How is Lemmy better than Reddit?
How is Lemmy better than Reddit?
I am a reddit refugee. Keep seeing that this is supposed to be somehow better than Reddit. As far as I can tell, it follows a similar format, less restrictive on posts being removed I suppose. But It looks like people still get down vote brigaded on some communities. So I'm curious, how it's better?
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It's not owned by a greedy soulless corporation with a pigboy in control. There's more assholes on here (the AKSHUALLY is quite strong) but there's less hivemind.
the AKSHUALLY is quite strong
lol, yeah true, same as the linux community here is pretty much Arch BTW, but it's good-natured
I think the arch thing is just a meme. I asked a genuine question about which distro to use and got a range of suggestions but none of them were arch.
about which distro to use and got a range of suggestions but none of them were arch.
I think Debian is usually the strongest contender here.
I almost never hear anyone suggest Debian!
My baseless opinion is that having a variety of instances with varying ethoses means that there's a good home instance for everyone (not just the verysmart, young, white, male, liberal a la Reddit), and federation means that that variety of people are intersecting and interacting a lot more than if instances were completely separate. At the same time, it still feels like a small community, or maybe a bunch of small communities. There seems to be a lot less of the snarky clapbacks and unpopular opinions getting nuked that's typical of other social media.
(not just the verysmart, young, white, male, liberal a la Reddit)
Nope, we've also got the verysmart middle-aged white male liberals here, and some Communists too!
There seems to be a lot less of the snarky clapbacks
And almost no low-effort, “cult of personality” mememetic responses. I was going to list some but it’s been a year since I’ve been on that wretched site and I’ve purged my mind of them. But you know, the ones where you can basically predict the top comment before opening the page, probably propagated by the prevalence of bots on the site.
but there's less hivemind.
The hive mind here is far stronger.
- anti-anything microsoft
- anti-anything google
- unwarranted "just install Linux" everywhere
Agreed. Lots of reasonable opinions (not just my own) get downvoted here.
I’ve never been a fan of using downvotes as a disagree button and the issue seems even worse here than Reddit.
The more I see how people use downvotes, the less I like them as a feature in general. I don't downvote things anymore.
- Everyone can upvote, which already brings the most popular content to the top. Why does the system need another dimension to it?
- I often see unpopular comments at the bottom, with scores like +2 -9... The absence of downvotes wouldn't make a difference in content ordering, because the previous comment is simply +4.
- If I disagree with someone enough to act on it, it's my rule to explain why. A minus one is nearly useless as feedback.
- Then, once I've replied, what's the point of downvoting? Everyone can read my thoughts.
- Replies can be upvoted too, for people who think truth comes down to a battle of internet points.
- If I honestly believe something is bad or harmful to the community, it should probably be reported, not (merely) downvoted.
Downvotes as they are seem like outdated design on the human interaction level. They fail to iterate on years of knowledge gained since their inception.
I generally downvote in two scenarios. One is if someone is being a jerk, which is not necessarily enough for a report but always annoying. The other is if they are sharing misinformation, even if I believe they mean nothing bad with it.
I think it has it's place as a way to reduce visibility.
And sometimes I enjoy getting downvotes - there are times I knowingly rub a group of people (generally authoritarians) the wrong way, and I'm happy to see the message is well received. ;)
I've taken to replying in both cases :^)
When I have the time and energy, that is. A lot of my comments are just me adding what I hope is relevant context or correcting what I assume is accidental misinformation.
I understand reducing visibility of "bad" content, I'm just not sure the tool is worth its negative side effects.
Yeah, time and energy is key. But I do notice quite a bit of these types of quality interactions here - it's very much appreciated! :)
- Everyone can upvote, which already brings the most popular content to the top. Why does the system need another dimension to it?
I was going to say you can hide downvotes in your parameters, but your instance isn't on 0.19.5 yet
Because Microsoft sucks and Google sucks and if you install Linux there's 50% chance it'll cure someone's cancer. Also if you're at a bar and your pickup line is "I use arch" it'll be like the fucking Niagara falls. If you're into guys even their ass will go sploosh when they hear that line.
What I'm getting at is that we're just a superior being.
Or that we are all refugees and are just tired of enshitification.
anti-anything google
I hear that. Went through the technical reasons for the manifest V2 deprecation (if this is only to target ublock origin, why did they implement filter lists into the browser? Why does ublock origin lite work just fine?) and it got more downvotes than upvotes. Haters gonna hate I guess :))
Hey, I agree that MV3 brings benefits (such as better security for the extension ecosystem) and has technical merit, but it's worth noting that uBlock's main dev themselves said it won't work as well. uBO Lite doesn't work fine, it works. It's also worse.
And the same fundamental issue that affects ublock (the new API limits) affects everyone else trying to do the same job using extensions.
I get the impression most lemmy users don't have a lot of lived experience. Everyone deals in absolutes, and is unable to recognise nuance.
Most contentious issues have a range of considerations, positive and negative.
I completely agree with this observation. Generally if people get upset about my posts here it's people I'm close to agreeing with, who just cannot fathom that I don't agree with them on the details.
I keep thinking about the People's Front of Judea.
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Also you can block awful people.
Also awful people tend to use same awful instances, so you can block a lot of awful people in just a couple of clicks!
there's less hivemind
Not really. I guess it depends on the instance and community, but I have found that since the amount of users on Lemmy communities tend to be significantly smaller than on Reddit, the effects of hivemind thinking is actually amplified.
In actuality, Reddit and Lemmy are pretty much two sides of the same coin. The only real difference is, as you mentioned, Reddit is run like a business now and Lemmy currently isn't. That and Lemmy users are obsessed with Linux/FOSS.
The akshually might be stronger, but the cultish behaviour of specialised subreddits hasn’t quite arrived here yet so one can still have a faceted opinion about the stuff they discuss, while on Reddit it’s either “glory to our king” or “get the fuck out and watch your Dane Cook specials!!”