What are your thoughts on the Lemmy ecosystem?

I’ve been trying it out for the last week. I have my own opinions, but I’d like to hear others and see if we have common ideas on what is good/bad/indifferent about the Lemmy ecosystem.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
    53·
    6 days ago

    Yeah, but no, but yeah.

    On Lemmy, individual communities aren’t big enough to be communities but the community is big enough to be a community.

    So any post that makes it to the front of the entire Fediverse has quite a few familiar faces and feels like old reddit would.

    The issue I find with wanting Lemmy to be as big as Reddit is, you’re pining for an era of Reddit that doesn’t exist anymore. You can’t go back to 2011-2020 Reddit. It isn’t there to go back to. Bot posts aren’t just indistinguishable on occasion, they’re upvoted all the same, by other bots.

    This is the best you’ve got. Pitch a tent and make the most of it, fam.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
      34·
      6 days ago

      Unfortunately the bot problem is coming to Lemmy.

      Bots posting content is already a thing here, and then taking up front page space is already a thing.

      Lemmy is speed running “How to lose your sense of community”.

      • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I disagree somewhat bc of one very crucial factor: here bots exist but they tend to be labelled as such. Look in your settings on the web UI if you find this not to be the case.

        You click on a user account, then click block them, repeat just a handful of times and then bam, pretty much you have blocked all the bots there are. Yes it takes effort - it’s not done by default - but at least it’s possible, whereas on Reddit there is simply nothing that can be done, with virtually any amount of effort. Over there they are baked right into the system… right?

        And here the bots are, or even can be, helpful. A bot that you know is a bot is a good bot, or at least an honest one.:-)

      • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
        9·
        6 days ago

        I don’t agree, the longer I’ve been here the more familiar usernames I see, so to me it’s been improving.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    151·
    5 days ago

    For conversation about various subjects with broad appeal and a left wing slant, sure.

    For tech support or info on niche topics, not at all. Lemmy is not big enough, old enough, or easily indexed by search engines.

    The porn is also pretty mid tbh

  • Naich@lemmings.world
    14·
    5 days ago

    I’ve started a few subreddits and not had much engagement. I started a really niche community here and had someone posting to it within hours. Yes, fewer users, but the ones that are here seem to be more willing to engage.

  • bluewing@lemm.ee
    354·
    6 days ago

    Short answer is No. It suffers from many of the same issues of echo chamber, bias, and bullying. Just on a somewhat smaller scale due to fewer users. And never forget - Winter is coming. There will be a time in the future the bots will notice lemmee and come for it also.

    But I suspect this is all a human thing. We are a contentious bunch at best and down right hateful at worst. We build communities only to poison and kill them in the end.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      3·
      6 days ago

      I think it has potential to be better in a way Reddit can never be, but the two biggest instances do so little moderation their userbase might as well be “people banned from too many subredits”.

      I assumed the killer feature of Lemmy would be “zero reply guys” but instance owners seem willing to tolerate them in the interests of faux-engagement. But the irony is this sort of “engagement” actually scares new users away.

        • grozzle@lemm.ee
          3·
          5 days ago

          i think corgana meant zero people who reply with meaningless comments just for the sake of replying, like those tiresome one-line joke threads that choke up every big subteddit.

        • Corgana@startrek.website
          2·
          5 days ago

          A “reply guy” (wikipedia) is someone who responds to posts/comments in an annoying (usually smug/condescending) way, like what you think of when you think of a “redditor”. Big platforms like Reddit like reply-guys because they generate engagement (often someone telling the reply-guy to f-off) it’s also not a behavior that an algorithm can recognize, so human mods/admins are needed to curb it.

          Over time, if Reply-guys are not banned they tend to make the overall ecosystem too exhausting to participate in, and (authentic, desireable) engagement declines.

  • kamen@lemmy.world
    381·
    6 days ago

    Platform-wise, it’s already proven that it’s a viable alternative (with some advantages even - the federated nature for one), but content-wise, it has A LOT to catch up (because let’s be honest - in addition to all the bullshit and toxic people, Reddit has tons of useful information and good people still).

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    6 days ago

    I was a 15 year Reddit veteran and modded a couple dozen communities over there. I’ve moved over here with no regrets. The only thing that takes me back to Reddit is search results, and that’s getting less and less as more people have abandoned it and deleted comments.

    The amount of bots there now is astounding. It’s making me believe in the Dead Internet Theory.

  • Novice_Idiot@lemmy.wtf
    9·
    5 days ago

    A large part of what’s hindering Lemmy is search engine visibility, the “append reddit to your query” trend is really helping Reddit while it can sometimes be somewhat difficult to find content on Lemmy or the fediverde more broadly

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    31·
    6 days ago

    I last logged into Reddit in 2022.

    There’s a lot of things missing - especially niche communities - but there’s enough people to get into silly debates with and enough memes for me to scroll each day.

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    7 days ago

    Yes for me it’s absolutely a viable alternative. It’s still small and that has pros and cons. The overall quality of discourse is high because it’s a fairly hip crowd that has found Lemmy and joined. Feels more like the early days of the social web, before social media shat the bed. But being small has cons too. Some communities just aren’t here, and a lot of the ones here are small and less active. But there’s absolutely a viable base here that can grow over time. I’m glad that the internet figured this out because we were too dependent on Reddit before - it had totally consumed all concepts of online community and that was okay before the enshittification got into high gear. Lemmy from its inception is structurally designed not to go down that path. So spend time here. Share it. Help it grow. Start a niche sub and feed it.

  • TastyWheat@lemmy.world
    19·
    6 days ago

    Well, I deleted my r account the day they fucked over the app developers. Been here since, so I guess it’s a decent alternative. Not as much current content and it’s 90% politics on the front page… That can be filtered out though.

    The militant Linux missionaries though, they get blocked. They show up in most tech threads and it got old a year ago.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
    402·
    7 days ago

    No. Reddit has a userbase that allows it to be all things to everyone.

    Lemmy has a userbase that allows it to be a pretty good linux disscussion forum.

    Once you venture away from technology, its crickets. There’s a community here specifically for the Cleveland Guardians. It’s dead quiet. The Guardians are even in the ALDS right now…granted they’re down 0-2 in the best of 7 series…but the ONLY post since they started the playoffs, is me asking why the community was so dead. That topic has 0 replies despite being posted days ago. On reddit, I wouldn’t have even needed to make that post, because there would be topics on almost every minute thing the Guardians have done right, and wrong, since the playoffs began.

    And then I’d get heckled for saying that Ketchup is the hot dog derby champion. Now and forever! But on here? Nothin…