Is Lemmy a good alternative?

New here. Migrated from Reddit. Still trying to figure out Lemmy - what's everyone's experiences like coming from Reddit and does Lemmy serve as a good alternative? Pros and cons/differences?

I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 "controversial" comment and I got perma-banned... this sucks. I mostly followed music pages like r/TheBeatles and loved to just rant about Beatles albums, Paul McCartney's latest tour, discuss new releases from other artists and also movies/TV shows. I can't think of any other website that offers that kind of forum-like discussion other than Lemmy?

I really did always hate that Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber. The way the system works with upvotes and downvotes, if I said anything people don't agree with, I'd get massively downvoted. I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom... it really felt like I was treading on egg shells. My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song. Really petty.

I've always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren't pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy is basically an parallel universe of Reddit. There's less people here, which means smaller but also less toxic communities. Since this is a segment of the fediverse, people also tend to talk about Linux and free open source software, while also trashing on Windows, Google, and any other product by what I like to call "Big Tech". People are much more liberal here, there's more tolerance for the LGBT community, there's basically lots of hatred for cars, people praise the European Union. Ok some of these are bad examples of liberalism, but still, it's all found here. Enjoy your stay. If you don't like it, you're free to bid us farewell.

Sine_Fine_Belli ,

It’s not perfect, but lemmy is good enough for us

recarsion ,

Unfortunately it's not quite there in terms of numbers. Many niche communities that exist on reddit simply don't here or have very low activity. The ones that do are typically better than on reddit though.

I_Clean_Here ,

Lemmy needs to figure out a way to "group" similar communities from different instances. That is the biggest flaw by far.

twinnie ,

And maybe it's just my app but I keep seeing the same posts over and over from different groups.

Saltarello ,

I really like it. Tech comminities & some others are very bouyant & interesting but niche communities really struggle. Even direct replacements of big subreddits struggle. Hopefully this improves.

One tip from my own experience. I use Voyager & blocked a load of US politics keywords.

And another, I subscribed to as many interesting Lemmy communities as i could then browse Home feed in the main & occasionally All to see if any other interesting communities crop up that could be worth joining.

Welcome & enjoy.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

In your particular case: yes, lemmy is absolutely the answer.

It isnt for a lot of other folks. Lemmy has a lot less moderators/moderation and a lot more alternative communities and multiple instances.

This has a ton of implications. You can still get banned for petty reasons but usually not from the instance but just from a community. In that case you join or make another one which doesnt ban people for {particular_reason}.

It also means that you dont get the tons of posts and comments. Imo as a reddit refugee, people from reddit are going cold turkey on drinking from a firehose or more accurately, being showered in content. There is a million dollar business and many years of experience, social circles and code behind that. Lemmy is like reddit in the early days, just much later.

So if you ever feel there is a lack of content, consider hunting for it on lemmyverse.net for example. You can add non-banned instances to your instance by searching for a community‘s handle.

There will still be people here you dont agree with and the people here are a little different but all in all I‘d say its a pretty good thing. :)

Have fun.

mctoasterson ,

There are instances or subs here that will delete your comment or ban you simply for posting something that disagrees with the predetermined consensus they are going for. And no, I'm not talking about racist or abusive comments, just generic shit that may not perfectly align with their narrow personal Overton window. I'm not going back to Reddit, but I wouldn't say there is a robust and diverse discussion here either. A lot of groupthink, or perceived groupthink...because dissenting opinions get straight up deleted.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Hello fellow Reddthat user!

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

Not like I havent seen that happen but I immediately block communities for doing this once so I‘m not seeing this much lately.

3volver ,

Yes, it is a good alternative IF you take part. Don't be a lurker, post stuff, cause friction, create interesting discussion even if you know you may get downvoted for bringing up things people don't want to talk about. Reddit is a censored pile of gatekept shit, don't ever waste your time commenting on there.

nickwitha_k ,

I made 1 "controversial" comment and I got perma-banned... this sucks.
...
Is Lemmy the answer?

That's really going to depend on you. What sort of "controversial" comment?

If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you're going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you'll probably be fine, with some exceptions:

  • There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
  • Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
  • There's a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we're trying!).
  • You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you're posting. Individual instances (kinda like "reddits") have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don't expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
  • It's important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
  • There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don't be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We're generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.

If you're good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there's a good chance that you'll have a good time.

neidu2 ,

From what I gather, the "controversy" was about his preference for one Zelda game over another. I think he's going to be fine.

Donut ,

No, that was the temp ban. The perma ban had to do with a lost song thread

neidu2 ,

Oh my, that makes him literally Hitler

Donut ,

What? People are just curious how they got a ban by the site admins instead of a subreddit. It takes a bit more to pull that off than just posting an unpopular opinion.

Great exhibit of Godwin's law, though.

neidu2 , (edited )

Greater exhibit of sarcasm

Unlikelyvillain ,

I’m also super new here because I keep getting banned there. I’ve been told I was a bigot because I was against the Palestinian genocide. Like what?! And I was harassing the mods because I asked them a question 2 times in 3 months. There’s no discussing with them. They come down at you with a hammer and it’s just mean. But if people attack you? If people are cruel? Totally fine.
I’m a huge rule follower but I’m human and make mistakes. I hope here there is discussion allowed with the powers that be in case i mess up. I try to be respectful and kind. I just want to all get along.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Sorry to hear that

Unlikelyvillain ,

Thank you

Lovstuhagen ,

It's great - scratches the itch, overall. I sometimes pine for places where major debates on a specific topic constantly rage - ideally, I'd be able to discuss religion whenever I wanted, skipping threads I felt I didn't want to wade into....

But it is a good enough replacement overall and I feel like we are proceeding to having such a size. I am also open to the idea that I have not curated enough to find a place where this si consistently happening in the Fediverse yet...

I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks.

There have been some controversies that have led to banning and banning of entire instances. Usually, this involves Lemmy instances that were tolerating a lot of blatant transphobic memes that cut deep and were very mean...

I get why people isolated them.

I am still worried, though, that there are people who would still react this way to good faith discussion where there are disagreements. While there are some places where that is for sure OK, I think there are some instances that might react so negatively as to want to ban a specific user or their instance over it. I may be overreacting but IDK.

dumblederp , (edited )

I too have recently been perma-banned from reddit for nonsense. I still browse it with my banned account, I just don't comment. They're going to chase away heaps of people. I made a new account under a vpn to help someone and the account got shadowbanned. I think reddit is trying to become some corporate-safe-space where business can fake market directly to reddit users.

TexMexBazooka ,

They’ve been blocking VPNs now and it just makes me not use it even in the few cases it’s useful.

btaf45 ,

I too have recently been perma-banned from reddit for nonsense.

I call then rando-bans. e.g. You were banned for violating unwritten rules, poorly interpreted rules, rules made up on the spot, or because the mod is having a bad day. Basically stuff where a warning would have easily sufficed.

dumblederp ,

I told a bot to go fuck itself and a human mod got offended on its behalf.

MusketeerX ,

For general browsing, news, technology, mainstream topics etc.. it's much better than reddit, less toxic, better vibe.

It's very small though, so I've found two areas where it is just not a replacement:

  • Specific, smaller niche interests, they might have a community here but it is often empty and quiet or just non existent.

  • Sports, specifically a place to chat during live events. There's not enough people to support that.

So it depends what you are looking for and how niche your interests are.

I've mostly stopped using reddit and am in here now. But I still end up there occasionally. Not much these days though.

KAYDUBELL ,

spot on

God_Is_Love ,

Personally I still use other websites to get news about niche topics sinse Lemmy is small, but I genuinely much prefer Lemmy for general memes news and whatever else pops up! I genuinely think the funny post are much better than on Reddit.

ElectroVagrant , (edited )

In strict technical terms, yeah it's okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.

There's still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they're in an odd spot.

The first of these you'll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.

PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.

The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.

All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.

Lemmy isn't a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.

Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it's arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.

Nevertheless, it's possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn't suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.

Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:

One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I'd recommend visiting:

!moviesandtv
!movies
!music
!casualconversation

Honestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Thank you for thé communities list!

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