I feel like I'm spending less time on social media after switching to Lemmy
Maybe it's just because there's less content on Lemmy as of right now, but I remember doomscrolling Reddit, but now I only briefly open Lemmy once or twice a day.
Could this be an example of the affects of addictive social media?
The thing with mostodon and lemmy is that the feed is not algorithmicly tailored to you with the goal to get you to spend as much time as possible. That’s why these experiences are usually more relaxed and fulfilling than what the big players offer.
And that’s why I’m never going back. I absolutely love it here. I scroll my feed for a few minutes here and there, drop a comment or two, and I’m done. No feeling of missing something cool. I’ve probably seen it and I’m good.
OH! That’s fucking interesting and makes so much sense. Lemmy is the only social media thing I have now and that’s 100 percent what the difference is that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Reddit wasn't tailored to the user, the user tailored it to themselves (unless they were fool enough to use the official app).
It really is just that there's less content here, and the content there is isn't sorted particularly well via Hot. It's a WIP
How the Best and Hot algorithms work on Reddit is completely up to Reddit. They 100% tailor it to the user.
I spend more time on a social media with chronological feeds than without algorithmic feeds
Wow you perfectly hit the nail on the head with this comment. I've been wondering what "feels" different, and that's exactly it. When I'm done scrolling I just stop.
And that’s why I’m never going back. I absolutely love it here. I scroll my feed for a few minutes here and there, drop a comment or two, and I’m done. No feeling of missing something cool. I’ve probably seen it and I’m good.
Name of the wind was great. The only reason I didn't start the second book was the Author's refusal of releasing the third and "final" book. I prefer cutting things on my terms rather than being forced to. it sounds stupid but at least I feel in control that way lol.
Oddly enough, people are pretty adamant about demanding that we add a lot of addictive features into lemmy, just because they exist on reddit and on other big tech platforms. I usually push back, but I'm always downvoted to oblivion. I conciously wanted to avoid putting these addictive, psychologically harmful things into lemmy-ui.
So its great to see posts like this one. Social media doesn't have to be a negative experience, or addictive. The time we spend here should be short, and positive.
Short positive social media is my dream
What would be an example of an addictive feature that could be added to Lemmy?
Infinite scrolling, karma, targeted content.
I'm really thankful for it, so thank you for pushing back. One of the biggest reasons I chose Lemmy over Kbin was the lack of overall user score. I'm fine with posts and comments having a score — it sort of helps one determine what is and isn't good content for a community, or what might not be good advice — but summing those up on your user profile only leads to weird score measuring contests and a sort of "number go up" addictive cycle. Thank you also for giving us the ability to hide scores if we don't want to see them.
Thank you for that
o7
Does Lemmy even need any more features? Can we please avoid feature bloat and don't break what doesn't need fixing?
I think that depends on what you would call a "feature". Most everything I can think of that could be "added" would be front end stuff, and third party devs can do those if they want.
Mostly just better connection with other Fediverse apps (Mastodon, Peertube, etc)
yeah social media should be more functional and easily put away when not needed. I love the fact that I just don't get attention consuming notifications. I love the fact that there isn't an algorithm that promotes the most inflammatory point of view for "eNgAgEmEnT".
I just don't feel like a product here, it feels real compared to any platform.
I feel similarly. To add to that, I don't even like the fact that people have been pushing so hard for Lemmy apps. I get that people want something to entertain themselves with on the train or in class or wherever they might be, but phone based social media apps seem to encourage superficial engagement and doomscrolling by design. I much prefer a rich desktop experience as it encourages depth of discussion and debate. One thing I really liked on reddit, though, was something I saw a long time ago on r/TrueFilm. Comments had a hard minimum for characters. If your comment was below 250 characters, or something like that, it was automatically removed on the basis that if you had anything to say, you should have thought about it enough to warrant more than 250 character submissions. It also functionally murdered smartphone or tablet based commenting. I kinda wish you could do similar on certain lemmy communities.
Lemmy for me feels like the early days of social media. Think early 4chan and reddit. I do miss the days of simple forums though.
I'm curious, would you tell me about some of the anti-features being requested? I wonder what kind of things are flying entirely under my radar.
Well here's some upvotes for you, brother/sister man/lady
I mean those features are addictive, so it isn't that odd that people want their fix.
I have seen the same behaviour in myself. Reddit was the only social media I used and when they pulled the plug on third-party apps, I took it as a goodbye.
I see myself sometimes opening my phone to "do something" but I have almost no apps to waste time on. I've reused that time to do better things, which feels nice. I read a little more here and there, I learn stuff of wikipedia when I'm on my phone, or I get up and do something else. It's been great for me, even though I'm kind of sad to see it go. Lemmy is a great community, though I'll try not to start using it so much, just for my own sake and not on the fault of the platform itself.
Same here, but as of now just need to find things to fill that gap. Started reading a little more this morning so hopefully that will help with that
I was already learning Spanish, but not having Reddit has upped how much time I’m spending learning. So yay I suppose. Plus, less doom scrolling is probably healthier.
Same, I had a birthday recently and my wife got me a kindle. I'm not great at reading and often have to look up words as I go, but that's easy. I just finished The Name of the Wind and am on to the second book. I highly recommend it as it was easy to read and very engrossing.
I read every chance I get now.
Same. I find myself scrolling through my apps and can’t decide what to do. Got me to open Duolingo which I had forgotten was installed. At least doing something productive now.
I've found myself taking my Steam Deck into the washroom instead of using reddit in there. Play a game for 10 minutes instead of doom scrolling.
It's like being knocked out of a trance.
It has made me more aware how often I rely on my phone for cheap entertainment. I get an impulse to take it out and then remember there's nothing good to watch. Obviously I still make it on here, but the lesser diversity and higher repetiveness is throwing me for a loop. Annoyingly, it means more time scrolling past ads on Facebook, but I feel I'm avoiding my phone more. I have been searching out more long format YouTube videos though which is a tradeoff. I wonder if it's temporary and if I'll stick to doing more beyond these tiny rapid endorphin kicks
Take the win when you get the will to not listen to that brain itching. Basically fighting an addiction it seems.
This exactly what happens with drug addicts
Corporate Social Media are constructed to be addictive. Ever since I immigrated on July 1st, I stopped using SM like Reddit, twitter (only FB for old relatives sake). I noticed that I actually decreased the time I spend on Lemmy and Mastodon. I value it as the same kind of decision as the one that I quit smoking
I scroll for about 30 minutes, try to comment or post OC once, set it down and check back later in the day. I never did that on Reddit!
What are you doing with your extra time? I bought a keyboard recently with a digital screen that shows you which key to press, sort of like guitar hero. Also learning spanish and thinking about buying an entry level nice telescope.
Started practicing writing instead of looking at shitposts and it's been a great decision.
I love this for you! Keep growing and learning
That sounds really cool! Is a keyboard like that called something in particular? I'd love to hear which one you got.
I started experimenting with home automation. I have ordered some sensors and I'm planing to use the with home assistant. Talking about a big rabbit hole.
If (and it's a big if..) I am successful, I guess that I'll have even more extra time :p
I'm spending way more time!
I didn't really like the community in Reddit that much. I used it more like a news feed. So I never read 'all', I just read my subs for a few minutes here and there, but I didn't post and comment much.
Since coming here I post and comment a lot more. There seems to be more proper discussion here, despite being much smaller and quieter.
Yeah I also post and comment way more. I probably have more comments here during the last month than I had there combined since 2006.
I think overall my social media time has gone down considerably, but my direct interaction (ie posting and commenting) has gone up.
For me it helps to know that somebody is actually going to read this comment and it won’t be buried under 1000 others. You usually had to get to a post pretty early on Reddit to have your comment be seen, and I mostly browsed /all.
Less doom scrolling, more engagement in stuff you're interested in.
Just the feeling of people actually reading your comment and not just lookibg at the upvode/downvote to tell them how to feel does a lot for my motivation to engage.
Sometimes smaller numbers is good for the community.
I haven't found a way to hide posts I've seen yet. So I find myself opening Lemmy, seeing a little new content and then putting it down. There isn't a constant feed of new content to just consume.
It's been nice not to be inundated with a neverending stream of bullshit.
I feel like with Lemmy, it's harkening back to a period of the internet where you can approach it and put it down for later. It's not yet constructed in a way like all of the other social media platforms, that want to keep you invested, even if you know what to expect. Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter .etc all remind me of the days in the old internet, where you had web portals. These web portals were from MSN, Yahoo and AOL primarily.
They all had things there, to keep you attracted to them. They had their search engines, they had games, they had news, they had weather and many more things. All to keep you in one place and to keep you from venturing out to other places unless you used their search engines before Google became the juggernaut of that.
Social Media today, is designed now, to be like them. Except it's worse because they've got algorithms in place that they extract the data from, i.e you, to pitch to you things that you may be particularly interested in just to keep you invested.
For all of the numbers those social media platforms have, they sure do say a lot of nothing.
Completely agree with the last sentence. For all the hours I've spent on shitty social media, I couldn't remember a single post or comment I read there to save my life.
After decades of platforms trending towards monopolization, bring on the fragmentation.
The community here is small and I love it. Maybe I don’t spend as many hours on here but I also don’t get pissed because I read an idiotic comment, and I feel like I can post an opinion without getting downvoted to hell.
I feel like most of the critical news and politics makes it to the top political communities here, but without the 5000 articles of people rehashing the same stupid story over and over. If I read Lemmy world or beehaw news and politics, I have the gist of what’s going on.
Everything else is the meme trend of the week here. Not pooping, beans, vintage memes, Ohio, etc.
I'm looking for those top political communities. Where are you getting those?
The one I'm subscribed to has about one article per day.
I recommend Lemmy.world politics.
That said, it’s best to go to your instances website, tap communities, and search for “politics.” Subscribe to the communities with the most users.
I feel like I am spending less time on Lemmy but am more satisfied with my time here.
On Reddit I would scroll endlessly. I'd find a comment or sentiment that was wrong and start typing out a reply, or once in a while a topic I knew about or had a story for. Then delete it because I don't want to argue with an idiot and no one will ever see the comment because of the flood of "jokes".
I feel like I can actually interact with the content here.
Me too! I'm on kbin but same effect. I'm here less than I was on reddit but it feels like I'm actually interacting.
It's also way more positive and less toxic.
I feel that, my friends asked me how Lemmy is and I told them it's great, but I find that I spend a lot less time because it's harder to find new content.
I do, too. Prefer the Fediverse to anything else.
I have the same effects. But this is probably the best thing to ever happen to me.
It doesn't matter what domain you're on, break the habit of being stuck on these sites. The internet is regurgitation of content, and echo chambers that have extreme point of views that shouldn't be celebrated
Lemme isn't using some algorithm designed by an entire phycological department to be as addictive as possible for engagement numbers.
The splintering, the difficulty of the federation relative to the easy UX of the silos, the normal pickup time of any new thing on the internet, but most of all, [unlike Reddit and every other platform], there is nothing in the server code which is designed to keep you here. Go play with your cat, and post a video of it.
I'm contributing more- I made/mod a couple communities that I was missing and now I'm outside finding content for them more than inside scrolling.
This is the way; if all follow the way, our future does return to an endless scroll, but one of ever-ascending quality and novelty using gentle pruning algorithms that we each control for ourselves.
I'm the opposite. I find myself on Lemmy off and on all day. I use it way more than I have been using Reddit in the past few years
I agree. Now that I know I'm not contributing to a corporations ad revenue I post a lot more. I was reluctant to use Reddit for the longest time and then started 4 months ago. It was an easy thing to give up.
Also, the UX experience is much better. I always felt Reddit was super slow to load.
New reddit is slow. .old.reddit is pretty fast.
Same.
Although I have less knowledge now.
I am finding more time IRL now that I've converted to Lemmy. I'm learning a new language as well as learning chess. I think it's because much of the new posts aren't showing up in ALL/Subscribed so I end up consuming much of it faster than Reddit.
Thanks Reddit for giving me the push I needed to run the fuck away!
To me there’s less engagement right now in Lemmy than there it was in Reddit, partially because there is less content, but hopefully this will change in the near future
Ive experienced the same. The communities I enjoy are still too small on Lemmy (like 14 users/month) and the quality of content on local abd all is pretty hit or miss - so I just spend less time looking at it
Yeah this is actually preferable to how I used to open Reddit a thousand times a day for absolutely no reason :)
Same! I keep looking at R…and getting annoyed. I miss bacon reader.
I probably spent a bit less time too, but the bigger difference for me is that I'm doomscrolling less but instead I'm commenting more and posting more.
I'm the same, used to spend hours scrolling but use it only about half an hour. Quite happy about breaking the cycle.
Same. And I’m quite happy with the reduced time. When I tried to quit reddit cold turkey I found myself back almost immediately. But lemmy is a nice substitute. Content gets replaced at a slower rate, moderation is looser or less annoying. Fewer bot nonsense. And tough there is a crowd here on lemmy spewing a lot of nonsense, I almost prefer that they never get concealed. Shows more truly the divide on the issues. I almost don’t want lemmy to grow to Reddit size, tough I feel it might, with time.
Yes, this is quite homely.
I'm sure it's different for everyone but I was beginning to get burned out on social media and would have spent less time on it regardless.
I'm spending way more time online in general and on SM in particular, just not on one platform. I think it's because, in searching for something new, I've found all of these other places each with their unique culture, atmosphere, etiquette, and language. And each place is introducing me to new things (new search engines, browsers, streaming sites and apps, podcasts, RSS feeds to subscribe to, etc.) If I had stuck to Reddit, I just would've been doomscrolling instead of exploring what's out there.
Meanwhile, I'm spending way more time here than on reddit. Ouch.
Same here, indeed it's for the best
I'm fed up with logging in every day. Why can't I stay logged in for some reasonable time like other apps?
This isn't an issue on Jerboa
Use a different app. I've never had this issue
I'm using the web interface on Firefox and have only ever logged in once so far, when I made my account. It must be something on your end, do you maybe automatically clear cookies or sth?
Brave on Android. Cookies not cleared automatically.
On the Desktop I can login fine on Chrome, not at all on Firefox.
On android I'd rather use the web browser. So many apps I don't trust. Between Spoutible, Mastadon, and Lemmy It's simpler to use the same browser for all.
Using liftoff, logged in once. No issues alike.
Use Voyager (formerly known as wefwef). It's great!
I’m trying this Alexandrite app. It’s quite good on desktop.
I had this issue on jerboa, seems fine for the last week since I switched to connect
I've been spending less time on Lemmy and Kbin overall, but I'm more engaged and commenting more. Basically, I'm getting more out of the conversations here. Not saying the conversations on Reddit were any less meaningful, because there are a lot of intelligent people that posted and are posting over there (I'm assuming they're still posting over there, I honestly haven't been there since the 3PA Purge). Maybe because the amount of comments here are fewer so it's easier to read more comments and respond vs the wall of comments and still missing a lot of information. I don't know. But I feel like I can spend less time here and get more out of the posts and comments.
Same, and I don't think that's such a bad thing either.
Doomscrolling used to have a meaning of browsing /r/collapse and /r/collapsescience rather than /r/worldnews
I don't have to scroll a long time here to find the content I like. I scroll through until I find things I've already seen and then I do other things. I've had a lot of time to be creative without addiction-fueled social media scrolling.
Not sure if that is a diss or not
You can look up dark patterns and compare the two based on that if you want, that would be very interesting!
I'm the same too, was whipping out reddit on the phone at any chance, or browsing while doing something in discrod with mates. Now it's Voyager for a quick blast (honestly, I kinda hate the feeds, I don't have a comfy one yet, understand they're reworking it soon-ish) and for a good read, I'm back on friggin...SomethingAwful and reading some legendary threads from past and present, it's like a magical book of schadenfreude. Way better than mindless nothing on Reddit [Apollo].
Thanks Spez!
I still scroll both Reddit and Lemmy 🔥
Same. Especially for the smaller communities on Reddit
The algorithm of reddit would add content to your feed that you don't subscribe to. Even if you visited the s ti b to block it, it would suggest subs similar to it, because you once visited
I always browsed r/all, I subbed to a bunch but only went to them occasionally. I'm in it for the mindless scrolling in downtime and news.
I miss always having new content. I was almost 100% reddit anyway and now it's 100% Lemmy just with less content so inherently I spend less time.
I know technically I could be a contributor to content but it's just not me. I think I had ten total reddit comments the whole 14 years I was using it. It's not my thing.
I'm spending more time. I never browsed beyond my niche subs on reddit.
The subreddit I was active have not migrated to Lenny at all so I guess I will have to not scrolling like crazy anymore
Well I didn't spend all that much time on Reddit, I actually spend more time here because I reply a lot more and find stuff I'm more interested in reading.
Same here. I dont know if it's something connected to the switch to Lemmy (since I also deleted my tiktok and Instagram account), but maybe it's a contributing factor as more people here are feeling the same
Me too! I really like it. It makes me feel fresher and more open to the world around me.
Same. I enjoy it
It's a good thing, you don't need to be on social media 24/7.
Good thing that's probably nice is you probably feel like you're not missing out on anything if you're off for a few hours.
Really goes to show you how much they've made social media truly addictive, and not in a fulfilling way.
After spending a couple years barely online, I honestly have no idea what the hell is going on anymore onlilne.