I was just reading this post https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1gmv76n/is_reddit_going_to_remain_the_primary_space_for/ and many barely see the fediverse as an alternative and they seem to have a negative bias towards it. Super ironic when it comes to the self-hosting community. Yes, some instances are problematic, yes, some devs might have had problematic views. But it doesn’t really matter when it’s federated and FOSS. I think it’s clear-cut that the selfhosting community on Lemmy is a perfect alternative to reddit. Why is there such a negative bias?
ARE we a healthy service though? Setting aside how any social media can be addictive, Lemmy in particular is incredibly toxic. It can be MADE into something that is far more tolerable, but it is not that way fresh out of the box, for a new user - particularly a mainstream one - who does not know what they are doing, e.g. how to block, what an “instance” even is (neither Reddit nor X has an equivalent), etc.
Blaze, when he preaches about the benefits of Lemmy on Reddit to entice new users to come here, mostly tells people to choose lemm.ee, and even specifically mentions the tankie issue for those who are worried about it, specifically regarding lemmy.ml. However, lemm.ee does not block e.g. hexbear.net’s ChapoTrapHouse, nor does it block even the incredibly offensive lemmygrad.ml. I almost left the Fediverse entirely when I commented in each of those, and received WEEKS and WEEKS of replies (EACH) to what I considered an innocuous comment (e.g. “at least Biden lowered gas prices, which is not nothing imho?”) - I could do nothing (that I knew of) to halt it. Nor, having arrived in them via All, did I have the first inkling of what those communities were all about, or those instances. I did not consent to that! Having read the rules of e.g. Lemmy.World, and coming as I had from Kbin.social, I was not expecting anything remotely close to… THAT!!!
So I understand why my irl friends have all absolutely refused to use Lemmy, and moreover give me a dirty look for even having suggested it. It’s nasty. WE (who use Linux btw) know how to manage software, and can make it into something beautiful. But a day-1 noob with a guest or fresh account, trying to compare this place to Reddit, will not likely stick around long enough to see what we do.
As for the rest, I most definitely get what you are saying, and there are a couple of recent(-ish) posts in !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca that cover those topics in more detail, if you want!:-)
hm, maybe lemmy needs the feature to disable response notifications for specific posts or threads. Though that’s the less problematic scenario. The biggest issue in federated networks is when somebody is determined to stalk and pester you, though I haven’t heard of that happening here so far. But you could comment under each and every post of another user, since you can see all posts. And there is no way to stop that if they are persistent as they can just create a new account on a new instance anytime they get blocked or banned.
Oh I’ve seen it - some people receiving downvotes between replying to me and me seeing their content, which I thought was odd so I checked out their post history and literally everything had been downvoted. Obviously that’s a sort of troll attack (except one case where the person said that they were doing it to themselves, so as to imprint upon themselves how worthless those scores really are). Admins can see such and ban accounts doing it, but some instances allow automated signups so there can be an unlimited number of accounts that would need banning though, if someone were determined enough to keep making new ones.
But that’s not what drove my irl friends away - that was content that e.g. made fun of the Western world & society, and which they considered “extremist”, and did not want to see so they left. And as others have noted, if you remove politics and Linux, then other than Star Trek what else do we even have here?
A community, that’s what. But that takes awhile to see, yet they were already gone.