I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it’s “dogshit” and “not going anywhere” get systematically upvoted.

Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like “yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org 🤦‍♂️

It’s frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that “Lemmy is not ready yet” and that there’s “no viable alternative to Reddit”.

This and the overwhelming number of comments being “against the mod protests” just prompts me to question whether there isn’t some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.

  • Zebov@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Probably bots. Reddit has been using them for some time, but recently got caught using chat gpt or something similar to argue against the blackouts.

    • bloodtide@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Which is fking insane since one of Steve’s excuses for upping API pricing so high is to fight LLM from training on “their” dataset! Fucking LOL

    • Mon0@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The majority aren‘t bots. Most of them are legit no lifers to whom Reddit going down the drain would be a huge blow. I mean you work full time as a cashier for taco bell and you are not really happy with that situation. Some people go to school again, learn a skill… others spend all their time one Reddit stockpiling karma. Those are the people who really hate lemmy and anything that could remotely make Reddit worse, because they are heavily invested in the platform for the wrong reasons.

  • Wander@yiffit.net
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    1 year ago

    Unfortunately there’s probably a large amount of users who simply don’t care.

    But that’s okay. What matters is content creators, not content consumers. Anyone with half a gram of decency and self integrity will have realized that they need to take steps to move away from Reddit.

    • YolkBrushWork402@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      When the content creators leave and go to Lemmy/Kbin, eventually those content consumers will leave and go with them too. Will be a bonus for the Fediverse

      • Wander@yiffit.net
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        1 year ago

        We need to ask Louis Rossmann to join the fediverse. He’s been super critical with Reddit on YouTube.

        • impulse@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m sure he’s already aware and will make an account if he wants to.

          There’s no point in shoving the Fediverse in someone’s face.

        • Joph@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Kbin, like Mastodon and Lemmy, is another way to interact with the fediverse through ActivityPub. Like Lemmy, it’s similar to reddit in style.

    • Houdini@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. Let the milquetoast mouth-breathers stay behind. With sufficient brain-drain, Reddit will eventually look like Quora.

  • Extra_Cucumber_2979@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Once - unfortunately - Apollo app will be down, in less than 2 weeks, I’m pretty sure Lemmy will surge and they will come complaining here 😅

  • XanXic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s sort of an asshole problem. All the cool people are walking away from Reddit, or at the very least trying to support the blackout/boycott. So all that’s left are the chronically online people, apathetic lurkers, and assholes who purposefully don’t care. The assholes are now seeming more vocal because all the logical voices are burned out or gone. Provided the good contributors/commenters stay away. Eventually lurkers won’t enjoy a ton of pissy comments on everything and look for more interesting discussion to peruse. Then the assholes will just be being assholes to each other, then be like man this place is full of assholes, and go look for a healthier community to be an asshole too because they don’t want people who fight back like they do lol.

    • cranstonapple@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Hey hey hey. I’m chronically online. That’s why I care enough to be here instead of Reddit!

  • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Here’s the thing - we’ve been raised from birth to think “people don’t make things, companies do”.

    Most people have never used software that isn’t company branded, they’ve never sat in a chair made by someone they know, they’ve never pulled food out of the ground. Almost all jobs set someone up doing a service with a supply chain behind them or doing one small step of something bigger.

    It’s learned helplessness. They don’t have the concept of how they could do things outside of the hierarchy - solid chance they’ve tried, and since their skills are hyper-specialized and rely on big, expensive tools, they found they had a lot of gaps.

    Anything you do outside of a company is a hobby to most people. And even then, people organize into sports leagues and buy fancy toys instead of just meeting up in the park with a ball… Do you really need to play by professional rulesets when you’re just trying to exercise?

    This time around, I didn’t bother to explain why the decentralization is so important to my friends and family - even the technical ones are almost afraid of the idea of it.

    Instead, I told them about the ways Reddit has picked up the harmful strategy that Facebook used, and that makes mobile gaming so addicting yet so unfulfilling: show them less of the content they want to change the reward schedule, training you to use the app longer for a smaller dopamine hit. Show you content that will make you feel angry, driving up engagement. And most importantly, always wave the promise of another dopamine hit.

    The app is eggregious - it sprinkles in stuff from top communities I left a long time ago because they suck, it gives you suggestions for new communities and presents them like interaction from other users, and it sends you notifications to tempt you back in all the time.

    And this is just the beginning, it’s going to get a lot worse With all the other social networks eyeing their own strategies to squeeze their users, it’s going to suck across the board, and good luck trying to build relationships outside these platforms

    I think it’s important to remember we’re animals, and we’re not just trainable, we’re the most trainable by a large margin. The best of us have just a handful of moments where we see beyond our instincts and conditioning, and decide to train ourselves

    This project is important, because it can give us back communities small enough to get to know each other, while providing a larger forum for ideas, and with a design that can shrug off attempts to control it.

    It’s going to fragment. Sections of it will break off into echo chambers, admins will sell out their users, and parts will offer a curated walked garden hosted. But it can survive all that because of one simple truth - unless one person captures the majority of the network, they’re going to have to cut off the best part of the network. Social media can be profitable without sucking, but to rake in profits it has to suck - and even then, we can start up servers for friends and family, and rebuild the network organically

    I’m working for an app streamlined enough I can send it to my mom and have her sign up without getting scared off, and I think I’ve got a solid idea of how to improve discovery of communities without becoming distributed rather than decentralized. Other people are building their own visions of what this can become, and a lot of people are writing impressive code (Lemmy has no business scaling as well as it has), and the beauty of it is that it all competes while adding to the whole.

    I’ve been at it for 30 hours now, but I can’t shake the feeling that me getting this out this out in the next few days is going to matter if this is going to become what I hope instead of another shard of Reddit.

    But every time I step away to take a breather, I end up back on here and see a glimpse of what this could be

    The only way to change the world is to release something self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing and intrinsically positive, and hope it grows

    • jpenczek@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My biggest issue with Lemmy is lack of userbase… which is fixable by signing up for Lemmy.

      Figured best case scenario other people make the switch, worst case I’ll forget this service even exists.

      Also does anyone know how to enable dark mode, or if there is a dark mode?

      • Mintyytea@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        yeah that’s what I’m struggling with too, like it’d be great if we could encourage people to try these, but at the same time I don’t want to give them a bad first impression to turn them off forever if they can not stand it’s still a baby project (understandable). I honestly don’t think it’s that hard to start using these fediverse products though, and I feel like the posts saying “lemmy will never take off”, “kbin is too hard to use” only gave me barriers to start using it. And then when I did start, I was like oh this is great, everyone’s talking, it’s a close community

        • moon_matter@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The biggest issue is how easily people are taken “off-site” when linking to another instance, leaving them essentially logged out and unable to subscribe or otherwise participate. Users should be presented an option to be redirected to the relative view within their instance or go external. With the “external” link in much smaller font below the preferred option. Kind of like how Steam or Discord has a pop-up asking if you “trust this site” whenever you leave their spaces.

  • Warped@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Reddit is known for it’s use of bots. Bots helped Reddit grow in its early days. I’m not surprised that bots are being used now. As more people leave, I’m sure more bots will get used to give the impression of an active community. Just lie they did in those early days.

  • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    There’s definitely corpo sockpuppets and bots involved, some of which have even straight up posted AI bot warnings about not being able to generate offensive content (oops!) but there’s plenty of ignorant people too.

    That said, I’m kind of OK with them staying on reddit because people like that had been making reddit progressively worse for years and years at it gained popularity. Hopefully the relative obscurity of Lemmy will prevent that from happening for a while yet.

  • NRVulture@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Of course there’s no viable alternatives to Reddit. Why would someone create another dumpster fire?

  • lachjeff@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I reckon it’s mostly bots set up by Reddit admins and sad-sack mods who consider Reddit moderation to be a full-time job

    • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Also, people have a natural tendency to form “teams.” Even if they don’t particularly like what Reddit’s admins have been doing they may identify as part of “team Reddit” and so see other teams as the enemy.

      • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        There was a legendary episode in social psychology called the Robbers Cave experiment. It had been set up in the bewildered aftermath of World War II, with the intent of investigating the causes and remedies of conflicts between groups. The scientists had set up a summer camp for 22 boys from 22 different schools, selecting them to all be from stable middle-class families. The first phase of the experiment had been intended to investigate what it took to start a conflict between groups. The 22 boys had been divided into two groups of 11 -

        • and this had been quite sufficient.
      • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Besides, the way to convert isn’t by arguing. You do it by providing a good platform (not there yet), good content (not there yet) and good community (kinda there?).

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’d say we’re at “okay platform” level, and “okay content if you’re into the specific things we’ve got okay content for at this point.”

          It’s a gradual process. The Fediverse is slowly getting better, and Reddit is slowly getting worse, and eventually someday they’ll pass each other in the wilderness.

    • Dav@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Amen, if Reddit ever died it would probably survive living rent free in Lemmy users’ heads.

      • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Eh, Digg is nothing more than a historical note to most who left in the exodus, but there was a time when it made up a large % of the posts on Reddit. People will move on, but for now the wounds are still fresh.