Now that a lot of the commotion has subsided I’m just curious to know how y’all are finding the Lemmy experience in general and whether you use it regularly like you did reddit?
So far so good. In a smaller community I feel more responsible for contributing to discussions. Others seem to be engaging too with thoughtful comments (not just karma-farming inside jokes).
This is helped by the fact that new interesting threads are not immediately buried in heaps of new content, so you actually have time to think of an answer that someone might actually read and reply to. I realize that this is mostly a function of the current scale of the Fediverse and that the more it grows, the more it might just turn into Reddit.
I find I tend to get more replies here.
It’s the Fediverse that I have been searching for.
Somebody on Lemmy made this quote I really like:
Twitter is people you care about posting content you don’t care about. Reddit is people you don’t care about posting content that you do care about
Twitter-like Fedi never clicked for me. I made a bunch of accounts over the course of two, maybe three years, each starting with the intention of maybe making new friends and having a good time. I met a ton of cool people but we never became good friends because I never got really invested into it, simply because my feed was never something I hoped it would be, something exciting.
Lemmy gives me exactly what I was searching for. I didn’t use it prior to thr Reddit migration because there were too few people but now I am very happy
Just another quote I read about twitter/Mastodon:
“You simply shout into the void and hope someone answer.”
Lemmy and Reddit feel more like the old forum culture. And that’s better, imo.
Yeah Twitter style never appealed to me either. Though I’m wondering if I should try Mastodon since it’s supposedly more active than Lemmy.
In my experience, no. I’m not a fan of the microblogging style of discussion as well. I never had a personal twitter account, only my artist account I use to post once a week. I thought I’d try Mastodon, and while it’s nice to be in the fediverse and there a lot of interesting people and posts there, the microblogging format still doesn’t work for me and I basically stopped using my account after 2 weeks. I feel more at home with Lemmy.
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Sounds like me. I signed up to Twitter in 2010 but practically never used it. The short message format never appealed to me and I always thought it was dumb. The heavy focus on politics also put me off.
However if Mastodon is interesting I’m willing to give it a try! Do most people use it anonymously or with their real names?
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There are instances that bump up the max length. The word you’re generally looking for is “glitch” (instances will say they’re running “the glitch fork” or “glitch edition” or will have version numbers ending in +glitch, which has a few features on top of regular Mastodon), although some regular Mastodon instances may also increase the char count the hard way.
Alternatively, Firefish/Misskey by default has ~3000 characters but it’s a completely different experience altogether (although it still federates with Mastodon (like kbin and Lemmy)). I’m not exactly sure on how Akkoma instances are usually set up but that’s worth taking a peek as well.
Of course this doesn’t address the politics stuff but that’s more on you to curate your own experience.
That twitter quote is so true.
I’m just still missing communities that are only on Reddit rn.
Other than that… I’d argue the Lemmy ux is already far superior, so that’s great.
It’s a give an take. I do miss some of the communities but at this time lemmy is more intimate. Some of my favorite communities are so big, being a part of the discussion is like pissing in the wind. As an early adopter on lemmy you can help build and participate more readily. Nothing like having a comment on a thread with 1,000 comments and thinking ‘fuck it no one cares.’ Or worse trying to hamstring your comment into the top 6 or 7 threads for visablity alone.
Some of my favorite communities are so big, being a part of the discussion is like pissing in the wind.
I dig the analogy and had to chuckle.
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You mean you don’t want to see the same whiny post about LTT again?
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Perhaps your filtering has done a good job then!
It’s also really hard to block everything because there isn’t a simple block button available, you have to go into the message and then scroll all the way to the bottom (which is fun when infinite scrolling is switched on).
Try the Voyager app. Long press to subscribe or block direct from your feed!
Eh, it scratches the itch. I don’t touch reddit anymore, outside of web searches. Still, I miss the niche communities that only a massive site like reddit can give life.
i moved to lemmy before the reddit api changes. in january 2023 i stopped using all proprietary software and was looking for alternetives. its way better than reddit, im never going back…
There’s good reason to love Lemmy, and since joining I’ve also gone very Foss and privacy centric but I just feel like it’s a bit quiet, maybe it’s just me
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🤌 perfection
It’s very quiet but it’s so much more personable in the comments.
I’d like to see more human posts than just meme posting and news.
Yeah, I’d love to have my niche communities back as well
Same here, so I started an “art” server. We’ll see how it fares.
Care to share?
Check it out here: lemmy.mindoki.com
Small but I’m still proud :-)
That would be nice. I yearn for the day when I can stop putting “site:reddit.com” into all my web searches cause the answers are all on Lemmy.
Right now this place is good for browsing All, but trying to convince the smaller subs to migrate over here just gets you downvoted and flamed.
Yeah I completely agree, even though I’m subscribed to my favourite communities, they are nowhere near big enough to even fill 5 minutes of scrolling a day
Back before Hexbear re-federated we used to have a sorting algorithm that was a bit better for smaller communities. Right now, Active posts stay for too long and Hot posts don’t yet have enough engagement to encourage people clicking through. I believe there’s talks of adjusting the sorting algorithms, hopefully soon.
Lemmy is great and all. Love it more then I ever did reddit. But it seems like instances are more politically polarized than your average subreddit. It kinda harshes my mellow.
I do like that people feel more genuine as opposed to just broken records repeating overused talking points.
I’ve only been active on Hexbear really since the cth sub got banned and we built that space, but I really like how federation has gone and the influx of new slop and occasional lost libs/chuds.
I know what some of those words mean
Hexbear: the 3rd or so biggest instance on lemmy and by far the most active. It’s where all the people with pronouns next to their names come from. We’re a left unity trans positive community that’s been around for 3 years, mostly made up of Marxists and Anarchists. We were just recently federated with the rest of lemmy about a week ago.
slop: Food for the hogs. Content. Posts. Discussion. Drama. Romance. Danger!
cth: a podcast no one really cares about. A community of leftists outgrew a forum that used to be about them. It got banned from reddit and the refugees turned into Hexbear.
libs: Liberals. From our perspective this includes about 65-75% of the American political landscape. This includes all democrats and about half republicans. These are people who support capitalism. Bernie Sanders is a lib. They are annoying and will betray you in the end but they’re usually the people who can be reasoned with so it’s extra frustrating.
chuds: Fascists. The other 25-35%. Confederate flag waving people who eat burgers as a protest against global warming. Kyle Rittenhouse stans. Coal rollers. The people who will kill you first if you have good politics. They believe above all else in natural hierarchies so the capitalists will turn to them when the left challenges theirs. That’s how Hitler happened.
thanks for the detailed description. feels like my online vocabulary expanded significantly
cth: a podcast no one really cares about. A community of leftists outgrew a forum that used to be about them. It got banned from reddit and the refugees turned into Hexbear.
what do you mean? people definitely care about citations needed.
Once you understand the kind of people who are on hexbear, things will become more clear. Just go to some of their profiles and have a look at what they post
I think a considerably chunk of them are bots
It’s not impossible, but I doubt it…
I hadn’t heard of them until I saw lemmy.ca blocked them earlier. If Canadians are blocking you for being hateful that might be saying something.
They’re one of the oldest instances around 3 years old but only recently federated with other instances.
This post is making me want to add hexbear to a word filter. Specially the blatant 4chan lingo such as “slop”.
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It’s their way of saying “low quality”, usually thrown at things they deem forced by a marketing team. Always gave me some anti-semitic vibes when I used to see it used in context but I’m not sure why off the top of my head.
It’s absolutely not a 4chan thing, “slop” has been used for aaaaaaaages.
I’d say it’s just an american thing, possibly specifically new york? idk
I don’t believe there is any 4chan connection - instead slop is used in the sense of
sometimes in the plural) Scraps used as food for animals, especially pigs or hogs.
Synonyms: hogwash, swill
This might be why. I hate that I’ve seen this stuff before.
That’s gross (thank you for sharing the link, I haven’t heard of that one) but it is 100% not what hexbears mean as they refer to their own forum posts as “slop”. They just mean low effort “content” in the more generic English slang sense.
Yes you’re right (though I am not familiar with hexbear). The chan slang was just derived from the standard slang and once you learn about them it can taint your interpretation of it because dogwhistles can sometimes be subtle.
“If I encounter a word I do not know used by communists, it must be from 4chan because I am the most highly educated and professional person ever to walk the Earth.” — liberals
(I am Jewish and have been terminally online for years and have never heard that ‘slop’ is anti-semitic. Sounds like libs are just using anti-semitism as an empty accusation to silence communists to me, especially heinous when you consider who funded the Nazis in the first place and who rescued the Nazis after the Soviets destroyed them.)
Yeah, it’s ironic. Cause the slop is for US
WE consume the slop, it’s not an insult for the posts it’s an ironic insult towards ourselves for being too online
I’m struggling to find niche communities but overall the comments are more human and not just saying what everyone wants to hear for Internet points. I still plan on hosting my own instance soon and I’m excited for that. I do find it annoying as well when I sort by new and it’s just thousands of repost from reddit.
My problem is that most of the posts are about lemmy or reddit.
It’s not as bad as it was a month ago. Already the content feels more diverse.
Same here. Really hoping the non-lemmy-focus communities can start to get more active now that the commotion is settling down a bit.
Yeah, people need to post in a lemmy drama community or something, I’m sick of it and would like to read about something else.
Lol yeah I know what you mean that bothered me a while ago too, I just wanted to check in
its good, been enjoying it for ~3 years now
Haha, same.
Pretty good, it’s my Reddit replacement (except for Google searches where I still put site:reddit.com, searching Lemmy doesn’t work that well…).
Choosing an instance sucked though.
I went like:
- sh.itjust.works: Found out they’re Canadian, the latency was too much for Europe
- lemmy.ml: Overall pretty good, I liked that NSFW instances were defederated, so I could browse All without seeing porn. Till I realized there is a slur filter that censors your comments and others. So if someone calls you a ‘bitch’ on the Fediverse everyone can read it, except you. You see ‘removed’
- lemmy.world: Largest instance, plenty of local content, good policies overall, but the stability was awful (due to DDOS)
- lemmy.zip: Smaller instance, full federation, super fast and in the EU, I’m staying there for now and moved all my subscriptions and blocked communities (mostly porn, again, I like to browse All) over
I run a tiny eu instance and am open to registrations
The problem with tiny instances is reliability and trust.
If you lose the motivation to run it tomorrow it’s gone. If you run out of money? Gone. If you’re the only admin and you die? Gone.
In addition to that you can read everything I do on your instance. Like all my “private” messages.
If an instance admin is scummy they could even modify the Lemmy code running and save away all passwords and emails in plaintext. Not an issue for me as I use a custom email and random passwords for every service, but it can fuck over random people.
So professional bigger instances do have their benefits too.
How do you create a custom email for everything? That seems hard to me
I own a domain, for example xyz.com, which means I can create whatever email I want, like [email protected].
The mail server I set up forwards all emails to one inbox. Which means I still get an email if you send it to [email protected] or [email protected] and so on, you get the idea.
So when I sign up for an account I don’t use a general email (except for banking stuff, taxes, etc.). If I sign up for Facebook (good riddance) I’d use [email protected]. That way I also know when I suddenly get a lot of spam who lost my email or sold it off :)
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Oh nice. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of self hosted email. Thanks for the insight.
Maybe I’ll try to set up something similar in the future.
In my case it’s self-hosted, but maybe there are email providers where you can use your own domain that enable the same feature (it’s called wildcard usually).
dude, all I ask for at registration time is a nickname and a captcha… reddit, twitter, fb and google all read your shit and train ai models and make billions of dollars every month
I’m sure your shitposts are top secret but idk, what’s your threat model?
Losing all my comments and posts?
embrace the ephemeral bro, I had a 15y/o reddit account (still do but fuck em)
also, you can just export them?
I saw “yarrrr” and chose a great one hahaha
I do use it regularly, but I miss some of the niche gaming communities. You can definitely tell there’s a lot less activity on here, but hopefully it keeps growing with time.
I think its great
Overall a much more friendly bunch of people here.
Thanks you guys! Youre all awesome!
