What do you think is the biggest issue with Lemmy?
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I advocate the opposite. Because people then see "lemmy.world" and immediately associate it with the rumours about the devs being tankies even though .world and the lemmy devs are unrelated
Maybe. Some people might not even know what a tankie is until they start using Lemmy.
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Yes, it's a matter of gradation. It's not an echo chamber for me because so many of you have different opinions, but generally we all care about what is true and the future of life on this planet.
So it's easier to have discussions around the parts we disagree over.
generally we all care about what is true and the future of life on this planet
But (to stay true to the spirit of debate I just defended) is this not itself a straw man? Do you think, say, religious conservatives would say that they don't "care about what is true and the future of life on this planet"?
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Agreed on all counts.
The real mystery to me is what value the echo-chamber residents get out of it. Why would someone join a group of people they already agree with, just to be told that their opinions are correct, and to shout down any interloper who contradict them? How is that not a boring waste of time? Is it that most people are insecure in their views and need validation, perhaps? It's a phenomenon I still don't understand.
People often accuse me of being a troll because I tend to voice views that are unpopular on this platform. Personally, I just don’t see any point in talking about things we all already agree on. I’d much rather try to change the views of those I disagree with - or have them try to change mine.
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The problem is the right no longer argue their points in good faith.
“The right” consists of individuals, just like “the left” does - and there’s plenty of bad faith to be found on both sides.
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lemmy.ml and its admins being the developers at the same time.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I don't think that in itself if the problem. anyone can host an instance. The problem is lemmy.ml being the apparent default instance, advertising itself as an instance for privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, and not mentioning seemingly anywhere in the description/rules that only red flavour authoritarian dogma is allowed in political discussion.
"America bad, therefore former 'communist' russia and current 'communist' china good."
Edit: it's not featured as prominently as it used to be on join-lemmy.org so things may be improving. they should still mention in the description that western viewpoints on many issues are not allowed due to "rule 1"
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generally we all care about what is true and the future of life on this planet
But (to stay true to the spirit of debate I just defended) is this not itself a straw man? Do you think, say, religious conservatives would say that they don't "care about what is true and the future of life on this planet"?
Good question, and they might. In which case it would be easier to have a discussion with them.
However, I think much of the time they cleave to a more Kantian morality, where acting correctly / virtuously in accordance with an identifiable authority. They may also believe that the future of life on this planet is trivial when compared to quality of life on some metaphysical plane.
I have this discussion with my neighbour constantly who is nice, but she keeps saying I've "got to have faith" and that "they have a plan to fix all this when the time is right" all while real people are suffering and dying, and their suffering is indelible — it can never be made to have not happened — and they will never be coming back.
It's really hard to have a real discussion about reality with someone like that.
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The lemmy.ml instance not being treated the same as the rest of the Triad in regards to defederation
Some highlights from the link:
"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin
https://lemmy.world/post/30673342.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558
::: spoiler CW: Original transphobic Comment from Nutomic
:::"NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
"If you don't support Russia then you just don't understand geopolitics" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
And a long list of bans/censorship and allowing the proliferation of known propaganda and misinformation outlets clearly demonstrating use of their instance and recognition to force a political narrative
PieFed doesn't have any of these issues
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People often accuse me of being a troll because I tend to voice views that are unpopular on this platform. Personally, I just don’t see any point in talking about things we all already agree on. I’d much rather try to change the views of those I disagree with - or have them try to change mine.
This exactly where I am on all counts. Stick with it!
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Maybe. Some people might not even know what a tankie is until they start using Lemmy.
I didn't. Tankie was a completely new word to me when I started here.
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Good question, and they might. In which case it would be easier to have a discussion with them.
However, I think much of the time they cleave to a more Kantian morality, where acting correctly / virtuously in accordance with an identifiable authority. They may also believe that the future of life on this planet is trivial when compared to quality of life on some metaphysical plane.
I have this discussion with my neighbour constantly who is nice, but she keeps saying I've "got to have faith" and that "they have a plan to fix all this when the time is right" all while real people are suffering and dying, and their suffering is indelible — it can never be made to have not happened — and they will never be coming back.
It's really hard to have a real discussion about reality with someone like that.
Fair enough about
literal religious nutspeople of firmly held religious convictions. This side of the pond there are very few of those, fortunately. My basic point is that plenty of people who vote "wrong" (Trump, for example) would actually agree with you on most of your vision of the good society. The questions are mainly over how to get there. This IMO is the tragedy of democratic politics today, and specifically the USA. An almost absolute breakdown in communication. -
I don't think that in itself if the problem. anyone can host an instance. The problem is lemmy.ml being the apparent default instance, advertising itself as an instance for privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, and not mentioning seemingly anywhere in the description/rules that only red flavour authoritarian dogma is allowed in political discussion.
"America bad, therefore former 'communist' russia and current 'communist' china good."
Edit: it's not featured as prominently as it used to be on join-lemmy.org so things may be improving. they should still mention in the description that western viewpoints on many issues are not allowed due to "rule 1"
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I don't think that in itself if the problem. anyone can host an instance. The problem is lemmy.ml being the apparent default instance, advertising itself as an instance for privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, and not mentioning seemingly anywhere in the description/rules that only red flavour authoritarian dogma is allowed in political discussion.
"America bad, therefore former 'communist' russia and current 'communist' china good."
Edit: it's not featured as prominently as it used to be on join-lemmy.org so things may be improving. they should still mention in the description that western viewpoints on many issues are not allowed due to "rule 1"
wrote last edited by [email protected]I realized .ml was fucking insane and delusional when they glorified Stalin and refused to recognize the atrocities he committed.
No matter what your political stance is, as soon as you deny negative facts and exclusively push the "positives" it becomes a problem and may radicalize you (if that isn't already the case).
What happened to nuanced moderate politics? It seems people unconditionally put the "left" or "right" label on themselves. And ironically these blind followers will have the audacity to call anyone close to the political center, or people who are honest with themselves, cowards.
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Im not your guy, pal!
I'll be your pal
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There is also a dearth of cannibalistic viewpoints here. And Zoroastrians are woefully underrepresented.
I don't come here to change my views (though it happens from time to time), and neither do they. I'm not ignorant of their thoughts; I'm inundated with them every day. I don't need to interact with assholes here. I don't want to come here and watch people scream back and forth at each other, and I definitely am not interested in participating—there is a reason I've left other social media.
You don't have to subscribe to political communities if you don't want to see political discussion. But the dearth of genuine political discussion here is a problem for the people who do want it, that can't be fixed by individual action.
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Or if instances used the word “Lemmy” in their domain names. I can say “go to Lemmy.world or Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.cafe” but if I tell someone to go “sh.itjust.works” they will get confused and wonder why “that site is not Lemmy?”
I don't think we want that. It sets some weird precedent that instances need to be lemmy-dot-something, which is both untrue and restrictive on server hosts as a barrier for entry if that becomes the universal convention.
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I feel like that's an issue that's exacerbated by the predominance of image posts over text posts, and text post only communities.
It's probably an issue with vote-based discussions full stop. Post something funny and it'll get votes because of the laughs; post something everyone in your echo-chamber agrees with and it'll get votes because it's right-on.
Maybe I just want to go back to forums.
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UI/intercations not enough different from reddit, so doesn't make it popular
Moderators .
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“The right” consists of individuals, just like “the left” does - and there’s plenty of bad faith to be found on both sides.
Is this like plenty of fine people on both sides? In aggregate, one side is far more egregious and it's not even close.
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The lack of content compared to reddit. If you look at [email protected] for example, there is only one post this week, and 4 posts this month. How is it that, with all the web developers and AI vibe coding shit, no one is actually asking questions?
When I was on reddit, I had to hide posts because there were 10 or 20 interesting questions every day.
It's a negative feedback loop. There is a good chance programmers asking questions NEED the answer (homework, work-work) so they don't risk asking in low pop forums, making the forum low pop because there are no questions.
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Issues that would be solved by time/gaining more users
- Not nearly enough people to cover all the niche interest communities that Reddit does. At Reddit you find an expert on almost any topic to help you with your problems and you'll find information on pretty much anything. Lemmy isn't there yet.
- Not nearly enough history. A lot of content is still good and informative after many years. Lemmy doesn't have a library of old-but-still-relevant content to search.
Issues independent of user count
- Search sucks. Reddit's search does too, but reddit is easily searchable via Google. Lemmy isn't.
- Onboarding is difficult, because you have to choose an instance, which is hugely important, but a newcomer has no idea what makes/is a good community to join
Issues that get worse with more users (aka, the potentially deal-breaking issues)
- Lemmy scales terribly. Every larger instance needs to retain a copy of pretty much all other content out there, and each comment/like/delete/update/... needs to be propagated to every other major instance out there. Adding more instances thus increases complexity and cost instead of decreasing it. Running a major lemmy instance is already prohibitively expensive now, with just about 50k monthly active users. If Lemmy was to scale to Reddit numbers (1.1 billion monthly active users, roughly 22 000x the number of users), everything would just break down.
- Moderation work scales just as terribly. Not only does an admin need to make sure the communities on their instance are moderated, but they also need to moderate all other communities on all other instances.
- Related to the last point, there's some legal issues as well if an admin doesn't moderate all other instances. Since content is copied from other instances to your instance, illegal content (e.g. illegal pornography, copyrighted works, ...) are also copied to your own server without your active participation. That makes it legally mandatory to moderate all other communities.
- Legal pitfalls in general. If lemmy becomes sizeable enough, all sorts of laws in regards to social media platforms will apply. That's one thing if the social media platform is run by a huge corporation with a legal department, but it's an entirely different story for a tiny group of non-profit idealists running the social media platform.
