I imagine there’s excitement for the increase of activity but worries about the potential toxic side of Reddit coming along too.
I’d especially be interested in the Lemmy devs’ opinions.
I’m actually quite pleased at the new influx of users! There’s finally a good amount of activity and real discussion going on here, instead of just posts with links to articles with zero comments and no real OC.
Aside from that, I have enough faith in the moderators and the structure of the platform itself that there shouldn’t be too much of a toxicity problem. Honestly, my own biggest fear is just that a lot of the new users here lose interest and move on, returning the platform to its earlier days.
For now, I just hope that the servers don’t go down in flames when the 12th comes around. I can’t wait to see how this platform will look further down the road though!
I have enough faith in the moderators and the structure of the platform itself that there shouldn’t be too much of a toxicity problem.
My concern: Are there enough moderators for the deluge coming?
Maybe not for the initial deluge, but with sustained growth the number of mods will grow too
Maybe, maybe not, but the instances have the option of closing registrations for a bit if they get overwhelmed and need to regroup. This is why it’s nice to see lots of other instances popping up across the fediverse
Maybe I’m missing something but how will that help the moderation, since users can visit/comment from any instance?
I literally just signed up and this is the first comment I’ve read. I feared we might be seen as outsiders so thanks. I’ve been banned from Reddit for quite some time but lurked on RIF. Hopefully Lemmy can scale in time.
I’m in Lemmy for, like, two years? Mostly lurking. I’ve been looking for alternatives for longer than that though.
I feel like the monsoon is mostly welcome. Content quality may decrease a bit, but the quantity will make up for it. And quantity is what has been missing IMO.
In special I’m hoping for specialised instances about some subjects that I enjoy. I like the Lemmy instance but stuff like anime and conlanging “feels” off-topic here.
In special I’m hoping for specialised instances about some subjects that I enjoy. I like the Lemmy instance but stuff like anime and conlanging “feels” off-topic here.
Do you mean for subscribing to the communities of these new instances, or would you completely switch to that instance (create a new account there)?
I’ve noticed some lags/asyncronity with non-home instance content. I guess it would make sense to be home wherever is the most and best fitting communities. But that would also mean leaving behind the stuff of the current account.
I’m all about it! Great to see a platform take off when it’s centered around being ad free and open sourced.
Well:
- I’m annoyed at calling people who dislike an app and choose another website “refugees”
- I’m happy that we’re going to have more activity
- I hope more instances will be built and maintained, because I don’t think the large number of new members can be moderated effectively if they keep flocking to the same handful of instances
- When in doubt, I hope moderators will be too strict rather than not enough, especially in the beginning to make sure the behavioural expectations are very clear
expired
That’s a good point, thanks for adding some nuance :)
just to emphasize your point there about calling people refugees. I always lurked reddit to the point of using libreddit only lately, and never felt the drive to contribute
with reddit’s shenanigans, I found out about this place in one of the posts asking for alternatives and it’s a whole different atmosphere and I feel more comfortable not lurking anymore
all this to say that I am here because of reddit’s actions, but I’m not a refugee
Hopefully it’s moderated much less. Don’t see how it wouldn’t be since it would probably take more effort. The excessive, special interest driven moderation is what really killed reddit long before this api issue.
Mods should have never been allowed to moderate more than like 3 subs at most.
I agree. “Powermods” became a thing 10 years ago and it’s been terrible for the site. Advertising companies pay teams of people to ensure subreddits remain advertiser friendly, and friendly to their portfolio of products. Reddit tolerates this because those moderators are free labour, keep the site clean, and post lots of “content.” I’m hopeful that, if Lemmy takes off, federation will allow us to wall off obvious cases of abuse without administrators stepping in, as they have done again, and again, and again on Reddit.
Admins also strong armed mods/subs to enforce community guidelines and TOS that was clearly agenda driven
I’m new here from Reddit. I was a former Digg user. Over the past few years, Reddit has gotten swamped with spam and low quality content. I was most at home there on the niche subreddits that were still earnest and not spammy. I hope things stay that way over here.
I’ve made a small donation to help Lemmy grow. It’s not much, but scaling up to handle the escapees is a big deal. Having the money to grow and build robust processes to keep content thoughtful and helpful is important. While I love the funny posts and memes sometimes on reddit, it’s really infested the popular subreddits to the point of being excessive. Ergo, I tend to hang out in smaller spaces where the dialog is more “straight up”.
What’s the link to donate?
I went here because I could do a one time donation. I plan to see how things go and eventually set up a recurring one though.
https://opencollective.com/lemmy
I found it on the main lemmy page where you sign up for a server. It probably needs to be posted in more places, like on the communities pages. (there’s a patreon site too where you can donate)
Pretty happy.
The place and platform is capable of growth and diversity … on which, many should consider starting their own instances just to spread the load and allow people to find their moderation homes.
I’ve been wanting the fediverse to be more topic/group/community based than a twitter clone since I got here, so it makes sense to see some interest in these “Threadiverse” style platforms.
There’ll be growing pains, and the current admins and devs are probably going through some pain now. Sorry! I just hope enough community leaders, former sub-reddit mods and future admins will see the value in distributing social media and help pick up the slack.
More broadly, for those who don’t know, IMO, the fediverse has been suffering from an essentially oppressive dominance by Mastodon. Everyone thinks the fediverse is just Mastodon. Though that’s completely untrue, as there are a number of alternative platforms, some of which are rather novel and interesting, it is numerically very true with Mastodon comprising
80%of fediverse users.Generally, this amount of dominance is almost certainly bad for the future health of the fediverse and the values it seeks to promote (ie, interconnected platform and community diversity). Mastodon, at the moment, is creeping towards being just another centralised platform … essentially an OSS non-profit Twitter in its own right, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but not what the fediverse is about.
Enter the Threadiverse! Lemmy, /kbin (and even calckey a little with what will hopefully become its federated channels), and others. Not just platform diversity, but medium or format diversity.
At this moment, IMO, it is very valuable to the fediverse at large, that lemmy, /kbin etc grow and do well.
I hope the reddit echo box ‘our way or the highway’, ‘everything is a pun’ mentality doesn’t transfer over as well
Aww, but Reddit pun threads are fun.
Agreed, I hope there is room for pun threads here too.
To each his own I guess. To me it’s too much of the same regurgitated over and over again like a meme that stopped being funny years ago
They’re fine when appropriate. It’s nauseating how they’re inserted everywhere.
Yeah, when a simple bots can post most of the replies. E.g.
if post.contains("r/theydidthemath") { post.reply("/r/theydidthemonstermath"); }then it’s gone too far. There are some good, creative ones, like The Old Reddit Switch-a-roo, but they’re too few and far between.
When someone shares a personal story about his wife’s struggle with cancer and the top reply is “I also choose this guy’s dead wife”
Been here patiently waiting for quite a while… this is what i’ve been waiting for, for reddit to finally fuckup bad enough that people move over.
If reddit deletes NSFW content, we can expect a third exodus of users
Reddit trying to go the slow route, removing one thing at a time, will make it easier for lemmy to scale and grow to accept all the users.
If they did API, old.reddit, and nsfw all at the same time it would be absolutely impossible to accommodate.
Honestly, while most people here have been alright, toxic newcomers have been a problem and I consider this place ill-prepared to handle them in a bigger wave than this one.
There has already been an observable culture shift, and some nasty screaming when some newcomers used to being a majority are challenged in their views and shocked to find a nontrivial pushback. And I feel that lemmy.ml will undergo a similar event to /r/antiwork if there isn’t staff action taken , where the place loses all its values and just becomes a sanewashed recuperated place that feels cheated when its founders keep saying what they said from the start. People largely just don’t read rules or sidebars, it seems, and realize lemmy.ml explicitly says it isn’t a general unthemed instance for everyone. It’s broad, but not ‘reddit’ broad, nor (pretending to be) politically neutral. Relevant source
Edit: I realize this may come off as “why aren’t other people doing more things!”. I realize the staff/devs are overloaded, I’m not blaming them to telling them to drop things. But I regret how few moderating/admin staff were recruited, and we’re seeing how many communities were made 4 years ago and have no active moderation, nor culture to avoid this becoming ‘reddit but here’.
I don’t know how to interpret “everyone should feel welcome here” other than it is for everyone. As far as culture shift, it really is impossible to maintain the more “fringe” leftist culture with an increase in users, marxist-leninist simply do not exist in large enough numbers. I don’t really see why lemmy.ml shifting its majority political leaning would be something negative to you, since the only thing that would happen would be more discussion in the comments, and if discussion isn’t something desirable, places like lemmygrad do exist
I joined the Beehaw instance a bit ago with a small exodus from Tildes, another Reddit alternative. It’s been nice to see the community grow and grow steadily as time progressed, and seeing the Reddit refugees makes me hopeful for the platform’s strength going into the future regardless of what Reddit does with its API (or other features).
As for the toxic side of Reddit, I’m more concerned for the devs in having to deal with the reports, but as a Reddit mod myself, I don’t think it’ll be too bad. At least on Beehaw we have a supportive community and I’m reminded of a video talking about the userbase of the early UseNet and how they dealt with the first spammer (not necessarily their methods, but the fact that they rose up as a community to enforce a community rule). Hopefully we can see that here (i.e. “the report button exists”).
Edit: a detail
a small exodus from Tildes
I’ve seen Tildes being proposed as a Reddit alternative along Lemmy, what was the exodus about?
I’m also wondering about this. I remember seeing Tildes promoted a few months ago but haven’t seen any mentions of it recently.
From what I remember, it had to do with the moderating decisions of the person behind Tildes.
I’m an ex Reddit user. It seems inevitable that the Reddit admins will lock out third party access - I could be wrong but based on recent years, Reddit doesn’t like to listen to it’s community.
I hope that the toxicity stays away, but it’s likely there will be toxic users at some point. My main gripe with Reddit was the lack of actual reading. Most mainstream subs were just memes / circlejerks / pics. I’d much prefer to learn something or read something of value over “lol-ing” at a pic.
I’m keen to see how Lemmy grows.
Wanting to learn something hits the nail on the head. I recently came to the realization that I used to learn things on reddit, especially in the comments. Not sure when that stopped but it’s why I had been wishing for an alternative for a while.
COMMUNISM IS BACK!
spoiler
Then, lemmy will KILL (BAN) users for some reason as the nature of communists. :D
