New here. Migrated from Reddit. Still trying to figure out Lemmy - what’s everyone’s experiences like coming from Reddit and does Lemmy serve as a good alternative? Pros and cons/differences?
I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. I mostly followed music pages like r/TheBeatles and loved to just rant about Beatles albums, Paul McCartney’s latest tour, discuss new releases from other artists and also movies/TV shows. I can’t think of any other website that offers that kind of forum-like discussion other than Lemmy?
I really did always hate that Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber. The way the system works with upvotes and downvotes, if I said anything people don’t agree with, I’d get massively downvoted. I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom… it really felt like I was treading on egg shells. My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song. Really petty.
I’ve always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
It’s the best I’ve found, but I wouldn’t call it a “good” alternative myself no.
Many others have commented on the small communities/lack of niche communities so I’ll simply say I agree with the takes in this thread there.
Personally though, I generally find Lemmy to be far less tolerant of any dissenting opinions across most communities. And man do I mean any. There’s a plethora of topics that aren’t even worth trying to discuss here because if you introduce the slightest bit of nuance to a hardline take you’ll be downvoted, insulted, and ignored.
A quick example that comes to mind are services such as Spotify/Youtube. To make a long story short, I find that I use Youtube often enough that I don’t mind paying for Youtube premium. They need to make money somehow to continue providing that service and I can’t fucking stand ads so hey sure it’s worth the monthly payment to me. I’m a pretty satisfied customer all things considered.
Try offering that perspective in any related thread and you’ll be called bootlicker and made to feel like you’re propping up Satan himself for daring to pay for Youtube and be happy to do so.
There’s other, similar topics. Some are easier to avoid, like the FuckCars community. I was a pretty big fan of that community on reddit but on Lemmy most threads seem to truly believe we need to go 100% no cars at all and there is no middleground damnit. Other topics manage to work their way into damn near any thread. Biden could literally pull a child and puppy from a burning building and there will always be comments about how he’s still a genocidal maniac and basically evil. That entire war is basically just not worth talking about here imo.
And then there’s little stuff. For example, don’t ever say you use Windows here lest a whole horde of people jump in to call you an idiot for not having switched to Linux I mean really what’s wrong with you using the most popular OS in the world by a large margin. Stuff like that.
So I guess to summarize my feelings here, I personally believe the echo-chamber is far worse on Lemmy than reddit and that’s primarily due to the smaller community. A lot of likeminded people came to Lemmy and we’re missing a lot of middleground opinions that come naturally with a larger, more diverse population. Too many people view everything as black and white and if you sit in grey both extremes are against you.
There are absolutely exceptions; I have seen respectful discourse on the site. But the general trend I perceive here is that the echo-chamber is far worse.
yeah. extremism seems to be the norm here. and you will be harassed and insulted and told your a POS if you even mildly disagree with the extremist narrative. most of the content seems to be angry leftism idealism that reads ‘young idealist’ who thinks ideological purity is the solution to problems and is incapable of acknowledging a complex and pragmatic approach to any issue at all. and generally people who are totally detached from the average person’s perspective/experience, as per your windows comment.
it’s just people being people. people don’t like anyone who disagrees with them. it hurts their feelings. so they act out.
i will say at least the mods don’t ban you for disagreement or injecting a dose of reality into a simplistic ideological narrative about the world… which is why i gave up on reddit.
Interesting points. I feel a bit let down then and not sure I’ve found what I’m looking for.
One question… Say a new season of your favourite TV show just dropped, where do you go online to discuss it? I’m surprised that in 2024 it’s difficult to find somewhere online to just talk about topics. I do love Instagram but that’s more picture based, X/Threads are just random shouts into a void, Facebook is Facebook… I struggle to think of any options other than Reddit, sadly. But I’m open to suggestions and just curious to know where people would immediately turn - to see what other people are saying about the show.
I think the poster above is right in most ways, but it’s also pretty easy to see around the negatives.
Give it a try for a month and see what your experience is like. Block a couple servers/communities and you might find it’s rather nice here.
My reply was a lot wordier, so I just wanted to say I 100% agree with pelotron here. They have the right of it IMO.
I focused pretty hard on the negatives because many other posters here have already hit a lot of the highlights and I felt they left out the negatives. It’s certainly not all bad. Absolutely try it out.
Just to start off: I would recommend experiencing it for yourself first. A lot of people hold a very different perspective from me, even just in this thread. Maybe it’s the specific communities I frequent that are like this, I dunno. But it certainly is worth giving a chance if nothing else. Costs you nothing more than however much time you decide is worth investing into seeing if the site is a good fit for you. And also, I truly believe Lemmy has the potential to grow into something greater than it is currently. Which is why I’m still here checking it daily. I don’t find it’s a good replacement right now, but I have hope that it has the best shot at becoming a good replacement.
I hate to say it, but generally if I want to see discussion around a new game/TV show/book/whatever I find Reddit to still be the best place to do that. IMO, Reddit’s overall quality has dipped quite a bit (browsing /r/all) but the smaller communities are often still good. Of course, all it takes is one shithead mod to ruin that, but I suppose I’ve gotten lucky.
I took steps to distance myself from reddit with the 3rd party app fiasco. I never bother browsing /r/all anymore, I don’t use reddit on mobile anymore, stuff like that. But I hopped into Old School Runescape recently and, well, just look at the OSRS community on Lemmy. The top posts are 9/10 months old. So I browse r/2007scape in order to discuss the game.
There’s a great silver lining to Lemmy being so small though: one person can make a large difference. I believe with enough effort it’s possible for one person to grow communities on here and that’s pretty cool. I don’t have the time/energy to do that, so I go to where others are already gathered to discuss things But, if you’ve got the mind for it, there’s opportunity to be the change you want to see. It’s just not going to be easy and it’s going to be slow.
Just copy Linux Mint onto an USB stick. No need to boot it, you hang it around your neck like a cross, and display it to raging pinguinoids to pacify them.
I am using Debian, in case you were wondering.