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Is the peak of lemmy behind us?

Posted this on shower thoughts but Ig here is more appropriate, I feel like lemmy is not the place I remember it being last year.

I really liked the atmosphere of civil arguments and understanding here, which is the reason I started posting actively as well, even though I have always been a lurker, but I feel like I have stopped feeling happy but instead more and more agitated when browsing, I remember people having civil discussions and willing to listen to others, content was low, but what each post produced was really high quality, nowadays though I rarely feel like it

People here have now started acting like as if they are some sort of god gifted individuals who are right in every regard, they love to throw the word ‘propaganda’ around but fail to acknowledge they could be a victim of it as well, I remember we could still have discussions about controversial topics without things getting ugly, nowadays it is not like that, comments get weirdly personal and sometimes even turn into insults and even phobic, people are hell-bent that they are right on certain issues, and never consider any other opinion or that something might be more nuanced than they think

I can be a victim of propaganda too, but what I really loved is that you were able to have healthy discussions and put forward your opinions, which meant you were much more aware of everybody elses opinion and their reasoning, which meant you could see things with different perspectives, nowadays though it is very different, you say something slightly controversial and be prepared for the hate comments (remember the mildy infuriating post? The guy ended up deleting it)

I have learned a lot from lemmy, and I have had wonderful conversations with some of you but I feel like the days where we all were collectively trying to build a good, happy and accepting community are gone, I won’t be surprised if any redditor looked us and thought we are a group of really closed minded people who wont accept anything that is not the common sentiment here

I was a little kid when reddit was gaining traction, so I have no Idea what sort of thing happened, maybe it was similar to this? I would really like if some early reddit adopters who also came here add their comments

One of my favorite moments I remember here is when there was some sort of meme about Ramadan, I clicked hesitantly thinking it’s gonna be a war zone, but I was surprised to see people having fun discussing how people deal with fasting where the sun never sets for months, that feeling was beautiful, I guarantee it will be a different situation now

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54 comments
  • Absolutely no way of knowing, since none of us are clairvoyant enough to compare the present to the future.

    21
  • Most interactions I've had here have been very nice and friendly. I see pointless fighting sometimes, but I mostly avoid such posts and communities anyway.

    I guess what I was going for is that there's still tons of good stuff.

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  • No, I don't think so. Today I've read and participated in some great threads about UK politics, the books people are currently reading, some great metal (the music genre) recommendations, Linux distros that are both privacy respecting but easy to use and a few other things.

    I was on reddit pretty much from the start of the Digg migration. It's not really comparable as reddit didn't have subs or comments at first it was literally a link aggregator with votes. When they did start appearing it was OK and then it got increasingly not OK very quickly. I took long, long breaks from it over the years and every time I succumbed and returned with a new account it was noticeably a lot worse. I won't go back again as it feels like every sub, even the smaller ones, are just bombs either constantly going off or about to go off. It thrives on negativity.

    Lemmy simply isn't like that. I'm not naive enough to think it never might be, but right now it's not. Of course there are fall outs and anger but not at the same level of constant vitriol I got accustomed to seeing on reddit.

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  • Seems like you like to roam around in news communities where political news are pretty much common. So I would not be suprised if lemmy seems like what you mentioned in your text in your perspective. Try joining more "fun" communities and leave the news communities.

    While I do think this is a legit question, it's not smart to call the entire lemmy fediverse bad just because the news communities' people were like that.

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    • Tbh there is not really much else going on, I visit asklemmy and nostupidquestions, but there are rarely good new posts, none of the niche communities I am interested in are active, memes are just mostly lurking

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      • Well yeah. That's what I also miss in Lemmy. Niche communities won't be a thing anytime soon if Lemmy doesn't get a little popular. Though you definitely can find communities that are interesting and aren't just political stuff. Or just take a break from Lemmy. After all, Lemmy is just another Reddit with federation.

        I honestly would go back to Reddit if the third party apps were not killed by their API change, I really miss niche communities. My only choice now is to either stay with Lemmy and wait till it (if ever) gets popular or just use Reddit in the browser with uBlock Origin.

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  • Are you butthurt because people didn't like your terrible opinions on public executions?

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  • what each post produced was really high quality

    I've only been participating in discussions on Lemmy groups for 3ish years, but I'm quite sure that never happened. There have always been good and bad posts, good and bad comments, civil and less civil users.

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  • There’s some tense communities but most I’m in are very cheerful.

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  • Unfortunately, I would not be suprised.

    I joined towards the beginning of the Reddit migration, so Im not an OG user or anything, but even in the few months that I've used it, Lemmy feels like its become far smaller and more hostile.

    As you said, when I joined, there was obviously biases, echo-chambers, and trolls, but there was good faith discussions, and arguments on viewpoints rather than just personal attacks or downvotes en-masse with zero rebuttal. As of writing, this post is a pretty perfect example of the change. There are a couple responses with little detail, a highly upvoted personal attack, and all OPs comments are downvoted.

    My best guess is that the lack of content has pushed away more of the average users, leaving mostly just the stubborn and elitist. Making it worse, the lack of content pushes users to /all where they find content not aimed at them. This hostility obviously pushes people away, and causes the issues to snowball. I honestly have no idea how we fix it at this point. It might just be down to getting it more casual users to offset the toxic users, but without huge amounts of funding, I don't see that happening.

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    • I think it might have something to do with moderation too. A lot of quiet communities aren’t as actively moderated lately because activity dwindled down after the initial Reddit influx. So I think more bs is slipping through the cracks a bit too.

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    • It’s not the downvotes really (they were not a problem either before), but the bad faith arguments, insults that is really starting to get to me, I honestly am kinda at fault tbh, tmrw is my physics final, (I came here to take a break, but I am now in a much worse position) and here I am arguing on what is essentially reddit 2.0, but without all those niche communities that makes people stick to a platform, where we can have discussions with people who share a similar interest, I feel bad for all of us, we came here from reddit, thinking we are gonna make a community where we can put aside biases and insults, have healthy discussions and keep out the corpos, but the thing is we have failed in everything we promised each other, except the corpo part

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  • i’m still having fun but lemmy.world needs to examine its moderation policies and get it together. i get that it’s the largest instance, growing pains, etc., but that’s only an explanation, not an excuse.

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