It is objectively a lot more male than Reddit or other social media. Reddit has many issues, but lack of women is not one of them.
4 times the same post in 4 different identically named communities…
I want a global feed, communities can federate with in a sort of sub-lemmy.North Korea shill. Seriously. How absolutely dumbfuck do you have to be to actually believe there is even the slightest good in that regime? It hurts me personally that I’m Korean and that I’ve seen countless people, some I’ve met in person, who lost their families in that hellhole. And yet people who can’t even spell Kim Jong Un or Juche are celebrating that prison of a kingdom.
Nothing about them are “left” or “progressive”. To me, they’re worse than MAGA shitheads.
Absolutely disgusting. Hope they all rot in North Korea.
Duplicate posts. Soooo many duplicate posts
This is like an echo champer of tech people, hard to find non-tech aware people here.
That was reddit when it first started it just takes time the problem is reddit people want to speed run this and created a bunch of communities then abandoned them or filled them with AI Slop. Only making it harder for stuff to grow organically. I do wish Lemmy and Piefed had a network global name space for communities like how IRC does channels.
it just takes time
It takes more than just that, though. Reddit’s UI and mod tools are more powerful, and the Fediverse as both a concept and a practical entity are more demanding and trickier to understand and use.
Agree. I like tech and I’m subscribed to tech communities. But not a whole lot other than that here.
We’re here, we’re just self-aware enough not to make it too obvious. I just don’t even interact with half the content in all because I have no fucking clue what a “distro” is, is it like a mix between a disco and a bistro? Sounds fucking awesome actually, I’m in.
Skip the “all” feed. It’s not interesting to me either, even though I’m familiar with distros and such. I just read the “subscribed” where I’ll find stuff I care about.
There’s just not enough content. I come here to doom-scroll and troll trolls, it’s much harder to do that when most of the communities I’m actually interested in are nearly inactive or don’t exist at all.
Yeah, that’s a real problem. All the really interesting special communities get like 1 post a week at most.
There is a lot of computing and a lot of politics, but not very much else.
Haters recently on here. Much more blocking necessary than half a year ago or so
I am forced to see posts in communities I am banned from for having an anti-ai stance AKA a working brain. I didn’t block all of them soon enough.
What I am saying is that you should still be able to block communities you are banned from. Seeing them in my feed and being unable to get rid of them is like seeing cockroaches in a kitchen.
Everyone complains about it being empty and not many want to do anything about it. I’m not sure if this is even because of the user number, because I’ve been on forums with just a few users that were very active. It often seems like too many people here are waiting for a large influx of users so that others can do the posting. Also people try waaaay too hard to copy Reddit 1:1. They have this one very specific community with certain content and try to copy it here. If there was a subreddit for a 1998 version of an obscure computer game, they want this very same community to exist here. Instead of discussing said game in a more general community.
There’s also a vocal minority of just really pessimistic people on here. Politics I don’t mind as long as it’s a discourse about not only what is bad but what can be reasonably done about it.
I’ve been in several discussions where I add “look at community, we are strong together” and it’s immediately beaten down with “the world won’t change things are shit and always will be, be mad and angry about it, I’m mad and angry at you”.
It’s the internet, I’m not surprised. But I’ve definitely had to disconnect myself for a bit some days after severe reactions from people just to remember it’s just strangers on the internet.
It’s not all the time, but for some discussions that promote inclusion and understanding to be met with the hard “I don’t agree so you are human garbage” can be an awful whiplash sometimes.
reading the top comments on this post, strikes me they reflect the founders of lemmy
maybe we’ll get more joy from the piefeds
I was gonna say something similar, like the amount of times I’ve wanted to look into some political topics and seeing comments encouraging violence make it hard for me to feel motivated just to stay informed. I get being angry, but damn, cue Mr. Rogers “what do we do with the mad that we feel?”
in 2026 we consume it like a drug and end up craving more of it and become rage-addicts.
we don’t do anything positive with it.
I don’t know, pessimism seems to be the norm. IRL I live in one of the richest zip codes in America… and pretty much every convo I have or overhear is people whining about how life sucks and how hard it is and how mean everyone else is to them.
We live in a ‘victim hood’ culture these days. People aren’t proud of things anymore or optimistic, it’s an arms race to see who can the most pessimistic and whiny.
The only time I hear or interact with people being positive it’s mostly them talking abotu self-help crap or whatever ‘therapy’ they are using to ‘help them cope’.
- Lemmy is by and large populated with ex-Redditors, who bring with them some of the same hivemind on certain topics. Eg: Lemmy is very anti-AI or nuanced discussions thereon. Nuclear is bad, etc. Makes bad faith discussions on certain topics almost certain.
- As everywhere else - there’s too much “you’re either on my team or you’re against me” - though notably less than in other spaces
- Upvote / downvote counts: these should be yeeted into the garbage pile of history.
Things Lemmy does well
- Less performative engagement.
- Less American (but arguably that’s still too much for some).
- Despite it all, a measure of civility still exists. Rare.
- You can create your own instance and be ungovernable :)
- No algorithmic engagement bullshit (so far)
- I don’t feel like I have to walk on eggshells every time I post something.
I personally find Lemmy a great deal more pleasant to interact on, with strong pre 2010 forum vibes and I feel that’s a good thing. YMMV
TL;DR: There’s a lot less “look at me, look at me!” on Lemmy and it’s all the better for it.
I have seen no people rail against nuclear on here or reddit.
They rail against my right to own personal nuclear weapons
Bastards!
Not very Auth of you! You sound like a hedonistic libertarian to me.
Upvote / downvote counts: these should be yeeted into the garbage pile of history.
Still not exactly sure what “yeeted” means, but I like how upvotes & downvotes tend to bring quality content to the fore, and I even like them as a permanent record. They’re not very useful of course, but having the motivation to permanently increasing my totals is useful for sharing good content and communicating in good faith. At least for me.
Right - that’s me trying to hip and cool (“how do, fellow kids”).
Yeet - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Yeet
I completely disagree about the upvotes / down votes thing btw. I think, platonically, that’s what they were supposed to do.
Pragmatically, they’ve end up being more a social proof / opinion suppression / brigading tool.
That - and infinite scroll - are among the worst sins introduced by social media. ICBW and YMMV.
Nah I think you’re on the money. As someone with ADHD, those worthless little updoots and infinity-scrolling are almost as bad as any algorithm!
ICBW and YMMV
YTMND. 👍
YTMND
I understood that reference.
Okay, thanks. I can never seem to remember it, maybe because it feels so unnatural. Maybe it would help if I knew where it came from, though. *shrug*
Pragmatically, they’ve end up being more a social proof / opinion suppression / brigading tool.
That seems exceptionally pessimistic to me, but maybe you have more insight in to all that than I do. Personally I think multiple things can be true about upvotes / downvotes, some useful, some harmful perhaps.
In any case, there is no debate that upvotes are useful and valuable to me when it comes to posting and commenting.
Well, I remember ye olden days of Usenet - we mostly got along without them, and without some of the issues they seem to cause.
If they’re helpful to you, thumbs up (ha). I do wish they were an optional extra instead of proxy dopamine button (based on the way some seem to use them). There’s actually a good read on why they (and reddit in general) skew toxic -
https://jacobdesforges.com/you-should-quit-reddit-distribution-wide/
Well, I remember ye olden days of Usenet - we mostly got along without them, and without some of the issues they seem to cause.
Things change, though. Upvote/downvote was one of the many things Reddit and other places trialed over the years, and based on the success, stuck with it. Me, I barely spent any time on Usenet, but it occurs to me that the userbase was probably smaller. A much, much larger userbase probably fits better with upvote/downvote, so the comparison there is likely skewed, methinks.
‘Dopamine rush’ is exactly right, and I think it’s useful and informational, similar to the way that people react to your statements and ideas in real life. I do think they can have an ‘echo chamber’ effect and help promote the problem that a popular thing or opinion can be completely wrong, but to me that just means that upvotes/downvotes aren’t perfect, not that they should be completely discarded.
https://jacobdesforges.com/you-should-quit-reddit-distribution-wide/
Not sure what you want me to do with a link to a book, but I don’t even agree with the premise of the title sentence. Reddit is still very useful to me, and I know of no other place that replicates the variety of content, there.
Ok, but I think you’re conflating two separate things; the usefulness of Reddit as a content index (which I agree is still unmatched) with whether the upvote/downvote mechanic is net positive. One doesn’t need to quit Reddit to acknowledge that the voting system consistently produces pathological outcomes at scale. “Brigading” is a literal Reddit phenomena
The Usenet comparison wasn’t really about scale. It was about the incentive structure. Upvotes/downvotes don’t just surface good content, they gamify participation in a way that systematically advantages emotionally resonant, tribally safe content over nuanced or contrarian takes. That’s not a flaw in implementation , it’s a feature of the design.
And “people react to your statements in real life” isn’t really analogous. In real life, social feedback is contextual, bidirectional, and has friction. A downvote is anonymous, effortless, and carries zero accountability. The asymmetry matters.
The link is to a book (available via Libby if you don’t want to pay for it) in case you wanted a primary source. In summary: Desforges’ core argument is that Reddit exploits operant conditioning to keep users chasing high-value posts through a flood of mediocre ones and that even people who claim not to care about karma are still shaped by it. It’s worth a read.
Justin Rosenstein - one of the engineers who actually built Facebook’s Like button - has publicly said it produces what he called “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure,” and has since restricted his own use of it. Leah Pearlman, who co-created it with him, has said the same. These aren’t outside critics; these are the people who built the thing.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/years-on-creators-of-facebook-like-button-give-idea-thumbs-down/
End of the day: if you find it personally useful, I believe you. I think the problem is in aggregate behaviour. Apes together…dumb.
Ok, but I think you’re conflating two separate things
I feel like they’re distinctly separate things, and I thought I’d communicated as much. Oh, well.
…the voting system consistently produces pathological outcomes at scale.
That seems like… a little much. I do agree that upvotes/downvotes indeed gamify the system, but on the whole would say that the end-effect on Reddit results in a big bunch of hoomons acting in typical hoomon ways, which is with deep undercurrents of fickle, ignorant, selfish, feel-good behavior.
The Usenet comparison wasn’t really about scale. It was about the incentive structure.
Yeah, I get that, but I do observe that there are advantages to upvote/downvote that indeed work better on a larger scale. I’m not sure they’re really needed on a smaller scale.
I’d say I agree with most of the things you wrote, but remain unconvinced that upvote/downvote is so absolutely toxic as to merit tossing. And of course, I don’t think it’s going to happen, anyway.
Aggregate behaviour amongst naked apes? Yeah, I would tend to agree. Now what?
Depending on the topic, I know that if I sort by top, I’ll find my people at the top, or the bottom. So, it’s useful for that reason. This was more true on Reddit, but it happens here, too.
Paying too much attention to the numbers I think will push people toward the normal take, whether we like to admit it or not. So, it’s best not to track your own stats too seriously. Just say your piece and let the chips fall where they may.
On a side-note, I think the past tense of yeet is yote. Good analysis nevertheless.
eggshells
Many, especially political and news communities ban opinions that are mainstream in the Democratic Party because they aren’t left enough. If they are powermods, they will happily ban you from dozens of communities and instances.
Definitely the amount of politics, it gets brought up in far too many places where it is unnecessary, I avoid political communities and stuff like that, yet I keep getting it in communities with 0 relation.
That may be true, but the context is… “politics” is kinda the only show in town right now.
I literally came home from work an hour ago, and told my partner we should think about turning on the deep freezer in the garage and stocking it up, because I just heard that fuel deliveries to farmers in the region have been put on hold.
Sure, something as mundane as what we will eat for dinner shouldn’t be “political”, but thanks to the yanks it really is.
Yeah I understand here, there’s a lot of knock on effects from political decisions that eventually cause stuff like this. I was more focused on people coming into comment sections and spouting political ideology and partisan politics rather than stuff like what you’ve said here.
I just wish it wasn’t all American politics. Like American politics is just shoved into evert random niche community even if its not even remotely relevant
To understand why there’s so much politics, it’s worth taking a step back. Lots of people in Lemmy understand that politics is simply how political goods are distributed.
What are political goods? Anything that people value: material resources, labor, ideas, attention, significance, etc…
So, if attention and significance are political goods, can you come up with a single thing that is not a political good and therefore isn’t political?
“Everything is politics” is an “um ackshually.” It’s technically true but you know damn well they’re talking about partisan politics or ideological politics.
You’re running apologia for people who can’t go on a thread about cake without posting a Trump joke or a Communist slogan. Mainstream social media proportionally does not have nearly as many of these people.
I agree that sometimes “everything is politics” might lead to unsavory conversations. My goal is not to defend that.
I think our goal in places like Lemmy is to communicate and understand each other, and, because of it (in the best of cases), live better lives.
How could “everything is politics” possibly lead to better lives? We may learn how our everyday actions —so-called “apolitical” actions— actually ripple out in ways that we actually care about.
For example, we may stop buying Awful Corp.'s bread and instead buy from our local bakery. We may stop assuming protein in our diet means misery-filled and climate-unfriendly meat and instead eat more healthy lentils, beans, and pea protein. We may stop buying purebred dogs from suffering-inducing puppy mills and instead adopt dogs. We may stop being brutal with ourselves because we didn’t turn out as the media says we should’ve turned out and instead hold ourselves wholly and kindly while we ourselves choose what kind of life we want.
Saying “everything is politics” opens up a door. We walk into a room in which we can choose. We can choose what kinds of stories we want more of and what kinds of stories we want less of.
Sometimes we cannot do anything about the things that hurt, but we can hold them in our hands as precious, fully aware of what it means to be human. Other times we can indeed get closer to the things we care about, and we can take steps toward it, confident that we are living lives worth living.
I’m glad there aren’t many apoliticists here, I hate talking about politics with apoliticists. They always want to complain and demand that policy change to ban the things they don’t like. I’m sick of all their political activism.
You can still keep up with politics while wanting the occasional break. If you don’t take breaks, all you’ll accomplish is burnout or straight up losing your mind. Neither of which helps anyone except for the fascists.
No, I don’t believe in that, I think everything is political. I have lots of fun with politics. Lately I’ve been watching Babylon 5 for fun and playing Subnautica Below Zero. Those are political. One’s about the politics of peace, one’s about the politics of capitalism and environmentalism. If I thought My hobbies weren’t political, I’d be far less aware of the interconnectedness of the world around Me. You need to know that everything’s connected. Everything has an impact. Everything matters. I don’t ever forget that, I don’t ever act without thinking of the consequences. I don’t go to the shops and buy some mincemeat without thinking of the cows that died to make it. I think of the cows, and so I don’t buy the mince. I don’t forget about politics. It’s in everything beautiful around Me. It’s in nature, it’s in love, it’s in identity. I’m goddessgender. That’s a gender defined by politics, defined by My relationship with others, just like the genders of man and woman are. I’m gay, and I love politically. When I caress My partner’s head, I take extra delight in how I’m committing an act of defiance against the patriarchy. That’s what recharges My batteries. I don’t agree with living the kind of lifestyle where you can forget that what you’re doing is always political.
You’re right that everything is political, but you don’t need to analyze the details 24/7. Sometimes it’s OK to just be too tired to think right and want to watch some mindless cat video. Also you might be able to recharge thinking about politics, but for most people it’s very draining, especially nowadays. Taking time for self care is the only way most people are able to engage without burning out or going insane, which once again, helps no one.
I don’t believe that. I think most people have a fun time and recharge their batteries watching a political movie like Star Wars or Jurassic Park or K-pop Demon Hunters. Don’t you?
Don’t think I was demanding much here, I’m trying to say that people who want to talk politics should talk in the communities meant for that, not in the non political communities and make it everyone else’s problem. But sure, I’m demanding policy change to ban something.
Okay, you go subscribe to !nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social and unsubscribe from all the normal communities like this one where we talk about politics. I won’t go and bother you there, so you stay in that one and the other non-political communities and leave us normal people alone.
Would like to point out politics is not actually the primary content on the fediverse and based on the downvotes you’re getting, you seem to be in a minority, not the majority. Now have a good day and bye.
Everything is political. That’s like saying text and images aren’t the main content on the fediverse.
The fucking politics oh my god, in every fucking community good lord. No way to filter it out either.
I don’t like that it’s basically Reddit. people from Reddit came here and they act like it’s Reddit and it’s basically Reddit
The lack of people. We need more people on the Fediverse.
The total lack of concern for easy on boarding of newbies. There’s a lot of big talk about taking on social media monopolies but absolutely no interest in coordinating to actually accomplish that goal.
