IMO the Lemmyverse, in certain aspects, is already better than Reddit.
I'm serious. Specially, the community - you folks, no matter the instance, you rock. You're amazing.
In Reddit it's always a struggle to word your posts/comments in a way that it won't trigger
unwarranted assumptions popping out of nowhere
"I dun unrurrstand" meaning "I disagree but I'm pretending that you aren't following any logic"
"You're saying that because..." [insert insane troll logic] everywhere
"U think dat 50 is not 100? Than u think 50 is 0! Dats stupid lol" tier oversimplifications all the fucking time.
insert random distortion of what you said, either due to malice or stupidity
Here though? People actually disagree with each other on rational = human grounds. They aren't attacking each other, they're agreeing or disagreeing with what is said!
It's specially noteworthy that even Lemmygrad's community specifically tailored for Leftist infighting is more wholesome than non-discussion subreddits. Like, it's a server made for people with strong political opinions, a community made to let them fight, and yet they can reason better than Reddit.
It’s early, yet. There’s still plenty of time for it to turn into a shit show. It’s happened in every corner of the Internet from the earliest of days.
What we can do is to carry on this positive approach and do our best to support the owners, admins and mods that encourage good behavior and dissuade the bad.
You're right - eventually it might turn as bad as Reddit. Or even worse.
But "it might". We're still seeing how things turn out in the long run. And I apologise for the idiotic (from my part) wishful belief, but I really hope that it stays as wholesome in the future as it is now.
Muddy bulldog is right, it's still early, but i hope that the complicated learning curve of Lemmy filters out a lot of those people. I'm loving the interactions so far and i hope it doesn't devolve into what reddit did. I had some really upsetting interactions there when i was trying to help people out and they, exactly like you said, completely twisted what i was saying in order to bully me. Didn't matter what i said to clarify. Im really conflict averse and i didn't get on Reddit for like a month afterward bc irrational anxiety lol.
Anyway, i feel like a teenager again exploring forums, it's so much fun. I hope people stick around and continue to make it awesome.
I think the 'discovery' aspect of lemmy might have some issues. Its not particularly easy to get connected into the federation (it basically has to be done manually), as far as I can tell.
I think the fediverse will be better supported by niche interests like lemmygrad.ml, or like wallstreets.bet. Smaller fiefdoms that focus pretty narrowly on niche interests, but that can be interesting to other groups in the fediverse. More 'tribal' and less monolithic than reddit. We've also already see how problematic that monolithic tendency of web-3.0 can be (centralized control via reddit; crashing of lemmy.ml).
SO I think if you are super into gardening, you should find a gardening lemmy for your home base, and federate out from there. I just wish cross-federation community discover was easier.
Mainly the "unwarranted assumptions" bullet point. I mentioned in a comment here how reddit helped pull me to the left, politically, and someone responded with something like "so if it weren't for a reddit you'd be a nazi?"
I‘ve seen some stuff I dislike on here too, but I figure that is normal in any place many people congregate. I like the overall small and friendly vibe though and ofc the freedom from the whims of spez.
My bets are that the only lemmy instances in the not so distant future to maintain sanity are going to be the ones that federate with lemmygrad and enforce heavy moderation.
People from the future, ping me if I was wrong. (I hope I don't have to edit this post)