The absence of a running karma total is a surprisingly powerful difference. I do still look back at old posts, and it's nice when there's votes, but without the little number next to a name or when I mouse-over a profile, there's no motivation to be the first in a thread to repost a cliche joke or to ragebait for fake internet points.
I think the “not having to be first” is what is so powerful.
I know that if I comment on a post from a few days ago on a populated community, I’ll likely at least get a reply from OP, if not a bunch of other people finding my comment and replying as well.
It’s like Lemmy is the nice, small-town version of Reddit (which is probably more similar to Gary Indiana).
Lemmy definitely has a more chill, human vibe than I got with Reddit, given how overrun the latter was with vast armies of shills, bots, alt right trolls, etc.
Not that it's all rainbow-pooping unicorns frolicking through flowery meadows here but at least the dick comments tend to be much rarer and often a one off for the person making them.
Part of the reason is Lemmy's default sorting algorithm for comments, "Hot", addresses reddit's biggest flaw, which is that earlier comments snowballs with upvotes, so it buries late-comers to conversations, leading to the rat-race of everyone trying to get their funny one-liners in as early as possible for maximum karma (which also isn't a thing here.)
The "Active" default sort for posts also means that comments are a lot more concentrated to what people are actually talking about and posts tend to be stickier. (also, botting upvote is a lot harder on Lemmy, since it's easy to bot upvotes, it's a lot harder to fake real conversations in comments. )
In fact, it is pointless to comment at all past like 4 hours on any post on reddit since it will just sit unread for hours, but here you can comment 1 day after a post and still have people talking to you.
for me, I was motivated to make this my first post because I want to help solve the death of content issue we still have. it's gotten quite a lot of attention. I think that anywhere bigger, anything of relevance would have already been posted by the time I see it
Also, for me, it's the fact I do not feel my data and privacy are being siphoned, sold, and fingerprinted on this platform. Another factor is that I feel the people and interactions are pure and authentic, rather than astroturfed and ambiguous. That may change as the fedicerse grows, but for now it is bringing me back of the older days of the internet.
You bring up one advantage I see from Lemmy. Even though I've seen this article posted before (I think by L4Sbot in this technology community), the nature of de-centralized content means that cross-posting onto various servers is actually encouraged to get input from a variety of users from different communities and configs (for example, people who have disabled viewing bot-account posts).
On Reddit, people would be quick to say "boooooo repoooost", but I've not seen that too much of that, just a few complaints of "there's too much orange guy and muskrat in my feed".
I comment about as much as I did on reddit, but I feel like I see less negative replies. It doesn’t seem to matter what I’d post on there, somebody somewhere would have something shitty to say. It’s not my fault society can’t accept my seal clubbing hobby.
See? This is what people in reddit can’t seem to understand. I say, “I want to go the Arctic and club the shit out some Seal,” and they immediately assume the worst. Just because I like dancing the night away in cold, barren wastelands doesn’t make me a monster.
Absolutely, I post much more here because I know actual people will actually read it and may actually respond like they would to an actual human. It's like the old days of the internet.
It's great that they have that. But man it got abused so easily, and it felt kind of silly that you could actually block it. I remember getting it after saying the most middest of takes.
Hey me too! Just the Lemmy side (was never into twitters whole thing) but I actually post stuff here, even if it’s just cross posting.
I always used an alt to post on Reddit and did so very infrequently. I think I posted maybe 3 things on the 4 years on Reddit?
I comment a lot more, and have posted a ton more (even without removing the posts! And yea, 5 is a ton more since it’s in the last 2 months rather than 4years!)
I don’t even clear my comment history as a compulsive thing (I changed me behavior somewhat, to allow for this) because I don’t want to remove activity from the platform. I know it needs me to contribute so I do!