Just checking the place out after not being able to stand Reddit and its policies anymore. Their policing of Luigi posts was the last straw for me.
Going public ruins companies.
Welcome to Lemmy! I'm glad you joined. There are tons of tutorials out there for how to use the platform, but if it helps, here's my advice:
I use the Android app Sync For Lemmy. Reminds me a lot of rif is fun from before Reddit shut down 3rd party API access about a year ago.
Lemmy.World is the name of the biggest instance on Lemmy. Think of it as a discord channel with different sub-channels except those are called communities here (and instead of r/ for subreddits we have c/ for communities).
There are still trolls here. What's nice about Lemmy is that you can block individual trolls, communities of trolls, or even instances of trolls (if you deem them so). Conversely, if you get banned from any of the above, you can make a new account on any other instance (like dbzer0 or shitjustworks) and still have access to the content from those people/places. The same is true if certain communities/instances change their policies on things like Luigi, which happened on Lemmy.World recently. I switched over to dbzer0 to avoid that censorship and to also see stuff about pirating - that which is banned on Lemmy.World.
Lastly, we can see posts/comments from other people on the Fediverse, like from Mastodon (Twitter alternative) and others.
Hope you enjoy your stay here! Lemmy is primarily tech- and politics-focused rn, but a lot of people draw parallels to Reddit's early days, which is good!
Welcome! Always happy to see new faces showing up.
This place is significantly smaller than Reddit, and also significantly more spread out. It grows on you, but it's important to look beyond the similarities between how lemmy.world and Reddit look. Under the hood, these are very different spaces.
"Lemmy" is actually a large network of independently operated Lemmy-based (or not... more on that later) websites. Each website has their own rules, and their own "communities" (AKA sublemmies, magazines, groups, etc.). You're using one of, if not the, largest website in the network, and the one that is probably most Reddit-like (pre-IPO) in terms of rules and policies. It's a general purpose content aggregator.
There are quite a few other medium-to-large general purpose content aggregator sites on the network. lemm.ee comes to mind, as does sh.itjust.works. And, of course, lemmy.ca, which is where I'm commenting from. Each of these websites has its own communities, and houses mirrors of remote communities that their users have subscribed to. Remote communities with local subscribers synchronize with the host website every so often (it can be quite frequently, but usually isn't instantaneously). This makes the whole thing kind of like being on a web forum, but being able to follow topics from other web forums.
As you can imagine, this means there are some niche websites on the network. ttrpg.network is dedicated to table top gaming; startrek.website is focused on... I don't know, some tv show or something; programming.dev hosts a bunch of communities focused on software engineering; lemmy.kde.social is focused on the KDE desktop environment for linux. These are often low-population sites, but they can see a lot of off-site engagement. Focused sites like that are great sites to use if your primary interest is the topic at hand; it really makes the Local feed super valuable.
If you remember that we're not all using the same website, and that the different websites are, in fact, different websites, with their own rules, cultures, and norms, it helps grok the space a lot more. It also makes it easier to understand why there might be 8 different politics communities, and that c/politics on lemmy.world might be very different, both in terms of who is posting there, and also what they're interested in discussing, from c/politics on lemmy.ca, or on aussie.zone.
Now, one thing that's not obvious from lemmy.world (or any Lemmy-based website, really), is that not every website you have access to here is actually running Lemmy. kbin.earth and rimworld.gallery both run mbin, which is a different content aggregation webserver. community.nodebb.org runs nodebb, a web forum server.
People have access to Lemmy communities from an even wider range of website types. Users from Mastodon-based websites, Friendica-based websites, Hubzilla-based websites, and probably quite a few more.
We're all on different websites. Some of those websites are significantly more different than others. That shapes this space in ways we haven't even begun to truly explore yet. And it adds a little jank.
But the jank is worth it, as far as I'm concerned.
I've been here about a year now. Good times. Your voice counts on lemmy in a way it really really doesn't on reddit. People will engage with you because you're human and say human things. It's much more welcoming for people who like to talk somehow than reddit ever was. Don't know why.
By the way, people talk a lot about how lemmy.world censors luigi, but I use lemmy.world and see, upvote and sometimes comment on plenty of luigi stuff without mod intervention. Maybe it's just one of two communities (subreddits) where it's enforced.
If you're a communist and don't like to hear China (or sometimes for some weird reason Russia) criticised, and if you feel that the USA is the Imperialist power that needs to be broken first, you'll feel most at home in lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, but also lemmy.ml if you want to keep access to stuff from lemmy.world.
If you're progressive or liberal, you'll be fairly happy here on lemmy.world. If you're a conservative, I don't know where to recommend you.
There are various country specific ones you might find suit you for other reasons.
All in all I'm not sure it matters a great deal as much as it sounds in my post. People from different instances turn up and say stuff anyway.
The best advice is that you don't have to lurk as much as you used to on reddit, you can show up and engage and the conversation will start around you.
I would add that I think checking out and joining smaller instances is also a great opportunity. Distributes the user load across servers and being one of fewer voices in an instance means you have a bigger say in who you federate with. You also get to be a third party instance to most of the big drama and don't get judged just for your instance as much
Edit: also, if you like your instance, contribute to it!
By the way, people talk a lot about how lemmy.world censors luigi, but I use lemmy.world and see, upvote and sometimes comment on plenty of luigi stuff without mod intervention. Maybe it's just one of two communities (subreddits) where it's enforced.
That's because the knee-jerk reaction for many of the mods/admins of .world communities, like news, was to massively censor and temp ban people for celebrating what Luigi did... for about 6 hours.
They were massively lambasted for this, they provided nonsensical explanations for the censorship with flimsy explanations based on their community and instance rules which they were very obviously selectively interpreting, were lambasted for these explanations, and then after about 6 hours they largely reversed course, stopped policing ao heavily and undid a bunch of the 24 hour instance wide temp bans.
You can find a few threads/posts on the yepowertrippinbastards community of lemmy.dbzero about this, or check their own modlogs, if they haven't scrubbed or obfuscated them.
Seems more or less accurate. Partly it's that we're all learning this together. Partly it's that we have a variety of mods that are different for each major community. Partly I think it was an overreaction to legal obligations. Partly it's that when you have a hammer (mod/admin tools), the tendency is to think that you should use them.
Not an excuse, of course. But people really easily love to criticize any kind of leadership with a broad brush without much willingness or understanding of how things should be led. You wouldn't believe the number of people who say they "don't have time" to moderate a community that likely takes less than five minutes of work a month.
I joined a few weeks after the Reddit API was made paid, but I left Reddit the day it happened. Better late than never, I guess. Welcome to Lemmy.
If you wanna delete your Reddit account, make sure you use PowerDeleteSuite to get rid of all of your posts and comments before clicking that delete button on your account. Not doing so will keep your contributions to the website live.
You'll find that the volume here is much (much much MUCH!!!) lower than reddit. As frustrating as this can be, the only solution is to stand and create more content. More worthwhile posts, more comments, more interaction. At its height, that was exactly what made reddit successful.
Only issue you might find with signing up for world is you can't get db0's piracy communities. I've been too lazy to switch since coming from kbin though myself.
Weird part is the last announcement I can find from .world admins said those communities were going to be reinstated, but then here we are months later and they still seem busted.
Was it the admin of the instance or an individual mod? I'm still trying to figure out the policies of each instance versus its communities. I mod a few communities on .world and have never had any admin come in and do anything there.
I'm not sure it's good to condemn all of .world if it's just a few mods doing this, especially since .ml is one of the main alternatives and thousands of times worse, removing anything remotely critical of China or Russia.
I got banned for ‚racism‘ in some community when I said China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. I also say Russia is doing it against Ukrainians and Israel against Palestinians, but it doesn’t matter. I thought .ml can’t be as bad as everyone says because I’m not exactly in the liberal camp but I had to learn that they are really bad…
If your experience is like mine when I ditched reddit, it’ll take a few months for the learned defensiveness and self-editing to wear off. People seem more mature here (except for our sense of humor) and I’ve found less trolling and sealioning.
The interface quality is down, but the quality of content is way, way up. It more than makes up the difference.
It's really hard for openly reactionary communities to get a hold here, because rather than being given free reign by fiat, they get defedded. The reactionaries are definitely here, and lemmy.world among other open instsnces are a bit of a haven for them, but even lemmy.world has to make concessions to the fact that if they become too much of a shithole then the other instances will make alternatives and render them irrelevant.
It turns out that without a big daddy institution to shelter them, reactionaries don't thrive, their communities can't metastisise, and they are super unpopular. That's the big difference.
It feels like we are more the early adopter tech savvy redditors though. As user ~2000 of Reddit, Lemmy feels very much like Reddit did prior to the Digg migration (after which things seemed to dumb down considerably).
I’d say people are very defensive and aggressive still but the filters and blocking helps me a lot. Though I’ve been sassy I do want to try to make a better nicer place
Been on Lemmy since the App/API ban. Haven't looked back at reddit since, other than the occasional search result pointing to someone's q&a.
Side note, anyone else tired of all the sanitized AI slop that pervades search results? The only websites worth visiting these days are user forums (incl. reddit/Lemmy) and wikipedia.
Agreed and welcome! Be prepared to engage in or create a new space for the communities you care about. Things feel like they're just getting started here, but that's ok. Good luck and have fun!
There's no going back anyways. I've tried making new accounts. It's impossible to post anywhere.
The account vetting filters block me everywhere. Can't post unless I'm a vetted poster. Can't become vetted because I can't post to begin with. I can't be bothered to seek out and karma farm on random subreddits that aren't a mess of filters.
I remember back in the day I heard that /r/counting was the easiest place to farm some starting karma on a new account since they didn't have a karma requirement to comment
Dbzer0, good. ML, bad. Their admins are trigger happy with instance-wide bans against users who criticize them or argue with them directly about their beliefs.
You might want to check the modlogs, bud. .ml HEAVILY censors posts and comments to the point that the admin will override mods and remove posts and comments that don’t even break rules.
.world just doesn’t allow people to promote and encourage violence. Maybe learn the difference.
And while you’re at it, how about you scroll through .world and take note of the shit-tons of edgy Luigi memes posted. They’re everywhere.
I meant it as better than lemmy.world in censoring in a neolib bias and thinking it’s not hexbear or lemmygrad. I have less bad experience with ML, so I guess least aware user lol ;)