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gabe [he/him] @literature.cafe

My Love-Hate Relationship With Lemmy – Gavi's Blog

I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

89 comments

  • 👏👏👏👏👏

    Well said. I don't disagree with a single point you made, and some of it echos concerns I've had since day 1. And extra points for calling out .ml as lemmygrad-lite. I think I've called it exactly that as well.

    The only thing I really have to add is on the topic of toxicity. Like you, I'm an instance admin and have a bird's eye view of a lot of behavior patterns. I've recently started wondering how many people are here because they're too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here. I won't guess an actual number, but I would say it's not insignificant.

    I'm firmly the latter case: I want to be here, I want this to succeed, and I'm trying to put in the work toward that result. And I've interacted with lots and lots of people in the same boat. But, like you, I'm also growing disillusioned for many of the same reasons.

    On the bright side, I've gotten much less rusty as a developer after having to write scrips and tools to fill in the massive gaps in moderation features.

    • The only thing I really have to add is on the topic of toxicity. Like you, I’m an instance admin and have a bird’s eye view of a lot of behavior patterns. I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here. I won’t guess an actual number, but I would say it’s not insignificant.

      That's unfortunately a big issue with alternative social media platforms and without tools to combat them it goes bad really bad. I agree completely.

      • Honestly coming here and starting my own instance and providing help for other instances and stuff has reignited my long lost love of computers and open source stuff. The passion for it is thankfully coming back.

    • I once wondered aloud here about if anybody else had noticed a lot of toxic members from certain communities, only to receive replies from members in those communities claiming that it was all fine and there wasn't any toxicity. Then I'd look at their history and notice they were a very toxic person. From my limited point of view I can say there might be some credence to your statement.

    • I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here.

      Dude yes, I've been thinking the same thing. I worry that users curious to leave reddit are going to go to a big instance, see concentrated worst-parts-of-reddit, and decide it's not for them.

      In theory, decentralization enables freedom from the average user being forced to put up with toxicity. But we don't really have that (yet) until the ratio of jerk to non-jerk improves.

    • I've recently started wondering how many people are here because they're too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here.

      This has largely been my operating assumption as well since day one when I came over during the Reddit API lockdown. I was fairly active on a NSFW alt up until recently and I've actually seen dozens of comments from new users mentioning that the only reason they were here on Lemmy was because they were banned from Reddit and had no other viable options. They were always an asshole to the posters and the reality is that with a lower population of users is that there aren't enough other voices to drown out these people yet and you end up with a feedback loop of toxicity.

      • the reality is that with a lower population of users is that there aren't enough other voices to drown out these people

        Yep. That, plus the jerks are always the loudest among any crowd.

        That's one of the big perks of running my own instance. It's been a site rule from the start that it's absolutely not there to be a refuge because you're banned elsewhere. And I do ban toxic accounts (local and federated) very quickly. Lol, if .ml is "Lemmygrad-lite" mine can probably be described as "Beehaw-lite".

  • There are a lot of good points here, I appreciate the time you put into it.

    As an end user of both Lemmy and Mastodon, it's always an eye opener to see how developers greet user requests and suggestions with curt or snarky replies. Even "Why don't you open an issue on our source tracker" will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.

    My own concerns are more on my own level, though. It resonates with me when you write —

    The Fediverse has its own existing cultures that thrive here. And when you enter a space that already exists you need to be mindful of that to prevent issues from occurring.

    I've seen a few user migration waves, and I think your description of (some) Lemmy users who just want a drop-in Reddit replacement is on point. Mastodon has had its share of Twitterati who surged in trying to recreate their previous circles and tone. Obviously, it's a generalisation but we do need to face the problem.

    The transition from a walled garden environment like Reddit or Twitter — moderated by professionals or enthusiasts, and algorithmically curated — to a federated space with carefully cultivated etiquettes will never be like simply picking up a conversation in another UI.

    I'd be interested how a project like Sublinks would/could accommodate the existing fediverse cultures, and hopefully bridge the cognitive gap that seems to exist between threadiverse and fediverse?

  • These are some really good points. I’m personally more interested in the development of PieFed than SubLinks due to the focus on making it easy to contribute, the developer cares about usability and mod tools, its in Python, and the developer posts dev blogs and answers questions on mastodon https://join.piefed.social/blog/

    • I'm the founder of Sublinks. I'm happy to answer questions. You can find me on Mastodon @sublinks@utter.online. You're right about the dev blog. We have a weekly Sublinks team meeting, the results of that could go into a weekly dev update. I've just been more focused on coding than community stuff. I'll do better.

      • I joined the listed Matrix chat for sublinks to discuss and learn more about the platform; but it seems entirely dead. Is there another reasonable platform for discussion and beta testing/installation?

    • Piefed looks very promising indeed

  • This blog post by a Lemmy user who accidentally uploaded his ID and dealt with the nightmare after describes in great detail the ridiculous steps instance admins need to take to remove images from the backend image server that Lemmy depends on. (as well touches upon the developer behavior aspect I will highlight later.)

    You misgendered the author of that post, they use they/them pronouns.

    Edit: I was mistaken about who the author of that post was.

  • Yes! This blog post is fantastic. I read your article through this archive link (since my phone is being finicky with the direct site) and loved it and I'm glad you wrote it! You totally nailed it on every point and voiced a lot of things I've noticed and concerns I've had.
    On the topic of non-anonymous reports: I've definitely already found myself hesitating or declining to make reports I feel should be made purely because they're not anonymous. Sometimes because the people I want to report are admins. I've already had weird situations of people following me around to other posts because they disagree with me and I don't want to add to that type of thing. Although I can understand that there are some potential upsides to being able to tell who is making reports, like to prevent misuse or spam... I dunno.

    Thanks a lot for sharing it with us here! and thank you for the warning at the top about mentioning CSAM - and for calling it CSAM and not the other, worse, seemingly more prevelent term. I appreciate it and I appreciate you! :)

    • On the topic of non-anonymous reports: I’ve definitely already found myself hesitating or declining to make reports I feel should be made purely because they’re not anonymous. Sometimes because the people I want to report are admins.

      My instance had a similar situation where a user on a large instance (not beehaw) was reported, and the reports only encouraged the person, who posted the reports publicly and called upon others to join. The admins were slow to deliberate, ultimately took no action, and although I think they mean well, do not strike me as up to the task of running a large social media platform.

      Requiring individual users to block the largest instances (and their communities) in order to peacefully use a platform is just Reddit with extra steps. Without decentralization we just have, as the author put it, Reddit 2.0.

  • I'm relieved to hear you'll still be running your instance despite these issues! Are you thinking of potentially moving the Literature Cafe forums to Sublinks?

    I definitely hear you on the moderation difficulties... with the Fediverse being as far-reaching as it is, good moderation tools are essential and it seems like Lemmy simply doesn't have these available.

  • Very interesting post, very long but also interesting. I also agree with most of the points.

    But I wonder why there is no mention of /kbin which has been a compatible alternative to Lemmy even during the Reddit exodus. It's also written in PHP which many people should have a much easier time to contribute to than Lemmy's Rust.

    • I've heard Kbin has been having major issues lately, the single dev is not the most active. There is a fork called mbin which seems promising.

      They are different from Lemmy, though, and not for everyone. But variety is good.

  • I don’t understand what’s happening in the chat, and people are super salty and not open to discussions so I see what you mean.

  • thanks for sharing :)

    Unrelated question: I see a bunch of "X user liked this" and "Y user boosted this" and comments from what appears to be Mastodon on the bottom of your blog post. What wordpress plugin do you use to show the activity of the post being shared on the fediverse, at the bottom?

    • I use some of the plugins from this plugin suite: https://wordpress.org/plugins/indieweb/

      I don't use all of them, but I mainly use the indieauth, syndication, and webmentions.

      Webmentions & syndication are how I get the "X user liked this" and stuff, it's webmention display. I use brid.gy and connect it to my microblog fediverse account and it checks the replies to the syndicated post I make and pings it to the blog via webmentions. It's pretty solid. If you need any help setting it up I'm here though.

  • This is the first time I heard of Sublinks, and honestly after a quick look through here in Lemmy I get the impression that main devs of Lemmy and Sublinks can work together to improve what it is currently the best option (Lemmy).

    I honestly think it is way too early to have a Lemmy "replacement" even if it is all running in the Fediverse, I just think it is a split of efforts, granted, I don't know all the background that runs behind and it seems like Sublinks dev does it like a hobby too.

    Regarding moving communities to Sublinks, yeah, it is up to instance maintainers, but that is a no for me, heck, I already had to recreate my stuff from the dead FMHY account I had (there was no account migration at the time), it seems like adding more decentralization to me, and we already had that with multiple repeated communities ¯(ツ)/¯

    Finally, don't get me wrong, options and alternatives are always welcome in my book, but as I said before, it feels like way too early for me.

89 comments