Title basically. I was here at the very start of it all and really enjoyed it. However I felt it lost its uniqueness within a few months of mass migration and started turning a bit like reddit again so I deleted my old account. However Reddit has only gotten much much worse since, and Lemmy has stayed about the same. So here again.
there are increasingly a greater number of nutjobs, spammers, and hostile/miserable/angry people. my block list is like 300+ now. 6-9 month ago it was like 12 people.
2 years ago it was mostly super nerds just nerding about.
I’m curious what your threshold for blocking is. I don’t block anyone. I appreciate dissenting opinions. I can totally appreciate that there are bad actors out here, but a blocklist of 300+ sound like a curated echo chamber.
Feel free to block me.
Its gotten significantly less optimistic and more cynical. Its in my opinion more of a reflection of the state of the world than a Lemmy specific issue but it affects Lemmy users more because this isnt a space that allows people to live in ignorant bliss.
kbin imploded and piefed came on the scene.
I left reddit the day the api shit went down and came here. Same Lemmy as its always been but noticeably more people now. My feed is more curated. It reminds me of my reddit experience in maybe 2011 or so. As with anything on the internet, the experience is only as good or as bad as you allow it to be. If you see a community or instance you dont like, just block them and move on. Do I like Lemmy as much as I did early reddit? Id say no, but not by much. Maybe its my rose colored nostalgia glasses for early Reddit that keeps me wishing for things to be the way they used to be but its totally possible that reddit was never as great as I thought it was. Idk. Im here now and I dig it. Its not the same but I like watching it grow and it keeps me entertained when I need it to. Overall, its better than the invasive nature of what reddit is now. Thats just my own opinion tho.
Initially, it was not stable. Lots of outages and issues with spammers, DDOSing, CSAM, etc. Those issues are mostly sorted.
Additionally, there was originally a lot of excitement and people trying to rebuild the niche communities they left on Reddit. Unfortunately, those efforts have mostly faded. There simply isn’t a large enough population here to support those niche communities at this stage. Mostly, people have sorted into the major topics that are common (news, politics, technology, etc.). Due to the demographics of Lemmy early adopters I’d say gaming and Linux are also well-supported here. The federated nature of Lemmy makes it difficult for niche communities to consolidate enough contributing subscribers to hit a self-sustaining rhythm.
Despite the initial wave of new signups and the subsequent dip, I think the population is leveling off and stable. This is good, but also not the right long term trend as ultimately it still really needs to grow a lot. Monthly active users is just below 50K. In my view this will have to 10x for the engagement in smaller communities to pick up. It may take years, or it may never happen. A lot of that will depend on attracting more mainstream users.
Not really. Same tiny echo chamber.
More people around bitching that they can’t farm karma with their tired opinions.
I’ve been here since. I’ve noticed very recently big improvements, I think mostly due to a few bot accounts sharing a lot of stuff all over. Also though, I recently switched to default the “All” channel and just filtering out the communities I don’t want. It’s so much more stuff I’ve discovered that way. Sometimes I feel like dropping reddit entirely and it likely wouldn’t hurt.
However I felt it lost its uniqueness within a few months of mass migration and started turning a bit like reddit again
This has gotten worse but it’s still smaller and not algorithming your experience so it’s still not as bad.
I miss Kbin
Mbin is right there
Fewer people marveling about Lemmy itself, which is fine.
There are a couple of people who are now a constant presence. For better or worse. Some of y’all need help that Lemmy can’t provide. I won’t name a name but if you have to ask…
20 users think it’s them because they want the attention. heh
I miss baby elephant gifs
One thing I’ve noticed recently was a massive uptick of adolescent sex jokes. It’s really annoying.
That’s what she said
your mother.
It feels more like reddit now, but still is populated by a certain type of person that would seek out Lemmy. Mostly techy, left of center+, over age 30+, etc. I enjoy it.
Heyy! Im not old ye…ahhh, who am I kidding, you’re right.
The extremists are a bit much but otherwise I like it here.
This is the biggest change from my perspective as well. 3 years ago, I could participate in the news and politics posts, but I feel very discouraged since the patience and nuance feels gone.
How much of it is individuals vs how much is the US pissing people off, I couldn’t say, but the amount of people looking to push personal agendas has taken over the main communities and I won’t comment there anymore for the most part.
I scroll them for headlines and read the article if it’s from a good source and mostly skip the comments.
Every other community has largely improved though. There is a bit more attitude I think, but everything is much better here than at reddit. I just got diagnosed with sleep apnea and now that I’ve been feeling better I’m catching up on manga, so I’ve been scrolling reddit some for those topics, and whenever I check out other random topics while I’m there, it is way trashier than I remember.
I’m still getting new followers and commenters in my posts, so the userbase still seems to be growing here.
Been here since exactly the API debacle, and it’s still kinda the same, just less attempts to make niche communities become a thing and more clustering on the big communities.
Would have posted the same, but this exactly. Don’t know whether it’s a good or a bad thing really. Enthusiasm for niche topics is awesome, but you need to maintain that enthusiasm to have a community, and that’s easier with fewer, larger groups.
We also used to have a lot of ‘porn on the front page’, but that’s gone too. Have no objection to a bit of nudity, but there’s plenty of internet for that elsewhere.
