I dislike that Lemmy is such a left-wing echo chamber. Reddit had a much wider variety of opinions being voiced openly; on Lemmy, there’s almost none. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s acceptable to say here and what isn’t. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting because it can make you feel like the opinions of the average Lemmy user represent the wider population when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Also, there are almost no blue-collar workers here, and most discussions revolve around office jobs and big city life.
EDIT: and the extreme levels of cynicism.
I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.
I don't like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation. The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years. This Lemmy account has only been around for about 1/10th of that.
One of the biggest strengths of Lemmy is also one of its biggest curses. Due to its federated nature, anyone can create a new instance. The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don't like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc. They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.
Like
Editable titles
"All" here vs other social media is much better
It's more likely that arguments are civil. There are still quite a few venomous arguments but I've noticed that it it proportionally less.
On Reddit or Facebook, if you didn't like a group you left and made your own. If you didn't like the admins, tough shit. Here, if you don't like the admins, you can use a different instance.
Likes and dislikes are separate, and are in some cases viewable who submit them. I feel like this keeps people a little more honest.
I like the modlog and transparency. It's so much easier that when someone complains about unfair mod action, to see if they are in the right or exaggerating.
There is an "end" to Lemmy. There isn't just infinite content to scroll through.
Dislike
Smaller user base means that niches that Reddit filled just aren't here.
There is an "end" to Lemmy. There isn't just infinite content to scroll through.
Neutral
The types of common negative personalities here are different from that of Reddit. Reddit has more misogyny, classism, antinatalists, and obnoxious atheists. (As opposed to the chill atheists.) Lemmy has quite a few people that are pretty shitty to those that are disabled or cannot get out of some situations. If you cannot work towards the greater good without any rest, can't escape a bad situation, or can't just extend yourself further, you are trash. There are also more fringe beliefs here. I do like it because of the different perspectives, even if I very strongly disagree. (It makes me think!) Unfortunately we still have the dumbass arguments about generations but you can't have it all.
All the trolls.
The people. For both.
Like:
- It has that small-community feel still. I don't see (perhaps because I stay out of a lot of the more tech-ey communities?) the kind of farming, low-effort, generally mediocre content I saw on Reddit.
- Lack of the sense of a hyper-corporatized, "You're only allowed to do things that make us money" sense that's enshittified much of the internet lately. I'm not even sure if Lemmy can be monetized.
Dislike:
- Not yet large enough either. I don't want hundreds of millions of users, but I still miss a lot of the more niche hobby/discussion communities I used to be able to participate in. Even communities for fairly large hobbies or interests can be dead on Lemmy.
- The awful political takes. Everything from typical dumbness up to advocating violence (but it's okay because it's my point). And it's everywhere.
I genuinely cannot express how much it annoys me that I cannot have a blocklist for keywords.
Most of the things I read are from my subscribed communities, which i'm very happy about generally, however given the overall state of life today, half of the posts in completely unrelated communities end up being one of the following:
- Twitter CEO
- Hate speech in US politics
- AI propaganda for some pump and dump quick money
I really just don't want to see any of those things
It takes some time to block out stuff to make Lemmy usable. So much anime, bots and dumb American politics.
It's nice there are a bunch of apps for Lemmy, but using it without an app is not very welcoming. It needs a lot of improvement (e.g. manually compose urls to subscribe to communities on other servers).
Like:
-
Decentralized system that limits abuse
-
Great customizaion
-
It works (unlike much of the competition)
Dislike:
-
Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)
-
Generally very pessimistic userbase
-
Lacks polish and features in many areas
-
Currently trends towards extremist echo chambers - the fact that .ml (an instance known for banning criticism of violent, racist, authoritarian governments) is one of the biggest instances, is a good example of this.
-
tends to be extremely hostile to any sort of monitization, regardless of the quality or cost to produce content
-
Dislike: every post inevitably has someone complaining about capitalism, Trump, police, Musk, …
The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that's amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.
Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
Likes: the small community, traditional forum vibe. No ads, no oppressive corporate hand to keep things advertiser-friendly. Interests and views tend to align, but I can have a healthy disagreement on many issues with most users here. Only a few famous borderline trollish users that aren't fun to chat with, most overt trolls are quickly dealt with.
Dislikes: heavy use of downvoting simply unpopular opinions (a mild annoyance). Difficult to pick between posting in a rarely active niche community and a very active but general community (sometimes I just crosspost). The threat of centralization, with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml having by far the largest communities (I would like to see more active communities spread across sites, though I make an effort sometimes to comment on different servers). Some big features I'd like to see that still seem far from implementation, such as multi-communities.
Decentrilization is both a blessing and a curse.
If there's an issue you can make your own community with blackjack, and hookers.
But at the same time these communities never seem to get super big (minus a few) and if you're subscribed to both there's not a good way to deduplicate the posts. So 5 communities post the same thing (or one person posts them in 5) sometimes you see all 5 side by side.
I have loved my time with Lemmy so far. I feel like people are much kinder here compared to Reddit, it feels like a genuine community of people that are willing and able to help one another out and chat and talk, without the people of Reddit that just bully and make fun of for no good reason other than just because. I think that’s the biggest reason I prefer lemmy over Reddit, along with the benefits of being decentralized and federated.
But I miss the near infinitely larger user base on Reddit and the things that come with that. On Reddit I can find a community for pretty much anything I can imagine. I’ve always loved using Reddit as a tool to help me learn, because regardless of what it is I’m learning I can find somewhere that I can ask any question I could think of, and 9/10 times someone out there out of the millions of Reddit users can give me a decent competent answer. That’s my favorite part about Reddit. That is, if they don’t just call me stupid and tell me I’m an idiot or something like that.
But I feel hopeful that Lemmy can get to a similar point some day.
I like that Lemmy doesn’t have stupid levels of auto-moderation happening. And I like that threads don’t constantly get locked merely because people are engaging with them.
I like that it's moderated fairly lightly but reasonably. Often I can have an actual discussion with someone who doesn't agree with me without either of us getting banned by a mod who likes one side or the other. From what I see generally a user needs to be very obviously abusive/racist/violent before a mod steps in, even if the content is controversial.
I dislike that I've needed to heavily restrict my use for my mental health until after the election. A lot of people (not all by any means) believe it's ok to bully and abuse other users because their cause is righteous - it's already shown up in this thread. E.g. the daily posts and comments, with a lot of upvotes/support, that label anyone who disagrees with or criticizes Kamala (used to be Biden)/Democrats a bot, idiot, worse than useless, foreign agent and so on. I'm not talking about downvoting which is just expressing disagreement - I'm talking about outright insults and upvoting those. The attitude of "vote with/support me or else" has no place in a democracy founded on free voting without persecution, even if the bully is sure they're right. If I didn't mention it, perhaps even though I have, we might see a version of "but it is actually ok this time" and reasons why. It's happened before.
Guess what? Very few "policy bullies" think they are evil - they're positive it's justified. Christians demand abortion bans, Muslim deportation, religion in schools/government and so on because they truly believe they are saving eternal souls. I was raised in that environment. That a sizable amount of Lemmy users believe it's correct/admirable to insult others into "proper" behavior makes them very similar in character to those religious extremists IMO. Apparently when the issue is really important abuse is ok.
I'll end by saying Gaza/Palestine is incredibly important to me - I am legitimately very upset frequently by the stories and media. However, Bernie Sanders convinced me to support Biden and then Kamala. Bernie laid out his argument with logic and facts and did not once insult my position. I also doubt the aggressive posts/comments are winning over undecideds. "I wasn't sure if I should vote Democrat until I was called a harmful idiot and had my concerns dismissed as being in bad faith".
What I like: flexibility for clients,nice people,etc.
What I dislike: not every community is here and some of the communism here as well as finding a instance you want is not the easiestI think it’s the best at what it does. That problem space doesn’t have a lot of good options.
Like: pretty much everything
Dislike: wish there was more activity in the D&D comms
like: people are nicer here!! it also still has the old forum/chatroom vibe, and if the admins suck on an instance you can just. join another. and still subscribe to communities from the old instance. modlog is also pretty cool, allows for transparency between mods and users. i also cant doomscroll because like the other person said, there's an 'end' to it.
as well as editable titles lmfao
dislike: niche communities are hard to find, and the ones that do exist are usually empty. also some of instances' ui/css is extremely fugly and i physically cannot use it (why i left the fediverse before) (also the nice css was one of my reasons for joining dbzer0). also the tankies, but at least they're contained within hexbear, .ml and lemmygrad.
I've got no problem with the communists. I like having a part of the internet that isn't completely commoditised and filled with ads and people trying to sell side hustles. I hate the search function.
The interface. I actually have a lemmy alt and I just hate utilizing it due to the web interface. Its the main reason I did kbin and non mbin to begin with. I did quick accounts on each and liked the bins better naviagation and config wise.
I like that it’s not reddit in terms of toxicity and powerdrunk mods. I really like the apps accessing Lemmy and the general tone in comments and discussion. As a German the community ich_iel is most of the content I need.
I dislike how long it took me to filter out the words „Elon“ and „musk“ because every second post on c/technology is about that man. Phew, my life is better without it. (I really like being able to filter)
What I like: The effort and persistence of the developers
What I dislike: The ActivityPub protocol.
I've been impressed with the number of people who understand this pretty esoteric and fundamentally game-changing bit of technical voting system knowledge:
About first past the post and third parties for those who aren't going to watch. But do watch! Required viewing for everybody!
What I like: It is definitely nicer than Reddit was.
What I dislike: It lacks some of the communities I was frequenting in Reddit when it was good.
It's still in the sweet honeymoon period before getting ruined by redditors who compulsively shit on everything.
The sidebar says email is optional but it's required to sign up, and your required to wait for approval before you can post.
