Ask Lemmy

I don't like that it's basically Reddit. people from Reddit came here and they act like it's Reddit and it's basically Reddit

Group think: I rarely comment here because of that..

The lack of people. We need more people on the Fediverse.

I still don't understand how to navigate the ins and outs of Lemmy and I've been here since RIF was killed

The AI hate is almost like medieval witch hunting. Someone says, “It is AI” (which translates to “witchcraft and the work of Satan”), and the rest seem to run and grab their pitchforks and torches, ready to burn the author at the stake.

The topics aren't as varied here, reddit pretty much has a subreddit for any niche community you can imagine.

I like the community more here though. People are generally supportive and there seem to be fewer unrestrained jerks.

The niche communities are so fragmented. One post every few months or just abandoned compared to hourly posts on reddit, examples like gaming subs for specific games.

It's a small echo chamber.

Duplicate posts. Soooo many duplicate posts

My least favorite things about it aren't really specific to lemmy. It's just the victimhood/doomerism culture here, that generates a ton of hateful angry commentary and the witchhunt mentality of so many of the users is revolting behavior.

But I'm not angry at the world and using lemmy to cope I guess. Like OG reddit, I mostly want to use lemmy to read interesting commentary on interesting events and stories and try and learn something, or articulate and add new POV to discussions. Unfortunately the cultural at large... hates this and sees all arguments/perspectives as a zero sum game where anyone who isn't confirming/supporting them 100% must also be denying them.

I also don't get the endless moralizing. I liked a lot how early reddit wasn't full of moralizing types, and I really hated it when those types of people gained traction and started playing comment police.

People act like it's easy to get into and conceptualize fedi. I don't have a problem personally but I have a very rare level of IT comfort for my field and it leaves me feeling very lonely in spaces like this. I even had to take a tech competency credit for my degree (I tested out of it because it was basically a checkbox that asked if I knew how to type but-)

Lemmy? the politics.

the fediverse? I know I've said this like a billion times to the same five people who come on here, but federated platforms still ape the format of big social media platforms, and inherit many of their pitfalls. I want long-term discussion and human connection, not an endless waterfall of content that quickly gets swept away.

That a lot of people can't help themselves but read way more into the comment than it's actually saying. I can't count the times I've had to be so explicit and airtight for those bottom feeders to get it.

Everyone complains about it being empty and not many want to do anything about it. I'm not sure if this is even because of the user number, because I've been on forums with just a few users that were very active. It often seems like too many people here are waiting for a large influx of users so that others can do the posting. Also people try waaaay too hard to copy Reddit 1:1. They have this one very specific community with certain content and try to copy it here. If there was a subreddit for a 1998 version of an obscure computer game, they want this very same community to exist here. Instead of discussing said game in a more general community.

What I miss most are the (physically) local communities. On reddit, there was a subreddit for my general locality, and the nearby big city, and several subreddits on different aspects of life (the music scene, the food scene, etc). I miss that - randomly finding an event or something interesting simply because I came across a random post.

I know it's a function of the fact that it's still (comparatively) early days, but I do miss it.

The people.

Reddit is full of different people with different backgrounds sometimes arguing in a toxic way about politics when it’s somewhat relevant, on a centrally censored platform

Lemmy is mainly an echo chamber for nerds almost always arguing about politics in a very toxic way on a federated extremely censored platform

Blocking people is just the same as muting them. I prefer people I block to not be able to see or interact with me ever again.

Anytime any question about age of consent comes up there's a lot of really creepy responses. Really really creepy.

Low turnout, mostly

People complaining about not enough variety when they don't post in those niche communities they talk about

One of the most interesting aspects about the Fediverse is also the most confusing one in practice: the communication across different platforms. E.g. the ability to communicate from Lemmy to Mastadon is incredible. However whenever that happens, it's difficult to even realize that it's happening. It could an extremely useful feature, but currently, at least on Lemmy, it's just confusing.

In Lemmy itself I'm annoyed by (too) many things, but mostly they are related to our behavior and stubbornness. Nonetheless, with all its faults overall Lemmy is still my "favorite" social media.

My main complaint is the bad search system of Lemmy. You can only search for community but not specific topics using specific keywords.

This only applies to people left from centrism (progressivism, anarchism, socialism...). "Wokes", "liberals", "tankies", I'll put them all as leftists in this text.

What is your least favorite thing about the Fediverse or Lemmy?

Lemmy. That interest in politics and critical thinking in general end when we arrive to topics do not concerning the life of the average lemming.

News about technology? Oh, yes, capitalism is wrong and Google is ruining this and let's do that... Feminism? Meh. Antiracism. Anticolonialism. Humanities defense? Whatever.

Of course, why would women or POC or the third world or non-STEM things would interest a bunch of first world STEM white men? Empathy or congruence with leftism? What's that? (sarcasm)

And it's tiring that you see how much time they spend talking about U.S. politics or online privacy, but not a thought can be put when you point out a non-privileged problem. I've even seen people get downvoted for saying something they posted or said was problematic.

In my region, leftists often separate completely from these spaces because of this. I don't want to, I like it here and, overall, my experience is positive and enriching. But yeah, this is one of the worst aspects of Lemmy in my opinion.