Lemmy’s protocol is open, so anybody can make 3rd party apps to work with it. Third party Reddit apps used to be popular when Reddit had an open API, but Reddit destroyed that on purpose.
Because Lemmy isn’t run by a singular company, you don’t get the same restrictions. Reddit admins had a whole host of rules on what a sub could or could not contain. Many of which were heavy focused on making Reddit more advertiser friendly.
The funniest part of killing 3rd party apps is they cut off a widely used method if collecting more commenting data from the average user. I guess they figured audience style interaction on the official app is worth more.
The official app purportedly has a shit ton of interaction tracking. I can’t find the link anymore, but somebody on HN even claimed what they wanted to track was so invasive that he walked out of a job interview for Reddit.
What I can say for sure is that the new Reddit “shreddit” website is absolutely fucking full of tracking. I reverse engineered it for reasons, and every interaction with UI elements was reported back before the actual interaction was allowed to take place.
They definitely gain more value out of user data from interaction tracking than they do from their comments.
As a former web dev, I know it’s normal industry standard stuff, but it’s really hard to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt here.
Their tracking is completely ingrained in the webcomponent-based SPA itself, beyond what’s reasonable for anonymized analytics. Disabling cookies even broke loading content, despite being logged out.
In a professional capacity, it was React with TypeScript for front-end, Node for backend with Nginx to serve static assets. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really for me. I enjoy web dev for hobby projects, but working with it day after day ruined my intrinsic desire to keep doing it.
Oooooh this is relevant to my interests!! After 20yrs doing web dev I crashed out of two jobs in 6 months completely hating coding. Can’t even bring myself to look at code nowadays.
There are many other reasons, but let’s be real. A lot of us ditched reddit because they dropped support for third party apps. Having an interface that isn’t trying to constantly milk you for all sorts of monetization schemes matters a lot, as it so happens. Enough to say goodbye to a lot of familiar and large communities with otherwise good information.
There’s many communities I miss, but without third party apps that place became unbearable. The equivalent ones are not as active, but i can actually read and participate in discussions here.
These days my Lemmy experience is listing through main page which accumulates god knows what. Even though I do curate a list of desired communities. Perhaps I should start filtering content I interact with.
You can mute specific instances. For example, not saying you should, but if you would happen to find all people from Hexbear insuffurable, you could make that instance disapeaar. Again, I’m not saying this specific community is filled with cocky asshole, but I’m not saying it’s not either. I really can’t as I haven’t seen any of their content since a long time.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that for a village to thrive, the creative people (the artisans, the musicians etc) must move in first, they form the roots, then the rest of the village follows them.
The creative people moved from Digg to Reddit. That’s what made Reddit Reddit, not the brand, or the UI, or some genius exec.
The creative people have mass migrated to Lemmy, & hence Lemmy will thrive. How do you know - see where og memes originate. Genius is not the domain of AI, & hence Reddit is Deaddit. We’re now just waiting for the rest to follow.
I’ve yet to see artists migrate here. The artists started on DA, Newgrounds, YT, Tumblr, etc. The professionals moved to Twitter.
Reddit started from geek & tech culture, not creatives. Its ability to foster discussion extended well to not just techies but to everyone. Most creatives I’ve seen shy away from Reddit.
I feel like that trope doesn't really ring true these days, as most of the "general purpose" instances are pretty moderate. Back when Lemmy was still just a small handful of instances, that was definitely the case, but I think the wider adoption has balanced things out a bit closer toward center, overall.
I dared to question how Nazis were still alive; instant permaban to my 10+ year account. They are more interested in defending Nazis than they are removing them.
Well there was a video on r/news where a group of cops beat sonebody pretty bad, body cam footage I think.
I commented “I hope those cops get what they deserve” you know like criminal charges of some sort. Oh no, reddit was perfectly fine with cops being bad cops.
And any recourse/appeal is not guaranteed a response, nor will you know if it is ever looked at. Nuts, especially since there are subs which I was on and had built a large reputation for trading, one of which no new users can register on. Fun loss of earnings from that day forward.
I was never really worried about reputation or virtual points. I just tried to contribute to conversations and be respectful. But Reddit has gone down hill. Soon it’ll be dead like MySpace.
Note that you can get banned from specific communities or instances, just not from Lemmy itself, as long as you are on a permissive instance or your own instance.
You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.
For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don’t find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.
In terms of the more populous instances, I think Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit before the site went mainstream, minus the jailbait, incest-posting, rampant racism and other degenerate shit that Reddit used to be known for.
steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”
…
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
There are some other funny bits in that article, like Spez having “large blue eyes” and once was a competitive ballroom dancer.
It can be. Once you get to hyper specific niches, you’ll start seeing communities where it’s more or less only a single person posting, if anyone’s around at all. In more general communities it depends what’s going on. There’s a few people in the memes and shit posting communities who I swear make just about every post that ends up high up on top/day, and are in half the comment sections too. In communities like ask Lemmy it’s usually different people posting, but the same few people replying
But, unlike reddit, you have a lot of options here. If you don’t like the way a community is moderated, start your own. If you don’t like the way a server is moderated, switch to a different one or start your own. The platform is no longer tied to a particular instance and the whims of whoever manages it.
Any given sub is only hosted on one instance, although moderators can be on other instances. I don’t know how moderation changes propagate across other instances. I hope someone else will explain that.
The tl;dr is there's a set way of saying these specific users are allowed to send actions such as delete on these specific posts, and software that implements groups (communities, to lemmy) ideally implement it in the same way. Of course, someone could always make a software that denies all remote moderation actions for instance, so it's always up to those implementing the AP spec.
Lemmy has a large userbase, so generally probably gets to decide a lot of these things, such as how moderators are listed when getting information on communities, and other software will have to choose to follow along to be able to work with the large userbase or raise concerns/give feedback if needed
That only applies to specific instances, or even specific communities. Just switch to a different instance or community, or make your own. If you don’t like lemmy.world, try out either exploding-heads or lemmygrad, depending which way you swing, and vice versa. Somewhere out there is the community and instance for you, and if none of them are to your taste, nothing’s stopping you from making your own - that’s the beauty of the fediverse.
Setting up an instance is not a resposibility that I want to have. I don’t wanna have to deal with trolls posting illegal shit that I will have to take care of.
And even without that, my instance could be defederated by yet another fucking moron with a log up his ass.
Well, if the moron was gonna defederate you anyways, its not like you’d ever have wanted to be on his instance and beholden to his rules. Like I said, we’ve got all sorts of instances out here - you just have to find your niche. From straight Marxist instances like lemmygrad to the exact opposite over at exploding-heads, to pirates over at dbzer0. Whatever you’re into, it’s probably here - just maybe not at lemmy.world. Try out lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works, or ask around for whatever instances fit your style. There’s even full, anti-censorship free speech absolutist instances around here if you take a look around.
You thought Reddit mods had a stick up their asses? Lemmy ones have a fucking modlog instead.
Fixed that for you!
I’m half-joking. Being completely serious now, I don’t think that censorship here is worse than in Reddit, just more visible due to features like the mod log, and lack of features like the automoderator (it’s harder to detect if you’ve been silenced if it happens automatically, based on keywords).
Gotta third this. I had actually forgotten how bad it was till this was mentioned because it never happens on Lemmy. Love that. I had a few posts removed for accidentally missing an obscure rule on Reddit. Do not miss.
Unfortunately, it still happens even here on Lemmy. I don't think we see it as much because most communities here have far fewer mods than adjacent Reddit subs on average, but occasionally you'll find a mod here who thinks they know better than their community and does whatever they feel like.
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