Reddit perma-banning account promoting Lemmy has Streisand effect

3 years ago by smallcircles to c/fediverse

As Reddit's enshittification reaches new heights their attempts to suppress attention for alternatives, like federated Lemmy, has the opposite effect as this Hacker News discussion shows.

thoro 110 points 3 years ago

Reading criticisms of Lemmy from Reddit and other platforms like HackerNews reminds me of reading criticisms of Reddit from Digg back in 2007-2010, except they're more based on architecture instead of "it looks ugly".

Now there are things that will turn away users. There's obviously a strong leftist culture here, there are less users so less content, and obviously federation is a stumbling block for many people.

But I really think that's ok similar to what people are saying in that Hacker News thread. I wouldn't want all of Reddit to come over, and I think it's better for the culture and growth here to get a self selected trickle/stream of users instead of a deluge.

I don't think Lemmy will necessarily have the same issues as Mastodon because Twitter/Mastodon requires you to know people or know accounts to follow to be useful. Lemmy just requires communities you're interested in and a critical mass of users to drive posting and engagement. We're already seeing greater activity as more users arrive

path: 0 11641, hotness: undefined, score: 110, children: 59

humanetech 45 points 3 years ago

That second comment by goplayoutside says it well: "Maybe the modest technical hurdles are a feature, not a bug."

I think it is a feature, and the same is true for Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole, imho.

path: 0 11641 11654, hotness: undefined, score: 45, children: 7

Kichae 29 points 3 years ago

I also see it as a feature. If instances have a natural active user cap, then server-based communities can't get so big as to outpace moderation. And admins have the ability to moderate local users' behaviour on off-site sublemmies by enforcing their own codes of conduct.

The internet used to be small, but expansive. It became big, but concentrated.

I liked the former. I know many people like the latter. Those people are welcome to their corporate slums.

path: 0 11641 11654 11680, hotness: undefined, score: 29, children: 1

cavemeat 13 points 3 years ago

I liked the former. I know many people like the latter. Those people are welcome to their corporate slums.

You've worded it well. I think the technical nature of it is to its benefit, and many server may not want to make the signup process easier, for the reasons you mentioned.

path: 0 11641 11654 11680 11928, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0

animist 24 points 3 years ago

@humanetech @thoro I like it because it weeds out the type of people who would end up being low-effort posters, trolls, and spammers.

path: 0 11641 11654 12048, hotness: undefined, score: 24, children: 0

smartwater0897 12 points 3 years ago

Very much so. It shares the load, both from a technical point of view but also from moderation and maintenance point of view.

It's actually pretty great, all of this.

path: 0 11641 11654 11807, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0

wintrparkgrl 8 points 3 years ago

While it keeps the willfully ignorant out, it can also keep people with learning disabilities out. Accessibility should always be worked on. That being said, Lemmy is certainly easy to access, Even more so than Mastodon IMHO because Mastodon you have to know people whereas lemmy all you have to do is sign up for a community

path: 0 11641 11654 18917, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

argv_minus_one 5 points 3 years ago

Problem: organizations pushing a political or commercial agenda will train their agents to overcome modest technical hurdles. Spammers, in particular, will go to extreme lengths to overcome technical hurdles, including hiring people to solve CAPTCHAs.

path: 0 11641 11654 18326, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1

comfy 4 points 3 years ago

Agreed, I remember being shocked about a decade ago learning that there were services run in developing countries where you pay about $1 for 1000 CATPCHA solves for your spam bot to pass along and a person solving it.

path: 0 11641 11654 18326 18948, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Ignacio 22 points 3 years ago

There's obviously a strong leftist culture here

That depends on what instance you create an user on. For example, Lemmygrad.ml and Lemmy.ml are not the same thing, despite both belonging to Lemmy. The issues I see are having a tankie culture, and not having more points of view.

There are less users so less content

That's something we can help with, although it's not so easy. I mean, the users that are already here, we can create more content and interact more with each other, so eventually more users will come. It can be boring and tiring, but it's not impossible.

Federation is a stumbling block for many people

That's something absolutely new for the vast majority of people. I felt myself confused the first time I joined the fediverse too. But after some time, I felt myself less confused. Some clarifications, tutorials and support can do the real trick.

path: 0 11641 11943, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 9

CrimsonOnoscopy 21 points 3 years ago

I have to hope that main instances will stop federating Lemmygrad at some point. There's no place, IMO, for genocide denial/affirmation and authoritarian extremism on platforms like these. Or any platforms.

path: 0 11641 11943 12166, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 8

skullgiver 12 points 3 years ago

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

path: 0 11641 11943 12166 12930, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 5

darylsun 5 points 3 years ago

I don't think lemmy.one is deferated from Beehaw; I'm subscribed to one community there.

1st edit: I forgot this community isn't on Beehaw.

2nd edit: Here's a link of all the instances that Beehaw is federated with, and lemmy.one is one of them. sopuli.xyz and feddit.de too.

3rd edit: Apparently, I'm Jared, 19, and I cannot read. Sorry about that!

path: 0 11641 11943 12166 12930 14880, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4

argv_minus_one 4 points 3 years ago

Edit: Seems this is unfortunately unlikely as the lemmy.ml instance appears to be moderated by a genocide denier and authoritarian.

Who has reportedly been banning people for calling out said genocide denial and authoritarianism.

path: 0 11641 11943 12166 18230, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1

CrimsonOnoscopy 3 points 3 years ago

And they removed my comments among others, for calling the Chinese state a colonial and imperialist state.

path: 0 11641 11943 12166 18230 19674, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

backpackn 14 points 3 years ago

What will the next social media trend be? Seems like the centralized options are done for (FB, TW, Reddit), but they’re not being replaced by any single solutions. Tiktok took mainly genZ. Professionals have been wanting a twitter replacement to move to since musk and have yet to figure it out (bluesky, tribel, post social, takes, mastodon, etc has no apparent frontrunner). Political apps segmented some off like parler and the right stuff. Decentralized and foss apps have all kinds of solutions but won’t likely ever attract a huge crowd. So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?

path: 0 11641 16284, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 1

fuzzzerd 17 points 3 years ago

So are we seeing the end of of an era of massive centralized social media?

God, I hope so.

path: 0 11641 16284 17019, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 0

smartwater0897 8 points 3 years ago

You can actually follow hashtags on mastadon, which is a lot easier then knowing users. :)

path: 0 11641 11776, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1

Kichae 16 points 3 years ago

Yeah, but none of the Twitter people were using hashtags, and a lot of them where hyper-fixated on finding their Twitter mutuals. They were just trying pretend Mastodon was a drop-in replacement for Twitter.

They didn't want to create their own space in the new place, and they didn't want to integrate with those who were already there. They just kind of wanted to ignore the fact that anything was happening, while still, I guess, engaging in slacktivism.

path: 0 11641 11776 11817, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 0

ipkpjersi 5 points 3 years ago

It's not like there's not a strong leftist culture on reddit either so I don't really see that as a problem unique to Lemmy. If Lemmy can provide a centralized-like decentralized platform, I think it can succeed.

path: 0 11641 18534, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1

thoro 7 points 3 years ago

There isn't at all. Reddit is liberal at the very best and even then it's mostly Obama liberal, which is center right outside the most conservative parts of the world.

The leftist communities are much smaller, easily ignored, and often ridiculed in the mainstream subreddits. The gaming spaces complain about "wokeness" and criticisms of female representations among others. Thinly veiled racism and explicit transphobia abounds.

In contrast, Lemmy is full of anarchists, communists, socialists, and other anti capitalist. It has been and remains a dominantly leftist community.

path: 0 11641 18534 20373, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

Showervagina 2 points 3 years ago

UX is whatever. Would like to see more decentralization of large hosts to avoid it inevitably being 1 or 2 big lemmy hosts with everything.

Also cross federation logins. I was so confused why my logins weren't working on other servers.

path: 0 11641 28494, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

upperleft 2 points 3 years ago

The strong leftist culture is a plus. I know I'm not going to get flooded with nazi shit like so many of the prior iterations of the reddit exodus (e.g. voat).

path: 0 11641 79913, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1

nephs 0 points 3 years ago

Only one section of the political spectrum has consistently been combating nazifascist initiatives throughout history, including present history.

And that's not liberals.

path: 0 11641 79913 119521, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

CrimsonOnoscopy -30 points 3 years ago

The most disturbing thing I've seen is the evidence that Lemmy.ml is controlled by a genocide-supporting red fascist/third positionists. If that's true, its a massive issue and makes the platform hard to trust.

Very open to learning that this isn't true, if it isn't.

path: 0 11641 11927, hotness: undefined, score: -30, children: 31

m532 17 points 3 years ago

You are a wrecker who is trying to destroy lemmy. You will not succeed. Go back to 4chan where someone might believe your weird conspiracy theories.

path: 0 11641 11927 13065, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 1

TheAnonymouseJoker 5 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11641 11927 13065 14526, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

Moonrise2473 13 points 3 years ago

Maybe you're confusing with lemmygrad?

I'd like to read more on this, if true

path: 0 11641 11927 12097, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 9

TheAnonymouseJoker 10 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11641 11927 12097 12120, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

CrimsonOnoscopy -15 points 3 years ago

The evidence I've seen is compiled mainly in these posts:

https://raddle.me/... https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/history https://raddle.me/wiki/QnA_with_Emma

https://www.vice.com/...

path: 0 11641 11927 12097 12140, hotness: undefined, score: -15, children: 7

PorkrollPosadist 10 points 3 years ago

Ziq is not a trustworthy source on shit. That guy is well known for lying and impersonating people to stir up shit, and has a personal vendetta against any leftist message board that he isn't personally capable of manipulating. He impersonated me and a few other members of Hexbear in the very early days when it became clear r/ChapoTrapHouse wasn't going to settle on Raddle.

path: 0 11641 11927 12097 12140 17856, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1

Moonrise2473 8 points 3 years ago

Fuck, i even didn't notice that the lemmy.ml instance admin, also the Dev of lemmy and the android app has Mao as a profile cover, with Che as avatar....

path: 0 11641 11927 12097 12140 12803, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1

TheAnonymouseJoker -1 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11641 11927 12097 12140 12373, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 2

aRatherDapperFox 8 points 3 years ago

Do you happen to have a link to said evidence? I'd love to review it, myself.

path: 0 11641 11927 12038, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 3

CrimsonOnoscopy -13 points 3 years ago

The evidence I've seen is compiled mainly in these posts:

https://raddle.me/... https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/history https://raddle.me/wiki/QnA_with_Emma

https://www.vice.com/...

path: 0 11641 11927 12038 12142, hotness: undefined, score: -13, children: 2

aRatherDapperFox 16 points 3 years ago

So your "evidence" is 4 different links from a "competing" platform, all of which should be considered "one source" not multiple individual sources, one of which is a user post with no actual evidence shown or linked -- at least not in the body of the post, I didn't care to follow through checking the comments -- and an article from... Vice.

Not exactly what I would call reputable sources. I'm not DENYING what you're saying, I just don't see any specific evidence to support your claim. Just... Be mindful of what you're using as "source material" when you claim there's evidence.

path: 0 11641 11927 12038 12142 12742, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 1

RagingNerdoholic 7 points 3 years ago

Very open to learning that this isn’t true, if it isn’t.

That's not how this works. If you're going to make serous accusations like that, the onus is on you to provide evidence to support them.

FWIW, I have no particular loyalty to lemmy.ml, I just joined the first instance I saw.

path: 0 11641 11927 17855, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1

argv_minus_one 3 points 3 years ago

Here's some evidence.

path: 0 11641 11927 17855 18253, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

luckless 7 points 3 years ago

What's the source on that? That's a pretty big accusation but I'd certainly want to know if it's true.

path: 0 11641 11927 12008, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 11

Kichae 39 points 3 years ago

It stems from the fact that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml cofederate, that the project leads are communists, and the claim that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml off of the same IP address.

The first two points are not in contention, but I haven't, personally, been able to verify the third.

Now, lemmygrad is absolutely a trollish, auth-left hellscape. And I say that with... well, not respect, but not specific derision, either. That genuinely seems to be the aesthetic they're going for. They're not here to make friends with anyone but themselves, and they'll play apologetics for China, North Korea, and Stalin's takeover of the Soviet Republic all day long.

But even if the project leads are genuinely involved in that, it doesn't really change the fact that the project is not inextricably tied to them. It's an open source project. It can be forked, and forked again. No one actually needs lemmygrad or lemmy.ml. Or lemmy, for that matter. Everyone can hop over to kbin or Friendica and still access all of the same communities.

Shit, they're accessible from Mastodon and Calckey.

And besides, it's not like people avoid using software when it's made by white supremacist capitalist techbros. In those cases, we all basically just go "yeah, but I'm not a white supremacist capitalist techbro" and carry on with our day. And those products generally can't be wrenched from their control or oversight.

Most people chose Elon over learning that multiple websites exist...

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12242, hotness: undefined, score: 39, children: 1

argv_minus_one 2 points 3 years ago

Problem: most Lemmy users and communities are on lemmy.ml.

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12242 18282, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

FaceDeer 14 points 3 years ago

And even if it were true, there are other instances. The only reason I'm on lemmy.ml myself is because the one that was recommended to me first was offline when I tried it, I could move somewhere else if this turns out to be true.

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12013, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 6

Ignacio 3 points 3 years ago

When I joined Lemmy a year ago (with another user), Lemmygrad was not my piece of cake, Lemmy.ml was too big (similar to mastodon.social), Lemmy.ca was not in my continent, and I didn't notice about beehaw. So, sopuli was the only one standing: small, from Finland and not tankie.

Creating a instance can be difficult, but it's a good way when you don't like what you're offered, and it can help other people to find their home.

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12013 12070, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 1

CrimsonOnoscopy -18 points 3 years ago

What concerns me just now is whether join-lemmy the website is controlled by them or not. So far I don't know if it is- But if the entry points are guarded by genocide-supporting (not denying) left-fascists, then that does pose a significant issues.

BTW, these ifs I'm using aren't rhetoric devices. I'm not stating this as fact. There seems to be indicators of concern- Is what I'm saying.

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12013 12148, hotness: undefined, score: -18, children: 3

CrimsonOnoscopy -14 points 3 years ago

The evidence I've seen is compiled mainly in these posts:

https://raddle.me/... https://raddle.me/wiki/why_raddle https://raddle.me/wiki/history https://raddle.me/wiki/QnA_with_Emma

https://www.vice.com/...

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12143, hotness: undefined, score: -14, children: 1

TheAnonymouseJoker -1 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11641 11927 12008 12143 12955, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0

TheAnonymouseJoker 5 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11641 11927 12103, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

responseAIbot 49 points 3 years ago

I was made aware of lemmy because of this. Joined.

path: 0 17070, hotness: undefined, score: 49, children: 1

ablackcatstail 10 points 3 years ago

@responseAIbot @humanetech I now have my next project: Lemmy. Going to start on it this afternoon.

path: 0 17070 17098, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

Anarcho_Mandalorian 25 points 3 years ago

Lemmy structure very anarchist and I like it

path: 0 16501, hotness: undefined, score: 25, children: 9

Alkalyon 21 points 3 years ago

Yeah, even some documentation sections look like manifestos but you can't disagree to be honest.

Reddit and the top media brought it on themselves.

path: 0 16501 17334, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 2

mrmanager 10 points 3 years ago

I loved that page so much. It's 100% truth what has happened, at least in my opinion.

path: 0 16501 17334 17669, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

Anarcho_Mandalorian 2 points 3 years ago

Lol

path: 0 16501 17334 17504, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

altair222 6 points 3 years ago

the whole of the fediverse is like that

path: 0 16501 20135, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

benny 5 points 3 years ago

path: 0 16501 20607, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4

smallcircles 7 points 3 years ago

path: 0 16501 20607 20614, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2

benny 2 points 3 years ago

path: 0 16501 20607 20614 20772, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

JuBe 1 point 3 years ago

I tried that, but I couldn’t get it to work. Oh well, two accounts won’t kill me.

path: 0 16501 20607 20614 36936, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

JackFromWisconsin 3 points 3 years ago

👋 hello!

path: 0 16501 20607 20608, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

elouboub 19 points 3 years ago

A few hundred people will migrate but the majority will put up with shit, because they're used to swimming in it.

path: 0 11833, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 7

tookmyname 9 points 3 years ago

It will be a small percentage of Reddit. But even small percentage is way, way more than a few hundred. And the most active users (mods, post makers, etc.) are the most likely to move. The casuals who just scroll are the most likely to stay. It’s the former that make most of the content.

path: 0 11833 13422, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

Dasnap 6 points 3 years ago

The question is if we'd even want the majority to migrate.

path: 0 11833 15134, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2

Tordoc 8 points 3 years ago

I personally migrated because I wanted to avoid the majority

path: 0 11833 15134 15407, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

Infinitybiscuit 2 points 3 years ago

I don’t. I want people who will take the extra time to add to the discussion. Most people aren’t going to want to acclimate to the fediverse which I think will filter out a lot of nonsense.

path: 0 11833 15134 22910, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

jjjm182 4 points 3 years ago

path: 0 11833 13094, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Alkalyon 4 points 3 years ago

but the majority will put up with shit

The majority of people in Reddit don't provide any value to conversation ofor information. We shouldn't really be sad that passive consumers don't follow the migration to Lemmy or more accurately to Fediverse.

I used reddit to get information and read news from active users and to engage in conversations within these topics.

People who won't follow us from Reddit, wouldn't have anything good to offer to this platform anyway so I don't think we should care to be honest.

Nothing of value was lost.

path: 0 11833 17381, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

stappern 2 points 3 years ago

good, we needed a filter

path: 0 11833 20912, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

blob42 15 points 3 years ago

That's a lovely news. Let them bleed.

path: 0 18860, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 1

erogenouswarzone 1 point 3 years ago

I'm really hoping this is too advanced for 90% of Reddit users. Reddit is such a shithole compared to 10 years ago.

path: 0 18860 25100, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

osma 14 points 3 years ago

path: 0 20865, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 5

nothendev 4 points 3 years ago

@osma @humanetech the same will happen with kbin, even tho its interface is hyper similar to reddit. pretty sure that's gonna be another case of "too geeky, unusable, unstable, useless, sh!tty reddit ripoff and bad".

the "useless", as one guy said (not on here) when i mentioned lemmy: "Another sh*tty reddit ripoff? Useless" is very funny

path: 0 20865 20887, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 4

DodoTheDev 3 points 3 years ago

I saw a similar thread on Reddit itself. They had several sources that claimed mastodon had "failed to convert Twitter users", and therefore the fediverse was a waste of time and would never catch on. I just chuckled because the longer they stay away, the better the fediverse will be (for me).

path: 0 20865 20887 21734, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 3

erogenouswarzone 1 point 3 years ago

For everyone.

Reddit just got worse the more people used it.

path: 0 20865 20887 21734 25083, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

nothendev 1 point 3 years ago

@DodoTheDev Absurdly hilarious. Thank you, saving this for later use

path: 0 20865 20887 21734 52921, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

mustyOrange 1 point 3 years ago

I remember reddit was sorta seen that way back in the day. The concept of of subreddits that had different sorting features and the like was a lot different than forums way back when

path: 0 20865 20887 21734 28827, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

Sam_uk 10 points 3 years ago

I think to an extent that depends on how much effort/funds the devs are willing to put in to keep sites online. Say 100k people want to come and have a look on the 12th. ~1/10 of those would create accounts, if the server falls over at 11am and stays down then only 10k people will see the site, maybe 1k sign up.

If the server is up all day then I think you'd see much larger adoption.

path: 0 11889, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

Showervagina 9 points 3 years ago

I'm here because they banned it. Figure if they are threatened by lemmy it must be good.

path: 0 28479, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

stappern 3 points 3 years ago

ive managed to dodge the ban so far

path: 0 20844, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

fediverse

@lemmy.ml

login for more options

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

go to feed...

fediverse

@lemmy.ml

login for more options

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

go to feed...