As a long time Reddit user, there’s something about Lemmy and the fediverse that feels really refreshing and new. I think it has to do with a few things…
- People are more respectful of each other and interested in discussion and being social.
- Less trolls (users are probably older?)
- Due to it not being absolutely huge, I feel like people will actually see my posts and comments instead of being lost in a sea of content. I suppose once Lemmy grows this will change, however the cool thing about the fediverse are the new servers. So you can stick to the server when you want smaller community discussion and go to “all” when you want more populated threads.
- The clean UI feels refreshing and clean, almost like the early internet.
What have you noticed? Do you find it refreshing too?
I noticed two things, along with all the good answers in this thread:
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There is no such thing as Karma, and I hope it will never be implemented into the fediverse. The reason is that on Reddit Karma was handled like a currency, an in order to obtain Karma, the general quality of the content declined, as a result of Karma-farming. Also it was used as a threshold for posting comments in certain communities. Imagine you could join an instance only when you have a certain ammount of a Karma equivalent. That is something I don’t want to see.
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At this moment there are mostly tech savvy users (former heavy Reddit users) here, who are interested in creating content and participation. Also these folks are helping each other. It feels like a little community. I think, the threshold to join the fediverse is still too high for the average mainstream user. Maybe it will be easier to get started when there are mobile apps.
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Here, people still feel as guests whereas on reddit, people stayed long enough to feel the place is their’s.
(“old timers shouln’t have to deal with this shit again”)
Agree completely. I thinkk my reddit account is 13 years old now. I got over the new reddit UI, took me a while. Still the main thing is, the discussions are what made reddit. Right now, everybody seems to be jumping ship to lemmy/kbin, but most of the main topics are either crapping on reddit or trying to compare reddit with lemmy/kbin, instead of letting it be it’s own thing.
My main site will still be reddit, if the quality of posts starts rising without bashing reddit on every 2nd one, then I might change completely.
Also, the UI still feels a bit basic to me.
I feel like people who moved to Lemmy from reddit are really incentivized to help it grow, so I am constantly seeing encouragements for people to interact / upvote / post content, which is great. I think that the community here is very motivated, and so even though there are less people, you get more engagement.
This
I think the lack of a karma equivalent, and thus karma farming, results in much more thought out and unique posts/comments.
Not to pat ourselves on the back too much but right now it’s mainly the Reddit power users that are here. The normies are wondering why interesting as fuck was flooded with porn as of last night.
I would consider myself a normie, specifically regarding reddit, as I only spent my time lurking there and already have more comments on lemmy than on 7 years on reddit.
The current vibe and atmosphere just feels kind of special. Almost everyone is figuring stuff out, no one is down voted for asking some basic questions and I don’t have the feeling that some grammar nazi is immediately around the corner to correct my many mistakes, just to get that sweet, sweet karma.
One key difference I found is the lack of user karma. You have no incentive to post something “just to get karma” because there is no global karma on your profile.
This encourages to post what you want to post instead of posting something that someone posted years ago because it’s easy free karma
I got to agree. The first thing I did was looking for my karma on my profile but then noticed quickly that it actually doesn’t matter. But has it the same addiction like effect in the long run? At least I can still see people enjoying a well though out comment, which is most of the joy.
Aside of people probably being a few years older. Less bots and astroturfing and I bet most people who moved to Lemmy are not your average mainstream user, usually more informed than average. It’s easier to talk to calm people instead of the “whoosh I got you buddy” person. With fewer user the chance to get heard and not drowned by meme and joke replies is also much higher. But when more user join this likely changes.
Because I’m here (see username)
Let’s see how it turns out.
I think it has people with above average reading comprehension because amount of people I saw that said opening a Lemmy account is too hard and they couldn’t manage to do it is way too high
Yeah that’s true! If an article is posted, the discussion shows that people really did read the article!
I have been a user on Mastodon for quite some time but wasn’t that active and felt it lacked some content for me. Now that I joined lemmy I learned that mastodon is federated and I learned about kbin! That’s what makes it refreshing for me. A lot of new stuff and small communities emerging :)
The thing that I think makes lemmy more valuable than mastodon is the focus on content versus personality. With Twitter, you followed people because you were interested in what they had to say and share. With Reddit, you followed communities. So even if a lot of the people don’t move over, once enough of the community does, it’ll feel the same (or better). I was never super active in my various subreddits (although I did comment, I just never posted), but I’m making an effort to comment and vote a lot on here just to help build that sense of community
Yeah that perfectly summarizes my feelings aswell. The topic oriented communities are what I preferr!
To add to the others: A factor might be that Lemmy (and oder fediverse services) are not corporates trying to gain profits.
By the community for the community.
In addition to what everyone has said, Lemmy doesn’t have an established culture compared to Reddit. No in-jokes like the poop knife for example
TIL about the poop knife!
