Jesus, yes. I can't tell you how many subreddits got swamped with high-school leveled questions about sex.
Especially in TooAfraidToAsk, which is supposed to be about questions that'd normally be about trying to ask taboo things to get a discussion. But no, you'll come across questions like "if there is no porn to look at, what do you look at instead while jerking off in the shower?". Like, besides trolls, who the hell comes up with some questions like that? Let's not forget the abundance of people, showcasing the lack of sexual education, asking if they'd get HPV by doing this or HIV by doing that.
Reddit seems like it is largely made up of two main demographics. It's either people in their 30's, 40's, 50's who were there since the site's launch (me) or teenagers to early/mid 20's. The latter has a big reach on the site right now.
Every single time I think about reddit, that picture of a past reddit meet-up appears in my head. 99% were fat, disgenetic, unappealing, unhealthy, weird looking people.
Because of user karma. Even a fake incentive to say things that everyone likes beyond normal social pressure creates a bunch of people who eagerly say inane shit to get moar doots.
Think of it like this. When humans talk to humans, is any joke ever obligatory? It's "that's what she said" any time anything vaguely prurient gets mentioned.
Now imagine if they said "I'm obligated to tell you that's what she said." Do you see how they've added a tragic undercut to a comment that already wasn't funny?
I used to use /s all the time over at Reddit - especially in political discussions. If I posted sarcastically "advocating" for something, I didn't want people to misread the post and think I seriously supported that thing.
Normally, I could trust that people would pick up on the sarcasm, but it's hard over text and there were people actually advocating for the horrible stuff. I didn't want to be mistaken for one of them, so I'd add a /s. It definitely ruined the joke, but I'd rather do that than have someone think I was racist/sexist/bigoted/etc.
Sometimes it's so hard though... It's hard to find posts that are just slightly disagreeing... It's always some asshole talking absolute bullshit or minimizing other people's suffering.... It's really hard to respectfully disagree with someone who says vile shit.
Well, I did say needlessly hostile. I definitely didn't mean that you should treat actually vile people with velvet gloves.
I'm talking more about the overall culture on Reddit where you'd have someone making some innocuous mistake and getting torn into it for it.
Although, yeah, that does also extend to general disagreements that tend to take on raised hairs where it really isn't warranted. Like, just of the top of my head, what happens whenever someone discusses the viability of nuclear power.
I think you should change your mentality. Imo, most people want to do good, most people are average intelligence, and most people are about average informed. I'm not extraordinary- so when I disagree with someone I'm recognizing that they probably genuinely want good, they probably know as much as me, and they probably are as smart as me, yet they disagree. Maybe one of us is lacking information, or maybe they have a different philosophy than me. And I can accept that and think they're wrong without jumping to them being a bad person. Basically, being wrong isn't evil- and I don't determine what is right anyways.
The problem with power mods is that it's a thankless job that people do for free. You're not exactly getting a line of people out the door willing to take up the mantle, so a small group of power users end up taking on more and more.
You're giving them too much credit. Although some are altruistic, many are greedy power hungry scabs who's entire life revolves around holding whatever merger power they can over others.
I stepped up once and made a sub for a small niche game I liked when none existed. The devs noticed, reached out me with free copies of the game to give away on the sub and everything. Then some power mods got wind of it, made their own subreddit for the game and completely overwhelmed my little sub though cross promotion via their other subs and with their army of alt accounts too.
Most of them don't want help, their cries are just to elicit sympathy and get free stuff out of it. Power mods are the scourge of Reddit.
Well right. The answer is just to have GPT moderate everything in exchange for Bitcoin. /s
You're definitely right, though. It's thankless but important and idk what the solution really is, but I think distribution is definitely better than centralization. More mods the merrier even if they're just there as checks and balances. But that's definitely getting into politics as well, which I'm not great at.
That’s already kind of happening. the main two communities are lemmy.world and lemmy.lm. And since different instances can defederate from each other that can cause the same echo chambers we saw on reddit. Here’s a list of everything you can’t see if you’re on lemmy.world: https://fba.ryona.agency/?reverse=lemmy.world
Thankfully you can go out and make an account on an instance like lemmy.sdf.org that doesn’t block anything but I don’t think it’s a perfect solution.
Shameless plug for lemm.ee, which no one has defederated from, also the admin has been actively contributing to the codebase and really seems to know his stuff.
I suspect powermods are more of a myth than reality, but I agree we should be concerned with any instance becoming the defacto site for Lemmy.
I think the best way to avoid this is already in motion (though slowly), which is to have smaller topic instances which house the topic in its entirety and don't have as many users (for example there is one for Star Trek and one for Android already). This way, regardless of your instance you still have access to the topic.
Powermods exist, but they are important to how Reddit functions.
They effectively act as a knowledge base on how to moderate large subs. They know how to use a lot of specialty software to moderate large subs and will typically act as a lightning rod for other mods on unpopular decisions.
They also get drunk on power, but Reddit never provided for a better way to control their communities. Of course, technically neither has Lemmy, yet.
Shutting down questions with any variation "just Google it"
It always irks me when someone goes "bro you know Google exists right" like if I wanted to Google it I wouldn't be asking it here
People also forget that Google doesn't give the same results for everyone. Sure you could use incognito mode, but how many people are going to do that when they're looking for normal stuff?
I've gotten pegged by people when I reposted something I knew very well, hadn't been posted within a year's timeframe. Like, what's the problem with that? It hasn't been seen in so long so yeah it'll be reposted.
Unlike with your second scenario, I've seen posts crop up within the same day and they're all gratified and praised like as if people hadn't seen them before when their short attention spans fail to tell them that they did see it before very recently.
Karma-whoring is especially bad when it’s just all bots doing it. There were many instances where even comments on karma posts were bot generated. Upvotes were much likely bot generated too.
How's about they stop trying to migrate Reddit subs over to Lemmy as communities? That would be nice. I don't want a Reddit substitute. I want a new thing that puts Reddit entirely in the past. I want a fresh start, not a Reddit clone. Reddit sucked for a lot of reasons. I could go on and on. Stop replying to comments with "this" as well. But, mostly, I'd like to see people from Reddit moving over to here with zero Reddit nostalgia. Say goodbye to your favorite Reddit subs, stop trying to re-create them over here in the Fediverse. Instead, have some imagination and create new, original communities and kick the whole Reddit vibe to the curb for once and for all.
Disagree — while the larger communities tended to get kind of lame, Reddit’s smaller communities were quite worthwhile. I want that to continue, just not on Reddit.
I'm really not talking about smaller communities. I'm talking about the ones that made the Reddit brand. Like AITA, for example. A lot of the smaller communities could be discussion boards anywhere because they're so small and they are a niche. If there was an Aardvark Lovers sub on Reddit, I'm all in for an Aardvark Lovers sub on Lemmy. Do I really want to see a lot of the same big subs? No. A lot of what I see on YSK is stuff I don't need to know, don't care about, didn't change my life or affect me at all, whether it's on Reddit or Lemmy. My point, which you did not get, is that I don't want a Reddit clone.
Why not recreate subs as communities? Sure assume subs could maybe be consolidated into a single community, but other time subs seemed to act just like communities here. Is there some aspect of communities in not seeing/ understanding? Or is that moreso just your opinion?
I just don't like the trend toward a Reddit clone. People should be more imaginative. Do we really need a "You Should Know" community? Not useful to me. Come up with something better, re-spin it and improve on it. Really could do without "AITA". Smaller subs, as I said in a previous reply, are so specific that if they get repeated on Lemmy, it's not really that they were repeated from Reddit. Like, let's say a lot of people on Reddit like Aardvarks and had a sub about their devotion to Aardvarks. Having a community for that on Lemmy is not the same thing as having a clone of "You Should Know." There are certain subs on Reddit that inadvertently contributed to creating a Reddit brand. I could do without those.
I agree. If something is sought after that also was on Reddit, it will come up here. No need to force it. I wonder if copy-pasting Reddit subs here would goad people into the same behavior this thread points out many people would like to avoid?
I kind of enjoy the circlejerking to an extent. It’s like watching fads come and go in real time, and I like seeing these dumb memes evolve over a week or two before disappearing
Circlejerking is incredibly fucking stupid, but I eat up stupid humour like candy so I personally support it. As long as serious/discussion spaces don't get contaminated, ofc
maybe it is necessary to build an online community to have posts like that?
I'm pretty sure it is, but that bean meme was a little bit too much. On the other hand I can understand how people on this new platform are craving the feeling of community that memes and insider jokes evoke.
The only justification I could think of is someone providing CSS services to different subs. Instead of modding/demodding for every issue, they just stay on and work as needed.
Underrated comment. I understand making a comment every now and then that's negative (people should be free to reasonably complain) but whole subs devoted to hating on something create the most toxic environments and echo chambers on the internet while inadvertently contributing to the popularity of the thing they hate. The universe grows what you give attention to so I think its best to focus your attention on things you love instead of what you hate.
At a certain point took like 5 years for me to notice on reddit was when summer would hit the site would be shit, I tossed it up to the kids arrived, again.
It's amazing for how much this place is supposed to be decentralized and open, hours much you all want to control messaging, themes, and already are having fight over fight on who to defederate from.
Twice now I've seen claims of "This instance just exists to support <something bad>! Defederate them!"
Meanwhile I'm subscribed to what appear to be completely normal, reasonable communities on those instances that seem to have nothing to do with the bad thing. Think topics like computer networking and home improvement, stuff like that.
Can we go easy on jumping to the "This instance" claims? Yes, some unsavory communities have been started on various instances. Those instances have, in general, addressed the issues when they were brought to their attention... Can we reserve the nuclear defederation option for repeat offenders or technical issues?
Experience has shown that too much blue-eyed-ness and openness towards trolls with bad intentions ruins a space very quickly. I can understand people want to put some thought into avoiding this before it happens.
I mean you're highlighting some points that support how open and decentralized that this place is?
It seems there is a healthy sentiment among users and understanding the tolerance paradox. Beyond that the ability to discuss around what we (an instance) wants vs what we (Lemmy) wants vs what we (individual users) want is great. The option the federate and defederate is also great, as if there is an instance adding 0 value to any of those prior groups (like lemmy.online), you as a community can decide to not federate. You as a user don't like that choice? You can go to another instance or make your own! The level of openess and control is really in your hands.
Cynicism and despair. There are no better words to describe reddit today than these two. Why do they argue endlessly over nothing? Because to them, nothing matters.
You can see that sentiment start popping up in the comments with the newest influx, but I hope sincerity will win out in the end this time.
Especially the pointless cynicism of a “Didn’t happen” reply. My single most powerful change to make Twitter a less toxic place (ho, ho) when I used it was to block @DHOTYA_ and related keywords and anyone who used them.
Pn the reddit side, i started lurking !savethirdpartyapps@reddit same topics over here but... people were being brought in circles by the same claims being repeated by the "nothing matters" people, the fact the debate was harrassed into hopelessness. The problems of these people were adressed to be not hopeless 15,12,7 and 4 threads ago. Its frustrating!
Although I'm sure this is highly optimistic, I'd love to avoid the toxic behaviors that were free to grow on Reddit. The most hateful words I've ever read were on Reddit; I'm already seeing it happen here. It would be wonderful if discourse was welcomed here and promoted without all of the toxic back and forth. What was more harmful was a large amount of one-sided bans dealt out by mods of a certain variety. As long as the mods agreed with someone's stance it didn't matter how obscene a comment made, was. Let's try and be better than Reddit in more than one way.
Seriously. I've been IP banned from reddit for a while, just because I made a vague comment on my main account while also having a burner that I just say my opinions on.
I can't stand "this is the way". Everytime I read it I imagine the person saying it having absolutely no personality or uniqueness about them. Feels like the ultimate NPC statement.
These just sound like the behaviours of your average pudding brain internet user. I don't think it's a Reddit thing, and it will 100% continue in Lemmy.
The good thing is one can block entire communities without issue in order to personalize the experience. It was already vital in Reddit for me, so I'm happy to do it from the start here. I don't hate meme subs or anything and I'm glad they're having fun, it's just not what I want of this site. Or outrage bait subs.... or sports subs... or gacha games subs... or cringe-focused subs... or -you get the drill. Happily blocking is easy and harmless to them.
Atleast the second point on your ‘missed’ list is generally instance related (atleast in my experience).
True, and I am aware of that. But just speaking of the user experience, it is a pain point that I'm currently experiencing that I wasn't when using Reddit (aside from the occasional "You Broke Reddit" outage periods).
That's not a criticism of Lemmy, I mean I lived through Friendster's cripplingly poor performance, Twitter's failwhale, and the bad early days of Reddit. Performance issues with new, growing social media sites is to be expected. But for the time being, I do miss being on a more stable platform.
This is attempt #2 to submit this reply. Let's see if it works...
I think part of the problem is that people don't tend to read the comments on anything before they comment themselves. So you get the same old jokes repeated over and over and people thinking their opinions are really niche and groundbreaking when the exact same opinions are all over that same comment section.
I dont think redundant questions are the problem. But people's historically short responses on reddit definitely were. Responses like "have you tried googling it" or "the question has already been answered, try searching before you post" do nothing but ostracize the person asking and make communities unwelcoming. I would like to see Lemmy more understanding, as to encourage and attract novice individuals in communities they are interested in
A way to more seemlessly link conversations together is kinda critical.
Seemless crossposting that shows you the comment as if it were a part of the conversation, kinda like a symlink.
Commenter links his post to an existing thread, collapsed by default mabe, and it puts the thread there as if it were always part of the conversation hirarchy
I feel like before 2015 reddit was way more free speech focused. Now it seems like every sub will ban you because they don't like you politically or you violated rule 15b paragraph 2.
Basically every sub is run by tiny elons with a power trip.
Yeah if you have a politically different opinion you get banned for "Trolling" as if it's impossible for someone to genuinely believe something they disagree with. This is already happening on lemmy unfortunately
Echo chamber, calling people "redditors", talking about the site as if everyones a community and knows eachother. It contributes to the hive mind. Just talk to people like normal people. Also, the writing style of anyone telling a story- at least the 4chan ">be me" is funny. The reddit style of just adding too much detail, snarky remarks, and the (22M) after every pronoun.
We are talking over text in an abstract conversarion structure (comment trees), in a place where you write your message on the wall and mabe some day (usually soon) someone will see it and write a reply back.
Whatever "normal" is, is what we make it. Hense the point of the post
All the hivemind from reddit. The love for random celebrities. Keanu Reeves doesn't care for any of us here. The love for recycling facts everyone already knows. I don't need to read about how the Appalachian mountains go up to Scotland again.
I remember when Jennifer Lawrence was the hottest shit according to reddit. Then she said something that reddit didn't like and suddenly she's the worse.
Also the bots that simulated activity by reposting the top posts with their highest upvoted comments from a year ago.
Cross-site/server bans because you posted in a community that the moderators of the one you are trying to post in don't like. Sadly already happening with many servers defederating from each other.
Defederating is fine and I think it's a necessary evil to combat spam and problematic shit which wouldn't even be allowed on Reddit, i.e. jailbait, loli/shota artwork, involuntary/revenge porn, bestiality, rampant hate speech.
The problem is when you have a bot banning you from dozens of subreddits because you posted a single comment or voted on something within a community like /r/kotakuinaction, /r/tumblrinaction, /r/watchredditdie, /r/subredditcancer or anywhere else they deem a "hate subreddit."
I hope the stupid koala/sunfish/panda copypastas burn with reddit. It was kind of funny at first, but then it started actually convincing people that a bunch of species legitimately deserve to go extinct for... taking up an ecological niche?
Reminds me of how people used to laugh about blobfish. Then they realized that the deep sea fish - adapted to incredible pressure - doesn't take rapid decompression well.
I've never seen anyone taking the copypasta seriously enough to consider wanting these species to go extinct. Do you have any links that show these kinds of people?
Probably the leftist echo chamber thing. You know, a place where people can't just assume everyone agrees with their extreme political opinions, everyone hates Trump and loves Biden, everyone has no issue with homosexuality or trans kids or drag queens etc. You know.
Yeah you're right. It might actually be easier to try to get all users across all instances to abide by a set of agreed upon social norms than it would be if there was only one instance (reddit).
Also there was that one user who'd write these Uwu Cute Baby Animal poems in baby talk and would get upvoted and jacked off in the comments ad nauseum. Like, the Rupi Kuar of Baby Animal Content Farms. The William McGonagall of Wholesome 100 Circlejerking
If downvote isn't a disagree button, then upvote shouldn't be an agree button either. Anyway, whenever you give people a single set of binary options to "react to a comment" (true/false, yes/no, on/off) they'll always interpret it however they want.
I reserve downvotes solely for comments that don't contribute to the discussion. For example, if my comment said "I like ginger tea with lemons" as a reply to your comment about downvotes, I would downvote it.
If it’s innocently irrelevant I either ignore it or reply “I don’t get it”. Either the commenter realised they replied in the wrong place or you get a fascinating insight into the thought processes that made it seem worth their time typing out.
If everyone would do it this way, downvotes could filter out noise. But even I found myself klicking at the downvote button for disagreeing with somebody. Maybe call it a noise button instead and give it a different icon?
I decided to never downvote anyone here. Debating on if that extends to bots or not though.
I've come close to breaking that rule, but I'm pretty sure I haven't yet.
Even bots should have the error of their ways explained to them (or rather their handlers). If they don’t listen and learn then it’s time for the mods to drop the ban-hammer.
Honestly, I think the downvote button was made for a hellhole, its helpful for only those trying to derail a conversation with their own anger or sadness, "why not get a mod?" ...you got me
So I see you've got 8 downvotes for saying this, that's because some people have a stupid personal rule that says if someone complains about downvotes then they should be automatically downvoted. This is a stupid redditism. Downvote me as well if you want but know that here we can see who you are if we decide we actually give a shit.
That’s why I’m so pleased that Liftoff! only shows the aggregate number. It’s so much calmer here when you don’t even notice that some proportion of people here are mashing that stupid downvote button.
Once we have critical mass, I think we can have meaningful discussions. However, if 300 million threads users become regulars in these instances, expect the worst of redditism. Every comment will be memes or jokes.
Going to have to disagree with this one. Saying /s is helpful for people like me who have a particularly hard time with interpreting text in casual contexts like this. Using /s doesn't change the feel of the comment (at least in my eyes) and helps you understand the tone.
The Firefox circlejerk. Anytime something remotely related to the internet was brought up there would be 700 comments about how much better Firefox is. I swear, ever since Google announced killing manifest v2 (which ofc isn't good) half the posts on reddit have been people shilling Firefox.
Opinions about Firefox aside, I hope people can agree the endless circlejerk was getting annoying
Edit: Judging by the speedy downvotes, looks like the Firefox fanatics are on Lemmy too. What a shame, I hate seeing their constant ads.
I've had that happen to me on Reddit too. Firefox really needs a fork that's similar to Vivaldi IMO. Something that brings the power users back to Gecko since Vivaldi is doing a better job for them than Firefox has in the last few years. They even got on the fediverse before Mozilla did.