I joined Lemmy a few weeks before the API change. I loved the conversations. I loved how the content was slower but more engaging, and less politically charged. There was nobody shitting on Elon Musk, or Twitter, or Reddit.

People were having meaningful, engaging conversations about random stupid memes. It felt like the early days of the internet… It felt like a small community of outcasts that all got together and posted shitty memes for the sake of giving someone else a feed of shitty memes to scroll through while they were taking a shit… Or not taking a shit, apparently…

But now that the Reddit API change happened… It’s like the super toxic part of Reddit was skimmed off the top and sent our way.

Every popular post is negatively charged. Every comment has an underpinning of hate. Everything is spun with some time of agenda that feeds half truths to make it look like whole lies.

What happened here? I thought this place was supposed to be better then Reddit? To not have some corporate overlord algorithm controlling us as part of some toxic hivemind?

Does anybody know of a Lemmy instance that has been spared from this proto-molecule outbreak?

    • Jfqs6m@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m generally looking at all, so maybe that’s my problem. I am finding it hard to find smaller communities that might interest me, but maybe it’s the app I’m using (Jerboa).

      Any recommendations? Either specific communities or tips for finding some?

      • TeaHands@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        Get on lemmyverse.net, search for your interests, build your subscription feed. Stop looking at All, and if you do insist on doing it at least block the communities that are making you mad.

      • cats@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        A strategy that has worked for me: very quickly browsing all new, just looking at community names. I barely look at the posts, just make a quick decision if it sounds interesting to me. I’ll check the sidebar and decide from there to subscribe or not. I’ve found dozens to follow and a bunch to block lol. It’s cleaning up my feed pretty nicely and my home page has a lot of content now.

      • Tundra@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        • Open up jerboa + your browser,

        • On the browser, visit: https://browse.feddit.de/

        • Search for the subjects/communities that you are interested in.

        • Long press (mobile) on the title and select open in app.

        • The jerboa app will load the community and you can subscribe.

      • galloog1@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I agree that All has changed. I was browsing this morning and made the same comment before realizing I wasn’t looking at my subscribed feed.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    1 year ago

    Wow. Considering your down-votes and some of the comments: Seems most of the people don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

    But you’re right. Everything on lemmy has changed drastically. Including the tone, how people interact with each other, …

    I like to compare this to the time people went from twitter to mastodon. that caused all sorts of misunderstandings and culture clashes. But lemmy was kind of small, much smaller than mastodon was. so the culture that was here a few weeks ago is just gone. the thousands or millions of people that came here barely noticed the few people and posts that were already there.

    give it some time. let things settle. i get what you’re saying. they just arrived, scream at each other, are generally just loud and have strange manners from the perspective of someone who deliberately avoided reddit before. but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. we can have meaningful conversations, niche communities etc even if there are now many more loud people with a completely different style on this platform. it won’t ever be the same, though. precedent from the early days of the internet is: a large influx of ‘normal people’ will destroy your communities. but i’m hopeful for the future. this definitely is a chance to spread something nice to a lot of people. we have to establish a healthy culture now. but that’s doable.

    • Jfqs6m@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      I try to be generally positive when commenting, but I’m usually not a poster… Not sure how questioning the direction of the masses is creating drama, but I guess they have spoken on the matter…

      • this_is_router@feddit.de
        51·
        1 year ago

        What happened here? I thought this place was supposed to be better then Reddit?

        Every popular post is negatively charged.

        Every comment has an underpinning of hate.

        Everything is spun with some time of agenda that feeds half truths to make it look like whole lies.

        questions and statements like this are creating drama. block users and communities that you don’t like and go with your day.

        • goji@lemmy.ca
          4·
          1 year ago

          I used to think of “blocking” as an extreme measure, but for us individuals, it’s really not. You get to decide what your feed looks like. Especially here.

          BAMO -> block and move on

          What flipped the mental switch for me was facebook, of all places.

          I hate it and was off it for years, then we moved to a small town with no subreddit, only a damn fb group. Man I went on a blocking spree with all the proudly terrible people, and now I have both an actually useful local town group AND a separate handy list of people I don’t need to bother meeting.

  • supermurs@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Sorry to hear about your experiences mate, I haven’t seen such behaviour yet on Lemmy.