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...

  1. People are more respectful of each other and interested in discussion and being social.
  2. Less trolls (users are probably older?)
  3. 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.
  4. The clean UI feels refreshing and clean, almost like the early internet.

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

ImFresh3x,

Because I’m here (see username)

fleabomber,

A lot of us have been nofapping reddit for a while so it's it a bit of a release to interact in this familiar way.

ergifruit,

"nofapping Reddit" is the greatest way i've ever seen anyone describe the situation

Bruce,

Here, people still feel as guests whereas on reddit, people stayed long enough to feel the place is their’s.

(“old timers shouln’t have to deal with this shit again”)

blek,
@blek@sh.itjust.works avatar

Exactly, I am very new to Lemmy and have been met with nothing but open arms from every community. Reddit at times definitely felt more elitist.

Knutsen,

Agree completely. I thinkk my reddit account is 13 years old now. I got over the new reddit UI, took me a while. Still the main thing is, the discussions are what made reddit. Right now, everybody seems to be jumping ship to lemmy/kbin, but most of the main topics are either crapping on reddit or trying to compare reddit with lemmy/kbin, instead of letting it be it's own thing.

My main site will still be reddit, if the quality of posts starts rising without bashing reddit on every 2nd one, then I might change completely.

Also, the UI still feels a bit basic to me.

thetreesaysbark,

I think the comparison is valid though. People want to know if Lemmy is a good alternative for them and you can only do that by comparing.

It doesn't take away that Lemmy is it's own thing.

sauna7843,

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.

AB7ORH7D,

That's sort of what I feel like this is - or at least that's what I've felt from browsing Lemmy. No ads and no ragebait/doomscrolling. There's nothing requiring that I stay engaged - in a way it's almost respectful of my interests and time.

Mugmoor,
@Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I remember when it died. Web 2.0

PizzasDontWearCapes,

As in when the advertising apps came along, right?

Mugmoor,
@Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It's when YouTube and Social Media began to take off.

krdo,
@krdo@lmmy.net avatar

Yeah, I loved the golden age. Back when everyone had a Geocities homepage and just linked to each other's sites. Back when getting a link to your homepage into the Yahoo index meant something.

Bruce,

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.

morrowind,
@morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

Just because we go back culturally, doesn’t mean we have to go back technologically as well.

Ignacio,
@Ignacio@lemmy.world avatar

The fediverse is a great system for moderation. I've been on Mastodon for years now and it's stayed pretty pleasant.

Domille,

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.

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

This is a huge part of it. People are in "this is my new home, I'm gonna wash the dishes just this once!". I imagine things will calm down later.

Domille,

yeah, that's pretty much what happened with Mastodon, as far as I can tell. There are still folks there, but it is much quieter now vs when I first joined it.

esty,
@esty@lemmy.ca avatar

i dont feel that its quiet, more that people have settled in, the users that stuck with masto use it religiously just like how people used twitter

swoos,

This

Pmmeyourtoaster,

I've experienced this as well and have enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.

lvl100magikarp,

Yep, I try to upvote everything and comment as much as I can. I’m still confused about how to post to specific instances on Jerboa though. Like I’m typing the name but it’s not showing up in the dropdown

The most discouraging thing that happened was that when I wrote a long and thoughtdul comment and press send, Jerboa gives me the “java type blabla” error, and I lost everything I typed. Then I don’t wanna type it again and I just give up on commenting

Hopefully these issues will be fixed soon! As I understand it it’s not even an issue with Jerboa specifically.

Varyag,
@Varyag@lemm.ee avatar

I've gotten to the habit of Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C my comments right before hitting Reply, just in case that happens. Luckily, it's been happening less and less, at least on desktop browser. Hopefully Jerboa gets to that point soon, too.

dogmuffins,

I agree. If lemmy continues to grow, inevitably some servers will be shit, but I imagine there will be other non-federated or less-federated instances. beehaw has already started down that path.

Trolls are generally looking for maximum carnage, so I imagine there’s less incentive / reward posting somewhere like lemmy.

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

As an experienced shitposter, the shittiness of the posting often correlates directly with the inability of moderators to clean it up.

Venutianxspring, (edited )

I think the biggest impact is that the early adopters that have left reddit are the heavy users that respected the flow and community of Reddit. So the good of Reddit has come here, but the general populace and the keyboard warriors haven't figured it out yet, fortunately.

It does feel fresh though, like Reddit did when Digg first ate shit and everyone left for Reddit

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ehh I just like people owned things vs corporate overlords dictating what I can do or see. Keyboard warriors are here tho, have seen many an argument around here about whether to defederated this or ban that or nuke some country.

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Because everything is small and manageable for mods right now, and everyone is talking to everyone else.

Lemmy also has the advantage that the default "hot" sort favors recency instead of upvotes so that you can get into a thread pretty late and still have your comments be seen.

Akasazh,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

Hi Margot, just wanted you to know that you're always in my "hot" sort. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

forgotmylastusername,

I think it’s partially attributable to Lemmy phone apps haven’t taken off yet. Phone posting is a different medium than desktop posting with regards to McLuhans “the medium is the message” principle. Phone usage appeals to the lowest common denominator. People use it as a time waste to mindlessly scroll. The cognitive load is much lower. Thus shitty content bubbles to the top because that’s all the brain power people are giving it. Phone usage is not conducive to consuming depth of content nor contributing it.

Additionally I think the lower cognitive engagement tends to lead people into greater fuckwad behavior. You aren’t on a board with human beings on the other side of a keyboard. It’s just a stupid app on your phone.

I think if I’m right then in time Lemmy with death spiral not unlike reddit if phone apps mature and Lemmy apps become a mainstream daily use type of affair. I doubt that will happen without the capitalist engine driving it though.

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

Am on phone. Should I skip for low cognitive effort?

Potato_in_my_anus,

I’m on my phone too using Jerboa.

TrinityTek,

I've only ever used Lemmy from a phone, and mostly using Jerboa as well.

Zetaphor,
@Zetaphor@zemmy.cc avatar

You're also forgetting that with a centralized platform everyone is stuck under the same roof. If we do reach that level of saturation then the communities can always splinter into a different instance or group of federated instances.

The problem with reddit was once we reached the point of everyone being there and the overall quality lowering, there was no refuge for the more engaged users to congregate and reform the communities that focus on quality over quantity. You could try and flee to more niche subreddits but it's really not the same, as demonstrated by OP making this post.

And then as you pointed out, the financial incentives are very different here, which will change how users engage with the platform and how the platform evolves as a result. Centralized platforms do everything to drive engagement to increase ad impressions and potential value to ad distributors. We have an opportunity to build communities with entirely different business models where growth is not an imperative.

clausetrophobic,

I don't actually think it's got much to do with having a phone app or not. I see what you are saying with the medium being the message, but I don't think the "medium" is phones or computers.

You're right about the medium being the message though, it's just that the medium is a nerdy federated social media. Right now we are in the first or second big wave of new users. Not quite the nerdiest of the nerds who would have been using Lemmy since the beginning, but we are getting the "early adopters" and the people willing to go out on a limb to try something new. These are the kinds of people who are likely to interact with a community in a positive way, because they are already investing themselves into something before it is established.

I am using a phone app to write this message right now, it was really easy and accessible for me to login and get to grips with the UI. There are loads of people just like me, in fact I would be willing to bet Lenny is being used by 80% mobile users. It's just how we communicate with the world these days. Very few people browse social medias on a computer.

JoeBidet,
@JoeBidet@lemmy.ml avatar

Because it’s run by the people for the people! :)

buckykat,

It's not run to maximize shareholder value

xtratrestrial,

That was my favorite part! Don't you just love being a tiny cog on the capitalist wheel of despair?

krackalot,

I just wish the orphan crushing machine wasn't so slow. JUST DO IT!!! Or preferably don't and stop sucking, but I know that won't happen.

Spacemanspliff,

Even if they were to come out fire spez and go say ‘our bad let’s stop and talk about this’ I’m still not going back.

buckykat,

On reddit I deliberately refrained from up/down voting because I hate feeding capitalist algorithms. I'm trying to unlearn that habit now.

RedCanasta,

At least here there is no algorithm I think?

buckykat,

Certainly there's some kind of algorithm behind sorting by Hot or Top Day or whatever, but it's not trying to sell me stuff or sell my preferences to anybody

Zetaphor,
@Zetaphor@zemmy.cc avatar

The only algorithms here are for sorting posts based on activity and recency, rather than trying to maximize engagement so you see more ads. Also it's all completely open source.

bitsplease,

As much as I’d love to think otherwise, i think a significant amount of the good feeling and comradery that we’re seeing now is due to us being in a bit of a honeymoon phase. You saw the same thing on Mastadon after the Twitter migration, everyone was singing kumbaya and holding hands, but overtime it started to regress a bit (though not nearly as much) towards a more “twitter” feel.

I’m sure over time it’ll stop being quite so feel-good and happy, but the fact that it’s community run and less centralized will help a lot in the long run i think. A lot of the friction and tension on Reddit was due in one way or another to it’s centralization - if you had a popular subreddit that was run by shitty mods, there wasn’t much you could do about it. here, you can just create a new version of the same sub on a different instance, and it’s a lot easier for people to “move” over to the new one.

I think the lower population helps a lot as well, right now the majority of the people on Lemmy are good faith users who care about the platform and want it to succeed. When you have 100’s of millions of users like Reddit does, you’re going to get a lot more bad faith users and people who just want generic content to scroll on

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

Soon we'll all be strangers and snobs and kick each other in the ribs to say hi

loffiz,

Agree on all your points! Not trying to sound arrogant here but I think content gets a lot more "bland" with more users, or at least in communities without great passion. It's much more personal here and posts generally puts interesting thoughts in my head as opposed to reddit.

GrayBackgroundMusic,

The type of people to leave reddit over the shenanigans going on are certain demographic. The crowd is different, here, bc we're more likely to deal with a new website that's not run by narcissistic sociopaths even if there's less content.

voxov7,
@voxov7@lemmy.world avatar

More left leaning for sure.

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