I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
There are no recommendation algorithms for content, you are one! Search for communities based on your interests and subscribe to them. The Communities view of your home instance and Lemmy Explorer are good for that. Because Lemmy is decentralized, all discussion isn’t centered around one site like on Reddit, which may at first give an impression of emptiness.
I also wrote an extensive guide about Lemmy few weeks ago.
Welcome!
I’m going to be honest, I would prefer having some sort of algorithm. Not only it would the things I’m uninsterested away, but it would occasionally show something new to me. I’ve seen people with “cjrated feeds” saying something about it being boring. The problem is not algorithms, it’s how they are constructed.
That’s a good point. That said, I do have options for finding unusual stuff when I want something fresh, so I’ve never felt uninterested. (It also helps that I’m tired of dopamine holes trying to create a never ending novelty coaster like regular social media)
Yeah it felt a little empty here at first, but then I realized I get way more replies on most of my comments here than I did on reddit where most people just scrolled right past it.
You make a great point.
I fire off comments without thinking much at about the same rate as I did on the other website but get replies on about ~50-60% here vs. ~20% on centralized media.
It’s really nice honestly. /gen
(And people are much nicer about tone tags here!)
Indeed, I quite like it, cause I’m here for discussion not just shouting into the void.
I find myself commenting far more often than I did on Reddit. I remember once that I lamented that Lemmy doesn’t have a “super upvote” in the way that Reddit gold used to be (which is a silly thought, given that I have never, and would never pay money to gild a comment). However, I realised that on this more discussion based platform, a short but meaningful comment can readily function as a super upvote. I think the lack of karma accrual for comments/posts also promotes this.
Same, I’m engaging more often here than I did on Reddit because it feels less like shouting into the void. I just wish there were more active communities for philosophical/political/religious debate on lemmy.
Also I didn’t even realize there wasn’t a karma system here, but that seems like a good call. I never paid attention to it on Reddit either (I couldn’t even tell you off the top of my head how much I have.)
Right? I think Lemmy is way more conducive to conversations than Reddit.
That guide is helpful. Thanks!
Very nice, thanks!
Karma does not persist and there is no minimum karma or account ages to comment anywhere.
Not entirely true, Solarpunk’s Pleasant Politics comm has an automod that bans and unbans based on recent karma ratios. The bot going back and forth on banning and unbanning me is the bulk of my modlog, lmao
[…] Solarpunk’s Pleasant Politics comm has an automod that bans and unbans based on recent karma ratios. […]
Do they have any documentation for that behavior? If so, could you link it?
https://slrpnk.net/post/11069853
That’s where they discuss it. You can check my modlog to see it in action, lol
Karma does not persist […]
I’m not sure what you mean; if I look at your account, for example, I can see all of your past vote scores [1].
References
- Type: User Account. Publisher: [“geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml”. “sh.itjust.works”. “Lemmy”.]. Accessed: 2025-03-28T02:12Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml.
- Outlined in red are the vote scores for some of the user’s most recent comments and posts.
it’s different than karma. points from every post have to be added to get the “karma”, which may can be done unofficially by using some scripts, but officially lemmy doesn’t do that,
- Type: User Account. Publisher: [“geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml”. “sh.itjust.works”. “Lemmy”.]. Accessed: 2025-03-28T02:12Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml.
Here is a great 30 min explainer presentation on the activitypub network in general: https://conf.tube/w/d8c8ed69-79f0-4987-bafe-84c01f38f966
It covers a lot of the philosophical and design differences that a lot of us are very passionate about. Welcome.
It’s small now, but growing. You can’t scroll infinitely for new content. It’s grown a lot in the time I’ve been here. The smallness can be a positive if you work to have genuine interactions with people. There’s no “karma” and some instances have disabled down votes entirely. You have sometimes subscribe to more than one community of the same topic (each on a different instance).
-
Read the global feed. There’s lots of content if you spread the net wide.
-
Block annoying posters and communities.
-
Be nice to other lemmites.
-
Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.
Another tip I haven’t seen yet:
-
It varies by client, but Markdown generally works, here.
-
Spoiler tags seem to still be a separate extension from regular Markdown.
-
Many of us try to be more careful to include ALT Text with images, as it supports both blind users, and anyone whose server is just being slow to load images:
Example of Image with Alt text in Markdown:
-
Welcome to Lemmy, here are a few pointers to help you settle in
Try commenting on stuff here, fun times.
Be careful though because Lemmy is a great echo chamber 😅
You’re right.
I recommend browsing /all to find popular active communities
You’re gonna look around and see a few old accounts and think you missed the early bus. You didn’t. We’re still pioneering.
If you think “why isn’t there a community for this” or “why isn’t anyone posting to this community” it’s because we’re small and we need people like you to fix those issues!
take all of the things you hate about Reddit comment culture and do your best to perpetuate them here
This
Here’s one I haven’t seen mentioned yet: many of us explicitly state our intended tone after our comments, to avoid miscommunication. Particularly in busy threads.
We have some great accessibility outreach communicators here, some of whom have shared how much it helps them or people they know.
Some examples:
- (Sarcasm)
- (Genuine)
- (Joke)
Sometimes these are abbreviated, but we often even avoid abbreviation - for general clarity, but probably mainly because we’re always gaining new users who might not recognize the abbreviation.
Welcome!
Lemmy.world is the boring “normie” instance and you’ll find it much friendlier than this place if you’re not a committed Marxist-Leninist ( that’s what ML stands for)
Ha! I had no idea where I was, thanks for clearing that up.
If normie means neoliberal bootlickers then yes
There’s the ML culture I was talking about!
Thanks for the demonstration.
Bud “thinks” big words must mean ML. Bet you can’t even define neoliberalism without looking it up. Obviously not even an ML user.
Neoliberalism:
noun
Controlled opposition
Isn’t lemmy.world very very USA-centric? And they are keen on name calling you as a tankie if you mention things that do not go along with their view.
I was banned from a community there, because I mentioned the Munich agreement and shared my view opposing what the community had in a discussion that centred around the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Yeah I like sh.itjust.works. It seems to be a pretty balanced. North American instance.
Yep.
There are a bunch of Anarchists on Lemmy.ml, as well as liberals and Social Democrats. Lemmygrad.ml is the Marxist-Leninist instance, Lemmy.ml is more of a generalist instance, but the users, mods, and admins lean Marxist.
Just being nitpicky, really.
A place with Marxist mods will not be tolerant of non-Marxist views. This one certainly is not.
If we’re giving advice to new users, they should be advised to find a more tolerant instance.
.world really isn’t very tolerant of certain views. They are very quick to dismiss people as Russian shills/bots for instance. I disagree with this instance’s views of China and the Russo-Ukraine war, and am not an ML (though I do kind of lean Leninist) and haven’t seen much bad faith name calling. It certainly is prevalent in leftist spaces (CIA bot, NAFO shill, etc) but this place is surprisingly decent.
Don’t mind me, just linking my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list in case you want to learn more. 🥸
I don’t know what to tell you, other than that a lot of the most active users of Lemmy.ml are Anarchists, and most communities on Lemmy.ml are not affiliated with Marxism to begin with, even if you include communities like World News that are more politically focused as “Marxist.”
Either way, I wouldn’t call Lemmy.world more tolerant, but tolerant of a different set of views. Lemmy.ml is more broadly federated than .world is, while .world selectively defederates from instances it isn’t aligned with politically. Even further, OP is on Lemm.ee, just asking on Lemmy.ml’s AskLemmy community, which makes sense as one of the biggest AskLemmy communities.
I’m not even trying to dig on Lemmy.world or anything, I just want to point out that it’s not really accurate to consider Lemmy.ml a Marxist-Leninist instance, unlike Lemmygrad.ml, or even Hexbear.net which is an umbrella Leftist instance.
So in case it wasn’t painfully obvious, I’m a total noob and don’t even know what lemmy.ee is haha. Do I need to make new accounts for each suffix or can I move it around—and what effect does my account being .ee vs .ml or whatever have on the experience?
Instances are like mini Reddits, many with their own unique flavor and focus (such as tech, LGBTQ+, politics, etc), with their own communities. You can stay within said instance by sorting locally. You can also see other communities on other instances by searching for them, or by browsing by all.
Does that make sense?
So if I were in a tech one for instance, the difference between that and just joining r/technology is that it aggregates all the sublemmies/posts that fall within that category? To kind of create a one size fits all home feed?
Not exactly, but close! Rather than pulling communities from other instances, it will have its own communities, but these local communities will usually have a tech focus, and thus so will the users. programming.dev is one example I know of. That doesn’t mean they don’t have other communities like for gaming and whatnot, but by virtue of being hosted on programming.dev, a gaming community there will likely have users more with a programming background.
That’s why generalist instances are, IMO, overrated. You can visit other federated instances, so your All feed will cover you for diversity if you want to step outside your niche.
Different instances go for different federation strategies, though. Hexbear.net, as an example, likes to have generally small lists for federation and remain fairly self-contained, as it is a space generally for Communists and Anarchists and does a good job of protecting its large queer userbase. Instances like Lemm.ee, like the one you have an account with, see almost everything, and are designed more for their All sort than local (though some communities are definitely on Lemm.ee).
Does that make sense?
Any political instance is cringe
Most instances will have some political lean, but some will make it a focus, which is a good thing to have that as an option for those who want it.
It becomes unhealthy when there’s a lot of biased instances, which I feel like there is currently
Every instance has bias, and will have bias, whether that bias is made public knowledge officially, or swept under the rug, at least in my experience.
There’s small bias, and will to have neutrality; and then there’s blatant bias and censorship. We’re in the second option here.
All bias is bias, neutrality doesn’t really exist in bias. Something being in the “middle” is itself a stance, not without equal bias for it.
Might wanna block universal monk. It makes the experience smoother.
Is this where I submit my application to be blocked as well?
Yeah actually, thanks
Edit: You’re just a big goof. I looked at your post history. I’d miss your shit posting.
