Is Lemmy a good alternative?
Is Lemmy a good alternative?
New here. Migrated from Reddit. Still trying to figure out Lemmy - what's everyone's experiences like coming from Reddit and does Lemmy serve as a good alternative? Pros and cons/differences?
I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 "controversial" comment and I got perma-banned... this sucks. I mostly followed music pages like r/TheBeatles and loved to just rant about Beatles albums, Paul McCartney's latest tour, discuss new releases from other artists and also movies/TV shows. I can't think of any other website that offers that kind of forum-like discussion other than Lemmy?
I really did always hate that Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber. The way the system works with upvotes and downvotes, if I said anything people don't agree with, I'd get massively downvoted. I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom... it really felt like I was treading on egg shells. My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song. Really petty.
I've always hoped somebody would create basically a clone of Reddit, but without the politics and without being overly-policed. Where people aren't pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?
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Welcome to Lemmy.
One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you'll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.
I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.
I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can't be found here, or just don't have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like "Stealth" to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I've been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.
You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.
Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn't display any downvotes.
You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.
As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won't get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.
Just note, if you pick one that's too small there's a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.
One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here
They are? Can I ask how? I can't even find my own votes like I could on reddit. I used to use that to show a friend of mine good posts and comments.
Instance admins can see your votes, not just local admins, but remote ones too.
I personally don't check those that often, but it's sometimes useful to investigate harassment, astroturfing, etc.They are. It's not shown on Lemmy itself, but anyone who federates with another instance gets to know who voted on what, and sometimes that information is made public to their entire instance (this is the case with kbin).
So, for instance you can look at this particular post through kbin's eyes: https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.world/t/1031138/Is-Lemmy-a-good-alternative/votes/up
Go to any post/comment, then click on "more" -> "activity".
"Favorites" are upvotes, and "Reduces" are downvotes.
Edit: And if you want to view your own votes I would suggest an app like Voyager, since that is one of the features.
I see, thanks!
As for Voyager, I'm not finding that anywhere.