Reddit

Lemmy feels a lot more like old reddit.

New Reddit feels artificial. The written content posts LOOK like they're from AI. Much of the subreddits are now curated. You can't say Luigi.

Here, it's a bit of a wild west. And that's okay.

There isn't much written content posts. But the comments? I'm loving it. It comes off genuine. Human. Real. Even the shitty ones that make me want to downvote but damn do I somewhat see their perspective.

It has a similar problem, but a better version of it.

From my point of view, Lemmy creates its bubble just by being friendly to one subset of views and hostile to another; and so people with some subsets of views don't feel welcome - and they leave. This creates a kind of bubble effect; but I'm ok with that - because frankly there are some views that I really don't want to see here anyway. Having diversity of views is good, but establishing social norms about what is acceptable or unacceptable isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

On the other hand Reddit (in addition to the above effect) also has a big dose of top-down enforcement. Effectively it has a small hidden group of people who can control what everyone else is allowed to say. They can ban certain words and sentiments; and use techniques like shadowbanning or just algorithmic demoting to reduce the influence of stuff they don't like. So they get a bubble as well, but the bubble can be guided and influenced by the people who control the platform. For my point of view, that makes it worse.

Lemmy users are not better... but Lemmy is.

I haven’t been banned for voicing disdain about Israel here. Just a few deleted comments. But no bans.

Yeah I came across lemmy Because I was told that this place believes in free speech even if it’s something you don’t agree with. That is not true though because I’ve had mods delete my comments lol.

I disagree.

We're a smaller chamber but a lot more echo.

I got banned for saying “ I’ll probably get banned for saying this but if you’re a Nazi or a Nazi supporter you deserve to get punched in the face” in response of a lady that was going around Boston doing the heil Hitler salute

Early adopters and technical users are more likely to be free/libre users.

Not sure if you are correct. On lemmy we have several different echo chambers with many interconnections. Best seen in the .world .lm flame wars. This might be a rather unique situation tbh and quite interesting for a sociological study, I guess.

I have been on Lemmy for over a year, and honestly, Lemmy should be looking up to Reddit on the echo chamber topic, not down on them lol. Like, if you thought Reddit was bad with Witch Hunts / Block Sprees / Whatever other tactics to create an echo chamber, Lemmy makes Reddit look like it has the mose diversity of opinions and posts on the entire internet.

I first came here from Reddit. About 2 or 3 months prior to the API Shutdown, I deleted my Reddit account on my own. Wasn't banned, never had been banned, just didn't want an account anymore. Then I saw in a Discord server someone talking about the API Shutdown, so I went to read some posts on Reddit about it. This is where I saw someone mention Lemmy. They talked about it like this place that was open to any ideas, any ideology (obviously not disgusting criminal activity like CSAM, yes I was here on Lemmy for the CSAM raiding early on unfortunately), was not politically affiliated with any political group or government. Sounded great to me, since I don't care about politics and don't want to see it. I have to see it enough in real life and I just don't want to deal with that crap any more than I have to. Just Lemmy users talking about their niche hobbies or groups. Basically, I was sold the idea of Reddit without politics.

For the first maybe, 3 or 4 months, Lemmy was pretty good. Not politically infested, nearly everything was on topic, not a lot of bots or spam. Genuine conversations between people that didn't always agree but those conversations did not devolve into name calling or anything. Dunno what happened, but that Lemmy is gone.

And before anyone brings it up, yes, I am a Lemmy.world mod for c/cars. The LW Admins asked me to be a mod because I was one of the more active users in that sub, along with the other current mod. At first, I said no. I didn't want to be a moderator, and honestly I still don't. But after asking me more and me saying no more, eventually the admins convinced me to be a mod. Here's the thing: I have never had to take moderator action on anything. Don't know if I ever will because of how low traffic that community is. But my mod style is simple: I don't care if I agree with what is said or not. I only care if a rule is broken. Justice should not have an opinion, so when I need to take action I disconnect it from my own ideas and opinions. Kinda like what one is supposed to do as part of a Jury in the US Justice System.

Anyway, the point is, Lemmy and Reddit have pretty much become the same, because they are now both infected with the same basic problem. So I wouldn't say Reddit is worse than Lemmy or better. They both have pros and cons that make them more or less equal, just the pros and cons are in opposite ways. Perfectly balanced, if you will.