I’m very new to Lemmy, I’m trying to see how it all works and what happens here. But honestly I feel like it might be a little too decentralized? Like, I know it’s the point but I feel like this doesn’t make for the best experience. Communities can be on any particular instance, and you can have repeats of communities for the same things. This feels overcomplicated, but I understand why it’s that way.
Also, how many people are actually doing a full switch from Reddit? I personally don’t intend on leaving Reddit, I’m just leaving temporarily, but not for any specific amount of time. I think that’s what most people will do, or I guess I hope so, because Lemmy still has a long way to go before it gets good enough to make a competition, especially considering the drawbacks I said before, and I don’t want us to lose all those communities that went black indefinetly, even if I supported the decision.
The point of the blackout was to protest, expecting an end to it all, although many are already wishing for an end for Reddit altogether from what I can see.
Idk, I still hope Reddit doesn’t die tbh, I hope they listen to reason and backtrack a bit, or we find a way to bypass the restrictions somehow, I think I saw a revanced patch to many Sync work iirc, so maybe there’s hope still.
In my eyes - and I’m a 9+ year user - Reddit has shown that they do not care about their users or their users’ experiences on their platform and only want to exploit us for data and ads, and breaking my 3rd party app is the last straw. Assuming Alien Blue stops working for the last time on July 1st - and I’m pretty sure it will - I’ll be leaving permanently. I’ll be editing all my comments with a final message and deleting my account.
It is sad to lose communities, though it was already happening slowly with bots showing up more and more. I think our experiences online are more meaningful than we might think, and I’ve been feeling a bit of grief at what’s been a good part of my life for so long ending.
But, endings can lead to new beginnings and that’s what federation offers us, on Lemmy or Kbin. I think enough people will stick around here, and software will get updated, and kinks will get worked out, and if there’s ever another mass exodus once Reddit does something to drive off more casual users, we’ll have made a great place for them to land.
But how can we ensure bots don’t become a problem here? If anything, restricting the API should help with that issue, although afaik many of those still fall on the free tier.
Anyway, here’s hoping you’re right and it does get better
At least on Beehaw, the application process for an account seems a reasonable gate. Admittedly, I don’t know what sort of comment posting API Lemmy has, so maybe it is technically possible someone could ChatGPT an application and comments? But, what incentives are there? On Reddit, vote manipulation, getting people to click on scam links, getting karma to sell the bot account, etc. Lemmy is small enough that I’m not sure there’s any incentive right now.
(I don’t think Reddit will get better which is why I’m here and not there.)
Yeah aside from automod and the “generally helpful” bots like Decronym, the bottom line of botting on reddit was for generating clicks and ads. This site seems a bit too small for anybody to reasonably gain any momentum from it, and I think the users of this site come across as a bit too tech-savvy to fall for obvious bait.
When it becomes bigger then it might be a problem on the instances that don’t have applications, but I think Beehaw is safe due to the application.
(Agreed. 7 year user here and reddit never got better. It only got worse as time went on.)