Okay, it’s actually 18955 at the time of this post. I’m looking at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and lemmy.world has already passed beehaw.org by a large margin for second place.
Can’t wait for this place to start filling out!
It’s pretty exciting! I’m really enjoying this new platform. Not filled with ads and the comments feel a lot more genuine.
Ugh that was my biggest gripe with reddit. Open a thread just to see the same 5 jokes repeated over and over in different ways to try and reap karma.
That’s why I left the Always sunny in Philadelphia subreddit. I joined to talk about the show but Every.single.comment. is a joke or line from the show. Almost no one would engage in an actual discussion or conversation.
I began using reddit in 2017. I never really realized there had been a decline in quality until I recently ended up on some threads from 2017ish. I think some of it had to do with the change from a very desktop-oriented, forum-style page, to a dumbed-down mobile-friendly experience. The emphasis is now heavy on pictures, videos, instant messaging, avatars, online status, shiny award bling, infinite scrolling, etc. Reddit may not have intended it, but I feel like their target age demographic is much lower now. I’m shocked at how many regular users are still in high school or even middle school. I’d guess the kids are the ones repeating the funny jokes en masse. They’re just kids being kids, but it gets old sometimes.
There aren’t any karma bots yet. No one is making useless comments like “this.” The conversations are civil. I’m loving this community!
I think the federated nature of the platform may help to reinforce those positive attributes. Unmoderated instances with low quality content are at risk of being defederated, and as evident by the mod log, the mods do enforce rules on inflammatory and low quality content.
Does lemmy.world have any unfederated instances? I was preferring the freedom of chosing to block communities myself but I started running into some very toxic posts that make me feel like I took a wrong turn and I’m gonna get stabbed in a dark alley lol! I’d rather stick to the friendly, positive and useful posts. I would rather avoid that aspect of Reddit here.