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?

tyo_ukko,

I have also noticed the absence of alt-right/populist right-wing people. But that could go under your point 2. It's refreshing nevertheless.

Also less guerilla marketing. Not missing that shit one bit.

PrivateNoob,

Are trolls more likely to be alt-right? Idunno, I think all sides can have the same ratio of trolls in them.

bobs_monkey,

True, but there's also a lovely Venn diagram where a significant overlap exists. No one's perfect, but a certain mindset definitely leans more towards being a dick to people than not.

tyo_ukko,

I'm sure for many trolls the goal is mainly to cause a reaction, and I think the alt-right stuff is an easy way to do so. Maybe that's a better way to put it.

Then there's the crowd that populated r/the_donald back in the day. Not sure how much of that was just trolling, but I'm certainly glad not to see that activity here.

PrivateNoob,

Honestly seeing alt-right trolls here sounds logical, since Lemmy is definitely more progressive leaning.

bobs_monkey,

I've seen a few, but they were mostly contained to more random offshoot instances, and those stirring up bullshit were booted pretty quick.

I think the inherent instance ownership gives admins a greater sense of pride to keep their localities positive, and a lot off us are still feeling from what reddit became in the last 5ish years and there's a communal sense of keeping that outta here.

And yes, at least for now. Hopefully those marketing ploys are readily apparent and get kicked to the curb quickly.

rr7,

Agree, agree, agree, agree!

jenings,
@jenings@lemmy.world avatar

Not to pat ourselves on the back too much but right now it’s mainly the Reddit power users that are here. The normies are wondering why interesting as fuck was flooded with porn as of last night.

Nugget_in_biscuit,

But that’s good, no? The power users are the minority that actually build the community. So we get the core base of Reddit without the problems you get from that site trying to become more like Facebook and TikTok

PenguinJuice,

This is the truth. It's a lot of what OG Reddit felt like before it became basically anonymous Facebook 2.0

chaddy,
@chaddy@feddit.de avatar

I would consider myself a normie, specifically regarding reddit, as I only spent my time lurking there and already have more comments on lemmy than on 7 years on reddit.

The current vibe and atmosphere just feels kind of special. Almost everyone is figuring stuff out, no one is down voted for asking some basic questions and I don't have the feeling that some grammar nazi is immediately around the corner to correct my many mistakes, just to get that sweet, sweet karma.

HorrorSpirit,
@HorrorSpirit@lemmy.ml avatar

Same here. I was also predominantly a lurker on reddit, as even when i wanted to comment something it did not feel safe, for lack of better word. Here i feel much more free to comment my mind. I hope it stays that way. For someone who was too young to experience the “old internet” it feels great to have a new and improved modern analog.

SirEDCaLot,

This is absolutely true, and this is how the internet was back in the old days before Big tech and megaplatforms. People would set up little servers on their cable modems using spare laptops. It was experimental, it was imperfect, but it was ours. One side effect of this, was that you had to be at least a little bit smart to get yourself connected to it. Even if that just meant knowing that connecting to it was something that you wanted to do. That weeded out a lot of idiots who contribute low quality discussion. Also, because there is no giant company with a financial incentive to get everybody to use it as much as possible, things were built for raw functionality rather than trying to make them easy for people to get addicted to in 30 seconds. That naturally makes them more usable for anybody with an IQ over 90.

Also, no advertisements. No sponsored posts.

neanderthal,

Also, no advertisements.

It didn't take long for ads to come along. Remember the 90s banners where you would punch the monkey to win $20? Or the text links that were ads? Pop ups?

SirEDCaLot,

Okay that's fair- I'm sure some instances will choose to advertise in some way.

TBH I'm more concerned about spam. Reddit has an army of anti-spam stuff, and that's just one site. As Lemmy grows, it will become a spam target, which will be more challenging due to its open nature (IE spammers will spin up their own instances eventually). I suspect that much like e-mail, some kind of RBL list will emerge.

skip0110,
@skip0110@lemm.ee avatar

You kind of notice how annoying all that corporate fluff and UI optimized to serve you advertising is when it’s gone.

bionicjoey,

Less repost bots. Seriously, I'm pretty sure 1/3 of posts I would see on Reddit were repost bots.

May,
@May@kbin.social avatar

Thats a big one i think. Iirc people would use an extension (or maybe a 3rd party app?) to block those users that commonly repost things and for a period of time i saw people saying their feed changed a lot on Reddit just from that. Tho Idk if thatd change much lately bc a lot of reposts I saw before coming here were from new account that were bots tryna build karma :/

N1cknamed,
@N1cknamed@kbin.social avatar

This is a group of like-minded, technology-affluent users that most likely have a higher average age than Reddit.

CynAq,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

As well as higher average IQ, it feels like.

Kichae, (edited )

IQ probably has little to do with it. It's socialization and learned expectation that are acting as a filter currently.

CynAq,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, of course. It was a tongue in cheek comment that didn't land well.

Kichae,

Ah. I got woooshed!

clobubba,

Barriers to entry occasionally have positive side effects. The current dynamic in and around the Fediverse reminds me of how dial-up bulletin boards self-selected for computer-literate (and typically intelligent) users. I suppose that implies that we should also expect our own Eternal September, too.

CynAq,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

If the adoption rate continues and quality of life improvements such as efficient mobile apps keep getting made, I think it's inevitable. But I also think it can be a good thing, especially if the distributed instance culture with semi-independent communities persist. If the culture shifts so much to instances just being nodes into the larger "verse" so to speak, the general experience could shift a lot with it.

In any case, with all the different user experiences available already with Mastodon, kbin, lemmy, Calckey, Pixelfed and Peertube offering vastly different experiences into the same ecosystem, it'll be a lot more diverse I believe as everyone will find their own comfort zone.

tehgamemail,
@tehgamemail@lemmy.ml avatar

I felt like Reddit was plagued by the mainstream user during the pandemic. I used to go on Reddit to lurk subs like r/Carding to understand how people(criminals?) steal credit card credentials and dump the balances.

By reading them I change the way I manage my own OPSEC. I could read just about anything there. Now it’s all banned or tightly moderated. Can’t say this can’t say that. Hope lemmy won’t be the same.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

If you don't like it, you can always set up your own instance here. That's the beauty of it!

Kichae,

The community size thing is going to be interesting as the space grows. The fact that there are functionally infinite name spaces means that "politics" doesn't just get to become the default politics discussion space for everyone wandering into the place. Lemmy.ca/c/politics can be a very different place than Lemmy.ml/c/politics, which will be very different from lemmy.world/c/politics, which will be very different again from beehaw.org/c/politics.

And you can suppose that everyone will just use the biggest one by default, but I don't think that's necessarily true. The biggest subreddit got that way predominantly because of their name, and there's a good chance that people'll see their local one first, not the biggest. Or that they'll see multiple of them, and end up engaging with multiple communities before they realize what's going on and settle on the one that suits them best.

There will always be a biggest, but there can be a larger number of smaller, lively communities because they don't need to take on names like "r/truepolitics" or "r/onguardforthee" (which is a so very discoverable and intuitive r/Canada alternative).

We'll have to see how the dynamics play out over time.

drascus,

It's likely all this will change as the user base grows. However there are some distinct advantages.

  1. Having instances focused purely on certain topics or ethics makes it so you can join the communities that align with your ideas. while all these communities federate having a home base that aligns with your ethics is important. Also if any particular instance becomes overly trollish there is the option that your instance can defederate from them. While this is not ideal having smaller instances with a more homogeneous community means that it will be easier to lobby for things like that than a monolithic service.
  2. people at the moment are focused on building something that is community oriented and that people will want to use. Right now we have mods, power users, tech enthusiasts, and community leaders mostly. We don't have a ton of trolls yet. This will change but I think we can adapt to it.
  3. There is a sense of comradery. People are dusting themselves off after the collapse of a former community of bolstering each other. This will wear off. however hopefully by then the service is robust enough that people will have found their new communities and groups that they jive with.
knova,
@knova@links.dartboard.social avatar

RE: #3 - we can all choose to be kind to newcomers. Be patient with people as they make those “Testing from Mastodon - can you see this?” Type posts.

StarLuigi,
@StarLuigi@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

How does Lemmy even work with mastodon? I couldn't figure it out when on mastodon.

May,
@May@kbin.social avatar

This is kinda random but till know i always saw "camaraderie" which i guess is more of a French influence spelling, but TIL comradery also an allowed way to spell it! Also ya I agree w you PLUS there seems to be less bots than Reddit atm

drascus,

I am aware of the other spelling. The "comradery" way agrees with my lazy American attitude a bit more. English is a strange language.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

I've never seen that spelling of it. No sir, I don't like it!

leosa,

For me the vibe here resembles that of hacker news. So I’m inclined to think the population here is early adopters and technically inclined.

May,
@May@kbin.social avatar

There are less reposts bc its newer and bc there is a lot less bots

random72guy,
@random72guy@lemmy.world avatar

Passion. The people here care enough to have not only left Reddit, but to have made a new community here.

original_reader,

I love this comment. I want to believe it to be true.

unix_joe,
@unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

There aren't any bots here promoting a narrative, or auto-downvoting people. From around 2015 until its final days, Reddit was manipulated by business and political entities to steer groupthink. Turning off reddit unplugs you from the Matrix, so to speak.

On Lemmy specifically: its a higher barrier to entry, there's less karma chasing here. Especially if you aren't on one of the larger Lemmy instances. It feels like a community and not like karma-whoring. In my preferences, I turned off viewing the number of votes a comment has, which is nice.

CIWS-30,

Other people have made good points, but one I've noticed is that there's no advertising or profit motive (so far) and there's also no leadership that encourages dark patterns like increasing negative engagement through encouraging stuff like doomscrolling or starting or continuing arguments.

I'm on Kbin, and I like how by default all the notifications are turned off. So people aren't automatically told to respond to every little thing they participate in. If they really care, they have to manually go back on check on things they wrote about or were engaged in. Makes it less likely that people will argue endlessly, lowering the quality of posts and replies, and derailing them with long subthreads of off topic discussions or arguments.

faltuuser,

It is indeed refreshing. But not sure how long it will last.

bunjix,
@bunjix@lemmy.world avatar

Just wait until September... ;)

rm_dash_r_star,
@rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

Haha, I was around then, when AOL got big it was like, well there goes the neighborhood.

faltuuser,

The flood will eventually come

mcpheeandme,

By now, we've all been around the internet long enough to know that good things never last. That's really life: Everything's impermanent. Lemmy will probably suck someday, as will much of the fediverse. But I'm grateful it's good right now and for the foreseeable future.

Scew,
@Scew@lemmy.world avatar

It could suck someday, but it doesn't suffer from the same things that made myspace -> facebook -> reddit suck. No money hungry executives profiting off underpaying employees to implement features no one asked for and selling astroturfing as a service. At least it doesn't seem that there's astroturfing as a service here yet.

rm_dash_r_star,
@rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

No money hungry executives

I think that's going to be the key difference. You can destroy something good, but to really destroy it takes an executive.

mcpheeandme,

You're right. The fediverse is definitely in a better position to ward off the suck.

kiwifoxtrot,
@kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world avatar

We didn't think those things would suck initially either. Facebook was amazing around 2004 - 2006 before it opened up to the general public.

scottywh,

I don't think I know a single person who ever thought Facebook was "amazing"... Even back then.

kiwifoxtrot,
@kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world avatar

Before it opened up to the general public, we used it to organize parties, share photos without concern, and keep in touch with friends that went to other colleges. There wasn't anything else like it.

floofloof,

I have hope that as the big corporations enter the Fediverse and start enshittifying it, some of us can sneak off to new instances that just don’t federate with them. Then the masses can enjoy their Meta-branded Fediverse, and the tech bros can make their money from it, while the rest of us carry on quietly in a parallel one.

bobs_monkey,

Let's hope it keeps that glimmer!

Zetaphor,
@Zetaphor@zemmy.cc avatar

We're not all trapped in the same building anymore. You can just move to a different instance and still have the same software experience but with the community you prefer.

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