Instead of 1 big website like reddit, there's a bunch of smaller websites like reddit. These sites are united in a way as users from one site can view, comment on, etc on other sites.
Something similar is Email. Even if you made your email address with Google to have @gmail.com at the end of your email address you can still send and receive emails from anyone.
It's pretty close to Reddit, but it's like a whole bunch of smaller Reddits that share posts between each other. The individual Reddits (instances) are generally grouped by hobby, political affiliation, or geographical location, but not always.
You can tell what instance something or someone is from by looking at their name or title. E.g. I'm from lemmy.zip, you can see it after my user name.
The reason that it can't be bought by a billionaire is that even if one instance is bought out, compromised etc, it can just be removed from the group at large, and it continues like nothing happened. I'm simplifying a bit but I hope you get the general idea.
y'all don't have to boycot every american, just their economy, so if a based person hosts a lemmy server that helps the open free internet and should not be boycotted
-Comment posted on Tor Browser via the Tor Network
(Not sure how much good it does, since I kinda already revealed the city I live in through my personal anecdotes. But I suppose I can create another throwaway for more... spicy... stuff)
My oldest Reddit account was just one year shy of being able to vote (just rolled over to 17) and it stung a little to hit that delete button yesterday. Lemmy very much reminds me of the days when I joined. However, users here frequently point out not having any niche subs on Lemmy - that was exactly what we had to contend with on Reddit. Except making a sub became competitive and you had a lot of speculative sub creation etc. It was exciting because it was new, but that isn’t the case now. The attitude I see missing on Lemmy then is this desire to create communities, and instead lament they don’t exist. Be the change you want to see everyone.
Is the Sync app no longer being updated/maintained/developed? I am having problems with it. Upvotes/downvotes are no longer being showed. Shame because it is my fav Lemmy app.
I had a sync sub but since it got abandoned I just cancelled it. Most images or videos wouldn't load, as well as some comments or some random shit. Using voyager now and won't look back. It's much better since the first time I tried it
I don't know if you used to use Sync for Reddit but it was pretty normal for him to go away for a while and then come back with a big update. I'm just assuming that's what is happening at the moment.
So it wasn't Reddit bots after all.
There is plenty of manufactured consent without it.
Same horrible views -Trump.
Europe can continue going down the drain with the US.
Deserved.
If you don't enjoy the left environment Lemmy has to offer, there are plenty of right wing echo chambers wating for you. I prefer it over the pure hate I read on those, even if I agree to a certain degree about manufactured consent. Maybe jfs just the nature of the Internet these days.
You clearly don't get my comment.
I said Lemmy is equally right except there are no Trump fanboys.
If that's why you feel the need to call it 'left' is laughable.
Possibly from american standards and view, who haven't got a clue what 'left' is and think their Bernie or even their right wing Dem party is 'left'.
Despite there being less horrible bots and banning or whatever, it looks like most views correspond to american ones.
Since Europe in in their sphere of influence and colors our news.
Somehow I was hoping it was only the MSM but when I see all the comments and views here it looks like the population has also shifted further to the right and think what they are told to think.
Many incapable of discussion, parroting MSM narrative and when asked for sources they start name-calling bcs they can't back it up.
Only difference with Reddit is I (mostly) don't get banned if I then return the favor.
It can be bought by a billionaire. I think we need to be careful thinking this risk doesn’t exist.
“We can just make another instance” - this won’t happen like people think it will. If all the content is on Lemmy.world and it gets bought, then people are going to be hesitant to move somewhere else, just like people are hesitant to leave Reddit now.
people are going to be hesitant to move somewhere else
It is however much easier to move between fediverse instances than it is to move from commercial social media to the fediverse. Once you're on the fediverse, moving is easier.
Even if people running instances are saints, a lot of money can not only buy, but bully them into submission. Bullshit lawsuits is one way to do so before they are financially crippled. We are safeguarded only by our irrelevance.
“We are safeguarded only by our irrelevance” it’s not just Lemmy. I’m thinking about the trans movement that progressed quietly without fanfare and the moment it was no longer “irrelevant “ for the majority it started getting massive pushback. Shocking how little it took to go from irrelevant to a danger to society.
Instances can be bought by billionaires. The software can't. And I don't think many billionaires would buy a website running a software that they cant control tbh
The software can, but the price is likely too high. In the end money can pressure anyone to do virtually anything. Having 100 lifetimes of productive work pressuring you to do something cannot just be ignored.
Why won't it? I think user accounts need federation as well, but switching hosts isn't hard. Lemmy.ca went down a little while ago due to a power supply breaking. The admin has been great about it, moving away from the provider that took a day to fix the issue. But during the downtime I was able to use an account I has already set up on a different instance.
When reddit is down, it was really down. When a lemmy instance is down you can just use another. Don't get tied into just one host.
It’s easy to say “don’t get tied down”, but people do. People like their online personas, their handles, their comment and post history. It’s a mixture of sunk-cost fallacy and FOMO. Reddit knows this, it’s why they still have 2000x as many monthly users as Lemmy.
This will be the same here: if a billionaire buys the biggest instance, yeah cool everyone can defederate, but then all the historical content is gone, most of the users are gone unless they move to you or an instance still federated to you, and you essentially alienate yourself.
It’s not that confusing. The simplest way to explain it, I think. Is that instances are like email servers. Defederating is like a spam blocker. If you don’t like your “email server’s” “spam blockers” you can chose another.
Lemmy has admins in the way that email providers do.
Another example: my instance blocks porn. Those who agree with this policy may enjoy this instance, but it doesn’t impose its rules on anyone using other instances who can access that content freely.
It’s kind of like email. They are all connected, but the rules are set by your provider and those who are willing to communicate with you. There is no one person who can set the rules for everyone.
Also has barely any community, is leaning deep into praising authoritarian countries, is gloryfying violence and has huge moderation issues. You can make everything sound good, but lemmy will never be a true alternative. It will grab a wave of people, lose it till the next controversy pops up and the cycle will repeat. Till there is an actual alternative that becomes available. Same as with Mastodon and Bluesky
leaning deep into praising authoritarian countries,
Like... more than Reddit? Do you have some examples so we can see which countries you think are authoritarian? Some... groups... believe Canada is authoritarian.