It feels more like reddit now, but still is populated by a certain type of person that would seek out Lemmy. Mostly techy, left of center+, over age 30+, etc. I enjoy it.

My main gripe with mainstream Reddit now is the engagement baiting that people are falling for all the time. “What are you thoughts on [Controversial Topic]?” If there is a new exodus from Reddit coming, I really really really wish all the baiting to be left behind and moderators to remove it on the Fediverse.

Lemmy didn’t have much content at first so you would run out of things to read after a while. It felt friendly at first, but certain topics still set off people at lemmy to the point I thought about leaving. Then lemmy seemed to improve and I could talk about those topics again, but now there are more trolls (even ones that seem to follow you around since they troll each post or comment talking about something) and spam bots that weren’t there before. I think a lot of conflict on forums like this has to do with miscommunication, but sometimes people are just mean and there isn’t a fix.

I feel it’s changing positively, as instance admins and our tool-sets mature, and more and more people are becoming permanent residents as they’re either permabanned on reddit (so they have no alternative) or they recognize the value of a system that is not and cannot be controlled by a corporate entity and they US billionaire interests behind it.

However I’m also concerned that our yet small size has protected us from truly existential issues like dedicated spam and propaganda orgs, especially those who would utilize GenAI to be more covert. I’ve already published tools like the fediseer to help prepare for this, but I really hope to see more people per-emptively getting ready for this. I see way too many doe-eyed admins firing up instances without a care in the world, open registration, no captchas, no botnet protections etc and they either burn out and close shop after a few months of firefighting, or get defederated, or they have to re-learn a painful lesson the rest of us did.

This does give me an idea, we do need a more holistic “So you want to open a threadiverse instance” guide to give such pointers to new admins and way to get support from others. Hmmm…

The extremists are a bit much but otherwise I like it here.

It has gotten much better. More content and general activity and nutjobs at .ml and similar got mostly isolated from the rest of the network.

I think fediverse is really shaping up as a strong reddit alternative. Most pop subjects are mirrored here and the vibe is very similar to early reddit so there no real reason to go to reddit other than super niche communities like of a tv show or something.

Most props go to the lemmy.world team as it kept a consistent big sane network running that keeps the project stable! If .world never happened I think Lemmy would have remained cess pool of social rejects like most reddit alternatives like Voat or lemmy.ml

Honestly? Not much.

Lemmy feels about the same, but Reddit seems much worse.

Now to be fair I don’t know if Reddit is actually worse, because when I browse Reddit now it’s while I’m logged out and via a browser (force old.reddit.com and OldLander extensions). So the site is A) harder to navigate than it used to be and B) my experience is less curated and I see more crap and C) because my experience is less curated I’ve lost access to many of the niche communities.

As an example if I want to read some discussion about the recent Game of Thrones prequel series “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” I can find a small community here on Lemmy. Nice people, but too few of us.

So I go to Reddit. If I search I find r/AKOTSKTV which is fine, and I find r/GameOfThrones which is fine. But I have to know, as a previous Reddit user, that maybe r/ASOIAF is also a great choice. Or if I want some real shit r/freefolk is where the glory lives.

So for that universe I know where to go. But for a new series? For a new niche? For a new community? I don’t know shit. I’ve found some of the more niche communities by luck. That’s what I would have been subscribed to in the past. I would have been in the community and in the comments and discovery was natural.

But nowadays I just get the front page of Reddit, and the front page kinda sucks.

But Lemmy? Yeah it sucks sometimes too, but at least there is a community.

My account is 3 years and 5 months old. I joined Lemmy before it was cool, because I like open source things. In fact, when I joined, Lemmy.ml was the main/recommended instance. Now you all hate it.

Lemmy used to be a barren wasteland of content. Now it is not. I’ve noticed no further changes. The tankies, the in-fighting, the debates about whether to de-federate with instances, the arguing over whether it’s becoming too much like reddit - it’s all been here as long as I can remember.

I arrived during the API debacle.

Some things are better, content and activity.

Some things are worse, spammers, AI proponents who harrass you despite the clear community-wide dislike of the plagarism machine, fascist chuds trying to mainstream rascism, misogyny, and ableism.

Basically each new wave is another usenet September equivalent, and it feels like we’re approaching the eternal september epoch as lemmy becomes more widely used. Soon we’ll have to deal with state actor bot-nets if we aren’t already.

It’s gotten a bit busier as far as new posts showing up go (been here since reddit api debacle) but we need like 4,000,000 more users, and then if we just held right there, we’d all be able to live happy little lives. There’s still just not enough people to support smaller, more niche instances.

On a side note: Doubly fuck reddit again. I don’t get on there to use it, but occasionally I’ll hop into an old sub looking for info. Got a notification that /humor deleted my post of a funny poem thing from 15 friggin years ago. One of only 2 posting I ever made that still occasionally got comments on.

Less lurkers and more people making comments over time. This thread is a great example.

TBH, not much.

Which pleases me. I actually donate to my instance every month in order to help keep it ad and algo-free.

The biggest change for me was losing Lemm.ee. That was a blow. I had probably the most thriving (not by much) synthesizer community. I haven’t had the heart to try and start it back up elsewhere.

Fewer people marveling about Lemmy itself, which is fine.

There are a couple of people who are now a constant presence. For better or worse. Some of y’all need help that Lemmy can’t provide. I won’t name a name but if you have to ask…