Pixelfed just overtook Lemmy as the 4th most used Fediverse software.

i just hate the way most people here assume everyone is coming from US smh

Or the vast majority of political spam from only one country. I’d like more of a worldview. Be interesting to see how others have other problems and how it might be solved with other solutions.

Yeah, that's definitely a shame. Let's see how it goes, but I'm about to create a !usdefaultism somewhere just to list those occurrences

2024
- Less than half, that actually surprises me. I honestly assume most people I meet online are Yanks.
  
  I think a lot of people talk like Yanks, or just don’t clarify. I’ve had conversations with other Brits where we both assume the other is a Yank.
  
  Happens to me a lot too, when actually none of us are from the USA
  
  I could see the numbers being a little different for Lemmy, but I don't expect that they're wildly different.
  
  I seem to remember Germans were like 10-20% at one point, but that might have evened out over time
  
  Would make sense with how they handled the migration from /r/ich_iel
  
  Sie haben gerufen?
  
  Nowadays, other countries also have Internet and can speak English
- That's reddit, not Lemmy?
- Yoink
  
  Grabbing that for future reference. That's the stats from 2024? Is there like a link to the actual source? Significantly more US-centered then I thought, especially since one would assume the numbers were even more skewed 5-10 years ago.
  
  Lemmy is much more weighted towards an international userbase in my experience, which can be frustrating for the American audience at times, but also has its benefits.
  
  which can be frustrating for the American audience at times
  
  I get it but that sounds so weird to me, lol
  
  Doesn't seem like a super reliable source. I just grabbed the first result I googled.
  
  I got it from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bg323c/oc_reddit_traffic_by_country_2024/
  
  It lists worldpopulationreview.com on the image.
  
  There this statista link which has similar numbers and sounds more detailed, but still doesn't have sources available. Google's AI points to statista.
  
  So nothing definitive. But I certainly expect that most users are from the US.
  
  You inspired me to do a bit more digging. I found the page on world population review.
  
  https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/reddit-users-by-country
  
  Which lists this site as the true source. Looks pretty legit to me. Seems to be a paid service.
  
  https://www.semrush.com/website/reddit.com/overview/
  
  They've got US traffic listed around 51% for December 2024, so it's actually gone up significantly compared to the March 2023 figures cited by world population review
  
  https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/reddit-traffic-report-march-2023pdf/257621808
  
  Went from 2.32 billion US visits in March 23 to 3.17 billion in December 24, while Indian visitors actually declined significantly in the same period.
- This is awesome; I’m too tired to do it right now - but I’d I remember I’d really like to normalise this against country populations to see what percent of a nation is a Reddit user.
  
  At a glance, I’m pretty sure Australia is punching well above its weight - if nothing else.
- Would you have such stats for LW? Really curious as it feels more balanced here
  
  With the data from https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list,
  
  Honestly neither of these give a very good impression of where users are from, but I don't think lemmy collects that data. Maybe if there was some way to check which languages people have listed?
  
  Yes, it's a bit difficult to infer any trend indeed, could be thousands of 1 person instances.
  
  Languages don't really work either, people tend to just speak English on the Internet. That's why I was asking Serinus, I thought maybe on LW they would have some data
  
  Actually I remember this data from lemmy.zip:
  
  https://lemmy.zip/post/29448608?scrollToComments=true
It's actually the second or third thing I mention about Lemmy if it ever comes up in conversation. Sometimes I feel like just dropping it because of it.
[email protected]
- I've seen it, but seems abandoned, and not a fan of yet another community on LW
  
  The mod still seems to be active, last comment made 19 hours ago

I don't disagree it's an issue, but what should be allowed in general communities? If any other nation's politics are allowed, then you can't really just not allow US politics (unless you make that a rule for the community and part of its purpose, which is fine).

There are just more Americans here than any particular other nationality, so you get more US content on average. You'll need specific non-US communities if you want to avoid it. Expecting general communities to not reflect the general audience is a little absurd.

[email protected] isn't about any country politics, it's exclusively about US politics (see the sidebar)

[email protected] should be useful information for everyone, not only US citizens

I guess I am a snowflake too then, bc to me consent should matter. And while the USA is a part of the world, and also has an oversized effect upon it due to the size of the economy and trade deals and the like, it also can be overwhelming for some, who feel ostracized and left out as if only the big guys (and guns) matter.

But on the other hand, it is known that moderation sucks across the vast majority of Lemmy - it's somewhat baked right into the tools themselves, e.g. removing whole posts rather than merely taking them out of the community lists but allowing people to continue their discussions already begun, as Reddit does.

So you may want to take it upon yourself to either start blocking by keywords (maybe find an app that allows that - I'm not sure which ones), or user accounts that do that, or even find a better community to engage with.

Though I agree with your conclusion: I no longer recommend Lemmy to people irl by virtue of having been burned by that far too many times before. We're toxic AF in this Alt-Left (rather than Alt-Right) "Nazi bar" space, and a lot of the people here are legit those banned from Reddit for exactly that behavior.

moderation sucks across the vast majority of Lemmy

Moderation isn't ideal, but absent moderators aren't going to moderate even with the best tools
- I mean, PieFed has some really cool thoughts about doing exactly that... I'm hoping for a lot there.
  
  As it is, Lemmy is simply a more authoritarian version of Reddit - at the low level I mean, next to the users, who e.g. have no modmail recourse to discuss anything, nor even receive a notification that their content has been removed. Even while it is also open source so allows instance admins greater freedom to implement whatever policies they choose - disabling downvotes for example.
  
  Anyway the more the technology can do the less reliance upon human efforts to moderate. e.g. to facilitate automated community discovery, so that there is lowered barriers to getting away from bad moderators.
  
  PieFed is highly promising, but I wish you didn't feel the need to go overboard with criticizing Lemmy. Calling Lemmy a more authoritarian version of reddit... that's a pretty wild take.
  
  That's like calling tribal societies more authoritarian than Stalinist or fascist states. There's no such thing as low-level authoritarianism, that doesn't make any sense. The users can message the mods directly, and they can go as they wish and do as they please. It's like calling the nuclear family unit authoritarian, it becomes a nonsensical concept when applied to human-scale social organization. It refers to large scale social units such as nations and political parties, not small groups of freely associated individuals like Lemmy.
  
  You're still stuck in the reddit mindset where there isn't anywhere else to go, everything is contained in one closed box controlled by spez. On Lemmy you can go and build your own box, and there are already dozens to choose from that are free and open to join.
  
  The users can message the mods directly
  
  The lack of modmail and notifications when content is removed is still an issue. Not authoritarian, that seems much, but a better moderation experience from both sides would make the platform better for everyone.
  
  Nobody is arguing that and it's irrelevant to my comment. You're simply pointing out the fact that Lemmy moderation tools are not yet full featured, which is unsurprising given we are still in alpha. This is a completely different criticism than the criticism of authoritarianism which I was defending against.
  
  Please stop responding to every single comment I make, if you wouldn't mind. I've had to reply to you like 50 times over the past week. I'll let you do your thing and you let me do mine.
  
  Honestly, for how many tech/open source people are on lemmy its surprising how few community contributions there are to the actual software.
  
  How would the users message mods directly when the modlog just says "mod"? They could message each one directly, or mass spam all at once, but in general the tools are highly biased to protect mods rather than grant power to the content creators.
  
  On Reddit - which I haven't used since practically the Rexodus so am definitely not shilling for it here - after a post is removed, people can still continue to discuss things in it. So if I typed a long reply to someone it would still make its way to them. Here, it's just poof gone, and a whole long response, possibly not even to OP but to someone else, I can't even send it anymore. All of those discussions that the OP spawned - they are all just gone. Nor can I look them up later if I have the URL - the entire post is gone, not simply removed from the community listing of posts but taken away from the community entirely, all of the work put in, by The People, removed from them by a possibly capricious mod. With no recourse to do much of anything except complain.
  
  I already mentioned how the admins have more freedom yes, so I am talking here strictly below that level, the interactions between mods and content creators.
  
  Remember the context of this thread is me responding to "People still wonder why Lemmy has a bad reputation even in the entire Fediverse..." So my purpose is not to whinge but to discuss practical solutions to improving that reputation. Putting the power back into the hands of The People rather than mods would go a LONG way. Like, even just sending a notification upon removal of a post or comment - there is much that Reddit does that if we did, would help. Or perhaps we can find even better solutions, but not if we don't even so much as try.
  
  Also, even if you did become your own instance admin, that does next to nothing for you if you still want to interact with people on other instances - it allows you to create your own communities on your own instance, but if you want to make comments on OTHER communities on OTHER instances, then everything that I said above still holds true - you still don't get a notification if your content is removed, you still can't continue conversations or even so much as view posts that have been removed, etc. Looking at the moderation practices of the Lemmy developers used on Lemmy.ml explains so much of why admins and mods have so much power, but the individual posters have so little. In some ways
  
  Reddit is more authoritian - at the top - but in other ways we are even more so here than there. We need to do better. I doubt that we will, but we should. Although we won't unfortunately, which means that people will remain on Reddit. Especially the ones who already seem okay with spez - to them, there seems not much to entice them to come here, for an objectively worse experience, for someone who doesn't want to put in the effort to learn how federation works much less to host their own instance? At which point we seem to me to be deluding ourselves - "People still wonder why Lemmy has a bad reputation even in the entire Fediverse...", bc we are not honest about who and what we are. e.g. we may be Linux users and self-hosters, who nonetheless still have fewer rights in some ways than we did on Reddit. Which we were fine with bc the software is still being developed but... how long has it been since the Rexodus, and we have seen little improvements made in some of these areas? And in this particular area, actual negative progress made bc the modlog used to say the name of the account of who removed something, whereas now it just says "mod" - which would be fine if there were a modmail, but again, there isn't.
  
  I am not counting negative progress as "progress". And I am losing all hope for Lemmy to ever improve in these regards yes - in fact I no longer recommend it to anyone, ever, bc I've been burned far too often on that in the past. I do still hold out strong hopes for the Fediverse tools though - Mbin, PieFed, and possibly Sublinks all show much promise for the Threadiverse (or whatever name for forum-based Fediverse). One day far from now Lemmy will remain the tankie Threadiverse, and people won't be dependent upon having to choose between just Reddit vs. it, bc there will finally be other options, and people will begin to be more free. And before you argue back: yes, it was thanks to Lemmy that got us here (or more to Kbin for me and so many others). But that is no reason to not seek to continue to improve by putting power into the hands of The People, even if Lemmy is not willing or even if it wants to head in the exact opposite direction.
  
  In the case of "DMs on removal of a post / comment" it is possible to do that with the current api of lemmy. But sadly nothing "official" yet. And it wont come anytime soon as lemmy devs officially announced they wont work at any moderation related topics for a while.
  
  I am not saying that I want DMs enabled to mods, and a modmail, and for a post to remain accessible after being removed, and for notifications to be sent to people upon their content being removed, but the lack of all 4 at the same time is what makes Lemmy difficult for people to handle, and will turn people away (likely back to Reddit).
  
  How would the users message mods directly when the modlog just says “mod”? They could message each one directly, or mass spam all at once, but in general the tools are highly biased to protect mods rather than grant power to the content creators.
  
  Message one mod who seems active or all the mods at once if you lack patience. Message an admin if the mods don't respond. It's not rocket science.
  
  On Reddit - which I haven’t used since practically the Rexodus so am definitely not shilling for it here - after a post is removed, people can still continue to discuss things in it. So[...] With no recourse to do much of anything except complain.
  
  This is false. Any comment that you made in the thread still exists in your profile. I'm not sure why you're lying about this.
  
  It's very apparent that you are despairing and miserable. Have you considered that your negativity and that of people like you is more responsible for the failure of this platform to grow than any of the minor complaints you continuously harp on? You're either an absolute fool or a reddit shill to constantly be arguing that users on Lemmy have less rights than they do on reddit. That is complete and utter nonsense, users on reddit have ZERO rights. Z. E. R. O.
  
  By all means, contribute on github or make some constructive suggestions for features, but to constantly harp on the lack of features for a platform with a small underpaid dev team is just extremely entitled and negative behavior, and helps absolutely no one. It creates a toxic climate on Lemmy for absolutely no reason.
  
  Or go use all the great PieFed communities with their perfect moderators. Oh wait, they don't exist. The only way for me to understand your constant, pointless attacks and trivial complaints against the only viable alternative to reddit right now is to conclude that you are in fact a reddit shill. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me why you would be acting this way.
  
  Lemmy isn't perfect. Constantly bitching about it while contributing nothing isn't making it any better.
  
  I use a bridge to matrix for private messages to the bot accounts, reports for posts for which there are multiple bot accounts on different instances because federation is broken for reports, and new posts to the communities (where the last one was merged just few hours ago). We are also contemplating getting ourselves the functionality to automatically message users when we take action on their post/comment.
  
  It's crazy how far we have to go to make moderating stuff easier/more pleasant to do. I hope lemmy improves in that by a lot at some point.
  
  My another gripe is no ability to detect image reposts because in image heavy communities they're very common and remembering what was posted and when is a massive pita. That would fall under a bot category and not integrated feature (but would be cool if it was deeply integrated into lemmy so situations where it would tell you if it's a repost BEFORE you even post it could be possible) but it's still something that makes it harder to moderate. Same goes for posting to other communities because you need to check if it was posted recently or not if you aren't chronically online to know that already.
  
  For the image issue, if it is a link then wouldn't Lemmy detect that already? Links to news articles and such at least work that way but I don't know about images.
  
  This is a link detection and not an image one. Two wildly different things. It also wouldn't handle images with slight differences like an edit here and there because again, doesn't handle images. Same goes for varying levels of compression. In fact it wouldn't even detect the exact same images with different sources or when reuploaded by users. Even if there were people who source images from the same place it would still be irrelevant without an overwhelming share of the users doing that to make the feature actually relevant. And EVEN if there was this high coordination then any trackers, shorteners, arguments, etc. varying the link to the same source they would be treated as a different links without recognising them as a duplicate like with youtube for example. So users would need to be a literal mindhive to coordinate on this level and at this point the tools would be pointless because the knowledge would be shared between everyone anyway.
  
  Having this feature would help immensely both as a poster and as a mod to handle the images with high probability of being a repost. But at the same time I know it isn't feasible due to image processing requiring quite a bit of computing power so it will continue to be a dream.
I’m also a snowflake, cause it’s also annoying that people assume you’re from USA.
- What state are you from?
- That did make some sense... at one time, on Reddit or Facebook, but damn times have changed since then. Though teenagers have not :-).

Someone called you a snowflake? Ok....uh, I'll call you a carrot.

But also, I don't understand the rules for this game. It's a snowman game, right?

It’s what’s turned me off this entire time. Everything is replied to with someone virtue signaling.

I just got called a rapist! For asking wtf she was wearing, fashion wise. (On a non rape story just to be clear). I also wonder why I'm still here. Y'all need to be better.

Looking at the comments, I can see how your comment got misinterpreted. I do believe you had no such intention, but the way it was worded (especially the last word, 'anyway') makes it sound out of context as if you were victim blaming. And from the number of votes, it's obvious many see it that way. Rather than get mad at randos on the internet, why not just reflect that you might have written that in a somewhat confusing way, and clarify it? Without escalating.
- I can see. But if people have a choice to interpret something as 1) that a question about fashion is in fact an innocuous question about fashion, or 2) that he's obviously a rapist and victim blaming and I'm going to call him a rapist (when the entire tone of the thread and community is not serious), the problem that I see is that Lemmy is quick to misinterpret in the worst way possible.
  
  And oddly enough, he was the person to escalate with that accusation, and I was the one to explain it.
  
  Where did someone call you a rapist? Was it removed?
  
  if people have a choice to interpret something as 1) that a question about fashion is in fact an innocuous question about fashion, or 2) that he’s obviously a rapist and victim blaming and I’m going to call him a rapist (when the entire tone of the thread and community is not serious)
  
  That's on the assumption that the reader sees both possible meanings, though. Most people don't do that, the first meaning that comes to mind is the one we go with. It's a very rare person that will, without external prompting, go 'I wonder if he meant something else?'.
  
  And oddly enough, he was the person to escalate with that explanation, and I was the one to explain it.
  
  From his POV, you had already escalated. Yeah it was due to his misunderstanding. But at that point you were the one with a choice as to whether to nicely explain your actual original meaning, (and maybe edit the confusing line?) or just rage about everybody on Lemmy being quick to assume the worst. Nobody's the asshole here, it was a misunderstanding, but you could have chosen to make it better :)
  
  If someone can't see what the literal words say then... there are bigger problems. Which may actually explain things.
  
  It's odd that you think I raged. I observed.
Yeah as expected I went and checked the comment in question and you are definitely misrepresenting it. You are omitting the context of the post, which is like…the entire fucking problem.

The amount of times I see people go “I was banned for literally no reason!” and the like only to discover they’re not being exactly truthful is staggering.
- TbF I've seen plenty of wildly inappropriate bans on Lemmy too.
  
  No one said they never happen 🤷‍♂️
- The context of the post: 196 which is essentially a shit posting and take nothing serious community. Yeah that context. And that it was a straight question about what she was wearing, fashion wise since you really need to hear it. So thank you for demonstrating the exact problem!
  
  You know I just read an interesting piece about how Musk deploys plausible deniability - or rather attempts to. He thinks he’s clever and he isn’t.
  
  I know what 196 is. The context is the image. You really can’t see any reason why you got that reaction? Really and truly?
  
  Reaction? If you see a simple question in a shitposting community, with the image of a fashion choice that is unconventional, and think "Hmm should I interpret this as a question about fashion as he asked, or should I interpret this as he's a rapist and trying to be clever about it", if you default to thinking that the other person is obviously a rapist (as you seem to have, saying that I'm seeking plausible deniability and try to associate me with Musk and trying to be clever with rape lol), then holy fuck, and frankly that's on you. That was your reaction. Like you have to really out there to default to "he's obviously a rapist". You need to be better.
  
  Honestly this is the perfect example of how Lemmy has a ravenous need to misinterpret. You just did it yourself.
  
  This is such a reach dude. Also her outfit is far from “unconventional.“ But I’m not gonna get bogged down in the weeds of that one.
  
  I remember somebody tried to talk to me recently about the economics of the third Reich without talking about the war. At some point you’re just ignoring what’s in front of you to the point where it’s dishonest.
  
  You’re having a very real principal Skinner moment here. A lot of people are telling you the issue, yet you are hell bent on hiding behind intention. Unfortunately intention is not enough. Especially when you double down in the face of valid critiques.
  
  I know you don’t want advice from me but I’m going to give it anyway: take a beat, step away from this conversation, then come back and think about why people may have had a negative reaction to what you said. There is an important lesson here you can pick up if you want to.
  
  It's a reach that something can be interpreted as it was stated?
  
  I can retrospect. Hopefully you can too because I'm going to hold up the mirror. All of the following is your thinly veiled actions (plausible deniability anyone?).
  
  First, thinly veiled, you likened me stating people misinterpreted my question to how people are banned typically after really going off on mods. Whether you agree or not on people misinterpreting a question, those things are miles apart. Second, you, thinly veiled again, likened me to Musk. Do I need to explain the negativity of that association? Third, you, again thinly veiled, essentially said I was covering making rapist comments by trying to have plausible deniability. Fourth, you, again thinly veiled, essentially said I was covering making rapist comments by saying I was trying to be clever about it. And the doozy, fifth. Again thinly veiled, you liken me to people talking about the third Reich. Like wow. If that Nazi connotation from Elon wasn't enough, you really pulled out a doozy there. That is a crystal clear pattern of you attacking people by likening them to other people. All thinly veiled connotations so that you can later say you didn't actually make the connection (you know, plausible deniability). Or maybe you were doing it so that if I said anything, you could say "are you interpreting differently??" like a gotcha. I could explain that one too, maybe next time.
  
  You took every chance you could to provoke, slap, and escalate. You are no longer trying to have a conversation when try to liken someone to Nazis, you just want to slap. Don't worry I'm not provoked. I just urge you to think about that.
  
  And inb4 misreading I'm saying this not because I'm provoked or mad, I'm saying this because your pattern is clear. You want me to reflect, and I want you to reflect.
  
  Thinly veiled? I was very blunt my friend. The pattern is honesty and advice. Take it or leave it.
  
  Humble yourself. Take a beat, come back to your original comment with fresh eyes and an open mind.
  
  LMAO see I was being polite and giving you a small out, and you said "no no no I was being very rude" as if that helps you. Oh god. And then you say "humble yourself" lol. Wow you need to look in the mirror. Open your mind and look in the mirror. With fresh eyes, and look in the mirror.
You were just joking around, right? Well, perhaps they were too. If you want it assumed about you, perhaps go ahead and assume it about then. That way, even if the former does not happen, at least you will definitely have the moral high ground regardless. Now, what was it that Obi Wan always says about the high ground...? :-P
- LOL no I wasn't joking around (about rape or anything else). It was a legit, straightforward question about fashion. And no he wasn't joking, it was a pretty clear accusation.
I'm so confused.
This place just needs better moderation. I've said this multiple times before but there is a serious lack of moderation and most admins go dark for long periods of time. Make it clear this behavior isn't okay, ban people who run their mouth, and remove low-effort posts.
- Strong agree. Maybe we should start calling out communities with inactive mods. Like a spring cleaning of communities.
  
  Could be a pretty easy flag to be displayed on any community. Basically last time the mod logged in or was active (should be available).
  
  Don't even need that, I know a few that could be used
- I personally have seen much worse overmoderation than undermoderation.