This is a sequel to this rant. I came to the realization that Lemmy and the broader fediverse aren’t really fun for me. The constant ragebait and politics shoehorned into everything was dragging me down, and the only communities without ragebait are also without content in general.
So I caved and made a Reddit account after 3 years and it’s gotten so, so much worse. First is probably the “gamification” of everything. Reddit already had karma, which had its own problems, but it was simple. Monkey brain like number go up. Now they show you analytics on your posts and comments, and encourage you to improve them, as though you’re meeting a metric rather than trying to connect with other people. It’s gross and cynical.
Then there’s the notifications. I get a notification every time a post is upvoted, not just for replies. It feels engineered to squeeze every drop of dopamine out of you and keep you feeding the content machine.
This one’s more subtle. The simple Reddit gold awards that existed when I first joined in 2012 had already ballooned into a myriad of different little trophies when I left in 2023, but they’ve redesigned them and now they look like assets from a free to play mobile game, with the way the awards shine when you mouse over them to that particular bright plasticky round art style. It’s not damning on its own, but combined with the above points it’s another nail in the coffin.
Sponsored posts I think were already a thing when I left, but now there are ads in the comments as well. There used to be one ad on a specific dedicated spot off to the side. It was unobtrusive without being hard to find. I felt that was fair. But it’s not about keeping the lights on anymore, now the whole things screams “You’re the product!”
But worst of all are the bots, AI masquerading as real users that make superficially genuine posts and comments. Discriminating between AI and human content is probably a skill that I could hone with time, but I shouldn’t have to go on a witch hunt every time someone compliments me. I’ve even been tricked into wasting my empathy on them, all so they can farm me for content.
So yeah, maybe I should just throw away my router and go outside.
This is a very lemmy.world take.
Most of this can be easily solved with one simple move.
Profile Icon -> Settings -> Preferences -> Experience -> Default to old Reddit -> turn on
- No ads in comments
- No upvote notifications
- No metrics
- I thought they removed awards entirely
Only thing it doesn’t help with is the bot problem. I’m just assuming that everyone with a default username who hides their history is a bot, and anyone who hides their history in general isn’t worth my time. I still run into bots over there way too often though.
Edit: main disadvantage of doing this is that they removed private messages from Old Reddit.
I did this this morning and it does help a fair bit.
Go outside
I browse feeds for about an hour a day, to get a feel for the information and mark anything I want to deep dive at my leisure. Outside is great. Creating things is great. I would highly recommend it. Even if you don’t ever make anything “worthwhile”, doing is worthwhile.
Is rather die with a pile of poor paper-mache ant heads wilting in the humidity, than 1000 karma or 1,000 people who know me as “wireheadcrawfishscissors” on socials. I’d rather waste an hour under a tree, listening to the wind, than an hour listening to others rage and whine into the void.
The world outside is beautiful. The one capitalism has created is a Frankenstenian horror of rotting thoughts posing as alive through the power of electricity. It wants to eat you. That’s its only goal. Don’t put your head in its mouth.
My brother I live deep inside a city and the heat is unbearable. The wet bulb temprature here is higher than 30c. Being outside isn’t much of an option for me
I just hope niche communities comes here
I don’t think things are bad enough for niche communities to make the switch. For instance, I check out the Critical Role Reddit subreddit semi-frequently, and it seems quite healthy, rather like how Reddit used to feel. By comparison, Lemmy does have a CR community and it gets posts from some dedicated users, but the comment section is always quiet (which is unfortunate, because interacting with other fans in the comments is kinda the whole point).
It really takes an organized move, where the subreddit community as a whole decides to switch over. The numbers just aren’t here for most niche interests to survive organically.
Every once in a while I see some, so I get a feeling there’s a nice amount already. =)
But takes more effort to keep them healthy, as the network is young and relays to help with discoverability aren’t common or widespread yet.
That last thing you said.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
I recommend blocking communities that bother you, or individuals if it’s specific ones that keep filling your feed with stuff you don’t want to see.
Been doing it for years and it surely becomes serene without drying up the feed.
Also might I suggest making an account on Mbin instead of Lemmy? It connects to microblogging too so further posts to find, allows blocking posts by linked articles (you’d be surprised how much that cleans the feed), and it’s very responsive to Ublock Origin filters and Violentmonkey scripts.
About the fediverse, most generalist communities have rampant political agendas crossdressing as posts of whatever topic the community is about.
Yeah, /c/mildlyinteresting is probably the worst one I’ve come across so far. Yellow stop signs are mildly interesting, three-chambered peanuts are mildly interesting. News articles about the political consequences of AI are NOT mildly interesting. Important and worth discussing? Sure, but not here.
And then there’s stuff like this. Whenever people complain about the fediverse not growing, this right here is why. Nobody is going to want to be in a knitting or woodworking community that only ever talks about seizing the means of production.
Life is politics. Death is the only escape.
The first image is innocuous, not overtly political if overtly off topic. Off topic discussions happen.
The second, well you’re browsing a community on a “politics” instance. There are communities there and people who aren’t devoted to it. Unfortunately the administration is. And it ultimately seeps into everything. If its an issue for you (it is for many many people. No shame there) BLOCK it.
The only real answer when it comes to niche communities and activity. Is to be the change that you want to see. Take an interest or two of yours that you feel is unrepresented and start a community. Try to post content there as regularly as you can. And then as you go along. Browsing new posts. When you see other posts in communities you might be interested in. Simply take the time to stop in and leave a post of general encouragement. It can mean a lot to those who post and moderate. And encourages others to do the same. Realistically the fediverse isn’t all that different in many ways than early Reddit. And that is how it grew.
I’ve complained about this in “mildly infuriating” before, numerous times, and based on response it seems that a critical mass of folks agree with me. However as long as the mods are inactive and don’t remove irrelevant posts, the problem isn’t going to get resolved. (I try to downvote the really bad offenders, but since most people browse all or subscriptions rather than in the community itself, they’re probably not comparing the content against the community all that closely, so the upvotes for content always outweigh the downvotes for context).
I hadn’t thought of browsing habits as a contributor. Both here and on Reddit I always bounced around specific subs/communities rather than scrolling All or Subscribed.
I think the inactive mods are due to a lot of Lemmings coming from Reddit having a perception that mods were power tripping, so Lemmy mods are reluctant to act.
The mod issue is a combination of things. There definitely are power mods and power-tripping mods here (see: yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com), although I’d believe the theory that many mods here intentionally try to have a light touch. I think the bigger issue is inactive/awol mods, and insufficient mods (many? most? smaller communities only have one mod: the person who created the community, who may/may not still be around). Also there are mods who welcome most any activity in their community, because otherwise they’d be dead.
Hey I had never heard of mbin, that looks good.
Sounds like you’re using default or ‘new’ Reddit. Switch to ‘old’ Reddit mode and I think ~85% of that stuff should drop off. Also, in terms of the FV, sounds like you’re cruising “All.” Instead, I’d recommend subscribing to the kinds of interests (via communities) that you want to see. It can take some time to build up that kind of list, but the results are pretty glorious, at least for me.
Alternatively, maybe just throw your computer or phone out the window. That might help.
