I have noticed that I interact a lot more in Lemmy than I ever did in any social media. Let it be Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… I am used to be the lurker, but here for some reason things are different. Wonder if more people feel like I do.
I feel like you are more encouraged to interact here. Like you’re helping the fediverse grow. The other thing for me is that people seem to be much more civil then in other places. So yeah I feel the same.
Exactly this. I never bothered to do much interacting on Reddit. Either comments were trolled or downvoted “just for shits and giggles” or they were buried in no time under all the snarky oh-so hilarious comments that instantly killed all real discussion.
From what I see, Lemmy is just at the edge of “not enough content”. So many communities have one or two committed posters. So I comment as much as I can and post when I see something interesting.
For me it’s the gonewild subs… Once you start getting regular content there and they expand out to gonewildcurvy or bdsmgw or 30sgonewild etc you’ll really see lemmy take off.
They’ve had some issues with that though. lemmynsfw was heavily defederated from others over concerns about CSAM being federated, and after that lemmynsfw had much more mild porn.
Personally, I think that as long as porn is still freely available via old reddit without logging in, then it won’t take off much. Also, we’re in the post-Only Fans age, so it’s unlikely lemmy will ever get that “pure” gonewild feel that reddit had, as almost every user that posts their own porn is now doing it for money.
That’s the thing I find so surprising. There are so few NSFW posters. Porn pushed a lot of technical and economic innovation online. If Lemmy can’t get traction on adult content, we’re in bad shape.
I certainly do. Most social media algorithms feed you content that it thinks will generate interactions. Lemmy does not do that which results in whatever you decide to post having more meaning because there’s no stupid and/or manipulative machine deciding wheter your post is or isn’t worth seeing
With reddit having way more people and being only a casual browser, I would never make it early enough to a post to contribute in a meaningful way. Whatever I would have said would be commented dozens of times before I got to the thread. At best my comment wasn’t made yet, but I’d be sure someone with more knowledge on the subject would’ve contributed in greater depth soon.
Here I see plenty of posts hours old with no comments. There’s a greater chance whatever I might say won’t get buried or overshadowed.
I think the reasons I’m more inclined to interact on Lemmy/Mastodon are because, firstly, the fact that we were all attracted to the fediverse means we instantly have something in common in addition to whatever subject matter our chosen instances and communities focus on.
Secondly, the communities are a lot smaller—for now. This could be a temporary thing if Reddit continues hammering nails into its own coffin, or the fediverse might be niche enough that it never becomes as massive. But right now, posting a comment on Reddit feels like shouting into the void whereas Lemmy is like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean. Neither are great for communicating, which I have always felt is the biggest problem with this format compared to classic message boards; but at least the message in a bottle is more likely to wash up on a shore where it might be seen.
In my decade of using reddit, I very rarely posted and maybe commented a couple times a week. I was a certified lurker. In the months of using lemmy, I became a mod for a community, comment nearly every day, and have far surpassed the number of posts I ever made on Reddit. Lemmy is just a nice place to be, and I like interacting with people here
I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I’d just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.
I know I do and it’s because the responses are more human and organic. I also don’t feel like there’s an algorithm trying to make me angry or driving me for engagement, which contradictory to the research, makes me want to engage more.
I would actually say I interact less, but the things I say on here tend to be more meaningful outside of the dumb jokes and references. Like I have more of a tendency to have an actual discussion on here and write out my thoughts versus on Reddit where I would say low-effort shit or something purely for the dopamine rush of getting those sick upvotes.
I do, and it’s not for entirely altruistic reasons either.
When I’d open a thread on reddit, if I wasn’t there within the first hour of being up or first dozen or so comments, it was almost guaranteed that whatever I said would get buried and the effort I spent formulating my comment would basically be wasted. So there was very little incentive to engage with meaningful discussion just for the sake of discussion. On Lemmy, most posts struggle to get over a hundred comments at most, and even more struggle to get past ten. So, if I spend time developing my reply, I have a higher chance of that comment getting seen and other people in the community engaging with me, which is the entire point of leaving comments, IMO.
Agreed. Comments here are more meaningful for being rare. Even comments disagreeing with OP or replying from a different point of view are often well thought out and meaningful.
On Lemmy, the algorithm is also more prone to show newer with less votes comments, when sorting by hot. So it gives more value to those low votes comments.
Definitely, there are less posts here that I feel if I comment its just going to end up going south - especially if I have a differing opinion. Which isn’t to say that doesn’t happen here on Lemmy, there are certainly topics where if you go against the grain, the exact same thing will happen (some of those topics make sense and are worth “fighting” for, others not so much).
I comment and share links at about the same rate as I did when I was primarily on Reddit. I’m less interested in Reddit these days and probably split my time 50-50. I’m pissed at what they did and continue to do, and the quality of the content has clearly taken a hit across the broader Reddit community but it’s still SO MUCH BIGGER than the entire fediverse that there is hundreds if not thousands of times the people and content.
I’ve tried to get a couple of groups off the ground, but I’m just not that guy and wasn’t on Reddit either.
I am not commenting on Reddit much anymore tho, due to the aforementioned behavior by Spez et al.
i miss reddit, too. been 3.5 months since leaving and i used to spend 12 hours or more at a time scrolling and reading. it was like a good friend or partner.
but i really NEVER posted there. and i do here, sometimes.
You’re right, the sheer size of Reddit means it’s hard to deny that the variety of discussion topics is much greater than on Lemmy. The decentralized servers model also means it’s slightly more difficult to find and grow small communities.
What I like though is that in general, posters on Lemmy, even the ones that repost old memes from elsewhere, try to genuinely engage with other commentors.
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