I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
I’m afraid you just described everything that begins well, but eventually becomes popular. The more the general public engages with a thing, the shittier that thing becomes. Things that are not yet mainstream or become/remain private tend to have a lasting quality.
A major difference being that the fediverse won’t get that “advertiser friendly” corporate sanitization with how it’s set up.
It’s nice not being advertised to or feeling like a product.
I think you underestimate the sheer fuckery of corporate advertisers.
I think the fundamental question is, as the Fediverse gets more popular, then how will servers get paid for? Here are some possibilities I see for how Fediverse hosting could work at scale:
- Surviving off donations alone: Possible but in my estimation unlikely, and it could veer into the territory of big donors having a controlling stake or exerting their interests.
- Instances limiting number of users to what they can afford: This would require the network of instances process to really work well.
- Big instances selling advertisements: Without oversight or moral commitment, this could easily go towards creepy personal data collection.
- Crowdsourcing the costs: This would require transparency and fundraising or some other model
- Hosts financing the operation in other ways: This could also easily get into creepy data collection practices or other dark patterns.
I hope we come up with some process or plan for avoiding the pitfalls and forging an honest and community-integrating way forward.
Aka eternal September
Ah yes, the common addition that ruins pretty much every equation. People. People suck 😂
The only solution is to make your own private instance and never allow anyone to join. Perfection at last… Oh, wait there’s still one human ruining the atmosphere. Not to worry, there’s a quick fix for that. You just need to ban yourself and then the instance will be completely perfect forever.
I think the next good solution to delay the march of normalcy is stronger community bias / branding.
I was on Reddit since almost the beginning and I would not say it’s similar, but I also don’t think that culture exists on the internet anymore, closest thing might be tildes?
What I really miss is the intelligent conversion and actual debate in the comments. People don’t really lay out arguments anymore, complete with sources and logical conclusions. Back in the early days of Reddit you’d be downvoted and told off if you made a claim without evidence. Anecdotal evidence, speculation, and bias were called out. There were still jokes and light comment sections, but comments aiming to make a point were essays where you could actually learn something. Might sound exhausting to some, but it feels like the internet has turned into just upvoting whatever confirms your bias, whether there’s evidence of it or not. I’m sure you can find some excellent examples in the old r/bestof posts.
The content was a lot different too, the community was just a lot more scientific. Studies were posted over articles, and clickbait articles (before they were even clickbait) were called out as not having substantial content or evidence. Even studies were heavily scrutinized by identifying the bias in the methodology.
There were a lot less communties (subreddits) too, which I think lead to healthier discussion overall and less of an echo chamber effect. It was still always criticized as being a “hive mind”, but it felt less like one to me back then anyways.
I guess overall it feels like the main difference is everything nowadays is meant to radicalize you, or get a reaction out of you. Back in the day if something political or scientific was being shared it was shared with the intention of changing minds, not confirming bias.
Anyways, that’s my old person rant. I’m probably looking at it all through rose tinted nostalgia glasses, but there’s definitely been a shift in how we communicate on the internet for better or for worse.
Downvoted.
Not a laid out argument, complete with sources and logical conclusions. This is anecdotal, speculative, and biased information.
Serious note : Love your perspective about the old reddit I’m always curious to know what made internet what it was. I wonder if that’ll happen again.
Source or gtfo!
My favorite was old days of Reddit you’d be skewered for posting a .jpg instead of a .png of the image had text.
JPG should be killed off. We don’t need a lossy image format anymore were not on dialup.
heard of 3g? theres better compression out there now anyways
Asking what’s the difference got a response about three paragraphs long.
I wrote some of them.
I also remember constant reminders to vote on the quality of the post, not if you agree or not.
Haha yeah, I don’t know if that disclaimer is still there, but that totally went out the window in the mid 2010s
It’s not and that’s because it’s bad for Reddit’s business model in the short term. If you zoom out this is exactly why reddit is on a nose dive over the last 3 years. More. Shit. Content.
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Kinda pain in the ass to add links and formatting on a phone which most of us use. Early days of reddit was all Desktops.
Yeah good point, that’s probably part of it! Reddit was probably used more during active time than passive time (while shitting). Gave you time to properly research a topic and structure arguments.
yea that reminds me when facebookk first came out and it was only for college, my friends would post stuff like that
I appreciate this take, and I strive to make intelligent conversation here on Lemmy.
/r/askhistorians was the last bastion of this approach. I loved that sub and really hope they migrate to a lemmy soon.
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I don’t know, I’m a pretty left leaning person. The vitriolic, almost violent responses to some of my comments is shocking. I knew Lemmygrad was a thing here, along with tankies, honestly it’s off putting to say the least. OP talks about Reddit being an echo chamber. I got news for you. This place is just as bad for lefty type discourse being regurgitated. My experience is that it has been anything but friendly.
Also just as hostile to women as reddit, sadly.
Found the woman
Please no crucify.
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I honestly wouldn’t give those people the dignity of calling them leftists. They’re too concerned about cosplaying as activists and dunking on people to actually give a shit about advancing the rights of real people or trying to protect anything good.
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I feel like those posters aren’t really socialists either. There’s a point which just claiming a worldview isn’t enough to justify the accuracy of that label while holding all the opposing positions to its values.
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I see comments like this, complaining about tankies, more often than i see “tankies”.
On the occasion politics comes up, and i say anything socialist, I’m jumped on by people who seem either angry or smugly dismissive of the notion of people organising.
Dude is a Canadian landlord. But I guess since the right wing has literal nazis now, anything left of that is ‘pretty left leaning’
Hey, I better not be seeing any disrespect for landchads here. Now you add 5% more rent to this month’s tip, hear me, rentoid?
It’s shit like this. I’m just a normal guy, I have a job, kids, hobbies. I believe in less military spending, national healthcare, social programs, and support for our vulnerable population. I got into real estate because it seemed like a good investment. People on here make it seem like anything that doesn’t fit their idea of “left” or"socialism" just be part of the conservative machine. Jesus, my investment decisions are not politically motivated. I made the mistake of trying to be part of a discussion and ended up with someone telling me I’m garbage and that I should give my investments to the tenants. Lol.
Being a landlord is a deliberate choice to make money through other people’s work.
It’s welfare for the rich.
That’s not to say you, or any specific landlord, is evil. It’s just an evil thing to do. If you don’t live in the house, you have no business owning it.
the right wing has literal nazis now
No more than the left does
Mate, it ain’t possible to be left wing and a nazi.
That’s a lie
Nazism is a far right ideology, my ignorant friend.
The Nazis are socialists
I just said I knew they were present, I didn’t say I specifically had a problem with them. I personally think that we’re don’t have enough unions. Any time corporations are against something, that usually means it’s good for employees and the environment. (I have no particular opinion on people’s political notions). It’s sad that people here on both ends of the political spectrum can’t voice their opinion without being jumped on. Honestly it’s worse than Reddit.
I’ve had several people here already tell me (directly or indirectly) that I’m really a Trump supporter in disguise because I dare criticize Biden and centrists don’t exist. But that isn’t a problem specific to Lemmy, and the sites that aren’t like this are alt-right “Ultra MAGA” cult sites that I want nothing to do with.
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The left has turned into the fascists they pretend to despise
Anyone who supports Biden isn’t left wing, especially if they get mad at your criticism.
The left has a lot to say about Biden
GOP/Russian/Qanon propaganda everywhere
lol i put up a post on here and people analyzing it from a “socialist perspective” the thing is i thin kits limited to certain cats [what u call communities] lemmy is like america 1790s, all kinds of people comign in here, some of the rejects from other countries, some criminals, and some opportunity seekers
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Given your comment I’m not sure if this a positive comment on lemmy or whether you agree with the comment you responded to?
Someone being banned for arguing politics would never happen on Reddit, so given they were banned from two instances in <6hrs is a land speed record.
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just as bad for lefty type discourse being regurgitated
You allergic to being correct or something?
I find Lemmy to be an echo chamber more than Reddit was. Depends on the community but Lemmy can be pretty caustic if you don’t agree with something.
That being said, is fine there is different opinions. Creates discussion.
Honestly, the fact that Lemmy displays upvote and downvote counts (like reddit, at least with RES, used to) makes it a lot friendlier. If you say something unpopular, better to see +10/-4 than just -6 - if you’re saying something unpopular but true, at least you’re seeing some positive reaction.
This alone makes it worlds less toxic and less circlejerky. People won’t automatically groupthink themselves into disregarding you if they realize that your comment was divisive instead of wrong.
+15/-45 gets that across better than -30
YouTube/Google also made this mistake. Or, I’m sure it is tested to make some KPI look good. But, certainly not the ability to discern “is this video garbage/scam” at a glance.
Sure, I’m clicking more videos to find a relevant one. So, probably “increases engamement”, but also reduces my willingness to pay for the service. But, I suppose it’s mostly driven by ad impressions.
And when you know it’s going to be unpopular, that +1 feels better than the -12 feels bad. You got through to someone!
I was around when reddit first started. There were Nazis. It seemed fine, because Nazis were useless idiots, and people told them to go fuck themselves.
Reddit in 2016 actively helped install a fascist who eventually tried to overthrow American democracy.
Reddit now is a place where “fuck off, Nazi” is punished more reliably and more harshly than being a goddamn Nazi.
This service feels familiar - but not for the reasons I’d like. The fools in charge of every popular instance think scolding “be polite!” and punishing rudeness instead of trolling are a force multiplier for trolls. If you can just keep saying dumb shit until someone says a no-no word - they get the boot, and you win.
I want a forum where “here is why you’re an asshole” is moderated based on whether the explanation is correct.
I actually got told by Reddit Staff that they’d contact law enforcement if I made anymore references to “punching Nazis”, then they banned me for “Report Abuse”
They never did a damn thing about the trolls who kept flagging any post referencing me being trans or anything positive about transpeople as “Suicidal” or “Promoting Self-Harm”
Got those “A redditor has asked us to reach out to you concerning…” all fucking day.
The worst sin of reddit mods was demanding “report and move on!” and then never doing anything about reports. Or scolding you for messaging the subreddit instead of using the report button.
Either do the fucking work or let people talk.
The worst part of that is they started banning people for “Report Abuse” even though I checked, “Report Abuse” is not even mentioned in the TOS.
How the fuck, are you gonna tell me to “Report and move on”, if you ban me for reporting.
Incidentally, guess why I had to stop using Reddit…
They banned me for very obviously joking that someone else should punch the fascist attorney general of Indiana in the face and it was some sort of punny reply based on something he said. They only reinstated me because a bunch of mods from multiple subreddits took my side.
They ban for “won’t someone rid me of this turbulent priest” comments apparently.
You understand that idiom, but not ‘go on, make my day?’ Even when it’s patiently explained to you?
Oh, I got that once. What’s the idea, I don’t get it ?
Same here, I read it was supposed to be a way of trolling, didn’t get the intention for my situation, but was just so fucking stupid anyway
There’s a negative stereotype that Transpeople kill themselves all the time, studies have shown this number to be dropping and the suicides to be caused by abuse from others and denial of transition related care.
The Far Right ignores this and goes “Lol transpeople kill themselves because transpeople dumb”
So it became a thing to report anyone Trans on Reddit, for “Suicidal Behavior”, which Reddit never looks into the validity of, they just send you a bunch of suicide hotline links… which is well intended, but there really should be a mechanism in place to find out if they’re trolling.
Eventually when it became common knowledge that it’s so exploitable it became a more in general method of griefing others.
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
I feel like political discourse didn’t start on Reddit until after subreddits were added
Haha, no. There’s a reason /r/Atheism was one of the default subs. All that Ron Paul didn’t come out of nowhere.
They say Atheism is to having a religion in the same way that not having a car is the same as having a car.
The same cannot be said of r/Atheism, the most dogmatic place on the whole fucking internet.
Big ‘/r/Politics is just like /r/Conservative!!!’ energy.
Shut.
Indeed.
Reddit in 2016 actively helped install a fascist
you can install a fascist?
can you uninstall one too or?
It’s already like that here, friend.
Lemmy might be friendlier on the surface but has a much stronger hivemind-y aspect to it where you agree with it or else.
It’s already like that here, friend.
Lemmy didn’t take off until well into May 2023, despite being online and open source for over 4 years. The quantity of posts, communities, comments was very small for 4 years online.
Then everyone flocked out of hate and anger of an API money matter with Reddit.Then crowds got hate-filled and angry when Threads was launched by Meta/Instagram/Facebook on July 5. And crowds became hate-filled and angry over Elon Musk rename of Twitter to X on July 23.
Outside big growth in memes and shitposts, there haven’t been big numbers of people flocking here out of organic goodness on organized topics. It has largely been a HiveMind of hate as a motivation to come here since May.
Some good seeds have been planted since May, but the atmosphere of hate motivates change is pretty much Mob Mentality / reactionary.
Your timeline of events is intriguing to see and makes sense to me, even if I had a different experience. Thanks for that.
Definitely, you can also see that on certain communities, there are very strong opinions which don’t allow for discussion.
Say anything that goes against the grain and you will be shunned immediately.Also - not that that is always a bad thing but Lemmy is extremely left leaning and you just can’t discuss certain topics here at all.
(Guns are always bad / Cars should all be banned and traded for bicycles / traveling by plane is bad and you should feel horrible for destroying the environment…)
What I enjoyed about early reddit was the tech/nerd focused community that did not try to push their political opinion into every thread.
Basically the worst part of reddit is already here, just that the echo chambers are smaller for now.Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it.
As someone who was on Reddit when it was young I am going to disagree with you here. Young Reddit was absolutely full of political ideology. It was a Ron Paul, legalize weed, atheist, soft anti feminist, cypher punk, USA style libertarian pool of ideology.
All places have an ideology. We are all constantly swimming in ideology. It’s just when an ideology matches you (either you being molded by the ideology or you joining a place with a matching ideology) you don’t notice it. A fish only has to think about the medium it is in after it is pulled out of the water.
It’s why Reddit Enhancement Suite was so valued on desktop for its filtering abilities and third party apps.
And the longer people used the reddit the more likely they were to avoid going to /r/all and unsubscribe from most if not all default subreddits.
Filtering is becoming just as important on the fediverse.
How is Dorothy going to make it to Oz if you’re hoarding all the damn strawmen?
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Indeed. Watch me attract downvotes. *ahem*
Linux sucks, and Windows 11 is a great OS.
I respectfully disagree with you.
Very funny.
🐧Must… DOWNVOTE… BLASPHEMY!!! /s
I do like to debate. I try not to use the downvote button if someone has caught my interest enough to engage.
I, too like to debate, and I do invite people to disagree with me if they can discuss in good faith. Easier to do in some communities than others.
I’d say less so. There wasn’t much by way of disinformation campaigns and bots back when Reddit first started so the posts and comments felt more genuine and organic. Even with Kbin/Lemmy being much smaller, there’s still a ton of weird shit that gets posted here or comments that feel really suspicious. It would be nice for that kind of environment to make its way back, but it seems those days are over.
Yeah 100% When I joined I saw so much weird pro China and Russia comments, veiled but there. And no one would disagree! To me it felt like trying to influence newcomers and it was more insidious the way it was presented. Nothing like the dumb trolls I was used to seeing on reddit.
I had someone go off on me recently because I talked about how I never see the term “tankie” anywhere but on Lemmy.
I blocked them because they just became so fucking unhinged it wasn’t worth responding to anymore.
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And the ddos’ n child porn aren’t too nice either
Honestly the lack of content helps people mellow out.
I like the fact that I’m not doom scrolling and being fed rage bait by algorithms. I also like the fact that I’m reasonably sure most people here are actual people and not bots or paid actors.
You can use the wayback machine to see how Reddit was at any point in the past. I was there from even before subreddits were a thing, and yeah it was pretty great. The fediverse does have a bit of that feel.
In 10 years we’ll look back on this early Lemmy period with the same nostalgia, and wonder how Lemmy ever got so shitty.
Nah - it’s pretty shit already. I wasn’t on Reddit at the absolute beginning but I did clock in 12+ years. This is more like the end of Reddit - only split into several servers.
At least we aren’t all competing to make the highest voted dumb joke or pun on every single post yet.
I actually liked that part, on most of the subreddits i used to go to they outlawed jokery. It was a very serious and sad place, mainly people just complaining and getting triggered by topics that weren’t that serious, at least to me.
Sure
In the Fediverse, it’s much less disruptive to migrate to a different platform if one starts to get shitty—so hopefully reddit-like situations can be avoided before they recur.
The vast majority of people on Lemmy right now are directly from Reddit and they act exactly like the bog standard Redditors they are. Stop deluding yourself.
Who are you interacting with that has been so lame? I’m having a way better time in these comnunities than on reddit.
You know, I’ve felt there’s a sizable difference now in the kinds of discussion you tend to see depending on your home instance. Lemmy.world really feels like Reddit in both good and bad ways. Lemmy.ca is cool with local news and a smattering of other communities. But I what I really love beehaw.org. There are few places like it, and I hope if people join there, they don’t bring their Reddit tendencies with them. Slow down a bit, think of each other and enjoy real, thoughtful discussion.
Anything even vaguely political is a shitshow since people are just as toxic as on reddit, but there is way less moderation
I think it depends on the instance.
hey I’m doing my best to be rude, scabulous, irascible and misanthropic out here.
There are antibiotic creams for scabulousness these days, how advanced is your case? 🧟♀️
ha. typo. I meant scabrous.
We appreciate your work.
I feel Lemmy is like reddit without the normies making this infact more reddit than reddit
I miss the ‘normies’, I interact with enough tech people in my daily life
I block almost every tech community and tech is still 50% of my feed here
This is exactly how Reddit started too. It was the digg migration that brought in all the normies.
Others credit the GameFAQs forums closing. Which really tells you how long reddit’s been around.
A bunch of websites circa 2008 basically won the internet, and would be dominant essentially forever if they hadn’t all started lighting themselves on fire circa 2020. Apparently because of interest rates. I am no ardent anti-capitalist, but I can definitely say, this specific arrangement has been thoroughly fucky, and its collapse has been deeply stupid.
Digg collapse was very similar. Digg was very clearly the “winner” at that time in terms of user numbers, but killed themselves in a very similar way as Reddit does now.
The word enshittification didn’t exist at the time, but the concept predates either website. It nearly predates the web. Stop talking to each other and start buying things.
Lol no Lemmy is just as bad as Reddit
The average Lemmy user seems more Reddit than actual Reddit lol
I left reddit for lemmy and have yet to have the same experience here that I did on reddit.
Honestly, it’s begun to feel more hostile and shady. Pretty sure the Russian trolls are here, but hexchan ain’t helping either. I’m waiting for a client side instance block feature. We really need it.
I mean I or anyone coudl write one up easily with userscripts, but I assume you’re wanting server side block, because thats just UI stuff, you may not see it but the server is still sending you their junk, which is what you want to stop. something simple like: cat_name{‘nousers’:list, ‘keywords’:[list of block keywords], ‘blockalgs’: [list of knownblockfilters] } and you send this to the server to fetch only the stuff you want
I’d like to block all users and posts from hexchan, exploding heads, and lemmygrad. I don’t care if it sends the data as long as it blocks it from my UI.
What’s that written in? Python? I need to learn Python.
if u dont care about receiving data, just learn HTML, css, and javascript. Take a look at userscripts and tampermonkey
Best option I’ve found so far is Connect for Lemmy on Android to block instances.
I thought you were going to say, full of weirdos, degenerates and outcasts. 🤣
I feel like you might be looking at early Reddit through rose coloured glasses. 😆
All the tales of Eden have been told by those who stayed till the fall
At least when CP is posted here it’s a malicious attack instead of a Reddit Approved Top Sub.
Yep, having jailbait as one of the top subs is not a good look. But in other places it’s more pleasant. I miss the novelty accounts before the coming of bots.
i miss when spacedicks would make some gross disgusting shit get to the front page 😂
Wasn’t there comments that people didn’t like the fact the comment feature arrivée at one point?
