From purely practical point of view, what is the selling point of Lemmy for the average user who does not care about the theoretical benefits of software or the open source software movement?
Assumptions:
- The average user will never host a instance.
- The average user is not interested in volunteering or moderation.
- The average user is not looking for NSFW communities or any controversial communities.
No ads/tracking. That’s really it. Any of the other complaints I had on Reddit are here and in most cases even worse.
The API issue was the biggest one for me and what made this all intriguing. Now apps are getting around that. Winston for Reddit is beautifully designed and even guides a user to creating their own API key to add to the app. This API key provides you with a limit of 100 requests a second. Which is more than enough. (You could also do this on modded Apollo’s).
The average user just downloads the Reddit app though.
For me, less spam, bots, recycled posts.
More competition in the UX due to the availability of third party apps.
The mods/admins cannot do moderating actions quietly.
Unique Instance culture.
Conversations feel like they matter.
The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that while Reddit may have a lot of large active communities, I would rarely get a quality response if I posted a question or a discussion topic.
Here, I can post to a community that hasn’t had a new post in a few days, and within an hour I have several people offering help or discussion.
Reddit is far more active, but Lemmy users are far more helpful.
I wonder if that’s because there’s a load of bored nerds waiting around to help people, lol
You say that like it’s a bad thing
It’s not
Maybe it’s a population bias thing. All the helpful people left Reddit for Lemmy. I.e., being helpful may be highly correlated to the set of ethics that drove those Redditors away in the first place
Creativity flows when people are bored
Nooo…
Would you like help with something?
I installed Ubuntu and have it all set up. It came with Gnome. But now I kind of wish I went with KDE. How hard is it to switch?
Years ago when I used it, it was just installing package kubuntu-desktop and selecting kde as the default environment for the user. Not sure if it still works like this.
The mods on lemmy are just as sensitive as the ones on reddit and they lean on excessive bans.
Man, moderators suck because they’re all closeted losers.
Out of curiosity, have you been a moderator before?
It’s a fairly thankless job that you volunteer for. Most people aren’t doing it out of some lust for power, they’re just doing their best and sometimes make bad calls.
Are there shitty ones out there? Sure. But many of them are just trying to make nice spaces for their interest.
I’ve moderated subreddits, I’ve moderated chat rooms and have had managerial experiences in other things over the years online.
People hated me moderating because I ‘took out the trash’ that people, including other moderators, considered the life of a community. People being meme shitlords, people trolling, people gaslighting, people instigating matters .etc
And they all got by because of friendly nepotism and shitty comradery among shitty people who love other shitty people.
I’m not the kind of moderator that I see in most moderators now, who have a brain aneurysm over some expressions and thoughts that they see others express that they deliberately misinterpret. All so that they can construct their self-justifying reasons to ban over.
And that is power-tripping, to me.
Feel free to report power tripping on [email protected]
If you have an issue with the Reddit admins, you either suck it up or stop using Reddit. If you have an issue with the Lemmy admins, you can migrate to another instance and forget about the old admins.
Communities being smaller is a double-edged sword. Yes, it’s harder to find the content that you want, but it’s easier to be heard here. And it’s overall easier to have a meaningful conversation here, that doesn’t get flooded with sea lions, irrationals, or 11yos. (Note: I’m saying that it is easier, I’m not saying that everyone here is sensible or acts sensibly all the time.)
If you’re left-wing you’ll have an easier time discussing politics here. And if you want/need a safe space there are some good instances for you, like Beehaw or Blåhaj, in Reddit they’d be simply flooded with entitled newbies until the mods give up.
So TL;DR: unless you’re one of those “lol! lmao!” kids or a right-winger, Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.
I went for a federated option specifically so that it’s resistant to one company going rogue like Reddit did with the API fiasco and the banning of every third party app that made Reddit great. That’s really the killer feature, if you’re tired of your admins you go to another instance. No need to protest and switch your subs to private, just move the whole community elsewhere.
Yup - the benefits of federation are usually abstract, until someone in power goes rogue, then those benefits become solid as a brick. And since people in power here know that we have an easier time migrating, they aren’t too willing to go rogue as the ones in Reddit.
Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.
Unless what you needed was specific niche information - but yeah in terms of general overall quality, of discussions, in particular not as an encyclopedia of knowledge but as a social media platform, then definitely. Though with that caveat rather than universally.
- no ads
- no addictive algorithm
- free speech
- cleaner ui
Addictive algorithms are terrible. I often check Facebook or Instagram for one little thing and before I know it I’m spending 20 minutes in the app 😭
Lemmy vaguely feels like Reddit when it wasn’t really popular. When you could comment and it wouldn’t be buried under 10,000 others. Participation almost feels pointless there.
The community is the main selling point for me. Further left than reddit. Fewer bots and recycled bot posts. Generally less defensive and aggressive posters, though the US election has made things a bit more contentious, I’m sure it’s still better than reddit on this.
So far it seems to me like the troll instance here is much lower. There are definitely reddit-esque people here who will reply to comments by demanding that you refute their ludicrous misinterpretation of whatever you said. But overall I think there’s much less hostility.
Here, there’s little to no benefit in boosting posts or up/down vote manipulation
Vote manipulation definitely has a benefit, comments and posts are still voted, and public sentiment is still swayed by votes.
Yeah I like the lack of cumulative karma scores, which I think will disinterest a lot of people who see discussion forums as a competition.
Less bots, less adverts.
Seriously, half the posts/discussions/replies on Reddit aren’t even real.
SubredditSimulator leaked out all over Reddit a long time ago.
Possibly they were real at some point… before they were endlessly copied and modified by chatbots:-).
To me, the toxic culture of Reddit is a dealbreaker. Over here, you’ve got some folks that came from Reddit and didn’t quite get the memo that they don’t need to enter into gladitorial combat anymore when they disagree with someone, but overall, it’s a lot more relaxed.
I actually recognize usernames and people try to write thoughtful responses the vast majority of the time.
This feel could change, but for today, it is so.
I really like the UI a lot better than reddit. So far I’m finding the single-page app architecture works really smooth.
