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When I first started using Lemmy it seemed like such a nice place with interesting discussions. It seemed like the first group of people to join after the app exodus were being quite careful to be respectful of the existing culture.

Now, it seems as though the culture from Reddit has completely replaced it. Toxicity and all. I will say I do follow a lot of communities from a wide range of instances so it's clearly not everywhere.

Am I the only one who's feeling like we've just stormed in and bulldozed Lemmy?

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[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 208 points 1 year ago

I came to Lemmy from reddit and I find it an incredibly nice place to be, full of polite discussions and fun posts. I haven't seen any of what you're saying.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When the rightwing communities started getting defederated, their users started making alts on the main instances.

Then you've got lemmy.grad which I still have trouble believing aren't just all trolls.

I've never seen a logical comment from any of them. And they agree with the rightwingers waaaaay to often for it be a coincidence.

Like, there was a thread the other day filled with people saying Islam is a violent religion and no other religion encourages violence. And all 1.7 billion Muslims support terrorist extremists.

Maybe because China and Russia have also been oppressing them for centuries so lemmy.grad has to act like that's the right move?

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 year ago

Like, there was a thread the other day filled with people saying Islam is a violent religion and no other religion encourages violence.

Any links for that one?

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

No idea how to link so other instances see it on theirs but:

https://lemmy.world/post/3293542?scrollToComments=true

There was like double the comments from last time I looked at it tho, it's been a couple days

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks!!

I’m struggling to find any anti-Islamic sentiment in there from lemmygrad users?? (which is what I was interested in seeing … ordinary Christianity > Islam isn’t too surprising to see anywhere I’d say, however shallow it is).

EDIT: All I could find was this one comment from a lemmygrad user (along with a small exchange afterwards) that seemed to me entirely sympathetic to the Afghans and not at all anti-islamic.

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[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

No idea how to link so other instances see it on theirs but:

I’m not sure there is a way right now.

[-] SaveComengs@lemmy.federa.net 14 points 1 year ago

lemmygrad existed before all the reddit people

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[-] Skotimusj@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

I agree. Came from reddit in June. Lemmy has been a very friendly place. I just posted for advice with a typo in the title. Noone even mentioned it. No belittling advice or bickering. Just kindness and helpfulness.

[-] Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 23 points 1 year ago

Did the same and was helpfully informed that unlike Reddit, you can edit the title if there's a typo in it :)

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[-] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's difficult to have a respectful discussion of disagreements on lemmy.world and sometimes even lemmy.ml, especially since a lot of the users I try to engage with start of with "ewww lemmygrad" and I tend to disengage there. It's just not productive nor is it anything worth my time.

If both parties already agree on a line you won't find any disrespect. And this kind of interaction is one I see most often, especially when it comes down to politics over on lemmy.world...

I think Hexbear has a posting startegy, that I've seen countlessly now, which works well. Start of with good faith discussion, if it goes well continue on the same path, if the other party decides to be a shitty person then post PPB, troll or disengage.

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[-] ren@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It’s scale.

Scale is the enemy of social networks. All of them, including Lemmy.

Let’s say 0.1% of the population are just straight up assholes who ruin everything.

If you only got 100 people on a site, no one is an asshole.

1000 people? Well now you got that asshole Andy in the group. Fucking Andy. But we can deal with him.

But we scale up to 1,000,000? Well now you got 1000 fucking assholes to deal with!

[-] atlasraven31@lemm.ee 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If my math is right, it should be 1,000 assholes at the end.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

Stop being an asshole Andy!

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[-] r00ty@kbin.life 34 points 1 year ago

I don't want to be that asshole Andy. But 0.1% of 1,000,000 is 1000. :P

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[-] thoro@lemmy.ml 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It makes sense.

Most people who came here two months ago did so because they explicitly wanted to leave Reddit, but not because of Reddit content or the site culture. It was because admin decisions on third party apps and the API.

They still wanted Reddit, just with different Admins and different apps. Ideally, they'd have wanted communities to fully migrate over.

lemmy.world specifically became basically a lifeboat, having been linked to from original third party apps.

Yes, it was created and had the technical and resource requirements to keep up with the new influx of users without constantly crashing (in the beginning), but nonetheless, that meant it got the largest influx of the migration.

It's honestly a bit strange for me to see people in here with two month old accounts saying "oh yeah the culture has just changed so much".

You all were the change. It's that influx of users that basically brought Reddit here.

Anyone who came here before the API changes did so either because they had some kind of issues with Reddit, whether it was the dominant culture or what, and wanted an alternative or because they were interested in the open source and federated nature of the project regardless of Reddit's own decisions.

Though tbf, pre migration, this place was basically dead. Posts would have a handful of comments at best and it was mostly Lemmygrad users and also FOSS enthusiasts. Hexbear was the most active Lemmy instance and was a chapotraphouse lifeboat formed in 2020 but it didn't federate so it was really mostly just Lemmy.ml as a general instance and Lemmygrad unless you explicitly knew and cared for Hexbear. Neither was very "toxic" in their own communities and there really wasn't much inter instance fighting, even if there still were people on lemmy.ml who didn't care for grad, as far as I remember. I honestly mostly lurked and didn't participate often.

The apps also were much worse.

Things started picking up as the API announcement happened. That's probably when we had the best balance of positivity and user growth.

It exploded when the API changes went into effect and voila.

Still, I would say it's mostly still a bit better than Reddit and there's more effort in commenting for the most part.

I don't think I've seen a pun chain or a "he's not your buddy, guy" or anything like that.

[-] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 17 points 1 year ago

And that's only the first migration. Expect a way bigger one once Reddit sunsets the old reddit interface.

[-] MaybeItWorks@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

This is exactly what happened to Reddit with the Digg shitshow and then gradual public adoption. Reddit used to have thoughtful conversation and was where I could go to get interesting perspectives. Eventually enough people joined that the quality went way down.

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[-] LinkOpensChest_wav@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

Tbf many of us, myself included, had had a problem with the general reddit culture for a very long time (in my case dating back to 2011)

The API change and Sp*z's libelous lies (egregious even by his abysmally low standards) finally gave me the motivation to leave, and I'm genuinely happy that I've never checked back on my old account (which is still up, but has been mostly scrubbed of content)

I didn't come here to find more reddit. In fact, I tried switching back to tumblr at first before learning more about the potential of the fediverse

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[-] foggy@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

This is such an "us vs them" mindset and it just doesn't work that way.

Reddit dominated internet culture for ~15 years. Reddit culture is just what internet culture is now. Any internet community that grows to a sufficient size will begin to exhibit the dominant internet culture.

Things aren't black and white.

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[-] frogfruit@discuss.online 43 points 1 year ago

After blocking most of the meme subs, I find it a pretty nice place.

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[-] thelsim@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago

I'm one of those Reddit refugees. I can't say anything about how things were before I got here, but I would like to add that I treat Lemmy a whole lot different from Reddit. When I joined there was plenty of talk about the lack of content, people only upvoting but not commenting, that kind of thing.
So I took this as a sign that I should be more of a participant and not the three-posts-to-my-name lurker that I was at Reddit. And I saw similar motivations with other users. So I do hope that at least part of the refugees have added a positive influence, and more so than they ever did when they were still using Reddit.

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 year ago

Also, to add to this: culture is a living thing, like people and ecosystems. Change is inherent and healthy.

It's totally reasonable to debate whether an event brings good change or bad change, but complaining about a community being different is, imo, not healthy or rational.

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[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

Lemmy doesn't have a collective culture. Each instance has it's own culture or will develop it over time, even though a lot of reddit vestige remains. (It's only been like 2 months)

I don't think toxicity ever will get too bad here, for the simple fact that if you don't like the say, c/politics of one instance, you are always free to go to the c/politics of another instance or even start your own.

Eventually, the toxic instances/community will bleed users and die out, defed is a factor but doesn't have too much to do with this.

[-] Kroxx@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago

As communities grow from obscurity to populated change is inevitable. I used to use reddit and the #1 thing I hated was the condescending, holier than thou attitude that was rampant. I have seen it occasionally on here but for the most part Lemmy is a breath of fresh air, so I personally don't think reddit culture has replaced it. I can definitely see a strong cultural influence from reddit but I personally think Lemmy culture is significantly different, in a good way.

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[-] intensely_human@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago

Can you link to a few comments or posts that you think represent this nasty reddit culture?

[-] mojo@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

lemmy.ml on a good day had like 15 to 30 upvotes on the front page. There wasn't much of a culture before.

See the traffic in April this year, a little over 4 months ago. Lemmy.world only been around for like 2 and a half months now. That's the most active it's been since before the exodus. The exodus definitely helped jumpstart the site.

[-] thawed_caveman@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, my answer to "has the Reddit exodus killed the former Lemmy culture" is "what culture lmao"

Not that i was on Lemmy before, but i was on Mastodon before Elon bought Twitter and it was a ghost town.

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

It's quickly getting more toxic and aggressive. But we're not counting karma, so as soon as you recognize that someone is arguing with you in bad faith just block them.

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[-] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The important thing to understand is that Lemmy doesn't have an inherent culture. Nor does Reddit, or Twitter, or Mastodon, or any other platform.

They are communities, and communities naturally change as they scale.

So yes, of course Lemmy had changed. But I'd argue that the inherent strength of the whole concept of "federation" is that any one particular instance only has to witness as much or as little of that change as they want to.

If you don't like where Lemmy as a whole is going, find (or create) an instance that agrees with you and de-federates from most others. win-win.

The point is that you are responsible for your own particular Lemmy experience in ways that you never were on Reddit.

[-] rusticus@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

Hexbear and lemmy.grad were there before and are as toxic as any reddit sub I’ve ever been in.

[-] DrMango@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Nice. Lemmy is finally big enough for "Lemmy sucks now, the old days were better" posts 🥲

[-] demlet@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I thought the point of Lemmy was that people could make their own instance if they don't like what's on offer. It can be whatever people want it to be, and none of those are mutually exclusive.

[-] AttackBunny@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I think I agree. When I first moved here everyone was so nice, respectful, and willing to have an actual dialogue. Now it feels more like Reddit where when you say something every just immediately jumps to shitting on you, even if they interpret what you said wrong, or if they disagree. I also feel like there are a lot more of the “well, akshewally….” Types here now. There also seems to be people who honestly can’t grasp this isn’t Reddit, and brought the same mentality/trends with them.

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[-] birdpatch@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I think it’s still much too small to have that problem honestly

[-] Ab_intra@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I find Lemmy much better than Reddit. But this comes down to what communities you follow in my view.

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[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 12 points 1 year ago

Except for a few power-tripping mods and admins I haven't seen much of Reddit culture here. And the blatant copy of r/place was a little cringe (especially as it was introduced with "let's create our own customs!").

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I felt that way until I found out the bigger instances aren't even much older. Lemmy World itself apparently started as soon as the changes were announced but before any big protests began. Instances that were around even before those either were not very active to even have an established culture, or are so niche they're not really affected.

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[-] Karmmah@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I read that some people on here go about it by blocking accounts that are repeatedly toxic. I like this approach since it directly improves your own feed and if a lot of people do it with time the reduced exposure these accounts get could improve the platform as a whole.

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[-] Candelestine@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Personally I did notice a change in tone, but it wasn't the reddit influx, it was a couple weeks later, around the time the hacks started.

[-] danhakimi@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

You mean the circle-jerk of six tankies talking about how the West is the definition of evil? Is that the former Lemmy culture you're talking about? I don't remember there being anything worth mourning.

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[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Beehaw is still pretty nice :) The moderation is part of why I joined it. I’ve definitely noticed other community getting toxic comments in the past few weeks, though

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[-] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

I love when people say they are glad they are bot on reddit anymore and create a new one. Suddenly everything sounds like reddit again. Artporn, foodporn, earthporn we get it you are 16

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[-] Femcowboy@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

As a movement/fandom/website gets bigger the more bad actors there will be within it. There's also less consequences to ones reputation for being rude to others when a community gets larger because there are more people in the community you haven't been rude to yet that you can still have positive interactions with.

I don't think it's something carried over specifically from reddit or its community but rather just what naturally happens (which also happened on reddit,) as communities get larger. They become more and more reflective of people at large, and right now people aren't doing so hot.

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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
151 points (73.1% liked)

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