Do you interact more in Lemmy?
I have noticed that I interact a lot more in Lemmy than I ever did in any social media. Let it be Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter... I am used to be the lurker, but here for some reason things are different. Wonder if more people feel like I do.
I feel like you are more encouraged to interact here. Like you're helping the fediverse grow. The other thing for me is that people seem to be much more civil then in other places. So yeah I feel the same.
Like you're helping the fediverse grow.
It feels like a civic duty.
From what I see, Lemmy is just at the edge of "not enough content". So many communities have one or two committed posters. So I comment as much as I can and post when I see something interesting.
I’m doing my part. soldiers laugh
This is how I see it, and it seems like comments are better received here, too, which encourages me further.
Yea I’m pretty much of the same mind, anything that can encourage content on here the better
Exactly this. I never bothered to do much interacting on Reddit. Either comments were trolled or downvoted "just for shits and giggles" or they were buried in no time under all the snarky oh-so hilarious comments that instantly killed all real discussion.
With reddit having way more people and being only a casual browser, I would never make it early enough to a post to contribute in a meaningful way. Whatever I would have said would be commented dozens of times before I got to the thread. At best my comment wasn't made yet, but I'd be sure someone with more knowledge on the subject would've contributed in greater depth soon.
Here I see plenty of posts hours old with no comments. There's a greater chance whatever I might say won't get buried or overshadowed.
I do, and it's not for entirely altruistic reasons either.
When I'd open a thread on reddit, if I wasn't there within the first hour of being up or first dozen or so comments, it was almost guaranteed that whatever I said would get buried and the effort I spent formulating my comment would basically be wasted. So there was very little incentive to engage with meaningful discussion just for the sake of discussion. On Lemmy, most posts struggle to get over a hundred comments at most, and even more struggle to get past ten. So, if I spend time developing my reply, I have a higher chance of that comment getting seen and other people in the community engaging with me, which is the entire point of leaving comments, IMO.
Agreed. Comments here are more meaningful for being rare. Even comments disagreeing with OP or replying from a different point of view are often well thought out and meaningful.
On Lemmy, the algorithm is also more prone to show newer with less votes comments, when sorting by hot. So it gives more value to those low votes comments.
And also generally, with those 2000 comments threads, someone's bound to already have said the same thing so you upvote it and move on.
It certainly doesn't help that Lemmy had and still has absolutely no sensible way to actually surface niche communities to its subscribers. Unlike Reddit, it doesn't weigh posts by their relative popularity within the community but only by total popularity/popularity within the instance. There's also zero form of community grouping (like Reddit's multireddits) - all of which effectively eliminates all niche communities from any sensible main view mode and floods those with shitty memes and even shittier politics only. This pretty much suffocated the initially enthusiastic niche tech communities I had subscribed to. They stood no chance to thrive and their untimely death was inevitable.
There are some very tepid attempts to remedy this in upcoming Lemmy builds, but I fear it's too little too late.
I fear that Lemmy was simply nowhere near mature enough when it mattered and it has been slowly bleeding users and content ever since. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, though.
Agree to everything but the doom. Yes, most people will only give 1 chance to a platform, but we haven't churned through most people yet. Most people are yet to honor Lemmy with their first visit, at some point in the future. We will be better prepared than ever. This wil be true for a long while. So I think we should make (reasonable) haste, but nothing is lost yet. In the long run, we're still growing.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Is that how it is on .world?? On my instance and the ones I browse I find it to be ten times higher quality and massively less aggressive than Reddit.
Lord, you and I must have been on different forms of reddit if you think the users over here are more overly assured and aggressive than reddit. Personally, I find most conversations so much more productive here.
Yes I'm seeing the same sentiment bubble up in multiple comments here. I don't relate at all..
It's been a few years since I encountered any meaningful discussion on Reddit that wasn't immediately polluted by screeching buffoons. I've yet to see that here.
I hope this trend personally experiencing continues!
Lemmy feels very different to me as well. People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn't totalitarian. Plus Reddit really seemed like it was controlled by moderators with an agenda. I'm not a flagrant asshole (I think), yet I was banned from a few subreddits for not following seemingly arbitrary rules. For example, I was banned from my city's subreddit for making a post asking a question that wasn't directly about the city, it was more about the state's culture/history. I just wanted to know what my neighbors thought. Apparently someone decided that wasn't what the subreddit was for.
People seem more mature, skeptical, genuinely left-leaning, interested in discussion, and the moderation isn’t totalitarian.
You've finally found the right echo chamber for you!
Kidding, kidding. But really, I don't find people on Lemmy that much more mature or skeptical than Reddit, and I've had fewer productive discussions (though those have also been rare on Reddit for several years now). It's definitely more left-leaning, though.
Moderation seems more friendly, though, I agree with that.
You've finally found the right echo chamber for you!
It's been a very, very long search, lol
I also have found the discussions more mature, usually, even in some cases where the other person is to my right or left on the political spectrum (I am in the progressive / social democrat range). Of course there are always some that post in bad faith but it seems like the ratio of those to others is lower here, thankfully.
You want an honest answer?
No. No I don’t.
I comment and share links at about the same rate as I did when I was primarily on Reddit. I’m less interested in Reddit these days and probably split my time 50-50. I’m pissed at what they did and continue to do, and the quality of the content has clearly taken a hit across the broader Reddit community but it’s still SO MUCH BIGGER than the entire fediverse that there is hundreds if not thousands of times the people and content.
I’ve tried to get a couple of groups off the ground, but I’m just not that guy and wasn’t on Reddit either.
I am not commenting on Reddit much anymore tho, due to the aforementioned behavior by Spez et al.
that's honest.
i miss reddit, too. been 3.5 months since leaving and i used to spend 12 hours or more at a time scrolling and reading. it was like a good friend or partner.
but i really NEVER posted there. and i do here, sometimes.
Hey, thanks for being honest about it.
You're right, the sheer size of Reddit means it's hard to deny that the variety of discussion topics is much greater than on Lemmy. The decentralized servers model also means it's slightly more difficult to find and grow small communities.
What I like though is that in general, posters on Lemmy, even the ones that repost old memes from elsewhere, try to genuinely engage with other commentors.
I certainly do. Most social media algorithms feed you content that it thinks will generate interactions. Lemmy does not do that which results in whatever you decide to post having more meaning because there's no stupid and/or manipulative machine deciding wheter your post is or isn't worth seeing
I findyself upvoteing way more on Lemmy than I ever did on Reddit.
Yes, definitely by a huge margin
Partially because I feel like people will actually notice, partially because I feel more a part of a community due to the smaller size and seeing the same people multiple times
I have read so many thoughtful comments on this thread that made me say to myself "Yes, that. Exactly that's the reason I mostly rarely bothered formulating a comment or opinion on Reddit." The whole atmosphere on Lemmy seems so much more mature, considerate and genuinely interesting to read. I really hope we can maintain this as Lemmy is (hopefully) growing.
I couldn't have said it better! This is exactly how I feel
I've seen it fairly often by now; many people seem to enjoy posts with moderately long comment sections. I believe this is what contributes to a more wholesome experience.
Similar to how groups meet a natural breaking point when they grow too big and people cannot know each other anymore, I imagine huge comment sections create a sense of being meaningless and unheard. This discourages sensitive voices, and may appeal more to people who don't care anyways, which isn't exactly a great attitude for social encounters.
I can further imagine large comment sections create FOMO for the reader, and can overall be more stressful, which leads to aggression.
Just guesses and impressions. No idea if true. Also no clue how to foster that environment in a growing network.
That is probably a part of why I do comment more here, I would see comment sections on reddit sometimes already with hundreds of comments and just felt like I was trying to slip into a convo that had already been well established or whatever, here I feel more likely to comment because the sections will be sparser and my comments will actually get replies from the users in the thread.
On R×ddit, I wrote about a scary experience I had and posted, not thinking much of it. Weeks later, someone in a server I frequent sent me a YouTube link and asked "isn't this you??", as they recognized my R×ddit username. It was a video of someone reading out my post and giving it much more exposure than I would have ever wanted.
It spooked me to realize that R×ddit is now just a content farm. Posts will be picked up for videos, news articles, Facebook fodder, etc. Most of that shit is 20000% fake anyhow. What's even the point?
Give me a smaller community any day. The moment people start farming Lemmy for content to read out in their YouTube videos? That's the moment I bow out.
That's an interesting perspective that I really hadn't thought about much but you're totally right. Glad I was always more of a lurker there.
Dp you think Lemmy would not be one if they were as popular as reddit.
How naive.
The best you can do is using different alts to avoid recognitions with your main username.
A LOT more. It's also in part because I'm not being stalked by Nazis which I was on Reddit, but I feel so much more comfortable talking here in general.
Heeeey, nazi stalkers. Not bad bruh.
What did you do to get that kind of attention?
So I have a fake white supremacist Facebook account where I befriend white supremacists and then I would take their photos and put them on r/beholdthemasterrace. It was absolutely glorious to mock those inbred hooded motherfuckers, but then some of them found out their faces were put on Reddit, and they complained to the Reddit admins who opted to permanently ban me as a result. Yes, Reddit took the side of Nazis.
But before my ban they were all messaging me telling me why the white race was superb and all their usual kind of bullshit.
Absolutely! Less trolls, real people with real opinions make for a far more interesting community to be a part of.
And less people make it feel more comfy.
I was on Reddit yesterday to remind myself how bad it was. There's no way I'm reading hundreds of comments especially when most are inane or insane or toxic.
Here, the comment quality is far better (higher signal to noise ratio so to say). And I finally recognize usernames that show up regularly. I feel most folks are commenting in good faith so I'm not constantly on alert looking for right-wing propaganda bots (or trolls or whatever they are). It's all so much more relaxed and cordial. Hopefully we can keep it that way for a good long while.
I am interacting about the same amount but I am trying to comment with a little more thought and substance though it doesn't always work out that way.
Agreed about the less people makes it more comfy. The whole instance is your community too, I guess being able to choose what you want from a instance makes everyone more comfortable. You don't get overflown with people with different objectives when it comes to browsing Lemmy.
Nope, I'm a lurker by nature. Back to my hideyhole I go.
I'm both. sometimes I comment alot, most of the time i lurk...there are some good contributions from some peeps that i like to keep encouraging them to post (pug jesus) because it is interesting content...thats what im here for anyway.
Yes, definitely. I'm more willing to share my honest opinion. For me, the fear of downvotes was real. I also sorted Reddit posts by Hot, and I rarely felt motivated to connect on a post that already had 1000 comments.
Keeping up with all the comments and the fear of being repetitive made it impossible indeed
Yes and no. Reddit has more niche interest groups that don't exist here.
I am far more interactive on here. I was almost exclusively a lurker on Reddit.
not really, I mostly interacted with niche communities on reddit that haven't made the switch
Compared to reddit, yeah, kinda. On reddit it often feels like it's not worth it commenting on a post if it's popular and 14+ hours old. On Lemmy I will see new comments with the default sorting of comments.
Yes.
I've always disliked the current state of social media, because it always felt like everyone is shouting at each other rather than talking to each other. That's why I like having penpals to writing letters back and forth and shoot the shit on whatever, and I've blamed Facebook and Twitter for killing that.
I lurked reddit anonymously but I don't comment much, because it felt like the only place that you can discuss various topics with random people and learn cool things. But part of it is that slowly, it made me miserable, the hivemind with all the arguing and smugness and unfunny one-liners and most of all, the cynicism.
This place is a bit different I think, I really didn't expect to get as involved as I am, but it kind of brought back that feeling of writing back and forth to random people and having a conversation again.
I've made it a goal to read and write more and talk to more people when I have the time to spare right now.
I was mostly a lurker on reddit for many years. Before that was a forum board user, moderator, and even setup a few for sports leagues. Despite being sports centric there was usually off topic sections for politics and other off subject debates. Often these sections became more popular than the sport.
Then it would became drama filled and once a year there would be complaining about all the new summer users once kids were out of school. They would flood the forums with newbie stuff and people would leave the forum and find a new home. Seems like this pattern repeats to the newer socials too.
With FB etc the forum boards seem to lose a lot of that daily traffic over time. FB and other Socials delivered that quick dopamine hit and it didn't even need to be in the niche the forums were. For those that wanted the niches, FB groups came on the scene.
For me with Reddit it came on one of my early Android phones which was great for reading with. I didn't comment much as the threads were usually fairly deep with comments and sort of done by that stage. It didn't have that small town feel like the old forums so I wasn't as inclined to add much. Still there was plenty to read, perhaps too much as books began to be replaced by socials too. Since I was only a mobile user, the API changes were a great reason to get off reddit and read books again. Still working on that.
I'm finding myself commenting more on Lemmy but like the life cycle of the forums and reddit, it's only a matter of time when the users reach the tipping point and the feel of the place will change.
So I'm trying to enjoy things as they last these days. Hopefully get some books in there now too...
I miss having pen pals, social media really ruined that for me as well. I still remember when my, then, close friend moved over to Facebook. Our usual bi-weekly exchanges slowly changed into her posting updates and dozens of followers writing simple replies. No longer having the time to write individually. I still don't know how exactly, but we just drifted apart after that. Still hurts a little when I think about it.
Anyway... That was about 15 years ago and until now I haven't really been vocally active online, just spend my time lurking like so many others. I really had to make a conscious effort to get more interactive and I took the move to Lemmy as my excuse to do so. People were already complaining that no one commented and only upvoted, so I'm trying to be the change I want to see :)
It's not like the old interactions I had with my pen pals, but I do like the human connection I sometimes get with others.
I interact less on Lemmy compared to Reddit, mostly because people here seem to be very vocal and polarised, so every time I have a notification in Lemmy I start groaning "oh god what did I say this time?"
But still, Lemmy is the cradle of humankind and wisdom, compared to Instagram and Facebook.
Way more. There's lots of genuine posts on here and not karma farming bots. Also, my posts in c/lockpicking and c/balisong actually got replies fairly quickly. On reddit, I would've been met with downvotes or people who don't even interact with my posts.
There are fewer people at Lemmy who only exist to blast threads with tired old jokes and memes so there is room for well thought-out comments to get more visibility.
I come here for discussions and so far most of the posts seem to welcome it, leading to more desire to engage.
Less. There's less developed community in my interests. Heck, even the football channels are quiet today.
In my decade of using reddit, I very rarely posted and maybe commented a couple times a week. I was a certified lurker. In the months of using lemmy, I became a mod for a community, comment nearly every day, and have far surpassed the number of posts I ever made on Reddit. Lemmy is just a nice place to be, and I like interacting with people here
Yes.
Sometimes it's corny or a little bit flamey though, but that actually feels like I'm discussing with real somewhat (we're on Lemmy after all) random people.
100% would discuss again.
Yeah, folks are super reasonable compared to other social media sites, for the most part. The occassional nutter isn't propped up by some PR company bot net to drive engagement so they just end up downvoted into oblivion.
It's refreshing.
Not yet! A lot of my interests aren’t as easy to find on Lemmy yet, but I’m definitely on here more than Reddit. I’m not really a community leader type but I can definitely be in the hype squad.
Dude, yes. I feel more comfy here than in the corporate hellscape of centralized social media apps
Not really, always a lurker
I was pretty active on reddit also
Nah not really. I only ever used reddit and YouTube. I'm not the kind of person for social media. When u/spez had his fit and the subs went on strike I quit reddit, because I don't like to be pushed around and getting screwed by some greedy corpo prick. Also, privacy. I rarely ever post something myself. I mostly write comments. But the amount of commenting is the same here as it was on reddit.
I just heard about LibRedirect, so that's the next step to give less data to Google.
Yup, the people here are cooler
I don't. Not much less either, I don't interact much with social media. Not that I don't want to, but I rarely have anything of worth to contribute. To make matters worse, Lemmy is mostly missing the communities that I'm interested in, of if they're there, they have little engagement. On reddit it was a little better, and Facebook is just insane in comparison.
But mostly I don't have anything to say, and if I do it's mostly stupid. My primary means of helping Lemmy is to not interact (much).
Definitely.
A) Posts don't have thousands of comments already by the time I see them, eliminating the feeling that commenting would be meaningless.
B) Engagement helps us grow, and I want to help us grow.
I used to be a lot more active on Reddit. But I forbid myself from downloading the app, so as for now, Lemmy is the social network where I interact the most.
I'll jump in under your comment because it's the same. Refuse to download Reddit app so my usage there is way down. Over 13 or 14 years I was fairly active. Here, I'm moderately so, but due mainly to my feed being probably proportionately inactive.
Yeah if Lemmy ever hits whatever saturation point is needed that niche communities are more relevant my participation will increase. As it is I'm honestly having to visit reddit occasionally to get answers from those niche type communities because they are simply non-existent here. There is nowhere but reddit to interact with these groups, as much as I hate that.
Yes. I was afraid that how my parent's thought on my comments and posts on mainstream social media, like Facebook, in the past, because they have have their own account too.
Now I have one less thing to worry about and interact more here than the days when using those mainstream social media.
Like about the same as I was on Reddit, I'm much of a lurker.
I comment far far less here than on Reddit. Reddit was much much better at showing communities I actually cared about and sprinkled in cat pics or memes. And most posts already had a little bit of engagement.
Lemmy's just throws garbage new posts at you with no comments, no interactions, and it was posted 30 seconds ago. It also groups together posts when someone crossposts something to 30 other communities so you just get a block of 5 posts of the same thing.
As it's matured more I think it's gotten better, but it's not good.
I've noticed that the lack of content and poor arrangements is pushing me back to reddit
It's pushing me to the real world instead of Reddit, so a great success overall.
I'm back on reddit, but I only browse and never post.
Lemmy is much more limited in content but I post more here.
I know I do and it's because the responses are more human and organic. I also don't feel like there's an algorithm trying to make me angry or driving me for engagement, which contradictory to the research, makes me want to engage more.
I have always been a prolific commenter on Reddit. I'm doing the same over here. Hadn't been to Reddit in a couple months. Went over there earlier and explained to someone on r/electricians how an AC to DC transformer works. They permanently banned me, even though my answer was entirely correct, especially for the given problem. Heil spez, you can keep your shit show.
I try not to interact in political posts as people are very toxic but other posts it's been good.
most posts i stumbled here are completely irrelevant to me, politically and socially, but reading comments here are better than reddit.
plus, margot robbie is here.......
No, but the replies are often more strongly charged.
When i had an account on both reddit and lemmy, i askedd questions on lemmy because I got actual answers
I don't remember did I do anything else than lurk when I initially created my account in Reddit.
I was more active before I stopped creating stuff (and shortened my time of interacting with) in Reddit, and that activity level carried in here.
However, since I think that Lemmy is a smaller place than Reddit and I really want this "seems-better" system to take off, I am trying to contribute some extra resources of mine here to help the cause! (I think Lemmy is the only social media I use)
Yes, even though a lot of my opinions are considered controversial here. On Reddit, unless you sort by newest posts, you're going to get buried in the comments section.
I think I got a double push - I've reached a point in my life where I finally have something to say as well as Lemmy not drowning out my posts/comments.
Also hosting a publicly open server drags me in even more; I love that stuff.
Same for me, I maybe replied 4/5 times in many years on reddit and I feel I've engaged with more conversations in the 3 months I'm on lemmy. Maybe having a smaller community leaves out the "someone else will comment" attitude.
I think less people makes it harder to get lost so it’s worth commenting. If you sort Reddit by hot, there’s already thousands of comments and most likely no one is ever going to see your post. So why bother? Most of my posts on Reddit are in small subreddits for pretty much the same reason I comment more here.