2y ago

Why does Lemmy feel so fresh compared to Reddit?

As a long time Reddit user, there's something about Lemmy and the fediverse that feels really refreshing and new. I think it has to do with a few things...

People are more respectful of each other and interested in discussion and being social.
Less trolls (users are probably older?)
Due to it not being absolutely huge, I feel like people will actually see my posts and comments instead of being lost in a sea of content. I suppose once Lemmy grows this will change, however the cool thing about the fediverse are the new servers. So you can stick to the server when you want smaller community discussion and go to "all" when you want more populated threads.
The clean UI feels refreshing and clean, almost like the early internet.

What have you noticed? Do you find it refreshing too?

25 comments

Ok so let me throw out some old timer wisdom. This is what the social media/forums/the Internet are like when the cream is skimmed off and the 90% of users who only browse, and the 8% who only vote are gone. Enjoy it while you can. The summer always ends.
- Absolutely, my first thought was this is what internet was in the 90s and 00s. Slow, good yarns, and lame jokes.
  Tbh there's already too many memes here though. Half my front page is 196 and German me_irl sometimes.
  
  You can block those communities if you want.

In addition to what everyone has said, Lemmy doesn't have an established culture compared to Reddit. No in-jokes like the poop knife for example

You don't have your post deleted for forgetting a minor rule and there's a chance that your post will be seen instead of hidden under countless new posts.
- Even worse when you browse /r/all, find an interesting post about some topic, join the discussion, type out a long reply, hit send..
  And 3 seconds later you get an automod message that your comment was removed. Because you aren't a subscriber to that (default!!!) sub, or you aren't verified, or you used a word they don't like.
  And even worse: You join a discussion, got some good points back and forth, everything is great. You try to reply to the latest comment in that chain to keep the conversation up and suddenly your comments get blocked. Because it was a /r/blackpeopletwitter post (you didn't even notice as you found it on /r/all) and at some point they only locked it down for verified black users, kicking you out of the discussion.
  I mean sure, have your own space on Reddit (even if it's basically racism), that's fine. But then subs like these shouldn't be default subs on /r/all when they constantly lock down threads.

Yeah man. Lemmy definitely has that early internet feel. I love it. Hope you're having a good day.

I was on Mastodon and Lemmy roughly a year before the Twitter and Reddit fiascos. I never was active on Twitter, never even had an account, but I’ll admit Reddit was my jam. I didn’t even use any of the 3rd party apps, I actually did use their main app and had no issues with it (except for the occasional annoying ad on my mobile device…). But when the needless greed of Spez started to show at the seams and the communities there started to divide, I took an afternoon to delete everything from nearly 4 years of posts/comments.
Both Mastodon and Lemmy were FAR less active prior to these migrations, and so I honestly checked in once every couple months. But then Mastodon started showing up in my main news feeds due to Musk’s idiocy, and I knew it was time…
Similarly, when Spez started to make the same decisions, I already knew where the party was likely to move.
I only started using Lemmy again yesterday when Memmy came out as I dislike using social media from my desktop (though I do occasionally).
It’s nice to see so much more activity here now. It’ll probably never get to the levels of Reddit, but hey that can be a good thing in its own right.

I feel like people who moved to Lemmy from reddit are really incentivized to help it grow, so I am constantly seeing encouragements for people to interact / upvote / post content, which is great. I think that the community here is very motivated, and so even though there are less people, you get more engagement.

The negativity is definitely less. Sure, out of say fifty comments to a post there's maybe two disgruntled souls. Overall it's conducive to discussion.
Over on reddit I kept to just hobby subreddits for the most part to make comments. Only way to not come across the trolls.
Yes, the clean UI is wonderful. It's good to have something simple. It's also fun to watch something grow.

I think the lack of a karma equivalent, and thus karma farming, results in much more thought out and unique posts/comments.
- Torn between replying with "this!" as a meme about how generic responses like that are used to farm karma and making a joke about how "of course someone with only 1 reputation point would say there's no karma equivalent." Idk how reputation works and if its only internal to instances or a shared across instances. But its possible it does become a karma equivalent in the future.
  
  Reputation seems borked at the moment, it counts downvotes but not upvotes so I'm sitting at -34 right now lol

It's called the honeymoon effect. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can acknowledge that lemmy is vulnerable to all the same failings as reddit, and the sooner we can take steps to safeguard against those failings.
If we instead say "no no, lemmy is different, look at how much better things inherently are over here", then we're doomed to go down the same path.

silky smooth apps. not overwhelmingly populated and serious.

Definitely people here are much more polite, the contrast is just striking.
- I haven't seen a single comment that began with "Imagine.." yet. The lack of immature and pointless sarcasm is a breath of fresh air
  
  Those users aren't intelligent enough to understand what the Fediverse is, why they should use it, or even how to sign up.

There was a time where the internet was a place for fun. Purely fun! No profit-based platforms, no mass abuse of users, no privacy violating practices, no forced ID verification, and no political correctness censorship enmass.
This age was known as The Golden Age of the Internet. It was something I saw gradually disappear like a frog being slowly boiled in water.
I'd like the hope we can one day come back to this era. The Golden Age was an escape from reality, while this corporate ran bullshit has been nothing but profit focused greed with a constant reminder of reality.
I cannot express in words how amazing the Golden Age was. We never knew we were in it until it was one day gone. Decentralization and freedom from centralized entities may allow the Internet the perhaps return to the Golden Age. An age where the Internet purely exists for everyone to have fun in and be able to express themselves freely without censorship.
- If I were given the opportunity, I wouldnt swtich back to the state of " the good old internet" .
  It was full of popups and viruses. DL speed was 3kbps on good days. Hence without any form of streaming. Depending on operator, you had to pay for the landine communication between your PC and the provider. If a family member picked up the phone from another room while you were using the modem, you got dcded. Of course, one coulnt be joined by phone when he was using internet.
  You have to weigh the pros and cons.

25 comments