I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.
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Well said. I don’t disagree with a single point you made, and some of it echos concerns I’ve had since day 1. And extra points for calling out .ml as lemmygrad-lite. I think I’ve called it exactly that as well.
The only thing I really have to add is on the topic of toxicity. Like you, I’m an instance admin and have a bird’s eye view of a lot of behavior patterns. I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here. I won’t guess an actual number, but I would say it’s not insignificant.
I’m firmly the latter case: I want to be here, I want this to succeed, and I’m trying to put in the work toward that result. And I’ve interacted with lots and lots of people in the same boat. But, like you, I’m also growing disillusioned for many of the same reasons.
On the bright side, I’ve gotten much less rusty as a developer after having to write scrips and tools to fill in the massive gaps in moderation features.
The only thing I really have to add is on the topic of toxicity. Like you, I’m an instance admin and have a bird’s eye view of a lot of behavior patterns. I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here. I won’t guess an actual number, but I would say it’s not insignificant.
That’s unfortunately a big issue with alternative social media platforms and without tools to combat them it goes bad really bad. I agree completely.
Honestly coming here and starting my own instance and providing help for other instances and stuff has reignited my long lost love of computers and open source stuff. The passion for it is thankfully coming back.
That was me with developing. I used to do it as my day job before moving to infrastructure - now all I develop at work are scripts and the occasional lookup tool.
I do kinda wish I’d chosen something other than NodeJS to be my daily driver, lol, but it does what I need well enough. Haven’t really had a base it can’t cover (yet?).
I once wondered aloud here about if anybody else had noticed a lot of toxic members from certain communities, only to receive replies from members in those communities claiming that it was all fine and there wasn’t any toxicity. Then I’d look at their history and notice they were a very toxic person. From my limited point of view I can say there might be some credence to your statement.
I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here.
Dude yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I worry that users curious to leave reddit are going to go to a big instance, see concentrated worst-parts-of-reddit, and decide it’s not for them.
In theory, decentralization enables freedom from the average user being forced to put up with toxicity. But we don’t really have that (yet) until the ratio of jerk to non-jerk improves.
I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here.
This has largely been my operating assumption as well since day one when I came over during the Reddit API lockdown. I was fairly active on a NSFW alt up until recently and I’ve actually seen dozens of comments from new users mentioning that the only reason they were here on Lemmy was because they were banned from Reddit and had no other viable options. They were always an asshole to the posters and the reality is that with a lower population of users is that there aren’t enough other voices to drown out these people yet and you end up with a feedback loop of toxicity.
the reality is that with a lower population of users is that there aren’t enough other voices to drown out these people
Yep. That, plus the jerks are always the loudest among any crowd.
That’s one of the big perks of running my own instance. It’s been a site rule from the start that it’s absolutely not there to be a refuge because you’re banned elsewhere. And I do ban toxic accounts (local and federated) very quickly. Lol, if .ml is “Lemmygrad-lite” mine can probably be described as “Beehaw-lite”.
There are a lot of good points here, I appreciate the time you put into it.
As an end user of both Lemmy and Mastodon, it’s always an eye opener to see how developers greet user requests and suggestions with curt or snarky replies. Even “Why don’t you open an issue on our source tracker” will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.
My own concerns are more on my own level, though. It resonates with me when you write —
The Fediverse has its own existing cultures that thrive here. And when you enter a space that already exists you need to be mindful of that to prevent issues from occurring.
I’ve seen a few user migration waves, and I think your description of (some) Lemmy users who just want a drop-in Reddit replacement is on point. Mastodon has had its share of Twitterati who surged in trying to recreate their previous circles and tone. Obviously, it’s a generalisation but we do need to face the problem.
The transition from a walled garden environment like Reddit or Twitter — moderated by professionals or enthusiasts, and algorithmically curated — to a federated space with carefully cultivated etiquettes will never be like simply picking up a conversation in another UI.
I’d be interested how a project like Sublinks would/could accommodate the existing fediverse cultures, and hopefully bridge the cognitive gap that seems to exist between threadiverse and fediverse?
Even “Why don’t you open an issue on our source tracker” will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.
How should developers handle feature requests? Keep in mind there is a need for the whole team to see the suggestion and it’s also good to have a place to gather feedback and further discuss.
Community managers - sometimes just talking about your issue with someone will help tremendously in figuring out how to put it and they often can just do it for you. That said, Lemmy devs do not value work being put in the issue tracker - they have admitted to not reading it. People who cannot contribute code are just entirely ignored and have no power in the project’s direction.
I suspect the small size of the dev team and the general nature of an OSS project means there aren’t swarms of people around volunteering to be community managers.
Small projects your sway with the project is directly proportional to your ability to submit pull requests. It’s just a sad fact that it’s easier to say “I wish we had feature X” vs. “Here is a pull request that implements feature X”.
At least with OSS you are getting what you paid for (nothing!), vs commercial companies where you pay for the software and they STILL ignore you.
Many users on Lemmy seem actively hostile to the idea of decentralization in a way that feels self defeating. They don’t want a better alternative to Reddit, they just want Reddit 2.0 and attempts to sway them towards something better feels like pulling teeth.
Yes! I don’t think it bodes well for general adoption when so much of the Lemmyverse is hosted on two essentially “Reddit 2.0” (by that I mean loosely moderated) instances. Assuming half the population of the Lemmyverse are people banned from Reddit for poor socialization, it means new users considering switching are most likely to first encounter a pure concentrated form of the worst aspects of Reddit userbase.
Beehaw is the only “general” instance I know of who’s mods and admins seem to be actually up to the task of keeping their communities from becoming wholly exhausting and it’s because they didn’t allow themselves to balloon up beyond their ability to self-moderate.
Does anyone know of any Sublinks instances? The main page for it speaks in present tense, but I haven’t found any active instances. (aside from the demo, of course)
I apologize for my stupidity:
this is me
It hasnt been released yet, still working towards parity (but getting there soon)
The first instance using it will likely be sublinks.art and some other instances will be switching over from lemmy when it hits parity like programming.dev and literature.cafe
Do you know if Sublinks will be compatible with existing mobile apps like Eternity?
These are some really good points. I’m personally more interested in the development of PieFed than SubLinks due to the focus on making it easy to contribute, the developer cares about usability and mod tools, its in Python, and the developer posts dev blogs and answers questions on mastodon https://join.piefed.social/blog/
I’m the founder of Sublinks. I’m happy to answer questions. You can find me on Mastodon @sublinks@utter.online. You’re right about the dev blog. We have a weekly Sublinks team meeting, the results of that could go into a weekly dev update. I’ve just been more focused on coding than community stuff. I’ll do better.
I joined the listed Matrix chat for sublinks to discuss and learn more about the platform; but it seems entirely dead. Is there another reasonable platform for discussion and beta testing/installation?
It’s not dead, perhaps you joined at a slow time. We were just chatting a bunch in there about cursor pagination. There are several rooms if you didn’t notice. General, Frontend, API, & Federation. Along with Announcements and Support.
