Of course, that’s to be expected, with people migrating from Reddit and all, but the title is kind of badly worded.
Feel there’s a lot more argumentative and just kind of… angry users on here. (have you seen Sync fans biting everyone’s asses over saying money should be spent funding instances and not an app?)
Live laugh love Lemmy though :)
I’m a Reddit migrant, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised about how positive everyone is in here. I don’t doubt we’ve gotten more Reddity as awful, terrible, jackwagons like me have joined (uhm. giggle) but you guys still have an atmosphere that’s 100x better than Reddit. My only complaint are the minor details about missing features etc that I know will be resolved in time.
So… I guess that didn’t answer your question directly, but indirectly while it may have gotten more Reddity, it’s still a long way away from being Reddit. I hope that continues.
It’s less toxic here.
Don’t look at political communities
I’ve just blocked them all. Just the clickbaity titles gets me annoyed. Let alone the comments.
I see they’ve already started practicing the “mass downvote anything I disagree with” routine.
Literally my socialism subreddit some people randomly dowmvote my stuff for no reason, it makes me upset honestly because they don’t even comment why
Actually I take that back, your posts are kinda based.
Lmao imagine thinking you’re being suppressed in anyway for having far left views on lemmy
I had the impression reddit was overall less toxic compared to other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. I always thought that it was the “community” aspect of reddit responsible for this. People want to belong to a community and are generally less toxic towards fellow community members.
Maybe I was lucky in my community selection?
That said, I’m happy to be here instead of reddit… It certainly feels a lot more welcoming!
Maybe I was lucky in my community selection?
It absolutely depends on the communities in question. I’ve been an active member of the ‘Breath of the Wild’ sub for years and even tho there was of course still the occasional troll / bot, the sub as a whole was positively wholesome. At the same time I occasionally posted in a Pokémon-related sub of similar size, and even simple, innocent questions were mass-downvoted, insults thrown left and right for the most basic and irrelevant reasons, and they had so many scammers that they needed to keep a list of “trustworthy users” for online trades.
I will not directly link examples to avoid giving reddit free traffic, but one particularily striking example were posts made by people who didn’t like the games in question:
- “I don’t really like BotW”
Topmost answer: “That’s okay. Keep in mind that BotW is very different from former Zelda games and the new formula isn’t everone’s cup of tea. If it is [XYZ] that bothers you, there are these in-game solutions to make your life easier: (listed those things) …and if you are looking for a more Zelda-esque experience, there are these games: (list with alternatives and explanations about how they’re different plus the pros and cons of those games)”
- “I don’t really like Pokémon Sword/Shield”
Topmost answer: “Get fucked”
PS: Sadly that sub went down the drain in the meantime as the “wholesome” people seem to have left and what remains of the former community are the trolls, bots and jerks. It honestly saddens me a bit, but at the same time I’m glad that I jumped ship before it happened.
Zelda is a game where you help others through your courage and the kindness in your heart and save the world. Pokemon is a game where you command a small army of nonsentient creatures to fight and be injured for you so you can call yourself the best. Of course one of those games is going to have a more toxic community.
You know, that’s actually a fair point. Especially since one of them also heavily relies on online competitions against the rest of the world, where you need to be as aggressive and brutal as possible to even survive the first few rounds. That is bound to promote and reward a specific mindset over time …
It’s the same reason why the community for Undertale, the game where the moral is that children who are beaten shouldn’t hit back, is full of pedos
Maybe I was lucky in my community selection?
Probably, but I’d also agree anyway that it was generally less toxic than the major social media platforms. But I’d also say Lemmy/Kbin seems substantially less toxic than even Reddit.
Definitely way less toxic. Even though I’m still mostly a lurker, I’m at ease to stop and make comments without feeling that usual Reddit pressure.
Agreed. Also a Reddit migrant, and I feel like even if it’s changed here since our mini exodus (which I believe), I’m still finding it much more pleasant than Reddit.
I’ve started blocking communities left and right to try and tailor my experience more. Sync related communities are on the list of things I blocked.
I wish as a user I could block entire instances without running my own instance. It would make the blocking efforts much easier.
Ironically Sync can block entire instances.
can also filter keywords
Funny, connect can do that too
I don’t have Android, so it’s a bit of a moot point. But philosophically, it should be supported at the platform level so a user can go between their phone, desktop, browser at work, whatever, and maintain a similar experience when it comes to the content they see (or don’t see).
Exactly, I don’t like locally stored settings because I have many devices and I don’t want to remember to change something on every device every time
Really? I thought that needed to be implemented on Lemmy’s level. Guess it’s built in to ActivityPub because Mastodon could always do that. Definitely was a needed feature.
And so can kbin
You may already be comfortable with another app or the web version of Lemmy, but I recommend ‘Connect for Lemmy’ if you’re looking for instance blocking. It allows you to block instances as a user.
I use my phone, but also the browser on the desktop. It really needs to be a feature of the platform. Relying on instance admins to have the exact same preference for what to federate seems unrealistic.
I’m also on an iPhone. I assume Connect for Lemmy is for Android, as I don’t see it in the App Store. I’m using Memmy currently.
Ah, you’re right, Connect is just for Android. Though I do remember hearing of an iOS Lemmy app that could block instances at a user level, but I’m sorry to say I don’t remember the name.
That being said, I fully agree with you on relying on instance admins to defederate / block instances. I prefer to have the agency to choose for myself what gets blocked / not blocked. Though I can’t complain about my instance’s decisions so far, thankfully.
I hope you find something that works for you.
I’d much rather have admins error on the side of federating with everything vs blocking anything they personally deem unfit. From that perspective, I can’t complain about the admins either. However, being open at that global level really requires controls at the user level. I think that would also ease the burden on the admins to try and make the decisions for everyone, as there is literally no way to get that right. Some subset of the user base will always be unhappy.
It would also be interesting if this was part of the onboarding process, if there were some large instances that leaned into extremism, for example, proactively let the users know these things exist and let them opt in or out. That may encourage silos and group think, so that sucks, but so does letting users stumble into this stuff and letting them get shit on before they figure out, oh I need to actually look at the community name and instance for literally every post before I comment. An interesting post is no longer just an interesting post, it comes with community baggage that need to be considered.
This seems like such a (relatively) simple fix, I’m surprised it hasn’t been implemented yet. I’m almost tempted to try writing a PR of my own at this point.
It sounds like if you do, they’ll merge it.
Connect and I believe Thunder can block entire instances as well as specific communities and users
If somebody develops that feature, they’ve said they’ll merge it. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397#issuecomment-1658761077
kbin has that feature!
When you block an instance on kbin does that mean users from that instance don’t see your content at all when logged into that instance? That’s something I’ve wanted in case in the future some instances federate with Meta, so I don’t provide content for Meta users to see or interact with so they need to log out of Meta or sign up for another instance to view content.
I don’t think so, it just prevents you from seeing that instance’s content including their comments on your posts but not anything else
I think once that becomes a possibility it’ll make defederation unnecessary. Especially when it comes to Meta, since that’s really become the thing I’ve become more concerned about in the future than squabbles between currently existing instances.
I’ve tried not to block instances (or communities for that matter), because you never know what good communities may appear there at a later date. Instead I generally stick to viewing only my subscribed communities, while occasionally venturing out into Everything to see if there’s anything good I’ve missed.
I guess it’s like using Reddit front page vs using /r/all. I never liked /r/all, so doing it this way is much closer to my Reddit experience.
I guess the good thing is we can all tailor our experiences as we prefer :-)
I’ve historically been really picky about subscribing if to stuff and my subscribed posted tend to be short, so I’d venture into /r/all pretty often to try to see what is popular across everything. I liked when they added the option to filter stuff out of there, so I could get rid of really popular subs on topics I had no interest in, like league of legends. Although I wish there were different thresholds…. Like, normally block this, but if something rises to the top 1% of all time posts, show that to me.
Starting out here I think having ‘all’ is important for discovery, so I tend to go there a lot, but when entire instances are dedicated to an ideology, it seems even if an interesting community came up the skew from the ideology would be an issue. The community which asked me to leave their whole instance was just a generic meme community. I guess I was supposed infer the type of memes and the acceptable comments from the instance name, which seems like tribal knowledge that’s need to be picked up through trial and error.
The other thing was communities based on a kink or genre of porn I’m not interested in. If that’s the focus I don’t foresee an interesting community coming along, just an every growing list of things to block.
Yeah, fair points. I like your idea about a threshold for posts getting through, that’d be clever if it could be made to work.
Yes … yes … more isolation, more bubbles…
You think people should be forced to see things they don’t want to?
I’m not agreeing with the above, but it’s nuanced. Content curation is a sliding scale that can create an echo chamber if one becomes too insular. On the internet especially where discourse can be inflammatory, avoiding some topics can shut you off from entire ideas that may otherwise be benign.
IMO create the experience you want, but build resilience and test your limits often. It’s healthier for yourself and the internet as a community.
I’m very much in agreement with you. I think there’s an important value in seeking out those you disagree with. If your values can’t stand under scrutiny then you really do need to carefully consider them.
At the same time there’s space between what you disagree with and what is harmful to your state of mind for most people. Plenty of people don’t want to see anything NSFW and removing that is in no way turning their experience into a bubble.
Nuance is absolutely an important word here but I think the knee jerk isolation response to mention of blocking things is far more harmful than helpful.
it does seem to me that the people that whinge about bubbles are mostly people espousing reprehensible opinions, while ironically being most aligned with the people in the deepest conservative bubbles.
Gee I wonder what kind of opinion the person who down voted you has
It’s not seeing it that’s the problem, it’s commenting on something, then being attacked for wrong-think, because the instance is tied to a certain ideology that I don’t hold. Someone specifically told me to find another instance, basically telling me not to poke their bubble. I’m trying to honor that, as well as my sanity. I’m willing to have discussions, but it seems others aren’t. They just downvote like crazy and attack me as a person instead of various arguments or ideas. If that’s how it’s going to be, I don’t want to accidentally stumble into it.
There is also a significant amount of cartoon animal porn. I think about 40 of the spaces I blocked were for that. I’m just not interested in seeing that. I’d like to block the instance that hosts most of it, rather than having to block countless individual spaces as I happen across a giant animal dick banging a pony. People are free to have their kinks, but I’d like to be able to simply block it all so I don’t need to know every possible furry porn niche, or yiff(?) I think that’s what I’ve been seeing on a lot of them. I don’t even know what that is.
This isn’t a Reddit problem, it’s a human problem. The more people who join, the more trolls, edge lords, and just plain assholes will show their ugly heads. Instead of lamenting the “Reddit like” nature and jumping ship, I’d say just work on tailoring your experience. Stop browsing All, subscribe to the communities you enjoy, and block or ignore the instances and people you don’t want to see. We have the ability to tailor this experience to our liking, it just takes a bit of effort. And above all, just keep being positive and encouraging to others and that will spread around.
deleted by creator
It’s getting more peoply. Just the way people are.
How dare they! Everyone must arrive completely free of bias and judgement, nice, and open-minded.
It’s an unattainable ideal yes. But it’s okay to lament the decline in behavior as a social web service grows. Perhaps as a reminder to everyone to try to be better.
Feel there’s a lot more argumentative and just kind of… angry users on here. (have you seen Sync fans biting everyone’s asses over saying money should be spent funding instances and not an app?)
Just on that particular point, part of the problem is the range of quite-to-extremely hostile comments towards the dev.
Those of us who’ve used Sync for years know (as well can be known, at least) that the guy is solid and trustworthy - and the way some people have been talking about him and his motives is both unfair and inaccurate. It’s natural that there’s going to be pushback on that sort of thing.
Which isn’t to say that the prices can’t be queried or criticised of course, I was slightly surprised myself initially (although given how much I’ve used Sync over the years for very little outlay, it doesn’t bother me as much).
But when it goes beyond questioning the prices, and moves into unfounded criticism of his character and integrity, that’s too much IMO.
Honestly, yeah. I’ve been pretty disappointed in general, to be honest. Once you take away all the bot-spam, zero-effort memes, and doomerism, there isn’t a while lot of actual content on here.
Which is unfortunate, because I love the concept of Lemmy, and I can’t go back to Reddit. I’m still holding out hope, though.
I set aside some time to really browse communities and subscribe to the ones I’m interested in. My Home feed is pretty good now and isn’t just filled with memes and porn. Sure, there aren’t as much comments as reddit, but it also makes discussions more meaningful because my comments are not instantly buried in low-effort jokes and puns. I just browse All from time to time to see what else is out there and maybe discover some new communities. It also helps to have accounts on different instances because the Local feed varies too.
My technique is browse All then just block the communities that I’m not interested in, that way I won’t miss any new community that sprouts up.
I have to agree. Especially with that last one. The amount of cynical and/or pessimistic people on here making up a strong vocal (hopefully) minority is really disappointing
Is this comment not cynical and/or pessimistic?
I’m simply stating what I see and that it’s disappointing. Not sure how that can be seen as cynical or pessimistic
there isn’t a while lot of actual content on here.
I mean how many posts/threads do you really need a day? I read 10-15 or so. That’s plenty
10-15? That’s childs play. I honestly read probably an order of magnitude more than that.
I mean we all have our preferences, but I personally don’t want to go back to my old habit of spending 2-3 hours a day on reddit and lying to myself about why I did it. I try to cap it at an hour on here a day at most.
In my current subscribed feed, I’m lucky to get 10-15 posts total in a week, and even on All I don’t see nearly 10-15 threads I’m actually interested in in a week.
I realize a large part of this could be that I need to subscribe to more communities, but I haven’t seen any more that I’m into yet.
Interesting! I actually have not subscribed to a ton of stuff yet, but I feel like I’m seeing more than enough per day. The actual comments/threads aren’t super populated necessarily, but frankly, I think that’s a good thing. It’s keeping me from doom scrolling and I’m not getting bogged down in arguments like I used to on Reddit.
I’m not getting any of that stuff because I don’t subscribe to communities that allow that stuff.
I’ve just taken a look at the “all” tab for the first time and I agree it’s horrendous - but it was like that on Reddit as well, I think the solution is to only subscribe to what you’re interested in.
Yeah, definitely. On Reddit I used to browse both Subscribed and All (with lots of filters). I agree that it was rough there too, but unfortunately I just haven’t found enough active communities here to subscribe to.
Either way, I’m here for the long haul, and I’m sure it’ll get better over time.
I died a little when I read “Live laugh love lemmy”. That should be illegal!
I’m about to have a g*mer moment over that. Disgusting
Thats better than live laugh liao
Anything is
I feel like it was super reddit-y at the start of July, and then it started calming down to how it was before.
I feel it’s been way more Reddit-y this week. Maybe I’m just having a shit week.
I feel it too. I suspect it’s because of the Sync app. I know a handful of reddit people who were waiting on it before trying lemmy. All we can do is try and foster a better place.
Hope you feel better!
Hey… I bumped into Margot Robbie on the internet! 🤓
Don’t mind me, I’m just part of the scenery here now.
John Oliver don’t have anything on me.
Lol. Thanks. I hope so to!
Well, have you seen FOSS fans biting everyone’s asses over saying user experience is important and labor should be paid? Yeah, people getting their preferences called out and ridiculed usually causes that. It’s like getting into a small subreddit and stirring shit by saying that their collective opinion is wrong.
Before the great Reddit exodus, Lemmy was just an echo chamber for a small subset of like-minded people. Now you get Reddit Lite. Enjoy it!!
(This comment, brought to you by Sync Ultra. [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅] )
This comment is almost poetic lol
In my experience, this has always been a problem after a forum grows beyond a certain size. It’s not really a Reddit-exclusive thing. It’s also not related to karma/reputation-tracking, IMO.
Early adopters of a small, somewhat empty community are people who want to grow the community and encourage posting. Discussion is bright and careful in certain ways because it’s usually just a few commenters interacting with each other who all want the same thing.
Once a community grows big enough to support lurkers and a variety of topics, with multifaceted discussion happening naturally, you have a familiar effect happen: you know how people are disproportionately more likely to review a product or business if they had a negative experience than a positive one? Well, in a similar way, when there’s enough content to lurk (and not be one of the early enthusiasts who post in spite of a lack of content, as a duty to help the community grow), then lurkers are more likely to come out of the woodwork and join a discussion when they see something they disagree with or feel strongly about.
Honestly, though, it has a few silver linings. I grew up learning a lot from arguments online in various places. Sometimes they are handled well and sometimes they are handled poorly by the participants. Learn from both. It’s great to see two sides of an issue, even a petty one. It can teach you a ton about how to behave well, how to actually persuade someone on a topic, and how to avoid conflict in the first place. It can also teach you about a controversial topic you knew little about, and spark your curiosity to learn more (if only to refute something with citations) and sometimes change your opinion altogether.
The healthy/toxic dichotomy starts in your own mind. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself. So find those little positive nuggets where you can.
Us old greybeards remember this as “Eternal September”,.when AOL users were let off the leash.
Definitelynot a Reddit problem this is humanity at its core.
This is Barbara Striesand.
As older lemmy users try to reject the reddit influence, it will become the modus operandi.
Ever raised a kid? 😁
Well said, I do hate to see discord between users, but what is a forum if everyone has one mind and there’s no discussion to be had. Civility is key to open people’s minds to your own view. And yours to theirs.
This is one of the most reddit-y posts I’ve seen so fae
Yes. Politically militant people are becoming more common. This time last month people seemed to have been much more agreeable even if they didn’t agree with you.
I have noticed an uptick in trolling in the past few weeks, since around the same time as the attacks began. They usually delete if you call them out.
I’ve started using the block button liberally. Specifically on users that seem to be only interested in stirring the pot and not actually interested in having any kind of actual discussion. I also just blocked a weird influx of porn bots linking the strangest domains on !random@kbin.social that were all created yesterday
I rarely blocked people on reddit but the pool is much smaller here so you tend to run into the same troll repeatedly or they spam throughout ansingle thread
Ive taken to just reporting and blocking left and right because i dont have the mental bandwidth to spend on someone who is looking for fights and not legitimate arguments
I’m exactly the same!
Oh my Reddit blocklist was huge. There was a subreddit for my city I was fairly active in but it was just always littered with unabashed racists that I would block all the time, they would get banned, they would make a new account to keep being racist, I would block again.
I felt like local communities were disappointing for the most part, since I’d expect it to be people talking about interesting activities or events happening where they lived. But, majority of the content seemed to be filled with break ins or murder news and complaining about how trash everything is. Occasionally some useful threads about where to find ___ in the city or what services people recommend for ___, but that seemed to be the rate exceptions. So not something you really visited or subscribed to unless I had a specific local question to ask.
I noticed the botspam too. I submitted a report, but I have no idea where it goes. lol Someone else said it was loaded with malware though. I didn’t click on any of it to find out, personally. Better safe than sorry.
I saw on another thread that reports are sent to both your instance’s administrators/moderators and the reported person’s instance administrators/moderators
How DO you block people on Lemmy anyhow? I can’t seem to find the button for it, I just seem to be able to block subs as a whole.
I use the mobile web client and it’s just in the 3 dots menu on a comment/post to report and to block. By memory it’s the same on the desktop web client too
Ah, see - that’s not on old.lemmy for some reason. I guess I gotta use the ‘normal’ interface to access it.
I noticed it when going outside my subscribed feed shifted from being kind of nerdy tech and games topics to being more flooded with memes and a whole lot of politics and news. Not that there’s anything wrong with those communities. It’s just not what I’m interested in, and with that type of content starting to dominate and making it harder to find new communities I’m interested in I started blocking a bunch of communities again. Especially when communities like against____spam started popping up, since those spam the most content about ____.