Warning: This is a rant.
I don’t really know how to describe it but the content isn’t quite where reddit had been for me. Also the comments are kind of weird at times, like they type of person here doesn’t quite seem as ‘normal’ as what I’m used to from reddit.
There’s a lot more open source and privacy focused people and conversations. A lot of people seem to hate on big tech and big companies in a sort of toxic-ish feeling way to me (not to say the other relationship isn’t toxic… just saying). Random conversations go into: “omg your privacy is lost cause you used a Google service.” Then we have the ‘if we don’t defederate with Meta the world ends’ conversations. I personally would like to see what Meta does in the fediverse… maybe it will make it more normalized…idk. Then the: “if your app isn’t open source its awful and terrible for the world” people.
Like that stuff is all fine, but it just isn’t quite my cup of tea.
These things remind me of that one person in my comp sci classes in college who I just couldn’t stand talking to. He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail and would generally look like a dingus).
The bulk of the content that gets comments seem to be mostly meme atm. At least on all (7/10 of the current top for me are memes). I like my memes, but would like some more breadth/depth.
Like I hope Lemmy continues to grow and hope it gets better, but it leaves me missing reddit at the moment.
In a perfect world I wish reddit corp wasn’t such assholes and this whole thing didn’t happen the way it did.
I’m completely skipping the UI and stuff not being as familiar and the various outages/bugs/etc since that’s to be expected with something at this stage.
Please don’t hate me :) Just sharing my unpopular opinion. Though I genuinely wonder if others feel the same way.
/Rant
In a perfect world wish reddit corp wasn’t such assholes and this whole thing didn’t happen the way it did.
A lot of us here, are here and have the opinions you don’t like (FOSS, privacy is important, big tech is bad) because we too wish Reddit wasn’t such assholes.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. Lemmy users are jaded. We have come to accept that big tech companies will continue to act the way they do because it is in their nature.
The free ride is over bub. The walls are closing in as venture capitalists squeeze users for profits (especially in this economy). With big tech, you are the product. You don’t get a say in how you use the product. Instead you are cattle, to be hearded. If you want to be a sheep and mingle along with all the other sheep and just keep your head down and accept whatever the big tech companies tell you to do (and that’s fine if it’s what you want), then maybe Lemmy ain’t for you. But one thing is clear Lemmy must shed the ills of big tech and investor interests and privacy harvesting business models if we are to not return exactly where we ended up using Reddit.
Sorry, I don’t have better news for you.
Also a lot of us users are older and this isn’t our first social media company failing us.
Raise your hand if you came from digg, myspace or somethingaweful
This is a fair take.
Due the circumstances right now, we’ve got more tech and privacy minded people, as well as more “principaled” folk, so we definitely skew a certain way.
I’d say give it time. Imo, things will sort of water down if more people keep joining. (For lack of a better term)
But I will respectfully disagree, I’m kinda enjoying it, and I’m not half as smart as some of the people on here, but I do totally understand your perspective.
This is basically my take as well. I do understand OP’s sadness or frustration, but I do think it will pass.
That said, the world may never again have a home for so many full and rich niche communities. What u/Spez has done is a kind of cultural terrorism.
only thing i really miss from reddit is how large it was, it was way easier to find a decent sized community for more niche interests, it feels like here there is only equivalents to the popular subreddits, which is fine, but those were the last places i ever used or visited on reddit.
Absolutely the biggest issue for Lemmy (and any other federated threadlike site). This whole reddit “implosion” business (though it really is doing just fine still) has done wonders for user growth, but it’s gonna take at least another few hundred thousand+ people on here before there’s enough random distribution to make smaller niche hobby communities viable.
I miss how big reddit was. There were so many niche subreddits that were active. A lot of them are still active now, but I also don’t want to support spez.
Lemmy will get there one day.
It’s mostly the technically adept people here, we’re naturally more aware of security/privacy issues present in tech spaces and are angry that the masses are so oblivious or uncaring of the problem. Especially when that problem keeps ruining our online spaces or putting us at real world risk by letting apps use their cameras/mics/locations all the god damn time
Not everyone that is technically adept agree with your statements.
Not everyone but probably most people that are technically adept, and even more so those that have switched from reddit to lemmy
True. Not everyone agrees. Since I’m just me, I can only speak for myself.
With this in mind, I would like to hear reasons why you or others don’t agree. I ask in good faith.
Having an opinion is as natural as being human. I see the world through my eyes, think about in my brain, color it by my life experiences. So there’s always the possibility that I might be missing something important. Perhaps you were persuaded by some strong and much valid point or points.
If that’s the case, and if you’re willing, can you please share why you disagree?
To start with, I don’t think privacy is that important. I think that most open source end-products aren’t good and they are only made better when money gets involved.
To start with, I don’t think privacy is that important.
It makes more sense when we start talking about privacy in concrete forms. It’s about not giving any entity more information than it really needs in order to perform the service they claim to provide. For example, imagine how much better credit cards would be if the number was randomly generated, only valid for a single purchase and only the credit card company knew your name and address. Credit card scams would mostly be dead in the water and card readers would be rendered useless.
It’s not like it doesn’t make sense though. It makes sense that a credit card works the way it does because real-time authorization isn’t always available, and because there is a lot of legacy/backwards compatibility going on. If you wanted to “fix” credit cards you would get rid of them completely and switch to an identity service that allowed you to “federate” your identity with a lender’s service.
It sounds great, but in practice getting all of the ancillary parts working with each other is tough. Look how long Apple Pay (one of the better implementations of a better credit card) has been around and there are still a lot of places that don’t accept it.
Thinking about privacy as a 1:1 exchange with a service is already thinking two steps behind. Services have been using your info to create targeted ads since the beginning of capitalism. It really stepped up their game when computers and databases got involved, and as the internet became more prolific it got even more precise.
We’re at a point where your info isn’t even being used to target you. It’s valuable on its own.
And that’s the trade. You trade something of value to a service so that you can use their service.
Privacy is not important because we lost control of it a long time ago. It will take an act of Congress (in the US) to make it better, and there’s so much money involved that no one wants to tackle it head on.
Privacy is always a trade off. You have to find a sweet spot that fits your convenience and willingness to share.
A good example is home automation. I can get a camera from someone like Nest and it’s cheap, feature packed and simple to use. But it’s going to harvest all your data and videos.
Instead I could go with Logitech and Apple. Now the price is 4x higher but the videos only exist on my Apple cloud. This is more secure but still could have security concerns, and increased costs and effort.
Lastly I could go with something like ubiquity. Another drastic increase in cost, with less features for remote access. But you host your videos locally and are in complete control. This option is by far the most complex to set up as well.
None of these are inherently bad if you understand the trade off. I am accomplished in tech and I choose the middle option because it best fit my lifestyle even though I could have went with the last option.
Yup, the privacy-convenience trade off is the best explanation, and not everyone goes the extreme route. I too went the middle route with Apple.
The bulk of the content that gets comments seem to be mostly meme atm. At least on all (7/10 of the current top for me are memes). I like my memes, but would like some more breadth/depth.
I blame sorting algorithms for part of that. Memes will always be posted in higher volume cause they’re easier to make and upvoted highly because they’re easily digestible and relatable. Sorting must not merely take into account global activity, but rather relative activity for the community. The sorting algorithms also need to explicitly attempt to prioritize showing content from a diverse set of communities.
Admittedly, it’s hard to code such algorithms, especially while being efficient and personalized.
The whole purpose of Lemmy and the feddiverse is to be anticorpate.
I have been a foss fanboy most of my life so it’s a welcoming community and concept. But I get how weird it would be to suddenly join a community that basically says the mainstream way of thinking is wrong when it comes to the Internet.
That said I think Twitter Reddit and Facebook have all proven that it is. Centralized homogeneous platforms are just bad. Once you’re passed the fomo effect it becomes clear that they are not necessary. They are just tools and should be thrown away when they are no longer useful. Reddit could of maintained its status quo and we would all be there. Instead they felt they were “essential” to our lives so they could do what they wanted. It’s just not and this instance of Lemmy is just as disposable.
Lemmy will become more mainstream and more like old reddit with the addition of ppl like you. Variety is the spice of life so I think that’s a good thing. As someone who has lurked on Lemmy for years I can tell you it’s changed dramatically in just a couple weeks. Mostly for the better.
I love that your response is informative to a degree relating to your experience, and you kept a leveled positive response and even tried to understand where the OP. Is coming from. As someone who used Reddit for 7 years going on 8 I saw a lot of changes on that platform and I can say I love the idea of the Fediverse and I wish I would have spent more time on Lemmy.
However, I saw a post where someone described Lemmy users as anarchist and it made me cringe and laugh a little. Since I have been on here I have seen a lot of, “the mainstream world and mainstream supporters of platforms are lost and the world is lost and we must put an end to it.”
Coming from a digital forensics/security/IT background. My way of thinking has changed some over the years about my data and privacy. However, what I have found is that every platform has its issues like normal. For me it isn’t so much an issue but people using the Fediverse have some form of mentality that they have a portion of the internet figured out and the anarchy and push against the mainstream is some bigger plan. The truth is, at least to me, the Fediverse actually seems like a security nightmare. Being a part of a community that understands other aspects of the internet doesn’t make you invincible to the problems exemplified by other portions of the internet. The Fediverse is popular in its own way because it is small.
As you said it is disposable. You aren’t an anarchist because you can put down mainstream ideas. You are also in another world of hurt if you think anarchy works at all. History it doesn’t. Neither does libertarianism and libertarians are just anarchists that don’t want to admit they are anarchist.
I am fairly new to the Fediverse but based on what little I have seen and know I do also understand where OP is coming from. The users of some of these. Platforms are very strong and forward thinking and in people’s defense they aren’t entirely wrong. But some of the people on the platforms seem to think they have a portion of the internet truly figured out and that kind of thinking makes you vulnerable.
Alot of the greater FOSS community as a whole is a little defensive.
There was a time when Microsoft tried to kill linux and the open source movement when it was in its infancy. Back then it was literally MS saw a competition and wanted to crush it. While times have certainly change for example Facebook basically made BtrFS good. People still haven’t forgotten that a corporate giant once tried to destroy a passion project out of pure spite. So any move in that direction is considered an affront to the core ideals that make up FOSS. The way telemetry is looked at in the linux community is a good example. Even though there are valid uses of telemetry most linux users hate it and would rather a project die than include it. Its a bit of slippery slope fallacy mixed with tribalism.
I dont run across anarchist sentiment that often I would say its more communal. The endless dream of the ‘year of the linux desktop’ is a good example of this. I have been using linux as my desktop operating system for 18 to 20 years now. In that time it went for installing linux was tech wizardry and right of passage to a child can do it. What made it change is that the community desperately wanted to have that ‘year of the linux desktop’ when your average jo could take part in what we were passionate about. So devs removed as many barriers to entry as possible to make it so anyone could join in. While we still haven’t had that year yet my quality of life as a linux user has improved dramatically. Installing, maintaining, fixing and updating a linux environment has gotten so good that I find that Windows seems cumbersome. But those improvements where not done for me they were meant to bring new members to the community because the community desperately wanted to grow. It took a long time for the community to come around to the idea that linux isnt just for the nerds. I think the fediverse is in a similar boat now where the users want this cool thing to grow. But with growth comes change and people are almost always afraid of change. So there are a vocal few trying to convert others to there way of thinking so things dont change. Which is a pipe dream.
Also people really do confuse privacy and security. I use linux because I like my privacy and don’t feel like I get enough benefits when I give it up with Windows or MacOS. That said I also use gmail because I need the buisness I handle on a daily secure not private. I dont care if google knows what I shop for as long as they dont let anyone get access to my bank login.
I agree with all your points. In an ideal world, FOSS and megacorp projects can coexist without stepping on each other’s toes. The constant growth doctrine of capitalism causes the competition of FOSS products to appear as a threat to the large companies, thus we have seen that through legal action, buyouts, takeovers or other unscrupulous methods companies like Microsoft, Sony, Google, Nintendo have tried to extinguish FOSS before they catch on.
That’s why many FOSS users (like me) growl and bear their teeth at big corporations (and to an extent their sympathizers) trying to make sweeping moves into the FOSS space, as we aware the motives are likely less friendly than they appear on the surface.
Your point on distinguishing Privacy and Security is an important one, though they both rely on trust/confidence. I’m not the biggest security advocate. I believe that companies should only collect and transmit a reasonable amount of information necessary to perform their service. Technologies that rely on hoovering up massive amounts of data regardless of context, secondary uses for personal data outside of the reason it was collected, hiding behind generic “helping improve the service” clauses make me very suspicious and I try to discourage those practices.
Lastly, with Proton and the Steamdeck we may be in the year of the Linux gaming console if anything!
The steamdeck has really ushered in the year of the indies. So many games are getting attention because they run well on the deck. Battlebit is a great example.
It really is amazing how well proton works.
I think your security point came up yesterday lol
You are also in another world of hurt if you think anarchy works at all. History it doesn’t. Neither does libertarianism and libertarians are just anarchists that don’t want to admit they are anarchist.
I’m suddenly really interested in what warped view of history you’ve developed. What social institutions and broad philosophical norms would you say have worked historically?
im not coming from the exact perspective of who you replied to, but unironically i would say none have “worked”. and most likely none ever will, at least for a very long time. no system can ever work perfectly as intended, there will always be problems an ways to improve it. there may be some that are significantly better than others (personally, i like some form of democratic socialism) but it will always be a game of tradeoffs and slowly improving
He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail
Are you sure you spent time on reddit? This was all I saw there
Reddit is the place where people spend time teaching about topics they read once on TIL. And they’ll insult anyone who knows better
While that’s also the case, there were enough normal people who weren’t tech nerds. The percentage of them here seems a LOT higher.
Asshole about open source anti big tech here. Point taken. You can choose your communities you see on your home feed. Seriously, use the block user feature too. Block me if you want. It is not personal. I have a half dozen people blocked just because they have been negative and I don’t want to see it any more. With around 150k people here rn the total communities are still developing. There are several I miss but don’t want to mod or churn content by myself to get started. This is still mostly unsettled early adopters. Everyone here is going through the same series of breakup withdraw emotions, and everyone is a weird asshole user to someone. Most of us mean well. You are able to steer the conversation too. Post, and help making the conversation you want to participate in.
Very sound advice. It’s nice to know that you’re not the only one going through reddit withdrawals. But despite that, I’m determined to never come back.
The majority here don’t share your views when it comes to Meta and that’s a good thing. If you want to see what they do then there’s nothing stopping you signing up a free account on Threads and having at it.
Meta will do whatever it wants to do in the fediverse space regardless of who federates with them because they are a muli-million user platform with the money to support it. The users of Lemmy are small fry compared to that.
I’m always so curious about new apps that I did sign up and try using threads before deciding it’s not for me. I use a ton of Google services and other big tech stuff. Frankly, I think I just stopped giving a rat’s ass and sacrifice privacy for convenience. I don’t see myself changing anytime soon. I would always pick better UX over mediocre/poor UX with better privacy. The thing that irritates me about Reddit is the terrible UX of the official app. But I’m also younger and haven’t faced anything as such, so I’m not afraid of my printer at the moment. My uncle who works in cybersecurity genuinely acts like the kind of guy who wants a bunker and is a total conspiracy theorist.
Im somewhat similar, also younger and have a fair amount of big tech/google stuff. i am fairly aware of the dangers and try to compromise safety and security with convenience. my dad is MUCH more serious about security and privacy than me or the rest of my family, and does IT stuff for all the linux computers at a univerity near me. he of course has all linux stuff, buys the dumbest tech possible, etc. I wont sign up for threads purely because of how much data they want to collect, and would rather interface with it over the fediverse.
There is a lot of simple things you can do that wil greatly increase privacy/security without sacrificing ease of use or UX. firefox + ublock origin will eliminate 99% of tracking, data collection, and ads on the internet. that is most of the actual software stuff i do, other than just not signing up for an excessive number of things and giving too many people my data (even this i dont do super hardcore.)
I miss the range of content on Reddit, and the weirdness. But I don’t miss the people. Never believed friends how toxic reddit was until i joined Lemmy and realise dhow lovely the people here are.
It’s like the early days of Reddit, when people were just moving away from Diggs. We’re all still a bit polite. Just give it some time. We’ll get there on Lemmy one day.
I had been on reddit for more than a decade, and it takes time. And it takes people posting and commenting. As a relatively “normal” person, I don’t even really fully understand what lemmy/fediverse is. I’m barely getting a handle on what instances are. And from what I gather, it could be a really cool place.
But it’ll take time. And people. So I suggest just staying calm, up and down vote things as you see fit.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to reddit, but it definitely was my main source of information on subjects that I have interest it. I’ve stopped using Facebook, I only use Twitter to interact with podcasts.
We will get through this.
If lemmy continues to evolve this will naturally change. You have the early adopters who are going to keep using it as they are and right now we have arguably more hardcore Reddit lurkers (assuming most people migrating won’t use the official app because it sucks butt). As communities are being built, people are gonna start feeling better about posting but until then you will have to accept people who are already using it.
If you want to make start this change, make a community you want to migrate here, even if you don’t want to moderate and make a couple of posts to try advertise it
Reddit turned into a cesspool in the last 5 years or so. The admins reinterpretation their own TOS multiple times to appease popular audiences. The site got too big for itself, just like most social media, and the quality of its users and content went way down. But hey, if you want to continue to use a site that makes you prove your skin color to join subs then thats on you. Its still there, but personally Im done with reddit. It had its time and the company showed it true colors when the 3rd party app debacle happened. For years theyve been cutting services and censoring more content in hopes they can sell reddit for mucho dinero when they go public.
I miss the really niche content from Reddit because the community was so large. I’ve adapted to the UI here on Lemmy/Kbin but I’m hoping the niche subs I enjoy start to pick up activitywise. I do try to contribute content but even on Reddit I was mostly a commenter. There aren’t typically too many comments for me to reply to on Lemmy yet.
