Asklemmy

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!").

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

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

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.

Unpopular opinion, but I really hate the soft bubble space every social media is becoming and welcome the freedom of speech. I'm not saying people should be harassing each other, but it is nice knowing I could call someone a fucking dumbass when they're being one and not expect an IP ban.

Everyone wants to pretend like the ones who left reddit where the good guys. Most of them just want the same thing: attention, controversy and bad memes. We where a part of reddit and as such, we brought reddit here too. Maybe is not you or me, but there's people out there who will bring their toxicity everywhere they go. Be it Reddit, Twitter or Lemmy

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.

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.

Yes it has. You can see this in political discussions very easily. There are too many people (mostly Americans) who are accusing everyone of being a Russian bot. This did not exist a year ago.

Things are fine man. There's just a lot of de federation lately which I don't think is exactly right.

It's the politics, and the siloing as a result.

No. Apart from the relentless political posting, you-know-what-instance and a small handful of other people being obviously bad faith actors, I actually think it's a chill, relatively nice little place. A bunch of people will have Opinions and not be too shy about them, I figure that's fine as long as they're not aggressively off-topic, offputtingly angry or shared in a douchebaggy way. I haven't seen much outright incivility so far, whereas Reddit is a fucking constant shit blizzard.

I do hope we'll stay vigilant about astroturfing and bad faith participation, though, because it wouldn't take much to ruin the whole thing. "Redditism" is a natural-ish development for any large website if there's not a strong culture for resisting it, but it did become abruptly and noticeably worse once it turned into a pawn in the 2016 US election. Politics, as always, is the mind killer.

It's the circle of life. Something awful, the digg exodus, reddit, Twitter/x. Think of us shit posters as a sign of lemmy success.

I don't think so. I used to post every day so there would at least be some content. Now I don't feel like that's necessary anymore. I like it more now.

From what I can gather it isn’t true that Reddit culture has completely supplanted what came before, but it has definitely shifted things overall, both mixing to some extent. Scale is part of that though, as is the filtering mechanisms provided by a relatively niche platform.

Antagonistic downvoting (I’m now basically against downvoting I think), superficial statements, especially those that are dismissively in disagreement to the point of unpleasantness or abusiveness … I’d say I’ve seen more of all these things.

One effect, I think, is the establishment of Reddit replacement communities and their gaining large membership which has shifted the centre of gravity here. The whole of lemmy.world being an example.

Besides all of that, I’d say I’ve seen the generally or more frequently presumed set of “obvious” opinions shift toward the mainstream, which isn’t surprising at all, but with a slightly ruder and superficial form of engagement (at times at least), it’s rather tiring.

Echo chambers are echo chambers, no matter the platform. As the voices grow, it gets louder. Just because it's an alternative to the mainstream, I wouldn't consider the members here smarter, more enlightened or savvier as a whole. Lemmy just got louder, that's all.

Kbin user here. It does not federate downvotes from lemmy. So far, I have a total of two (2) downvotes and every single interaction, including the one I got downvoted for, was quite positive.

No toxicity in normal interactions so far. The only (slightly) toxic comment sections were regarding meta topics of users complaining about toxicity elsewhere and/or wanting to defederate more communities. Even those discussions were nearly entirely polite and productive.

The only somwhat toxic topic I participated in was when one car-enthusiast complained about the fuckcars community and got called out throughout the comment section. Piling on like that was probably not the best way and they deleted their post some time after.

It's most likely just a phase, though it doesn't help I made something for it.

You aspects of Reddit's toxic culture have you observed on Lemmy?