1y ago

If Reddit had a soul/conscience, I think it was us, and we're all on Lemmy now...

As a little background, I didn't actively use Reddit for months following the blackout. I still barely stop in over there and if I do I'm never logged in our contributing to the communities there (where I was previously a daily poster/commenter).

Just bringing up a point that I'm not sure I'd seen anyone discussing directly over here; the general sentiment and quality of posted information on Reddit has become tangibly worse in multiple ways (I think coinciding with this group, us, leaving).

Now don't get me wrong, Reddit sucked in many ways and for long before the migrations to Lemmy, but there is a noticeable difference in a few key areas:

Less skepticism in replies
Less sourcing of information in posts and replies
Less counter positions expressed generally
If there is a decent reply, you have to scroll much further down to find it
Less plain labeling of obvious bullshit

Many of us used to introduce counter viewpoints or clarifying information into posts, with sources. That functionally worked as a roadblock to stall the quickly building momentum of disinformation/misinformation. Those roadblocks often feel absent over there now, IMO.

Not saying we hold a responsibility to go back there or that we were saving lives before, but the difference is very apparent to me - Have you seen it? Any examples?

72 comments

Reddit: bots talking to bots.
Lemmy: the socially awkward talking to the neurodivergent.
- I was wondering if I’m in the socially awkward category or the neurodivergent category… pretty sure I’m both.
  
  I'm the socially awkward one that comes off as combative and uses "To be fair" too often. Nice to meet you.
  
  Achievements unlocked!
- No eye contact on lemmy!
- Wasn't there already a subredit where bots talked to each other?
  
  R/subredditsimulator. I actually preferred it before it upgraded to GPT2, when it was just Markov chains. You got the most glorious nonsense sometimes.
  
  Yes! There was at least one experimental one that openly did that, and it was funny at the time. I forget the name of it. But it wasn't trying to pass itself off as real conversation to fool the shareholders.
- You're telling me other Tumblr users are on here?

I don't know, the idea that users on Lemmy were the best part of Reddit is a bit egotistical, bordering on narcissism.
I think what you're looking at is simply differences in scale and variety of communities. The user migration to Lemmy was negligible, and I don't really think content quality here is inherently better than it is there. Rather, I think Reddit has just become too big and mainstream.
More Boomers are now using Reddit, which for me seems like the same downward spiral that ended up hitting Facebook.
Corporations see people using Reddit for advice and so they spam it up to try to influence shopping habits and land on Google search results.
If Lemmy ever becomes as popular as Reddit, the same thing will happen.
- If Lemmy ever becomes as popular as Reddit, the same thing will happen.
  The Eternal September claims every social network eventually
- I find the comments here in the fediverse are of a higher overall quality, like Reddit once was over a decade ago.
  
  True, though I can't pinpoint exactly what it is.
- Agreed. Some (mostly different) positions here are arguably more entrenched, or at least absolutist, with just as much reactionary down voting instead of nuanced debate.
  
  Downvotes create echo chambers
- I didn't say the "best part" anywhere. I was implying the moral and rational part. You make some fine general points, but they aren't in response to what I said.
  Migration being negligible is subjective when talking about the users that may have been powering a certain sentiment or tone. Tens of thousands of people leaving would be more than enough to feel that change.

Many groups left, lemmy was actually a minoritarian destination.
And lots and lots of bots came. Almost immediately. It was weird looking how all the people left and yet the amount of stuff there stayed the same.
- Any idea what the other major destinations were beyond Lemmy?
  
  I guess discord was the most popular one.
  People talked about a few more at the time, there were some table running around telling where your subreddit went. But I really don't remember them.
  
  Kbin, real life, discord, etc

I think you're grossly overestimating
Lemmy shaved off 0.0057% of reddit users. An actual inconsequential number.
This would be like you losing a grand total of 1 grain of rice, from ~35,000 rice bowls.
Even if that was the best tasting grain of rice of the whole bunch, you wouldn't notice.
- That number doesn't really tell us anything about the amount of post/content generation that was lost. One or two persons could change the general tone of a smaller sub easily, and often did so.
  If only those two hypothetical posters left it could very well lead to a downward spiral into whatever bullshit is going on over there now.
  Some of the smaller more specialised subs I frequented simply don't exist anymore due to what happened.
  
  I thought I explained that pretty well no?
  If you had a grain of rice that tasted unimaginably, unmitigably, good. The highest quality grain of rice ever seen in the world, in all of history.
  It will not change the flavor of 30k bowls of rice.
  We're talking an absolutely tiny amount of users here. And we shouldn't delude ourselves over it, circle jerking for being the "higher society". Reddit didn't change because we left, the number of users on Reddit change more on a daily basis than 5 Lemmy's.
  That said, the smaller niche subs definitely saw some hits. I won't deny that. However, by definition, a small number of users leaving from small subs isn't a "gotcha" moment for what I've stated. That's is, almost by definition, what would be expected.
  The discussions here are of higher quality for sure. But you'll still notice that in many threads it's almost indistinguishable from Reddit in many ways.
- What proportion of Reddit users are "good" though? 0.0057% might be all of them
  
  Sounds about right
- What numbers are we using here? Reddit has roughly 70m active users, the fediverse has between 2 and 3 million, that's quite a few people over here.
  
  I last did this math a while back so let me redo it.
  Lemmy != The fediverse. Lemmy is fairly small with 45k monthly active users. https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
  Reddit has 430 million monthly active users (70m daily) according to their disclosures for IPO.
  So a 0.000104 multiple. Or 0.01% a little less than 2x my previous calculation. So, still a tiny number.

I've noticed it too but I don't think it's only because of the exodus.
I think it's also because by removing mod tools and opening the floodgates for bots, Reddit has enabled all kinds of vote manipulation and content manipulation by all the shill armies.
Everything from the Hasbara, the 50 centers, Putin's troll farm, Musk's troll farm, whatever Zucc runs that used to come and sealion me anytime I talked about facebook's role in genocide ... all those things have come into their full power now.
- Definitely multiple factors contributing

I don't reckon Lemmy users are as great as all that, but I definitely agree on the downturn of Reddit. It's been on a downward trend for years but we've past a milestone recently where I truly no longer want to interact with most of it.
I saw a Reddit post a few weeks ago that was a 1-minute cut down clip, clearly reuploaded from a YouTube video without credit. Several thousand upvotes, fair enough as it was a good video, but I went to the comments to find a source as you always could on Reddit. One person. One person out of hundreds of comments had posted the source and they had about 10 upvotes so I only found it after scrolling multiple pages. In the old days that would have been top comment with a "why didn't you post the source of this stolen content" attitude, now it was almost impossible to find. Made me realise the audience truly has changed. The top posts are all Facebook slop for people that want to pretend they're better than Facebook users.

Reddit is large enough that it's user base is very diverse and niche hobbies can still get a substantial following. From what I can tell, us lemmings are all kinda the same nerdy person who's into Linux and gaming with not enough of us to really make communities for divergent interests.
When I first came in a few people were trying to get /c/bjj going but it just kind of fell off because the middle of a venn diagram of people who are nerdy enough to be here and also into grappling is like me and 6 other people
Still, I peek in here now and again because the shitposts tend to be better.
- Maybe try martial arts as a whole rather than bjj?
  
  But that is no longer a niche community for my specific interest. Tai Chi, Muay Thai and BJJ are all martial arts. They are not alike.

lmao, its really not that different here, other than there just being fewer of us.
- I think the quality is better here, although there's a shit ton of propaganda.

The subreddit I was active on is still going strong, albeit with less interested mods. I think the impact of us leaving depends on the types of subs most lemmies used to be on. I don't think anyone from the sub I was on left reddit.
- I could have clarified, impact would be less on our own niche subs, more about general contributions to stories that made the front page and saw contributors from all areas as a result.
  
  While I agree that seems the case, there likely has been a corresponding shift in niche communities, even if the effect is less measurable. I don't check in on my niche subreddits often anymore (I've fully moved over to here and Discord), but with some of them, their quality has dipped slightly. Possibly could be chalked up to continuing trends independent of the migration, though.
  Smaller communities also require builders, so I'm sure the necessity alone has driven content quality on Lemmy.

I noticed AMP links started popping up all over Reddit. Before Google started injecting money, posting those was discouraged. Surely it's a total coincidence.
- Strange. What happened to the discouragement of AMP links and why are they suddenly popping up now?

I think there's also a general age demographic shift down as the mods and people who care about moderation, third party apps, bots, etc left. Something similar happened during the digg exodus where social norms and consensus around some topics changed, just not at much with the bots at the time. People who remain may not care, or they just may be unaware. There was always some propaganda blindness too in the 'i don't use social media just reddit' crowd.

The biggest difference I've seen is that while hot takes are fewer, when they do appear they are much spicier than hot takes on Reddit.
- I really wish you'd stop calling me that.

I think, beyond simply offering counterpoints, Lemmings are also better at accepting nuance and taking measured opinions. It would be really interesting to track changes over time in the usage of certain keywords on Reddit that would imply nuance. For instance, words like "but," "however," "think," "believe," "may," etc.
I have no doubt that the usage of these words would go down after seeing how Reddit is like now, but it would definitely be interesting to see the formal data on it
- This has been the opposite of my experience, unfortunately. I think the smaller population of the Fediverse seems to result in a more insular community. I see the same names cropping up in many disparate communities, whereas on Reddit I never bothered learning usernames because I rarely met the same people twice.
  I also get downvoted a lot more here, which was rare on Reddit. I haven't consciously changed my opinions or writing style, and I am still active on Reddit as well, so I don't think it's just me.
  
  Thanks for the input.
  I personally interpret your story not as evidence that Lemmy is insular. Or at least not in the way that perhaps you intended it. It seems to me (and this has generally been by experience with Reddit) that Reddit is generally really good at putting people together with others of a similar viewpoint. To me, the fact that you are more accepted on Reddit seems more indicative of the fact that Reddit prevents people who disagree from even talking to each other. Downvotes and upvotes, after all, have basically never been used as a measure of discussion. Both here and on Reddit, they just measure how many people agree with you.
  My experience on Lemmy has generally been that even while people disagree with you, they make a more earnest attempt to engage with your viewpoint.
  
  You currently have two downvotes for sharing your personal, factual, non-offensive experience. I’m not sure if the downvotes were meant to be cheeky but they certainly validate your post!
  
  I also get downvoted a lot more here, which was rare on Reddit.
  I moved to an instance that disabled down votes, one less thing to worry about
  
  I see the same names cropping up in many disparate communities
  I think one reason for this is because it's easier for a post to bubble up to "All > Hot" on Lemmy since there are less people and less posts here.
- Agree, would be very interesting to see it tracked and objectively analyzed

Yeah I would agree that for casual conversation Discord overtook for me. I was lurking r/warframe and after losing pc capable running game started gacha and discussed on r/Arknights. So with api fiasco I left Reddit and tried Mastodon... have account and check it out but there is no activity on #arknights , joined discord server for R/Arknights that was made during blackout and still going strong. Like I got better of R/Arknights and not on Reddit. People some use Reddit, some silently, some like me abandoned and even people who never used Reddit joined. Moderating m/Arknights on Kbin but with Kbin dev having unlucky strike and generally hopping he have health to both have normalcy and work on Kbin. So without proper mod tools and some broken features (like webp not displaying, where microblogs from Misskey converts to webp to consolidate space) and some other little wants that I would propose if I knew there would be implemented.
Using Misskey.io before it closed registration to Japanese only (happens when everyone was leaving twitter for Musk dumb thing he implemented). With Misskey at least found artists and players for Arknights but as it is Japanese instance, they only thing I can do is share art so #arknights tag weren't dead on Mastodon.social .
So TL DR left Reddit, joined sub Reddit discord server which is where I spend most of my leisure time, using Mastodon for news, Kbin for moderation (but no one visits, at least no spam as I clean up) and news , Misskey for fan art.

Well, I started the keitruck subreddit and look at me now banned from the site. They just lef me build it until they came and then banned me from the entire site. But yeah I bet they gotta be filling the place with bots now.

Lemmy is barely any better its just more left leaning.

☝️🤓

I still have a few niche subreddits that I check a few times a month (like /SamsungWatchFaces) but I haven't posted anything there in ages.

Oh is that what we're doing today? Big Ole circle jerk?

Someone says this here every week. I haven't been on it save for search results since the API thing, but it really must be bad.

Lemmy users acting like they are superior human being to people on reddit is the most cringe shit I've ever seen.
Yall are exactly the same and people on Reddit.
- No, it's worse than that
  The folks here are people who got shouted down on Reddit for being nut jobs.
- Cope for what? I don't think you know what that word means

72 comments