It’s gotten a bit busier as far as new posts showing up go (been here since reddit api debacle) but we need like 4,000,000 more users, and then if we just held right there, we’d all be able to live happy little lives. There’s still just not enough people to support smaller, more niche instances.

On a side note: Doubly fuck reddit again. I don’t get on there to use it, but occasionally I’ll hop into an old sub looking for info. Got a notification that /humor deleted my post of a funny poem thing from 15 friggin years ago. One of only 2 posting I ever made that still occasionally got comments on.

I feel it’s changing positively, as instance admins and our tool-sets mature, and more and more people are becoming permanent residents as they’re either permabanned on reddit (so they have no alternative) or they recognize the value of a system that is not and cannot be controlled by a corporate entity and they US billionaire interests behind it.

However I’m also concerned that our yet small size has protected us from truly existential issues like dedicated spam and propaganda orgs, especially those who would utilize GenAI to be more covert. I’ve already published tools like the fediseer to help prepare for this, but I really hope to see more people per-emptively getting ready for this. I see way too many doe-eyed admins firing up instances without a care in the world, open registration, no captchas, no botnet protections etc and they either burn out and close shop after a few months of firefighting, or get defederated, or they have to re-learn a painful lesson the rest of us did.

This does give me an idea, we do need a more holistic “So you want to open a threadiverse instance” guide to give such pointers to new admins and way to get support from others. Hmmm…

It hasn’t changed too much. It was wild for a hot minute and then mellowed out. Some people feared it failed but it just stayed steady year after year.

It’s not just circlejerking about Linux communism anymore.

I like it here, I only lurked on reddit. There isn’t much reason to comment when it seems that everyone was in a competition for “who can post the best zinger comment first”

TBH, not much.

Which pleases me. I actually donate to my instance every month in order to help keep it ad and algo-free.

I haven’t read all the comments in here, and probably won’t. But based on what I’ve seen so far, I’ll be the contrarian.

I first started actively participating on Lemmy maybe a few months before the API debacle, but I’d also been checking the place out a bit for a few months before even signing up.

This place was A LOT kinder then. Users were more apt to stand up for each other and call out bad behavior. Someone called another person a “fucking idiot” over an inconsequential difference of opinion and multiple people would be on top of that.

The API debacle itself meant a lot more users arriving at a faster pace, and they were mostly a good mix of all the different Reddit archetypes – the good and the bad. To me, it seems like it’s the in between Lemmy picks up the, shall I say, less appealing Rexitors. The ones that were permabanned for no reason at all they simply said they LOVE KITTENS – and then you see their toxicity here and that internal conflict strikes where you’re like “permabans shouldn’t be a thing, but in this case, I can kind of understand why it might’ve happened”.

Anyway, all this to say, back in the before times, the Fediverse felt a bit more distinct, like it had truly had its own generally amicable vibe and culture. Now, it feels like this is probably “Reddit-vibes” but from six months ago.

Not that I’m hating on Lemmy, obviously I’m still here, and it’s still currently the lesser of two evils.

Lemmy didn’t have much content at first so you would run out of things to read after a while. It felt friendly at first, but certain topics still set off people at lemmy to the point I thought about leaving. Then lemmy seemed to improve and I could talk about those topics again, but now there are more trolls (even ones that seem to follow you around since they troll each post or comment talking about something) and spam bots that weren’t there before. I think a lot of conflict on forums like this has to do with miscommunication, but sometimes people are just mean and there isn’t a fix.

Has not changed all that much. Really depends on the instance you join.

It’s the same but I had to block a few users. Very Reddit-like in some ways. Glad karma isn’t a thing though.

Very little, if at all.

Diversity has increased by a lot. It’s not just circlejerking about Linux anymore. Only positives in my book.

Can we discuss the bots? Lemmy’s communities are being over automated and I see bots reposting threads from Reddit and other junk usually from xitter

I’ve been in fediverse since API debacle, I feel the same vibes as I do on Reddit, both the good parts and bad.

For example, same controversies on Reddit also exist here, and have the same talking points and flamewar nature. I had an opinion about Pitbulls (that an owner should be far more responsible than the average owner - I know, controversial take), which got me banned from that sub and several other furry related subs. Which is something that also happens on Reddit when you tick off a moderator of several subs

So for the most part, I’m just a lurker that comes here to get some memes. Sometimes I share my opinion if I feel like it. But I don’t necessarily feel that it’s an upgrade from Reddit in terms of communities.