It's time to admit Lemmy has won the "the biggest reddit alternative" award, why it's time for all of us to consider supporting it (here's why) + reopening r/LemmyMigration

3 years ago by Lee Duna to c/reddit

Disclaimer: This is kind of a long write-up, but please don't downvote before reading it, put effort into this one:) Hello everyone. I’m back...
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thethirdobject 223 points 3 years ago

I know this comment could receive some negative feedback, but Lemmy lacks diversity in its userbase, compared to Reddit (or Tumblr in the old times). It's just a feeling, when I scroll through comments and posts on Lemmy, I picture most of the users as 16-46 yo white males.

EDIT: changed "45" to "46", see comment below.

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TORFdot0 153 points 3 years ago

That’s the vibe I always got from Reddit. But yeah, the vibe I get from Lemmy is that there are two demographics.

19-45 white male tech enthusiast and 19-45 white trans female tech enthusiast.

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CertifiedBlackGuy 51 points 3 years ago

I'm not sure yet which one I am ಠ_ಠ

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Nikki 8 points 3 years ago

cmon dont call me out like that :3

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fapforce5 8 points 3 years ago

Which is interesting. On the early days of Digg it was the same demographic, although more politically center. Then in the early days of reddit the same thing happened. It was mostly Linux and tech. So having the same starting demo is not a bad thing, but the question is, will it grow to adopt others

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TheSanSabaSongbird 4 points 3 years ago

I think Lemmy skews towards the younger end though. Of course I could be very mistaken as this impression is entirely unscientific and is based solely on the levels of knowledge and general discourse that are prevalent on Lemmy.

To my eye, a large percentage of Lemmy's users are both relatively low-information and lacking in real life experience. They also tend to be very ideological which in my experience is something that tends to diminish with age.

Again, I could be very wrong about this.

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hydrospanner -30 points 3 years ago

There's also the leftists who decide very narrowly what opinions will be tolerated! Don't forget them!

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GardeningSadhu -38 points 3 years ago

although i'm a white male in the age group i am neither of these... i know you didn't say everyone is in these groups, just here to represent us anti trans folks who don't know shit about computers. And they say commenting helps lemmy grow, so i'm doing that too.

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fidodo 80 points 3 years ago

That's how Reddit was for a long time too, and Reddit still is more like that than the other social networks. For whatever reasons that demo is more likely to be early adopters of this kind of platform. Diversity comes with growth.

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oce 26 points 3 years ago

Because Reddit was made for nerds, until more recently it didn't try to attract the mass with shiny interfaces and promises of social recognition like FB and Instagram.

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JDubbleu 6 points 3 years ago

I mean the whole concept of the fediverse is inherently going to attract the more paranoid of people who don't want to have big tech down their throat 24/7. The people most aware of this are those that work in/adjacent to big tech, and have enough understanding to be genuinely concerned about the state of the internet. Not that you have to be in tech to use/enjoy the Fediverse, but Lemmy is inherently inconvenient and less content rich than Reddit so it's going to create more niche/less diverse communities who have common interests.

Tech also has a very large trans demographic compared to the general population, and you can see that reflected on Lemmy too. The whole platform is largely going to reflect tech demographics until it is well known by the general public.

I'm just glad most people here are nice and willing to have open discussions. I've seen more threads of people disagreeing and reaching common ground than anywhere else.

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thethirdobject 6 points 3 years ago

I think you're right, maybe I'm just being impatient. I just appreciate the mix of points of view, I think it helps to see things differently.

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balderdash9 3 points 3 years ago

Diversity doesn't come when the userbase is outright hostile to outsider POV.

Why does it feel like every pocket of the Internet is a separate echo chamber these days. I just want to hear nuanced opinions that aren't on either extreme of the political spectrum.

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Belgdore 54 points 3 years ago

I get more of an impression that lemmy is full of far left leaning programmers. I think that is a good subset of people to have on a social media platform. But if we had more subs on other topics it should bring in other types of people.

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SCB 9 points 3 years ago

The reason you don't get many "normal" people here is that the community is absurdly hostile to anyone on the "normal person" spectrum.

If you're not a software-pirating techbro obsessed with "privacy," a leftist, or a furry, this place generally shits on you.

I very frequently post incredibly lukewarm takes for any mainstream community, and literally get called a Nazi. I have stalkers lol.

I, personally, tend to have "normal" views but significantly more resilience to online communities than "normal" people - which is why I still come here. Most normal people left back before this place even defederated from Hexbear. They ain't coming back.

Until mods of what are essentially "default" communities get serious about growth instead of wanting "their" spaces, Lemmy is never going to grow. Most people don't find getting blasted with piss-takes by Marxists funny the way I do.

Case-in-point from this thread

https://lemmy.world/comment/6400270

Oh and one directed at me, right on schedule.

Posted the bigot using the device created and coded by nerds. Do you fail to realize that “nerd” is what idiots call the smart kids? Of course you do.

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PoliticalAgitator 8 points 3 years ago

But if we had more subs on other topics it should bring in other types of people.

Is that actually desirable or just growth for growths sake? Rage comics and lolcats brought huge numbers of new users to reddit and the quality of content immediately began to decay.

Maybe a social media site that runs out of content is a good thing.

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Alsephina 31 points 3 years ago

Not much we can do about that. That's just the demographic an experimental decentralized platform like Lemmy attracts.

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1984 29 points 3 years ago

This comment will also receive some negative feedback but I don't care about diversity in my social media platform. I actually want people to enjoy the same things I do, like Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc.

That's the opposite of diversity I guess. More like a community where people have similar interests. That's what I like about it.

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Hazzard 37 points 3 years ago

Eh, that is kinda the appeal of Reddit, and its alternatives. Finding smaller communities of likeminded individuals that you can group into a tailored feed.

I always say the magic of this model is that it's not just a firehose of every possible interest, it's more like a shower of dozens of tiny handpicked jets. It just happens that on Lemmy, the "All" feed is still reasonably tailored to the main demographic here. That being tech nerds who dislike Reddit's recent decisions enough to make a change.

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TigrisMorte -3 points 3 years ago

Um, that isn't the definition of diversity being used here. They were suggesting some demographic diversity not interest diversity. Unless you are suggesting only young white males are into Linux, technology, geek jokes, etc. In which case, fuck off with that bigotry.

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GaMEChld 25 points 3 years ago

Do fledgling communities typically START diversified? I would imagine it always starts this way. You invent the thing. You send it to your like minded friends, they send it to their like minded friends, etc. I feel like diversity inevitably requires time and numbers.

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Zink 2 points 3 years ago

Yep, and in lemmy’s case, it was created by FOSS enthusiasts. And then it’s run on servers administrated by similar enthusiasts.

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KpntAutismus 20 points 3 years ago

there's no way you could even guess the skin color of a person by reading their comment. i could be a 70-year old asian man for all you care.

maybe because "race" just isn't discussed as much because it's also basically a social construct besides minor evolutionary differences.

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thethirdobject 19 points 3 years ago

People of different background have more chance to have a bigger diversity of point of view. You may not be able to guess the background of a single commenter, but you can spot things missing. Also, I wasn't actually thinking about race, but gender identities and sexual orientations as well.

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trafalgar225 8 points 3 years ago

Race is a social construct that impacts so many people in a very real way. The race that you're sorted into affects so much of where you can go, what you can do, and how the government treats you.

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rab 19 points 3 years ago

Yeah there is not nearly as much to be learned here which is the major appeal of reddit to me. I already know what the comments will say before I open a lemmy post

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BarbecueCowboy 10 points 3 years ago

I don't feel like we're ever going to get past that until we can make the sign up process very nearly effortless. Reading about signing up for an account on the fediverse can be a lot of new info. Choosing an instance can feel like a lot when new to the fediverse and at the point that it becomes something difficult or confusing, a lot of people just lose interest.

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noisypine 8 points 3 years ago

I agree. I am a techie, have been following Lemmy for quite a while before the Reddit exodus. When I made my account, first I had to understand that each instance manages its own accounts and there are many instances. My initial thought was to look for one of the higher population instances, but I read that this was not necessarily the best idea. Then I searched out why its better to pick an instance outside the high population ones and that whatever instance I picked, I could view/comment/vote on posts from other instances. I don't have a problem doing research, but I don't know anyone who is not a techie that would continue past my first question, and that is a serious problem for adoption.

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RxBrad 10 points 3 years ago
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thethirdobject 2 points 3 years ago

My bad, I edited my comment.

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blueson 10 points 3 years ago

I agree completely.

I don't have examples at hand now, but I feel like I see so much like minorly-sexist talk. Or at least the stuff I only imagined horny men write, in so many threads.

Reddit was the same like ~10 years ago and I don't miss that part of it.

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Eezyville 7 points 3 years ago

It definitely lacks diversity. But at the same time it reminds me of the early internet where we had dedicated forums like IGN. Most people weren't on these forums nor cared to be there. The problem here is sometimes Lemmy is not welcoming because of the way it is designed. You have to host and run your own instance or join someone else's instance. That is good because we, the users of Lemmy, own it but bad because we become very protectionists. We want to protect our instance from bad actors but some users take it to the extreme and protect the instance from people who aren't like them and think differently.

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BonesOfTheMoon 4 points 3 years ago

I totally agree with you. Feels like 4chan.

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Belgdore 4 points 3 years ago
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Belgdore 2 points 3 years ago
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beebarfbadger 2 points 3 years ago

Reddit has that AND the 16-45 days old repost spam bot base covered.

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knacht1 1 point 3 years ago

Youngin's.

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kerrypacker -1 points 3 years ago

Younger for me. They're either pro Palestine or really pro Palestine, which to me is the idealism of youth. I'd say mainly 16-30 first world or equivalent males.

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FlorianSimon 10 points 3 years ago
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systemglitch 2 points 3 years ago

Strange take tbh. The non-idealistic view is they both shitty (evil Jews vs evil Muslim terrorists), with normal people paying the toll as per the norm.

No one is justified in any of this carnage.

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shredderdoitbetta -5 points 3 years ago

So far from what I've seen in a year is that anyone who points out racism gets downvoted

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