I posted a few weeks ago about how I didn’t feel like quitting reddit just yet. and, honestly, I still have a hard time not opening my phone every five minutes to check it.
but I decided to quit because I realized how much of a negative echo chamber it was. I couldn’t even mute certain words on the reddit app so I had to keep seeing the same shit over and over again in the popular feed.
it’ll be a long road moving from one platform to another, but I’m pretty satisfied not being strangled by reddit’s overwhelming snark and negativity.
dunno if anyone here feels a similar way, but felt like sharing my thoughts.
For me the final thing was ubiquitous CCP propaganda and gaslighting even in non political subreddits
There is something very bad happening on the web and I hesitate to think about future consequences. We really need to get that EU army up and running pronto der Leyen.
Yep it’s out of control. There’s a lot of research showing extremist groups utilise social media to help spread propaganda, misinformation and recruit people. Cults can be political. It’s really scary
It’s kind of disturbing. Usually wars are something we think of as distant, then we go to the web and realize there are state actors, possibly with blood on their hands, doing social manipulation.
I got manipulated few times, maybe more times that I don’t even know about. Sometimes I feel like we should turn off all the social media because we can’t use them safely. Even knowing all this theoretically doesn’t make it better.
One would think that if you are aware of possibilities you can use the internet but there are just tricks to human psyche that work every time and you can’t really browse cat images and think constantly about some geopolitics or product placements
I know and it’s scary. Lemmy seems a million times better and I’m so glad I found it
Well there is hope that Lemmy is too small thing to be worthy of such actions. I entirely avoid any news and politics groups and just read newspapers without comments. This feels like a more sane and mentally healthy approach for me because I can deal with just the news author bias. That’s one person instead of judging thousands comments
The worst thing I ever done for my mental health was scrolling and participating in r/colllapse, quitting that made me much happier person almost instantly
I hear you there. I wish small personally moderated message boards would come back they were far safer
What helped me and my phone habits was the loss of Apollo during the API fiasco, and the immediate emergence of voyager, allowing me to simply replace the “check reddit feed” habit with “check lemmy feed”.
Plus, since lemmy is less algorithms (and users) there isn’t much urge to doomscroll.
Welcome!
It’s a weird feeling in the beginning. For me I was the same, I realized how addicted I had become to it, almost withdrawal from it. But after a while I realized what toll the constant firehose had taken on me.
You’ll notice we have less here, I view it as a good thing. Less content, but it’s higher quality. I check my phone less but when I do it’s less mindless scrolling. There are actual good articles.
Plus as you see I can actually chat with people here, instead the insta-hate I got on Reddit.
So overall, welcome! Let us know if you need directions :)
Ugh I know. There’s always been people online who just wanna fight but reddit just seems to have got nasty. The heart has gone, used to be you got random charity drives starting in comment chains and stuff like that, I’ve not seen that in ages.
I’m new so would you mind giving me directions? I’ve noticed there’s duplicate communities on different instances. Some of them don’t let me join or comment, is it cos I’m not a member of that instance?
Correct, not all communities are public and federated is the word. I think you’re looking for, where you can join the community from any other instance. However, we do try to do those things as public and federated so anybody can join any instance. There are multiples on different instances. It’s kind of up to personal preference. Which one you like. Or honestly you can join both, for example, there are multiple movies communities and I’m a part of probably three of them
Great thanks 😊
The initial move feels a bit like you’re giving up on an old friend imo. Many of us hoped reddit would change course or stop sliding towards what they’ve become but it’s obvious now that there will be no turn around. The enshitification will continue until nothing recognizable is left.
With Lemmy and the fediverse you have the chance to make it your own and help shape it as it grows, hopefully avoiding the missteps of reddit.
Welcome to Lemmy mate. Have fun settling in to your new home.
Any suggestions? I haven’t deleted yet (1) because I already have stupid gold and (2) because I want to find replacements for some important to me subs I’m on. Fora forums are close but I’m not all the way there yet. Cheers mate.
The honest answer usually isn’t what people want to hear.
Many people come to Lemmy thinking they can maintain whatever their habits were on reddit. For most people that means lurking and voting, not much else. Lemmy isn’t really big enough yet for that to work unless you’re only interested in the dominant topics here like linux and star trek, so people quickly get discouraged because Lemmy is “empty.” As if every social media site hasn’t started the same way…
For many/most of us the communities we were used to loitering in on reddit don’t exsist or aren’t active enough to lurk in without getting bored. That means we need to shift towards content generation/creation/sharing rather than just consumption. Not everyone is going to be comfortable doing that. It also isn’t going to happen over night.
The only way Lemmy will grow and become what you/we want it to be is by sticking around and participating. For many of us that means doing different things than we were used to on reddit. Lemmy is still very much in the early stages of it’s development and culture and it’s up to the users to decide what kind of place it’s going to be. It takes time and effort, and understanding that Lemmy is not and will never be reddit.
If people want reddit, it’s still there for them. Lemmy is still forming an identity and we’re all a part of it.
