I realize it won’t be like this forever, but while scrolling Lemmy I eventually come to a point when I start to see a lot of old posts and it’s a perfect signal that I’ve done more than enough scrolling for the day
I agree. Very much like Reddit in the early days.
Also, the level of civility and intellect in the comments is relatively high.
Also, the level of civility and intellect in the comments is relatively high.
Fuck you! No it isn’t you moron.
Wow! I want to upvote, downvote and report you at the same time. Kudos!
In the end all i did was leave this lousy comment
Shut the fuck up, you added nothing.
(Adds nothing myself)
See that single downvote? I did that bitches.
I was going to downvote it too but now I can’t.
Don’t worry I downvoted you so the legacy can continue.
The cycle continues
Moran*
I’ve found more belligerent comments have started to crop up, and sure enough, most of the time the account is about 2 weeks old. I really hope lemmy doesn’t change with this latest influx from reddit.
Fwy, some apps allow for automatically applied icons to indicate such. I forget exactly which ones, but I know PieFed’s web UI does it. It’s very helpful imho.
PieFed also marks people who receive like 10x more downvotes than upvotes. That way you can still choose to read their content, but seeing that, decide how best to respond.
I’ve just started using Summit and they show accounts less than 30 days old. Really slick ui too.
Never heard of that one - neat!
[email protected] dev has been really active lately
And it also went open source recently too! I was happy to see that, as I know it was a blocker for a lot of people.
It’s almost crazy just how active the dev is, I feel like I’m always seeing the “Summit was updated” screen - it is very clear just how much passion the dev has for Summit and for the Fediverse.
I got sent gore by a two year old account yesterday
AL or Bloody?
Nicole
I hate Nicole
According to fediverse lore, she’s dead now
Dang, I wonder for how much money her family must be asking for her funeral.
I expect much bigger influxes. From at least a few dozen people with hundreds of accounts. Probably around the time of an election.
It does make me wonder what safeguards if any Lemmy has against such shittification. What system might work for that? Maybe if you had a way that users could flag other users as trolls or quality contributors, and those flags carry vastly more weight if the person flagging is themselves a quality contributor. That would perhaps create a stable community, not necessarily a good one but at least one which resists change, yet allows a way in for new people.
Way more arguments on Lemmy seem to end with the two users stop down voting each other, and then basically concluding ‘that I see your point but still think you’re wrong because youre over emphasizing x or y’.
Way more arguments on Reddit just end with an endless loop of insulting and talking past each other.
I think the effect is probably like 30% selection bias of people coming to Lemmy more intentionally, and 70% lack of bots. Between paid influence campaigns, and Reddit’s own use of bots to juice engagement, my gut feel is that most of those endless arguments are either directly arguments with bots, or indirectly people who have grown so frustrated arguing with bots in other threads that they’re no longer capable of rational discussion.
Also, Reddit comment quality has nosedived in the past year or so. Like, wildly nosedived. It used to be that there would be at least one comment in the top comments that adds some more interesting context to the story, these days, I almost t never see that on Reddit, but frequently do on Lemmy.
The average age of a Redditor started to go down even several years ago, long before Rexodus, in large part as the platform changed things to encourage speaking even without bothering to read anything at all.
Thus I decided to leave Reddit regardless, and only fortuitously decided to come here. Some things simply are not worth the trouble.
the platform changed things to encourage speaking even without bothering to read anything at all.
How so? I don’t remember this.
As a mod of a small(-ish) gaming sub, I noticed.:-)
One example is how on r/Android, people would ignore the daily posted and pinned (or perhaps it was weekly?) mega thread, and constantly ask questions like “what phone should I buy?”, “which Android device should I purchase?”, “should I get an Android and if so, which one?” Setting aside how these are impossible without sufficient details e.g. what price range, what country is the OP from, are there relevant sales they are eyeing that would make the calculations different than from simply reading the existing posts that all ask precisely the same question ⁉️… anyway in addition to all that, it made it extremely difficult to have discussions of any real substance.
Combine this with the engagement algorithms and Reddit pushes all that crap (bc it’s “new”) above even extremely highly rated content, even if it was merely a few days old.
Post flairs helped, except that submitters entirely ignore those rules just like they do everything else. User flairs as well, except… same.
About the only thing that really worked was writing your own moderation bot. Ofc the disruption of the 3rd-party tools by making the API cost irl money 🤑💰💵💸 stopped that from working as well.
In short, you must have been in some very well-moderated spaces, possibly also niche, and if you did not browse r/all (or rather r/pop) then yeah, you could miss that trend. But it was definitely happening, and people talked about it in the subs dedicated to moderation.
It did not help that Reddit continually made changes that made it worse over time - practically hiding the rules from new posters to a community, seemingly in an effort to switch the focus away from the roots (before I joined Reddit) of having multiple forums on one combined platform - e.g. each having their own design, like CSS elements (I even made some of these!:-), to having all forums be part of one giant interconnected space, with efforts to erase divisions when moving from one community to another.
i.e. the endless streaming of “content”, but ENCOURAGING interaction via commenting or at least voting, despite whether the audience has any business doing so, e.g. whether their interactions add, do nothing to, or even detract from the conversation.
^THIS
I also choose this guy’s wife
And my bow
etc. To be fair, a little of that is just plain funny, and I hope we can allow for such here on Lemmy (it seems we do actually, when offered with respect?), but when the comments are just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of such in a row, such that it becomes impossible to find anything ELSE besides that… that is when a line has been crossed, and the platform becomes more difficult to read than it is worth. Imagine walking past a preschool on your way to work, and no matter how old you get (30, 40, 50, 60), they always remain the same - babbling as they play. Which they NEED, and hopefully you can enjoy engaging with it yourself. But at some point… don’t you need to get on over to work? When the noise crowds out the signal entirely, making more adult conversations next to impossible, then the only solution is to leave.
Or kick the kids out, i.e. moderation, but that requires enormous efforts. Some subs still do it, but the more Reddit enshittifies the harder it becomes.
And it’s not merely Reddit, it’s simply the nature of the game: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb.
Gotcha. Yes, I stuck to my own mini-feed of a multireddit comprising about 30 subreddits (even though I’m subscribed to probably a hundred). I could not stand the random nature of the ADHD-inducing main feed. For example, instead of /r/Android, I was exclusively in either /r/fossdroid or my own phone model’s specific sub. /r/buyitforlife is awesome as well as /r/zerowaste. I just followed my own interests, haha, and I guess that’s how I ended up with my overall continually positive experience of Reddit (on average lol).
You used it the correct way 😉
Most people wanted more content then the niche subs could offer though.
Nowadays I do think like read physical books 📚😃.
Yeah, I agree.
On reddit it seems the remaining human commentators are those who have taken over the mannerisms of the bots and adjusted to talking to the bots.
And you always get stuck in these endless loops of hostile disagreement.
That’s just not how normal humans argue. Even on the internet.
Normal humans either agree to disagree or just give up. In both cases ending the conversation after all useful things have been said.
It is not “rational discourse” so much as “emotional vomit”, assuaging loneliness with robots.
The only ones who win that game are the investors in Reddit, who sell more advertisements by using the “engagement metrics” that such argumentation ramps up.
Normal, satisfied people stop talking eventually, which lowers the profit incentive so they can’t have that, now can they?
It’s like gambling but worse - it’s not mere dollars that can stop upon running out of them, but people’s time that gets bled away moment by moment, until all the other opportunities they could have been spent on are gone. Taking advantage of people’s mental illnesses, which they help foster in the first place.
Eat shit and die, cunt
I hope the openness of the platform will continue to allow us to keep it that way as things grow.
Intellectual? Perhaps. Civil? Not always…
Using a combination of top day, mark read on scroll, and hide read, I regularly reach the end of the internet, and am glad.
How do you do this? My main problem with Lemmy is that I always see the same posts
I’m using the Boost for Lemmy app on Android. My memory is that the Sync for Lemmy app also has the “mark read on scroll past” feature. I thought I read a discussion that implied that some web Uis for Lemmy also had this, but that’s not what I use and not what I know.
What client are you using to read Lemmy?
I’m confused, is it not on everyone’s settings for their default Lemmy profile?
“Show Read Posts” is a checkmark you can unclick if you want to hide them…
Correct. But the additional feature is available on some clients. The additional feature is to mark posts as read when you merely scroll past them. That way I don’t have to keep scrolling past the same post every time I check Lemmy. I mean, I still scroll past the same link multiple times when different people have posted it to different instances, but I never see the exact same post twice.
Oh interesting, only use desktop so I’m not on mobile so probably missing out on some cool features being developed by others.
Do you feel the apps do a better job of representing a post on the main scroll feed nowadays? I always felt like it lacked context when you were just reading a small excerpt, but I can see something like that easily approved upon and updated.
I do feel the same as the OP poster though, I honestly can’t even get past the first page if I actually click and read the comments and look into the information being presented. One post can completely sidetrack me for a day if people start making claims that are untrue and it’s a whole rabbit hole to get to the bottom of it.
In Boost, I’m happy with Card View that shows pretty big thumbnail and a healthy extract.
Holy shit, at first I thought they were pokemon cards of billionaires like Bezos, Musk etc.
BRB coffee time.
Jerboa
Jerboa
Yeah, I just sort by new. I see everything posted in my subscriptions, and can just be done for a while. It’s great. And early comments get more upvotes, heh.
I mute a ton of communities, and I really like quickly getting to the “end” of All. Then I’ve blocked some other dopamine sites, so I get bored and go play outside 🤣
Wait, the “All” feed has an end? I need to step up my game
Yeah, All Top [time duration] just pulls the most highly voted of the selected time length. The shorter the time period the easier it is to run out.
You can also really feel that the algorithm doesn’t just blindly promote click/rage bait the way that reddit’s does.
It still gets promoted some times, but the front page isn’t constantly filled with it like Reddit’s is,.
Yes but no but.
On a busy day when I only have a limited time to browse and I don’t want to get trapped in the infinite “just one more page bro” cycle? Yeah Lemmy is good for that. But if I need something to pass the time for more than an hour or so (transit layover, extremely delayed appointment, sick day at home, etc) Lemmy has neither the constant influx of new content nor the archive of old content to allow for hours of distracting rabbit holes to explore.
Feel free to post more content!
I’ve made nearly 300 posts, much of which was OC. I feel like I’ve done my part.
I appreciates that about you.
I don’t know if I’ve actually seen one of your posts, but thank you nonetheless.
That’s the beauty of having a platform where your engagement does not matter because there are no advertisers to woo.
On the one hand, this could dishearten moderators and admins if there are fewer engagements and traffic in the community.
Yup, and then if you do endlessly scroll all you get to see either very wild takes, porn, and/or extremely niche start up communities, depending on your level of federation.
Shame it takes so long to get to the good stuff.
It’s true for more popular sub forums but it sucks for hobbies and more niche topics.
I like that on Lemmy you can comment on a 20+ hour old thread from the “front page” and still have a good chance at responses or interaction from other users.
Any subreddit that regularly hits the front page of Reddit requires that users comment in the first hour or two of the post being made, or latch onto some chain from the top existing comments, or else your comment is basically just thrown into the void. It’s even worse now that Reddit has started showing day or week old posts on the front page, like why bother commenting on those posts when absolutely no one will see it…
They’re showing day or weed old posts on the front page? I wonder if they’re losing members that give content or is there another reason?
Yep, if you open any subreddit (not including the reddit.com front page), it sprinkles days old posts in with the default “Best” filter. It’s a mystifyingly annoying change because from a user perspective you have to re-read the same post multiple times each week, and there’s no point further commenting on those threads because no one else is still engaging with them.
It’s like the worst of all worlds combination of old forums and old Reddit, because old threads keep getting necro-ed, but users have no control over which ones are coming back or when they do.
Even better, I set it to hide read posts. Who knew there was a bottom to the internet?
I realize it won’t be like this forever
You can always keep moving to smaller instances.
This is a great point. I have another account on a smaller instance, and there I frequently just read everything in the local feed.
It also reminds me to post something back somewhere.
I’m also enjoying participating in forums I would never touch in any other medium. I find the people that I disagree with have much better points, with significantly fewer radicals, idiots or crusaders.
I find the people that I disagree with have much better points
Yeah same. I’ve had many more educational moments on Lemmy, in both directions, than I ever did in 10 years on Reddit
Ugh the crusaders are the worst, they’re just nasty
I find the people that I disagree with have much better points, with significantly fewer radicals, idiots or crusaders.
Honestly, it gives me hope.
My best experiences online have been as part of smaller communities where you can actually know and recognize other people. I see people commenting on threads and I can remember them talking in a different thread (or multiple threads). So it is much easier to know ‘ok that guy is touchy about this thing but is otherwise a decent person’ and not treat everyone like a 1-dimensional character.
There is also a place to politely challenge others, especially when you see more out on a long (touchy) expressions.
I describing myself there on that limb as well of course. I’ve found myself well challenged several times on a limb.
It’s like a better version of Reddit in 2025, but what I really want is Ye Olde Reddit of 2010. I keep seeing comments about how Reddit turned to shit with the API changes, but IMO it’s been garbage for more than a decade. I haven’t been on Lemmy for long but so far I’ve mostly seen the same posts as on Reddit with mostly the same types of comment, just at smaller scale.
When I joined Reddit around the same time, people who had been on Reddit since it actually started were also complaining it was shit. 🤣
Yeah it’s the classic problem… quality goes down as population goes up. Never mind whatever dumb shit the company does.
It even has a name! Eternal September
