This “the alternatives are great” gaslighting stuff has got to stop. We’ve all tried it and we’re all still here, for good reason. Reddit sucks but the fediverse sucks even more.
Oh the irony in this comment… The only person being gaslit is yourself.
And secondly - a lot of people don’t know that you can now block instances individually and that defederation/blocking is not really that big of a deal anymore.
Reading the comments in that thread made me realise how little I miss Reddit. The sub is RedditAlternatives and there’s a whole lot of people in there whinging that people are talking about alternatives to Reddit. Lemmy has it’s problems, but Reddit is toxic AF.
There’s a certain demographic of people who crave a constant flow of outrage to fuel their social media addiction. I know because I’ve struggled with this myself.
Reddit has a slew of bots and artificially promoted posts to provide this to increase engagement.
I guess we have bots here too, but it’s trivial to block them, and obvious spam/ads tend to be removed on sight.
There’s far less outrage fuel here than on reddit, and also the comparatively slower flow of content encourages actual engagement and participation vs. merely consuming.
I can see why someone who’s balls deep in reddit might be disappointed here.
I may also be completely wrong about some of this, but that’s my observational take.
As someone who went from a daily user of reddit for a decade and now hasn’t used reddit basically since the app’s red wedding, I really don’t think this is it. As much as I hope the fediverse and Lemmy take off, currently I’m extremely pessimistic about that because if anything the problem is the reverse of what you describe. My current front page on Lemmy (all/active):
- an article whining about Elon
- an article about Fox News/trump
- a post complaining about charging for XBL/PSN
- an article about Tesla being banned from driving schools
- an article complaining about DoorDash
and so on. And to get to this great non-rage bait content, I had to go through the trouble of even figuring out how to use the fediverse and which instance to sign up for (and then still hop instances a few times) and spend my first week just blocking like I was getting paid for it because language settings on this site mean nothing, more or less, and there are a few “communities” that pop up here that provide all of the intellectual stimulation of jamming a q-tip too far in your ear.
And if those posts alone don’t paint a clear picture about who the user base is here, heading to the comments will. Most of the comments read like they’re posted by “lefty white linux bro” or “communist trans linux they/them” who have decided that those are their entire identity/personality. While none of those things are bad and I tick a lot of those boxes myself, it creates a real echo chamber that borders on hostile to anyone that isn’t in that category. The other side effect I’ve seen on this is that this place can offer up some real doozies of takes in a way that is likely to make anyone who actually knows anything just up and leave. I saw one the other day that was talking about greatest people in the FOSS space and uncritically lists RMS that was heavily upvoted. At least someone brought up why that’s problematic in the comments, but imagine hopping over to the mainstream sites and talking about best musicians and seeing R Kelly on the list…
Anyway, while I don’t mind an echo chamber now and then, if Lemmy in particular is to grow and be useful for anyone outside of this base, I’d suggest the community adopt something closer akin to “reddiquette” which is probably the main reason why reddit was able to get somewhat past this in the early days, and some of the “niche” communities were able to grow. I put niche in quotes here, because as it stands now Lemmy doesn’t have even very vibrant communities for fairly mainstream things (music and TV, movies, etc.)
So while I personally choose to spend my time here instead of on reddit, that’s mostly an ideological choice and I view as a sacrifice because I’m missing out on tons of other content that I enjoy. Even your post is a form of this – “reddit bad” (sure) “because of bots” (also sure) “and Lemmy has less outrage content and fuels engagement” (uh, no.) Lemmy has as much or more, and it’s only fueling engagement on those that don’t immediately bounce off, but since you posted “their team bad, our team good” you’re getting upvotes and probably will continue to.
I don’t know what current Reddit looks like but old reddit is still irreplaceable so far.
People on Reddit are simply too addicted to the content. That’s the only real reason I can see what could bind someone to the platform. It all boils down to that - content. (And you probably don’t need me to repeat the usual “for more content we need more users” lol)
The old reddit is purely a technical thing at this point. I believe in the popular opinion that it’s a matter of time before it gets shut down.
I’ve personally been a user of it on Apollo and Relay and to me it was the way to use it. Rarely have I interacted with the website. So I imagine it’s a similar thing with the old mode users.
a lot of people don’t know that you can now block instances individually and that defederation/blocking is not really that big of a deal anymore.
I’ll reshare my thoughts on this from a comment I left in a completely different context a few days ago:
My question about that option is: what effect does it have? My understanding is that if we defederate, they can see our content and reply to it, but only other users on their instance will see those replies.
Does an individual blocking them do the same thing? If so, perfect.
But if, as I suspect, it still allows them to see and reply to comments and everyone else in the fediverse can see it, I cannot support it as a solution to dealing with the kind of bad faith interactions which would make me want to block or defederate an instance. It allows them to continue peddling their rubbish without even enabling the person they’re cribbing off of to respond.
Yeah, I’m so weary of this argument but you’re dead right.
If I and all my neighbours close our curtains then we won’t see all the garbage, rats, dead bodies, and other refuse piling up in our street, and then congratulate ourselves at the lovely community we share.
It’s absurd. As though everyone expects that corporate encroachment into the fediverse is going to come with a big sign that says “threads” or some such.
