subscribe to, comment and post in those, and find the discourse and topics chosen to be much more reasonable and thought out instead of spraying vitriol and diatribe across my screen daily. I was on Reddit for 15 years and Lemmy has been a massive breath of fresh air.

The only thing I don't like about the fediverse is the constant stream of people blathering on about how "we" supposedly need to centralize and homogenize it and fill it up with botspam, so that easily confused morons with short attention spans will move here.

I love the small-town feel of it. It almost feels like the old-school forums, where you felt like part of a community.

The relative sparsity of comments is a major negative, but I'm hopeful that that'll change with time.

pros

• smaller community (too many stuff on reddit)
• awesome simple UIs (mastodon, lemmy)
• many third part apps
• people don't respond with one word

cons

• instances disappearing
• confusing at first

I like that there are zero ads, not even in the app I'm using. It's kinda weird.

most places i visit arent riddled with toxic assholes, i won't receive hate messages and replies for existing. generally a nice place

i just miss the lack of content and lack of small niche communities from reddit, i have like 8 trans related communities subscribed and content trickles in a couple times a day

less time scrolling is nice but as every social media shits itself i have been running out of options to take my mind off life for a while lol

I’m seeing the exact same fatal flaw I’ve seen on every single forum that gets any traction where moderators are afraid to ban people, or at least temporarily ban them, when they are just generally disruptive/acting like assholes. Just because someone doesn’t clearly 100% break a rule to the T doesn’t mean they should get to stick around. Disruption is grounds enough to remove someone.

You do not have an obligation to free speech. You are not a government entity. Yes, it is laudable to embrace different points of view and allow the free exchange of ideas. But some people are just assholes and keeping them around is bad for the community. Don’t be afraid to ban those people.

Mastodon is great. Feels very much like the early days of Twitter and is a solid product so far. I have a PixelFed account, but I haven't played around with it that much yet. Seems pretty good., though we shall see. I have an account on a Matrix server, but I've only signed-in and used it once; Discord is still far more useful.

Lemmy is...Eh. Idk. Rome (or reddit) wasn't built in a day, I know. It can be difficult to find the content or discussion I want because people are so spread out. Usually when numbers are low, you don't want people spread out because it makes communities feel empty, further driving people away.

But more than all that, I find the platform itself so limited. Like the moderation tools are terrible. Can't even block a problematic domain. It seems like if you delete a comment in a thread, all the comments underneath it vanish. Makes it difficult to sometimes leave moderation comments. And Federation or Defederation seems way too binary to me; there should be shades of gray. Though I think the Fed/DeFed binary is true of all Fediverse services.

Like I enjoy spending time here. But I'm not yet convinced that Lemmy is the right platform. FWIW, I'm also trying Kbin on a separate account; in some ways seems better, but in other ways, just seems confusing.

My experience has been almost entirely positive. Lots of nice people. A few jerks, but that's going to happen anywhere, and there are surprisingly few for a platform where you can essentially be anonymous.

I'm a mod of /c/Cooking, which is my way of contributing. Things won't grow unless we help it along.

Since some communities aren't quite so active, I tend to set my view All + Top 6 Hours instead of Subscribed. That gives me a nice variety of stuff to look at, plus it lets me discover new things.