Is Lemmy a good alternative?

I made 1 "controversial" comment and I got perma-banned... this sucks. ... Is Lemmy the answer?

That's really going to depend on you. What sort of "controversial" comment?

If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you're going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you'll probably be fine, with some exceptions:

• There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
• Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
• There's a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we're trying!).
• You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you're posting. Individual instances (kinda like "reddits") have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don't expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
• It's important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
• There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don't be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We're generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.

If you're good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there's a good chance that you'll have a good time.

Thanks, all really good feedback. I've managed to find a few 'somewhat' active communities to join like for my local city which has about 1000~ subscribers. Not as bad as I was expecting to be honest... that's enough user base for me to give Lemmy a shot I think.

I guess every social media platform has its politics

Idea: Try exclusively using Lemmy for a week.

If you love it, switch. If you hate it, don't. If you miss Reddit, use both.

For general browsing, news, technology, mainstream topics etc.. it's much better than reddit, less toxic, better vibe.

It's very small though, so I've found two areas where it is just not a replacement:

• Specific, smaller niche interests, they might have a community here but it is often empty and quiet or just non existent.

• Sports, specifically a place to chat during live events. There's not enough people to support that.

So it depends what you are looking for and how niche your interests are.

I've mostly stopped using reddit and am in here now. But I still end up there occasionally. Not much these days though.

I found I had to block a large number of communities from my feed that were very narrow minded. Once I did some diligent editing, however, Lemmy has become my daily browse and I'm happy with the change. I still use reddit for some of the niche communities that don't have a counterpart here, but the larger topics (news, memes, technology) are well covered and open to discourse.

I moved over to it after the initial Reddit exodus and haven’t really looked elsewhere. It’s not quite a full replacement in terms of content and engagement obviously. It’s good for broader stuff like memes, politics/games/movies/etc in general, but not so much for the specific. There are quite a few games I used to spend a lot of time discussing on their subreddits, but they’re basically ghost towns here for a lot of them.

There are also some more specific community leanings. You’re gonna see a LOT of Star Trek and Linux related stuff.

But overall, I’m happy enough with it knowing it’s a non-privatized space to talk.

It's the best I've found, but I wouldn't call it a "good" alternative myself no.

Many others have commented on the small communities/lack of niche communities so I'll simply say I agree with the takes in this thread there.

Personally though, I generally find Lemmy to be far less tolerant of any dissenting opinions across most communities. And man do I mean any. There's a plethora of topics that aren't even worth trying to discuss here because if you introduce the slightest bit of nuance to a hardline take you'll be downvoted, insulted, and ignored.

A quick example that comes to mind are services such as Spotify/Youtube. To make a long story short, I find that I use Youtube often enough that I don't mind paying for Youtube premium. They need to make money somehow to continue providing that service and I can't fucking stand ads so hey sure it's worth the monthly payment to me. I'm a pretty satisfied customer all things considered.

Try offering that perspective in any related thread and you'll be called bootlicker and made to feel like you're propping up Satan himself for daring to pay for Youtube and be happy to do so.

There's other, similar topics. Some are easier to avoid, like the FuckCars community. I was a pretty big fan of that community on reddit but on Lemmy most threads seem to truly believe we need to go 100% no cars at all and there is no middleground damnit. Other topics manage to work their way into damn near any thread. Biden could literally pull a child and puppy from a burning building and there will always be comments about how he's still a genocidal maniac and basically evil. That entire war is basically just not worth talking about here imo.

And then there's little stuff. For example, don't ever say you use Windows here lest a whole horde of people jump in to call you an idiot for not having switched to Linux I mean really what's wrong with you using the most popular OS in the world by a large margin. Stuff like that.

So I guess to summarize my feelings here, I personally believe the echo-chamber is far worse on Lemmy than reddit and that's primarily due to the smaller community. A lot of likeminded people came to Lemmy and we're missing a lot of middleground opinions that come naturally with a larger, more diverse population. Too many people view everything as black and white and if you sit in grey both extremes are against you.

There are absolutely exceptions; I have seen respectful discourse on the site. But the general trend I perceive here is that the echo-chamber is far worse.

Lemmy needs to figure out a way to "group" similar communities from different instances. That is the biggest flaw by far.

I really like it. Tech comminities & some others are very bouyant & interesting but niche communities really struggle. Even direct replacements of big subreddits struggle. Hopefully this improves.

One tip from my own experience. I use Voyager & blocked a load of US politics keywords.

And another, I subscribed to as many interesting Lemmy communities as i could then browse Home feed in the main & occasionally All to see if any other interesting communities crop up that could be worth joining.

Welcome & enjoy.

First welcome a lot of the users here are ex reddit

Lemmy is young it doesn't quite have the traffic reddit does BUT it also has less of the crap.

Unfortunately it's not quite there in terms of numbers. Many niche communities that exist on reddit simply don't here or have very low activity. The ones that do are typically better than on reddit though.

There are instances or subs here that will delete your comment or ban you simply for posting something that disagrees with the predetermined consensus they are going for. And no, I'm not talking about racist or abusive comments, just generic shit that may not perfectly align with their narrow personal Overton window. I'm not going back to Reddit, but I wouldn't say there is a robust and diverse discussion here either. A lot of groupthink, or perceived groupthink...because dissenting opinions get straight up deleted.

Lemmy is good but very, very small in comparison to Reddit.

For example, /r/mildyinteresting has 286k subscribers. Lemmy has around 51k active users across the entire platform and all of it's communities. And /r/mildyinteresting is a misspelling of the even more popular /r/mildlyinteresting (23.4 million subscribers).

Even some of the niche gaming communities are larger on Reddit (/r/Kenshi, 145k; /r/factorio, 370k).

However, the small community feel is much more pronounced here on the federated Lemmy servers. You'll see the same names pop up so everyone isn't a complete stranger. Third party app support is miles ahead of Reddit's crappy app. And if you don't like your instance for any reason you can hop to another one easily.

You'll see certain trends on trending communities here. There's a lot more posts on Linux, Star Trek, and Tech news that isn't as pronounced on Reddit unless you subscribe specifically to them. The meme community is top notch though and doesn't have the incel and misogyny issues that plague Reddit.

Welcome. Its been great for me so far. Whatever instance you are currently on the amount of politics and echo chamber does matter. So feel free to comment and enjoy. If you have a complaint try another instance (or even Kbin) to see if this helps. Also to note that there is much more control about what communities and people you can interact with

In strict technical terms, yeah it's okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.

There's still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they're in an odd spot.

The first of these you'll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.

PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.

The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.

All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.

Lemmy isn't a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.

Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it's arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.

Nevertheless, it's possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn't suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.

Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:

• Kbin, flagship site: Kbin Social
• Mbin. No flagship, check list of instances.
• PieFed, flagship site: PieFed Social
• Sublinks. No flagship, still in-development as drop-in replacement for Lemmy.
• Discuit. Not federated, but open source.
• Lobste.rs. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.
• Raddle. Not federated, built on open source Postmill.
• Tildes. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.

One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I'd recommend visiting:

!moviesandtv@lemm.ee
!movies@lemm.ee
!music@lemmy.world
!casualconversation@lemm.ee

Honestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.

Small but great!!! Once I've blocked Hexbear (the proud boys pretending to be far-left), everything is pretty fun and respectful.

The echo-chamberiness of Lemmy is different from Reddit, but still a thing unfortunately. It'll really depend on the community you're in, but since the population of the Fediverse (and especially the Threadiverse) is very small compared to Reddit you tend to have the same people cropping up a lot. I haven't been banned from anywhere (that I know of - I don't actually know if I would get notified) but I find myself hammered with downvotes more frequently here than on Reddit when I say something unpopular.

I'd say, mess around a bit and see.

It's similar in a lot of ways and this is still an echo chamber and the echo chamber we have here has a lot of overlap with reddit... but, while reddit mostly just leaned left... Lemmy... just leans anti-west. As mentioned, there's a lot of overlap there, we've got a lot that is shared, but the parts where those two groups differ can cause some serious wtf moments if you're used to the reddit community. As far as over policing, moderation logs are mostly public and there have been some controversies, but mostly people just stopped caring or left. If you stick around long enough, you will notice policies being applied unfairly if you're on the 'wrong' side and it's a lot easier to be in that category here.

All that to say, you'll likely have some moments where you think... Maybe that old echo chamber wasn't so bad.

Lemmy is basically an parallel universe of Reddit. There's less people here, which means smaller but also less toxic communities. Since this is a segment of the fediverse, people also tend to talk about Linux and free open source software, while also trashing on Windows, Google, and any other product by what I like to call "Big Tech". People are much more liberal here, there's more tolerance for the LGBT community, there's basically lots of hatred for cars, people praise the European Union. Ok some of these are bad examples of liberalism, but still, it's all found here. Enjoy your stay. If you don't like it, you're free to bid us farewell.

Personally I still use other websites to get news about niche topics sinse Lemmy is small, but I genuinely much prefer Lemmy for general memes news and whatever else pops up! I genuinely think the funny post are much better than on Reddit.

It’s not perfect, but lemmy is good enough for us

Its the same small group vibe reddit lost when they got big and greedy. You will actually learn names outside of the top reposter.

The only thing I miss is the really neiche communities. There's some but they struggle to take off due to the smaller user base.

You do have to look though a few different servers till you find one that fits what you want. Mods are still clowns depending on the server. Avoid the top few instances to avoid power trippers. Some things never change.

I basically found a cozy server and settled in after nukeing my reddit account. I don't miss reddit.

Welcome!

I also moved over from Reddit, some time ago now, Lemmy is great if you don't mind it being quieter and you're not into super niche things.

If you are into super niche things, definitely make those communities and begin fostering growth by posting, it's what I'm doing for my home country of Wales, slow but steady and all that.

Hope you enjoy Lemmy!

Lemmy is fickle but it's ok. Works the same but smaller, so you might be stuck on "all".

I too have recently been perma-banned from reddit for nonsense. I still browse it with my banned account, I just don't comment. They're going to chase away heaps of people. I made a new account under a vpn to help someone and the account got shadowbanned. I think reddit is trying to become some corporate-safe-space where business can fake market directly to reddit users.

It's a bit 'terminally online' at times, but only a bit more than Reddit

I’m also super new here because I keep getting banned there. I’ve been told I was a bigot because I was against the Palestinian genocide. Like what?! And I was harassing the mods because I asked them a question 2 times in 3 months. There’s no discussing with them. They come down at you with a hammer and it’s just mean. But if people attack you? If people are cruel? Totally fine. I’m a huge rule follower but I’m human and make mistakes. I hope here there is discussion allowed with the powers that be in case i mess up. I try to be respectful and kind. I just want to all get along.

Welcome to Lemmy.

One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you'll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.

I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.

I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can't be found here, or just don't have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like "Stealth" to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I've been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.

You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.

Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn't display any downvotes.

You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.

As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won't get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.

Just note, if you pick one that's too small there's a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.

Honestly? No

The good news is that we have a lot less of the dumbfuckery where people think the pinnacle of their life is a chain of meme posts.

But I think the decentralized and duplicated nature of lemmy prevents any meaningful conversations. People who just want an echo chamber stay in their version of a board and rely on moderators to scorched earth anything that doesn't fit a narrative. But it also means that people who DO want a conversation might never even see each other or not want to repeat themselves. Interesting point made in the world version of a thread but you tend to hang out in the zip? Yeah...

Which... is kind of message boards. Reddit was "successful" because it was effectively a single vbulletin site that EVERYONE was on so you basically only had one or two gaming forums and so forth. Whereas this is back to the days of usenet and everyone having a phpbb. You might recognize some folk from the Beyond Unreal forums at TTLG but those are different forums with different "cultures" and so forth.

That said: I can't help but gush over Mastodon. That is increasingly my favorite social media... ever? Because lemmy very much feels like a bunch of people who can't get over their ex and keep bringing them up in ever increasingly weird ways. Whereas Mastodon feels like everyone collectively said "Fuck twitter. I always hated it. Let's actually make a good town hall site" and... we kind of did. Yeah, you still have brigading dumbasses and a lot of the decentralization issues. But you also have people who actually respond to comments and have discussions. And while you still have the inherent flaws of trying to convey a point in a microblog, you also have a lot more "Wait, what are you trying to say?" kind of comments.

And... I am not sure what "lemmy" can really do. I think we have all collectively agreed to block certain instances (whether at the instance level or accounts blocking them ourselves) which helps with the... terrorist threats. But unless "lemmy" can decide to stop talking about reddit and stop trying to reinvent reddit... it is never going to be a place worth developing a community at. Shitposting and one off questions? Sure. But it won't be somewhere that you actually go to interact with other human beings.

Yes, it is a good alternative IF you take part. Don't be a lurker, post stuff, cause friction, create interesting discussion even if you know you may get downvoted for bringing up things people don't want to talk about. Reddit is a censored pile of gatekept shit, don't ever waste your time commenting on there.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Not really.

It's a good alternative to what I used to do with my free time, worm charming. It's not the same without a cobra.

I've been discussing this on Mastodon too, but more focused on features and limitations related to federation rather than people being dumber in one place or the other. But I also want more open conversations, which is one of the things I believe ActivityPub helps with.
So instead of voting for Lemmy I'll go ahead and say I prefer Kbin since I've found it easier here to interact with posts from other fediverse platforms.
Just read carefully the rules of each group/magazine/community as everyone is free to tidy up their spaces as they wish, reasonably or not.

I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned

From a subreddit or from reddit as a whole?

My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song

If from Reddit as a whole, unless the admins have changed a LOT in the last year, that sounds weird. They usually only banned accounts over calls to violence and promoting piracy blatantly.

I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom

wat. was a small personal sub? That's just a random suspension.

In your particular case: yes, lemmy is absolutely the answer.

It isnt for a lot of other folks. Lemmy has a lot less moderators/moderation and a lot more alternative communities and multiple instances.

This has a ton of implications. You can still get banned for petty reasons but usually not from the instance but just from a community. In that case you join or make another one which doesnt ban people for {particular_reason}.

It also means that you dont get the tons of posts and comments. Imo as a reddit refugee, people from reddit are going cold turkey on drinking from a firehose or more accurately, being showered in content. There is a million dollar business and many years of experience, social circles and code behind that. Lemmy is like reddit in the early days, just much later.

So if you ever feel there is a lack of content, consider hunting for it on lemmyverse.net for example. You can add non-banned instances to your instance by searching for a community‘s handle.

There will still be people here you dont agree with and the people here are a little different but all in all I‘d say its a pretty good thing. :)

Have fun.

@007KeyLimePie welcome!

Discoverability takes a bit longer here. If you're looking to add content, then alongside the usual directories it's worth checking out the lists at https://kbin.social/magazines/collections

Moderation is transparent here.

Also, protip: if you're in a thread where everyone is raging about "libs" or "the liberals," on reddit that would indicate a conservative sub, but here there's a 99% chance they are communists or anarchists.

ngl the only problem of using a alternative social media is that there are fewer official communities and people and a lower userbase

Eh it's slightly like Reddit in the sense you have to walk on eggshells. If you look at the Modlogs, in my case for example, you'll see I had comments deleted because it appeared to be disrespectful? Someone who I was responding to decided to label my response as having an, "attitude".. I'm too old to be a d*ck to people online - unless of course I'm returning the favor but even then I mostly brush it off and I don't go crying to the mods or reporting comments. Sticks and stones and all that.

But so far while the community is much smaller, it's definitely a lot more open to discourse between people with different/opposing views, or so it seems so far except you will definitely get downvoted for opposing views.

I like Lemmy as a substitute for a general non-specific social forum to engage with others. It's not as popular so it's more intimate here.

What's missing is the general popularity and existence of robust communities. I think this is a good thing because it drives me to find other more specific websites and forums related to my interests. Some of those communities are harder to find and have less content though.

There's a middle ground between Lemmy and Reddit that doesn't yet exist. The hope (I think) is that the infrastructure will mimic the best of Reddit while rejecting the worst of Reddit.

I was complaining about the Reddit echo chamber for probably close to ten years. The arrows have not been used as designed for a long time. They're supposed to mark an item as relevant or not relevant, not as a like or dislike. Had they been used properly... well, let's put it this way, AI is now being trained based on what people like, not based on what information is relevant or correct.

Incidentally, I was brought to Lemmy for a reason similar to you. I posted one innocuous question on one sub that got me banned from a totally unrelated sub where I wasn't even a member (evidently, engaging with one sub, regardless of your reasons or opinions, is enough for another sub to ban you, even if you fully support the other sub).

Me too just in . And uh yeah its great the content is obviously lacking and hoping it would grow . But the clients are steller especially jerboa and privacy , security , Foss aspects are unmatched . I'm not planning to stay tho not because of Lemmy but mostly because I'm losing sanity an.. Yeah no .