On reddit I was a lurker that posted like once or twice a year, but ever since joining lemmy I’ve started posting multiple times a day.
Yeah, but I’m still doing it on purpose to help the community grow. Somebody’s gotta fill this place with content, and at the end of the day that’s our job.
Normally I’m more of a commenter exclusively unless I need the services of a specific community. (video game question usually) But the Lemmy project has sent me digging for all the best youtube stuff I’ve seen in basically the past decade and then finding the community to shove it in.
Same here. I have a 9 year account on Reddit with only a few hundred posts and karma; by the time I found something worth posting about anything I posted would either drown out in the noise or essentially already be posted.
the worst part is you’d almost always end commenting in a thread that gets deleted due to rules etc if you tried to get ahead of the curve and comment in a brand new post. I’m way more active here because I’m trying to help build the community.
Real non-sequitur, but I love the Marathon reference.
when it became about points instead of sharing people started gaming the system. we are posting to share, most others making it to any level of visibility are actively gaming the system.
i did some tests around it a few years back, getting notice with derivative gaming is easy but it just drowns out any real content. Only certain power users are usually allowed to the tops of pages, youll see a lot of the same names on the front page over and over.
clear sign there is no hope and discourse isint real anymore
I think the poll numbers will act the same way to moderate what people say. I don’t think total karma was important, it’s seeing a community you’re in agree/disagree with you, and all the dopamine/negativity that comes from that.
the challenge is keeping that around the goal of posting engaging content rather than a race to the bottom for popularity points.
Coming from someone with 2 million + link karma on Reddit, thanks. I burned myself out a while back. Just too busy now too. You’re good people.
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There’s also the fact that on Reddit any interesting article was probably already posted:)
Yea, like 500 times too. I really like the feature on here that checks around for other places the same video might’ve been posted.
Like, I shared a vid to Video Essays on LotR theme composition, y’know, niche but not too-niche, and saw it had already been posted in basically every LotR sub. But cool, I posted it anyway cuz it wasn’t in that sub yet and it was good content. But it got like two upvotes (probably me and the mod) and I didn’t have to really wonder why–oversaturation. Nice feature, big fan of it.
I’m in the same boat, I feel like I’ve posted here more lately than most of my reddit life.
I’m in the same boat, I feel like I’ve posted here more lately than most of my reddit life.
Oh yeah, same here. The community is just so much nicer here. :)
Still a lurker tbh, aside from this comment
We need you, too. As long as you’re upvoting and downvoting, you’re helping curate content.
Yeah, they’re actually the backbone of the community. We’re not the power that keeps the trolls at bay, they are.
Are upvotes and downvotes federated?
Yes. Not always successfully atm, but they are supposed to sync across all servers.
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Plus lemmy only counts users who have posted or commented as an active user. So making at least one comment is helpful to gain traction.
Oh I didn’t know that! Thanks for mentioning it, TIL. I’m glad so many others are also trying their best to be active like this, I’m really optimistic so far about the community building around here if folks keep this up.
Hey, I see you not lurking there 👀
Same. I see myself commenting a little more here (and posting my cat to various cat related instances), but mostly I’ll be reading and upvoting/downvoting.
lol semi-lurking here as well. good comment tho
I am but I’m very quickly finding out I have nothing to contribute.
Agreed. It’s a smaller community and easier to feel seen. I’ve probably already posted more here than I ever have on Reddit.
I just like that I can post an honest comment and not worry about being Well-Ackshually’d to death. Sometimes I’d be knee-deep in Wikipedia fact-checking and suddenly realize, “This reddit reply is not worth the personal effort I am putting into it.”
I used to be an avid participant on reddit, but haven’t been for a long time. Now on Lemmy, I feel like participating again.
I think it’s because it’s on us to make this a great place now. Like, we can’t just migrate and be silent. Or migrate and be assholes. We come here, we gotta participate positively, so I’m just doing my part.
Me and my people are powered by spite. I am going to try and be more active to help everything along so that reddit may die.
Same here, every post feels like I’m making a small contribution to a platform which I really want to succeed.
I am a lurker for life, probably, but I will try to be better for Lemmy, to help the site grow.
Always felt unwelcome posting anything on reddit. Lemmy is new enough and filled with people who are nice enough to make feel like I wont get yelled at for commenting or posting.
Posting is essential to get this community up and running so thanks!
I think that as a result of the size of reddit, it was unlikely to have engagement when you commented, and it was common to get unkind engagement if it did happen. It’s nice to have a fresh start, but since there’s less of us, it is also a much more intimate experience.
this is me returning to form, as algorithms put me into a hole engagement on my posts went to crap, i stopped posting at this level over 10 years ago now.
having a proper forum again, Im posting like I used to, my google fu is once again being shared with the community.
whats interesting is reddits algo would lead you to believe what you are saying or posting has no value. i come here, and started just posting as normal, expecting nothing, surprised but also reminded of how algos work when i found normal levels of engagement again.
Algorithm driven social media stopped working for the interests of its users a long time ago.
It skews interactions into the parasocial. Massive groups looking at one thing, everyone screaming, no-one except a few being heard.
Instead, social media should be many smaller groups looking at and discussing many different smaller things. Reddit still had some of that, if you went looking for it, places where everyone gets heard by at least someone.
It’s interesting to think about how algorithmic (and now AI) curation could work in favour of different goals but capitalism has imprinted its ethic into our new digital commons
until you cross an invisible line and are made invisible on the site because your speech is not as free as they want to claim. esp if you want to speak truth to power.
That’s not what free speech means. You can say whatever you want, but no-one owes you a soap box from which to be heard.
I’ll admit commercial social media is more than a soap box, because without it you might as well not exist. But on the fediverse, you can literally bring your own by starting your own instance. But that STILL does not mean anyone has to listen by federating with you.
i would not exist without commercial social media?
I was running BBS’s and forums for decades before these sites came about.
How am I still alive and in existence now because of centralized internet?
this is a fascinating world view, tell me more about it.
What I mean is, due to the overwhelming popularity of facebook, twitter, reddit and the like, using something else severely limits who you can interact with.
If you just want someone to talk to, you can do so anywhere. If you want to be a politician and affect actual change, even on a local level such as a subdivision of a city, good fucking luck getting elected if you’re outside mainstream commercial social media.
I was able to do that back in 1990 on FidoNet, again on usuenet in the mid-late 90s, on IRC in the 90s and 00s and using google to search forums in the 00’s until the centralized systems killed them. IRC, usenet and others still run, I can still email people I want to talk to as well.
What you are arguing for is a smooth, slick, paid for, UX. Minimal UI’s and typing “@” in names is too much. Looking at lists is annoying so you want it curated for you. VCs dumped money on private UX and now people think its essential. We have always been able to communicate directly, there is no technical limitation.
Its in the minds of the users and the unwillingness of some to see a different domain name or try a new UX flow.
Get some VC money drop 20m or so on Fedi UX and all of a sudden people will see very little difference.
Or just wait, I remember when the linux desktop was a joke too.
What? What am I arguing for? I’m only explaining my take on the current status quo.
What I like about Lemmy is, that you don’t need to be one of the first comments to interact with people. On Reddit you would easily be buried somewhere at the bottom but most Lemmy posts I see have a really nice comment section. People are more likely to see your comment because the posts don’t have hundreds of comments but there are still enough comments to start a conversation. I also love that I can have conversations stretched over days. I don’t browse Lemmy often. I don’t need to feel bad when I answer something a day later.
