I think it’s a boon that we’re a tiny fraction of Reddit’s size. Reddit is something like 30+ million MAUs and Lemmy dropped recently from 62k to ~50k. We’re a grain of sand compared to Reddit, and I think the community is better for it.
Lemmy isn’t really a Reddit alternative. We’re too small to have niche thriving communities, and depend 100% on sorting your feed by “all” or “local” to get new content. What’s nice is it feels like one close knit community vs closed off micro communities inside of subreddits.
I get exposed to more things this way oddly enough- viewing content I normally wouldn’t in favor of my smaller selection of subreddits. People are more polite, more informative, and far more original with their comments.
Keep on doing your thing, everyone! We’re building something different here.
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To be honest, even Reddit doesn’t really feel like Reddit anymore. I have a certain nostalgia for how the site used to be a decade ago, it feels far too corporate now.
I am loving that it doesn’t feel like reddit, and it’s really weird to me that anyone does while they are also screaming about how terrible reddit was in every way. It seems like a lot of people are forgetting that the reason reddit sucks is because most of the communities are too big and have been around too long.
Large groups of people with a shared interest are not welcoming, they are condescending. They are jaded and have “seen it all” and have no qualms telling others that they are anything from inexperienced to inept. Any opinion outside of the norm is attacked with vitriol. New members questions might only get a response to “set them straight”. They reinforce echo chambers just to feel superior, while claiming that they aren’t echo chambers because they are constantly arguing with other people. The whole concept of a normal conversation is lost on them because they can’t separate their ego from their demeanor. They take circle jerking so seriously that they can’t even circle jerk anymore and have to uj/ every comment. They can’t use sarcasm because there are so many hateful people that would agree with them.
I’m not trying to say “back in my day frankfurters were a nickel” but even ten years ago, the infighting, briggading, downvote wars, smugness, and soul filled anger and negativity on reddit was so much lessened that it doesn’t even feel like the same website. It feels like I’m reading YouTube comments. What used to be a place where people might disagree with you, but at most they would just make fun of your bad grammar, or misspelling, is now just a website full of hate mongerers trying to divide people into groups.
Here on Lemmy feels to me like the old days of reddit. I can feel free to comment on whatever post I feel like and don’t have to worry about someone coming at me full bore, just to try to make me feel bad that I like to eat American cheese on my breakfast sandwich, or like the feeling of wet socks on carpet.
Sorry for the rant.
That’s why we need a new place that feels like reddit used to feel: like walking into a cocktail party full of interesting strangers having interesting conversations.
I 100% agree, just without the scummy PR-driven administrators, but a more community driven vibe to it. Just like Reddit in the olden days. (my account was 13 years old and once the API went, so did I).
Now if there are instances who don’t want Lemmy to grow from what it is now, then by all means the admins are well within their rights to defederate their own community.
As for me personally, I gladly await when my default browsing sort is something else than Everything @ top day.
I should post more.
Then, why are you here and not on Reddit? Serious question. I’d like Lemmy to be like Reddit too, and I’m here because Reddit doesn’t feel like Reddit anymore. I can’t even say why; it just doesn’t.
Because we have a spine?
I’m here cause it’s what reddit was/could have been.
By which I mean, I used Reddit for my community purposes until the corporation showed profits are more important than those communities. Then I found these alternatives, and while they are smaller and less active, it provides the same engagement of community based knowledge sharing.
Bonus: less of the annoying bullshit that’s crept in seems to be here. I didn’t really realize just how annoying the “Hi didn’t I’m dadbot” comments and seeing that 30 of the 100 comments on a post are roughly the same smarmy pun. I don’t mind them from time to time but every post? I’m fine with useful bots like tl;dr or conversions or whatever, but truly useless spam ones aren’t missed.
When communities aren’t as populated we rely on a more central content feed. Young reddit was the same way. People identified with the site as a whole with advice animal memes and news instead of everyone having their perfect niche subreddit feed that emerged with a huge userbase.
The general feed that we have now is a little immature but that’s how reddit was too. Lemmy or whichever platform succeeds will mature and cater to us eventually but for now it’s kind of like going back in time. It’s weird and fun and definitely good enough. No fucking way I’m being an experiment to some shitheads that don’t respect what reddit is about. It will all be worth it when lemmy develops I think.
Because they killed the good apps. Now that sync exists for Lemmy I’m here.
And while I dislike the development of some of my subreddits in the last few years it’s not much different here. A comfortable number of users is simply difficult to reach, but not exceed.