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?

interdimensionalmeme,

I think because everyone has their own corners, the common spaces don’t need to be as toxic. Also, Lemmy’s population is self selected because of the still high bar to entry. Lemmy basically feels like early Reddit. The hostile influence of moderators and the backlash anger everyone feels from being mistreated by them into silence is not yet here.

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.

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!

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.

git,

I think it has people with above average reading comprehension because amount of people I saw that said opening a Lemmy account is too hard and they couldn't manage to do it is way too high

Grosshirn,

Yeah that's true! If an article is posted, the discussion shows that people really did read the article!

Very_Bad_Janet, (edited )

Early adopters of any innovation likely have certain personality traits that make them able and willing to assess a new technology and learn/overcome some obstacles to use it. Maybe those traits translate into pleasant, respectful online communication?

ETA: I need to see if I still have my old grad school copy of Diffusion of Innovation. It might have some answer in there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

ETA1: Most everyone seems thoughtful and patient. So maybe those are early adopter traits?

dodgypast,

That's my thinking. As an example the people who usually end up answering people's tech queries are the most likely to end up here.

gylotip,

What does ETA mean?

Very_Bad_Janet,

Edited To Add. :)

MyMulligan,
@MyMulligan@lemmy.one avatar

My wife is a teacher at a small district. She's watched student's abilities drop over the past twenty years and the time of covid left them severely lacking. Yes. Their writing skills are practically not there. It's truly sad.

Grosshirn,

I have been a user on Mastodon for quite some time but wasn't that active and felt it lacked some content for me. Now that I joined lemmy I learned that mastodon is federated and I learned about kbin! That's what makes it refreshing for me. A lot of new stuff and small communities emerging :)

kiddblur,

The thing that I think makes lemmy more valuable than mastodon is the focus on content versus personality. With Twitter, you followed people because you were interested in what they had to say and share. With Reddit, you followed communities. So even if a lot of the people don’t move over, once enough of the community does, it’ll feel the same (or better). I was never super active in my various subreddits (although I did comment, I just never posted), but I’m making an effort to comment and vote a lot on here just to help build that sense of community

Grosshirn,

Yeah that perfectly summarizes my feelings aswell. The topic oriented communities are what I preferr!

yads,

Really good summary. I think this is exactly why I never really took to Twitter and I never really realized why, but it's exactly that. I'm more interested in topics than specific people.

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

Not disputing what you're saying, but one feature that was a game changer for me on Mastodon was figuring out that I can follow hashtags in addition to people.

But I do agree with everything you said!

kiddblur,

Oh yeah, that is nice, but I guess at the end of the day it's still just that idea of "I'm a person saying a thing" (and using a hashtag) versus "here's this article I found"

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.

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.

pickle_party247,

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

Kurumatron,
@Kurumatron@lemmy.world avatar

How long until the "broke two arms" story comes here?

goat,

huuuuuuuuuurr, we should make a really clever and quirky comment to identify ourselves. something something narwhal bacon sings.

XD XD ;p

adj16,

But we do have the no poop guy.

Refuses to shit. Refuses to elaborate. Leaves.

Rob,

I also choose this guys poop knife

mim,

It's inevitable with time though.

Maybe to a lesser extent, since not every instance federates everything. If clusters start to form, you'd expect some in-jokes to be limited to certain communities / instances.

Ciari,

The poop knife has already made its way here 💀

Jumuta,

wtf did i just read

datavoid,

Quick someone link the swamps of dagobah, Jolly rancher, coconut, or broken arms

esty,
@esty@lemmy.ca avatar

I haven't read any of these words in years and I'm kind of upset you made me remember their existence

abcd,

TIL about the poop knife!

bigkahuna1986,

You’re one of today’s lucky 10000! Sort of…

MedicareForSome,

On reddit, half of the users are bots controlled by various corporations and state departments.

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

chaddy,
@chaddy@feddit.de avatar

I think the lack of a karma equivalent, and thus karma farming, results in much more thought out and unique posts/comments.

WalrusDragonOnABike,

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.

DoucheAsaurus,
@DoucheAsaurus@kbin.social avatar

Reputation seems borked at the moment, it counts downvotes but not upvotes so I'm sitting at -34 right now lol

Kantiberl,
@Kantiberl@kbin.social avatar

Boosting is the only way for reputation to go up. I boosted you for science.

Very_Bad_Janet,

Interesting! I gave you a boost as well, also for science. Funny how we all seem to be tinkering and figuring what does what here.

ivanafterall,
@ivanafterall@kbin.social avatar

I'm not sure I feel comfortable taking advice from a person with -51 reputation...

Kantiberl,
@Kantiberl@kbin.social avatar

Ooo everybody come look at Mr. Non-controversial over here with his +40 reputation.

cunnilingsus,
@cunnilingsus@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Do you mind explaining what boosting is for us on Lemmy?

Kantiberl, (edited )
@Kantiberl@kbin.social avatar

It adds your comment to my profile feed if anyone is following me. I think it's a way to work better with Mastodon like sites but I don't really know. I understand that @ernest is in the midst of changing that.

chaddy, (edited )
@chaddy@feddit.de avatar

Lol, I think the first one would definitely have flown over my head without explanation. Also, I don't know if it's instance specific, but I can't seem to find my reputation on my profile, neither on feddit.de(lemmy-ui) or Jerboa. Where do you get that information?

Maybe it could be useful for moderators or admins to access that information? But that also poses the risk of accounts "reputation-farming" like on reddit to sell the account to some bot-farm that uses it for astro-turfing or sth similar.

russjr08,
@russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net avatar

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the reputation thing is a Kbin feature, at least everyone I've seen mention it so far has been on a Kbin instance.

I do not think Lemmy has the same thing, but don't quote me on that!

Very_Bad_Janet,

There is a thing called Reputation (IIRC) tucked away in your profile. Im not sure if that's a true karma equivalent. Also not sure what you can do with it.

awsamation,
@awsamation@kbin.social avatar

It doesn't matter what you can do with it. You couldn't really do anything with karma either.

Gorillan,

I think it all boils down to an older and more geeky user base.

floofloof,

Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. This feels comfortable like the internet until the late 1990s. I didn’t realize I missed that. And when it starts to be exploited for profit, trolled for whatever reason people troll things, and swamped by bots, let’s sneak off somewhere else they don’t know about and do it again.

szczur,
@szczur@lemmy.ml avatar

Fediverse denizens are really active.

Heimchen,

Yea, I became more active on lemmy than ever was on Reddit

SrEstegosaurio,

Yeah, engagement is in the Fediverse is colosal in comparison.

Lurra,
@Lurra@lemm.ee avatar

Definitely people here are much more polite, the contrast is just striking.

Griff,

(Love your pfp!)

Haan,

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

bigbox,

Those users aren’t intelligent enough to understand what the Fediverse is, why they should use it, or even how to sign up.

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