Has the Reddit exodus killed the former Lemmy culture?

I came to Lemmy from reddit and I find it an incredibly nice place to be, full of polite discussions and fun posts. I haven't seen any of what you're saying.

It’s scale.

Scale is the enemy of social networks. All of them, including Lemmy.

Let’s say 0.1% of the population are just straight up assholes who ruin everything.

If you only got 100 people on a site, no one is an asshole.

1000 people? Well now you got that asshole Andy in the group. Fucking Andy. But we can deal with him.

But we scale up to 1,000,000? Well now you got 1000 fucking assholes to deal with!

It makes sense.

Most people who came here two months ago did so because they explicitly wanted to leave Reddit, but not because of Reddit content or the site culture. It was because admin decisions on third party apps and the API.

They still wanted Reddit, just with different Admins and different apps. Ideally, they'd have wanted communities to fully migrate over.

lemmy.world specifically became basically a lifeboat, having been linked to from original third party apps.

Yes, it was created and had the technical and resource requirements to keep up with the new influx of users without constantly crashing (in the beginning), but nonetheless, that meant it got the largest influx of the migration.

It's honestly a bit strange for me to see people in here with two month old accounts saying "oh yeah the culture has just changed so much".

You all were the change. It's that influx of users that basically brought Reddit here.

Anyone who came here before the API changes did so either because they had some kind of issues with Reddit, whether it was the dominant culture or what, and wanted an alternative or because they were interested in the open source and federated nature of the project regardless of Reddit's own decisions.

Though tbf, pre migration, this place was basically dead. Posts would have a handful of comments at best and it was mostly Lemmygrad users and also FOSS enthusiasts. Hexbear was the most active Lemmy instance and was a chapotraphouse lifeboat formed in 2020 but it didn't federate so it was really mostly just Lemmy.ml as a general instance and Lemmygrad unless you explicitly knew and cared for Hexbear. Neither was very "toxic" in their own communities and there really wasn't much inter instance fighting, even if there still were people on lemmy.ml who didn't care for grad, as far as I remember. I honestly mostly lurked and didn't participate often.

The apps also were much worse.

Things started picking up as the API announcement happened. That's probably when we had the best balance of positivity and user growth.

It exploded when the API changes went into effect and voila.

Still, I would say it's mostly still a bit better than Reddit and there's more effort in commenting for the most part.

I don't think I've seen a pun chain or a "he's not your buddy, guy" or anything like that.

This is such an "us vs them" mindset and it just doesn't work that way.

Reddit dominated internet culture for ~15 years. Reddit culture is just what internet culture is now. Any internet community that grows to a sufficient size will begin to exhibit the dominant internet culture.

Things aren't black and white.

After blocking most of the meme subs, I find it a pretty nice place.

I'm one of those Reddit refugees. I can't say anything about how things were before I got here, but I would like to add that I treat Lemmy a whole lot different from Reddit. When I joined there was plenty of talk about the lack of content, people only upvoting but not commenting, that kind of thing.
So I took this as a sign that I should be more of a participant and not the three-posts-to-my-name lurker that I was at Reddit. And I saw similar motivations with other users. So I do hope that at least part of the refugees have added a positive influence, and more so than they ever did when they were still using Reddit.

Lemmy doesn't have a collective culture. Each instance has it's own culture or will develop it over time, even though a lot of reddit vestige remains. (It's only been like 2 months)

I don't think toxicity ever will get too bad here, for the simple fact that if you don't like the say, c/politics of one instance, you are always free to go to the c/politics of another instance or even start your own.

Eventually, the toxic instances/community will bleed users and die out, defed is a factor but doesn't have too much to do with this.

As communities grow from obscurity to populated change is inevitable. I used to use reddit and the #1 thing I hated was the condescending, holier than thou attitude that was rampant. I have seen it occasionally on here but for the most part Lemmy is a breath of fresh air, so I personally don't think reddit culture has replaced it. I can definitely see a strong cultural influence from reddit but I personally think Lemmy culture is significantly different, in a good way.

Can you link to a few comments or posts that you think represent this nasty reddit culture?

lemmy.ml on a good day had like 15 to 30 upvotes on the front page. There wasn't much of a culture before.

See the traffic in April this year, a little over 4 months ago. Lemmy.world only been around for like 2 and a half months now. That's the most active it's been since before the exodus. The exodus definitely helped jumpstart the site.

It's quickly getting more toxic and aggressive. But we're not counting karma, so as soon as you recognize that someone is arguing with you in bad faith just block them.

The important thing to understand is that Lemmy doesn't have an inherent culture. Nor does Reddit, or Twitter, or Mastodon, or any other platform.

They are communities, and communities naturally change as they scale.

So yes, of course Lemmy had changed. But I'd argue that the inherent strength of the whole concept of "federation" is that any one particular instance only has to witness as much or as little of that change as they want to.

If you don't like where Lemmy as a whole is going, find (or create) an instance that agrees with you and de-federates from most others. win-win.

The point is that you are responsible for your own particular Lemmy experience in ways that you never were on Reddit.

Hexbear and lemmy.grad were there before and are as toxic as any reddit sub I’ve ever been in.

Nice. Lemmy is finally big enough for "Lemmy sucks now, the old days were better" posts 🥲

I thought the point of Lemmy was that people could make their own instance if they don't like what's on offer. It can be whatever people want it to be, and none of those are mutually exclusive.

I think I agree. When I first moved here everyone was so nice, respectful, and willing to have an actual dialogue. Now it feels more like Reddit where when you say something every just immediately jumps to shitting on you, even if they interpret what you said wrong, or if they disagree. I also feel like there are a lot more of the “well, akshewally….” Types here now. There also seems to be people who honestly can’t grasp this isn’t Reddit, and brought the same mentality/trends with them.

I think it’s still much too small to have that problem honestly

I find Lemmy much better than Reddit. But this comes down to what communities you follow in my view.

Except for a few power-tripping mods and admins I haven't seen much of Reddit culture here. And the blatant copy of r/place was a little cringe (especially as it was introduced with "let's create our own customs!").

I felt that way until I found out the bigger instances aren't even much older. Lemmy World itself apparently started as soon as the changes were announced but before any big protests began. Instances that were around even before those either were not very active to even have an established culture, or are so niche they're not really affected.

I read that some people on here go about it by blocking accounts that are repeatedly toxic. I like this approach since it directly improves your own feed and if a lot of people do it with time the reduced exposure these accounts get could improve the platform as a whole.

Personally I did notice a change in tone, but it wasn't the reddit influx, it was a couple weeks later, around the time the hacks started.

You mean the circle-jerk of six tankies talking about how the West is the definition of evil? Is that the former Lemmy culture you're talking about? I don't remember there being anything worth mourning.

As a movement/fandom/website gets bigger the more bad actors there will be within it. There's also less consequences to ones reputation for being rude to others when a community gets larger because there are more people in the community you haven't been rude to yet that you can still have positive interactions with.

I don't think it's something carried over specifically from reddit or its community but rather just what naturally happens (which also happened on reddit,) as communities get larger. They become more and more reflective of people at large, and right now people aren't doing so hot.

Beehaw is still pretty nice :) The moderation is part of why I joined it. I’ve definitely noticed other community getting toxic comments in the past few weeks, though

I love when people say they are glad they are bot on reddit anymore and create a new one. Suddenly everything sounds like reddit again. Artporn, foodporn, earthporn we get it you are 16

Everyone wants to pretend like the ones who left reddit where the good guys. Most of them just want the same thing: attention, controversy and bad memes. We where a part of reddit and as such, we brought reddit here too. Maybe is not you or me, but there's people out there who will bring their toxicity everywhere they go. Be it Reddit, Twitter or Lemmy

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kbin user here. It does not federate downvotes from lemmy. So far, I have a total of two (2) downvotes and every single interaction, including the one I got downvoted for, was quite positive.

No toxicity in normal interactions so far. The only (slightly) toxic comment sections were regarding meta topics of users complaining about toxicity elsewhere and/or wanting to defederate more communities. Even those discussions were nearly entirely polite and productive.

The only somwhat toxic topic I participated in was when one car-enthusiast complained about the fuckcars community and got called out throughout the comment section. Piling on like that was probably not the best way and they deleted their post some time after.

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.

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.

Yes. The old culture has completely been replaced. I still haven't formed an 100% opinion on whether that's good or bad. Maybe it's neither.

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.

Yup, Reddit culture and redditorisms have very much taken a hold in Lemmy unfortunately. Hell I remember that well since I came over here after GenZedong got quarantined. If anything I've seen Lemmy culture maintained only in the places that have created and fostered it for years before Redditors came over and which were actively combating Reddit culture from coming over.

Those places being of course Lemmygrad and Hexbear, I would also include lemmy.ml here if it didn't die a painful death. I remember it being a completely different place before, now I tend to avoid threads from there rather than take part. It just isn't what it used to be, fortunately Hexbear somewhat offsets this problem by having a completely separate and distinct culture. I like them, and I like very much that they are Reddit resistant.

You aspects of Reddit's toxic culture have you observed on Lemmy?

Tragedy of the commons.

It's most likely just a phase, though it doesn't help I made something for it.

The Reddit refugees came to Lemmy and made content. And everyone had a good time, except the occasional people that removed about toxicity.