Asklemmy

I came at the beginning of the Reddit exodus in June and I haven’t noticed necessarily a shift to Reddit’s culture as it’s grown but more of just the general toxicity that comes along with a platform growing to a certain size.

There is a lot more trolls and likewise people who won’t engage civilly with someone who has an opposing view (because why would you when there is a good chance the other person is just a troll?). I feel like the reaction to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities or most instances degenerating from Hexbear have shown me that.

Lemmy culture still seems to be intact. A lot of posting is still tech focused and the is still a lot of good discussion. It just seems like a lot of posts that make “Hot” on the All feed tend to be more combative or politically charged.

It's the politics, and the siloing as a result.

I don't think so. I used to post every day so there would at least be some content. Now I don't feel like that's necessary anymore. I like it more now.

Yes it has. You can see this in political discussions very easily. There are too many people (mostly Americans) who are accusing everyone of being a Russian bot. This did not exist a year ago.

Things are fine man. There's just a lot of de federation lately which I don't think is exactly right.

Unpopular opinion, but I really hate the soft bubble space every social media is becoming and welcome the freedom of speech. I'm not saying people should be harassing each other, but it is nice knowing I could call someone a fucking dumbass when they're being one and not expect an IP ban.

I am relatively new here, having embraced Lemmy after fleeing reddit in June. During my short tenure I have observed a change in culture and decline in politeness and respect for others. However, I think that some claims about the rise of toxic behavior are overstated.

In any event, it’s like a city growing from 500 people to 5,000, or from 50,000 people to 500,000. Of course the culture is going to be changed. Such growth is important to avoid stagnation and death by attrition, however. I think at this point Lemmy has achieved a critical mass where it is likely to continue growing. When people ask “how can we grow Lemmy faster or further”, though, I question whether that is really a good idea. Sites like reddit are somewhat too large, which is great for niche interests but fairly horrible for the most popular communities.

No. Apart from the relentless political posting, you-know-what-instance and a small handful of other people being obviously bad faith actors, I actually think it's a chill, relatively nice little place. A bunch of people will have Opinions and not be too shy about them, I figure that's fine as long as they're not aggressively off-topic, offputtingly angry or shared in a douchebaggy way. I haven't seen much outright incivility so far, whereas Reddit is a fucking constant shit blizzard.

I do hope we'll stay vigilant about astroturfing and bad faith participation, though, because it wouldn't take much to ruin the whole thing. "Redditism" is a natural-ish development for any large website if there's not a strong culture for resisting it, but it did become abruptly and noticeably worse once it turned into a pawn in the 2016 US election. Politics, as always, is the mind killer.

From what I can gather it isn’t true that Reddit culture has completely supplanted what came before, but it has definitely shifted things overall, both mixing to some extent. Scale is part of that though, as is the filtering mechanisms provided by a relatively niche platform.

Antagonistic downvoting (I’m now basically against downvoting I think), superficial statements, especially those that are dismissively in disagreement to the point of unpleasantness or abusiveness … I’d say I’ve seen more of all these things.

One effect, I think, is the establishment of Reddit replacement communities and their gaining large membership which has shifted the centre of gravity here. The whole of lemmy.world being an example.

Besides all of that, I’d say I’ve seen the generally or more frequently presumed set of “obvious” opinions shift toward the mainstream, which isn’t surprising at all, but with a slightly ruder and superficial form of engagement (at times at least), it’s rather tiring.

It's the circle of life. Something awful, the digg exodus, reddit, Twitter/x. Think of us shit posters as a sign of lemmy success.

Echo chambers are echo chambers, no matter the platform. As the voices grow, it gets louder. Just because it's an alternative to the mainstream, I wouldn't consider the members here smarter, more enlightened or savvier as a whole. Lemmy just got louder, that's all.