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  • In my limited experience with Lemmy I would say the problem here is worse, but different due to the whole instance and decentralized thing.

    I definitely don't think Lemmy has much ground to stand on in terms of looking down on reddit for the echo chamber they created.

    • Not sure if you are correct. On lemmy we have several different echo chambers with many interconnections. Best seen in the .world .lm flame wars. This might be a rather unique situation tbh and quite interesting for a sociological study, I guess.

    • I have been on Lemmy for over a year, and honestly, Lemmy should be looking up to Reddit on the echo chamber topic, not down on them lol. Like, if you thought Reddit was bad with Witch Hunts / Block Sprees / Whatever other tactics to create an echo chamber, Lemmy makes Reddit look like it has the mose diversity of opinions and posts on the entire internet.

      I first came here from Reddit. About 2 or 3 months prior to the API Shutdown, I deleted my Reddit account on my own. Wasn't banned, never had been banned, just didn't want an account anymore. Then I saw in a Discord server someone talking about the API Shutdown, so I went to read some posts on Reddit about it. This is where I saw someone mention Lemmy. They talked about it like this place that was open to any ideas, any ideology (obviously not disgusting criminal activity like CSAM, yes I was here on Lemmy for the CSAM raiding early on unfortunately), was not politically affiliated with any political group or government. Sounded great to me, since I don't care about politics and don't want to see it. I have to see it enough in real life and I just don't want to deal with that crap any more than I have to. Just Lemmy users talking about their niche hobbies or groups. Basically, I was sold the idea of Reddit without politics.

      For the first maybe, 3 or 4 months, Lemmy was pretty good. Not politically infested, nearly everything was on topic, not a lot of bots or spam. Genuine conversations between people that didn't always agree but those conversations did not devolve into name calling or anything. Dunno what happened, but that Lemmy is gone.

      And before anyone brings it up, yes, I am a Lemmy.world mod for c/cars. The LW Admins asked me to be a mod because I was one of the more active users in that sub, along with the other current mod. At first, I said no. I didn't want to be a moderator, and honestly I still don't. But after asking me more and me saying no more, eventually the admins convinced me to be a mod. Here's the thing: I have never had to take moderator action on anything. Don't know if I ever will because of how low traffic that community is. But my mod style is simple: I don't care if I agree with what is said or not. I only care if a rule is broken. Justice should not have an opinion, so when I need to take action I disconnect it from my own ideas and opinions. Kinda like what one is supposed to do as part of a Jury in the US Justice System.

      Anyway, the point is, Lemmy and Reddit have pretty much become the same, because they are now both infected with the same basic problem. So I wouldn't say Reddit is worse than Lemmy or better. They both have pros and cons that make them more or less equal, just the pros and cons are in opposite ways. Perfectly balanced, if you will.

    • Maybe there is a misogynist instance for you somewhere: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/modlog?userId=19216260

      • 🤣 that's the most mild misogyny I've ever heard. If that's all it takes to get banned from an entire instance you guys are fucked in the future. I can't believe I've not seen this pettiness before. This whole project is a joke. Death threats are a ok, but mild misogyny gets you banned? You all are warped in the head it that's how you feel.

    • Agreed. When I first came here I thought Lemmy would be open to all points of view.

      • Agreed. When I first came here I thought Lemmy would be open to all points of view.

        Lemmy already experienced Wolfballs, the de-facto right-wing instance, which their admin closed once they realized they were hosting a Nazi bar who were actually serious about White Nationalist nonsense and not just joking to "troll the lib snowflake". We tried it, it wasn't fun. Free speech absolutism is a pointless idealist approach to society - building a community where anyone can express anything will drive away people who want useful discussions and don't want to be regularly dehumanized for their existence (not their opinions or acts, but their existence). Diversity of opinion and the freedom to express is productive and constructive, but only up to a point. If someone came on here and persistently and seriously advocated that everyone whose name begins with an "M" should be publicly executed..... what's the point in tolerating that point of view? It brings none of the benefits of free expression. It's a waste of time that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. And if it weren't so silly and people actually did get lynched for having a name starting with "M", it would be threatening and make people uncomfortable being here. If this "M" example seems too ridiculous, replace it with something equally pointless like "not being straight" or "not being white", which people do get killed for.

        If this site were sprinkled with literal neo-Nazis and child abuse advocates (this isn't a mythical "what if", one can go to plenty of "free speech extremist" forums to see these people in action), then would you stick around? I'd go to somewhere else where I wouldn't have to see that pointless trash. And this isn't because of some mindless intolerance of political views - I've had serious political conversations with actual Mussolini-reading Fascists - but because some points of view are inherently antisocial, willfully repulsive and exclusionary, and they inevitably destroy communities. There's no material reason to be open to their antisocial points of view, it doesn't benefit the community or bring useful insight. It's an abstract right which causes more harm than benefit, more oppression than liberty. It's a waste of time and space.

      • All points of view can exist on different instances. Doesn't mean that every instance has to federate with all other instances

      • Unfortunately no lol. Lemmy has a handful of stances that are "allowed" and if you stray from those you're toast.

        You can get banned from entire instances just because the mod of that instance saw you make a comment they didn't like on a completely different instance and sub.

        It's fine though. Each instance can do whatever they want. I do think it inhibits growth and actual discussions from taking place though. If you ban everyone that thinks even slightly differently than you it just means you're left with a bunch of people that all pretty much agree I everything. Not exactly a riveting conversation.

    • The whole image seems made to be satirical. We're all in our own bubbles so for anyone to judge another person for the same thing is a wild take.

      I don't mind being in a bubble here cause it is safe and nice to be among like-minded people, but at least I am aware I am in a bubble.

  • The censorship and Napoleonic complex moderators on lemmy.world are nearly as bad as reddit

    • Removing posts of non news articles being posted to the news comms isn't censorship.

      Removing non-US politics posts posted to a US politics comm is not censorship.

      Removing political memes posted to a non-political meme comm is not censorship.

      Removing posts of something other than micro blogs to the microblogs community is not censorship.

      Removing posts that break the clearly posted rules of the community is not censorship.

      JFC... 🤦‍♂️

      • Removing posts of news articles you don't agree with and calling them "non news articles" is censorship. Removing political posts and calling them "non-US political posts" is censorship. Removing memes based on political ideation is censorship. Removing a quote from FDR for pedantic reasons is censorship. Overly oppressive community rules and moderation is censorship.

        Sad to see you advocating for censorship on here. 🤷

    • Also the tankie triad

      Also blahaj

      Also feddit

      Also .ee

    • :-/

      The nature of social media. Moderation takes time and energy (which amount to money). As a community grows larger, the moderators either need to increase their moderation costs or get draconian with their enforcement to reduce the expense.

      Reddit is just the Late Stage of this phenomenon. If Lemmy continues to accrue users and follow the Reddit trajectory, where else can it end? I fully anticipate it'll either go full /r/The_Donald with fascist bot-accounts spamming up every channel (a la "Nicole" spam mentioned in the pinned post). Or we'll see mods do full instance purges of anyone suspected of any violation of any rule (perhaps even automating the process or turning it entirely over to an in-house AI) because there's no Lemmy budget to do what Facebook or Reddit tried initially (turning moderation over to sweatshops in the Philippines or wherever labor was cheapest).

      Smaller communities speed ran this transformation. Voat imploded inside a year or two. Chapo/Hexbear ate itself over the course of a couple years. TruthSocial is all just botspam now. Some of the smaller instances in Lemmy have imploded to the same effect. This instance has a rather large and active modding community. But it comes for us all in the end.

  • It sure is too bad the communities on the Fediverse aren't acting in a meaningfully different way...

230 comments