I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

  • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
    25·
    10 months ago

    There are a lot of good points here, I appreciate the time you put into it.

    As an end user of both Lemmy and Mastodon, it’s always an eye opener to see how developers greet user requests and suggestions with curt or snarky replies. Even “Why don’t you open an issue on our source tracker” will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.

    My own concerns are more on my own level, though. It resonates with me when you write —

    The Fediverse has its own existing cultures that thrive here. And when you enter a space that already exists you need to be mindful of that to prevent issues from occurring.

    I’ve seen a few user migration waves, and I think your description of (some) Lemmy users who just want a drop-in Reddit replacement is on point. Mastodon has had its share of Twitterati who surged in trying to recreate their previous circles and tone. Obviously, it’s a generalisation but we do need to face the problem.

    The transition from a walled garden environment like Reddit or Twitter — moderated by professionals or enthusiasts, and algorithmically curated — to a federated space with carefully cultivated etiquettes will never be like simply picking up a conversation in another UI.

    I’d be interested how a project like Sublinks would/could accommodate the existing fediverse cultures, and hopefully bridge the cognitive gap that seems to exist between threadiverse and fediverse?

  • moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    20·
    10 months ago

    Does anyone know of any Sublinks instances? The main page for it speaks in present tense, but I haven’t found any active instances. (aside from the demo, of course)

    I apologize for my stupidity:

    this is me

    • Ategon@programming.dev
      19·
      10 months ago

      It hasnt been released yet, still working towards parity (but getting there soon)

      The first instance using it will likely be sublinks.art and some other instances will be switching over from lemmy when it hits parity like programming.dev and literature.cafe

  • Corgana@startrek.website
    20·
    10 months ago

    Many users on Lemmy seem actively hostile to the idea of decentralization in a way that feels self defeating. They don’t want a better alternative to Reddit, they just want Reddit 2.0 and attempts to sway them towards something better feels like pulling teeth.

    Yes! I don’t think it bodes well for general adoption when so much of the Lemmyverse is hosted on two essentially “Reddit 2.0” (by that I mean loosely moderated) instances. Assuming half the population of the Lemmyverse are people banned from Reddit for poor socialization, it means new users considering switching are most likely to first encounter a pure concentrated form of the worst aspects of Reddit userbase.

    Beehaw is the only “general” instance I know of who’s mods and admins seem to be actually up to the task of keeping their communities from becoming wholly exhausting and it’s because they didn’t allow themselves to balloon up beyond their ability to self-moderate.

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
      6·
      10 months ago

      Beehaw defederating with the biggest open signups Lemmy instance has definitely kept it a lot nicer. There isn’t as much content, but it’s also a lot less toxic.

  • wargreymon2023@sopuli.xyz
    20·
    10 months ago

    Domain blocks are always publicly visible.

    Mod logs are always publicly visible in the public mod log.

    What? It is crucial for the users, not a bug.

      • wargreymon2023@sopuli.xyz
        5·
        10 months ago

        Censorship and targeted sliencing of users are the source of bad moderation. To top it off, the mod can target and harrass the banned user and we wouldn’t know bc of censorship if allowed.

        targeted harassment

        1. It is about the anonymity of moderator, not about modlog

        2. Quit this job as moderator if you can’t take it

        • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
          15·
          10 months ago

          if the social prescription to harassment of moderators is “quit because you’re a baby” then you’re going to have many fewer pleasant spaces on the Fediverse in which to exist—because yeah, a lot of people will just quit. i am agnostic on the public modlog overall, but this is an obvious concern with it that i’m not convinced can just be dismissed idly. i obviously have better things to do than a thankless, payless job in which harassment would be dismissed like that.

          • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeOP
            91·
            10 months ago

            It especially leads to harassment of vulnerable people. There’s many aspects of moderation that is done here that if implemented in other fediverse software would become a vector for Kiwifarms level harassment.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
            6·
            10 months ago

            Maybe this is the syndicalist in me talking, but I think the problem is entirely pretending that Lemmy moderators and admins are and should be expected to work for free. It’s just too much work, too much daily upkeep, to reasonably expect to be handled by a volunteer labor force forever.

            That’s obviously a whole other drama with FOSS as a whole but there’s simply a different level of labor and difficulty inherent to running a large internet community than making a program and dumping it on a download site.

          • Corgana@startrek.website
            6·
            10 months ago

            Yes, very well said. I think this form of checking out is what’s happening to Reddit and why moderation there is increasingly just doing the bare minimum of spam removal and letting toxic users run roughshod. Why put effort in if it’s just going to cause strife?

        • DdCno1@beehaw.org
          1·
          10 months ago

          There is still censorship in many instances. Just because it’s transparent doesn’t change anything about the fact that it’s happening. I doubt more than a small fraction of users even regularly look at the modlog.

  • Nix@merv.newsEnglish
    19·
    10 months ago

    These are some really good points. I’m personally more interested in the development of PieFed than SubLinks due to the focus on making it easy to contribute, the developer cares about usability and mod tools, its in Python, and the developer posts dev blogs and answers questions on mastodon https://join.piefed.social/blog/

  • PenguinCoder@beehaw.orgEnglish
    16·
    10 months ago

    Thank you for sharing your experiences. I feel the same way about Lemmy software, instances, and the Fediverse as a whole. Appreciate your post and efforts.

    • renard_roux@beehaw.org
      10·
      10 months ago

      Maybe Sublinks could be(come) that new platform you guys have been searching for, re: Beehaw thinking about leaving Lemmy? 🤔

      I just hope it will be compatible with the available Lemmy apps (Voyager in particular) 😓

      Edit: Or PieFed I guess 😊

  • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    161·
    10 months ago

    This blog post by a Lemmy user who accidentally uploaded his ID and dealt with the nightmare after describes in great detail the ridiculous steps instance admins need to take to remove images from the backend image server that Lemmy depends on. (as well touches upon the developer behavior aspect I will highlight later.)

    You misgendered the author of that post, they use they/them pronouns.

    Edit: I was mistaken about who the author of that post was.

  • Zoop@beehaw.org
    14·
    10 months ago

    Yes! This blog post is fantastic. I read your article through this archive link (since my phone is being finicky with the direct site) and loved it and I’m glad you wrote it! You totally nailed it on every point and voiced a lot of things I’ve noticed and concerns I’ve had.
    On the topic of non-anonymous reports: I’ve definitely already found myself hesitating or declining to make reports I feel should be made purely because they’re not anonymous. Sometimes because the people I want to report are admins. I’ve already had weird situations of people following me around to other posts because they disagree with me and I don’t want to add to that type of thing. Although I can understand that there are some potential upsides to being able to tell who is making reports, like to prevent misuse or spam… I dunno.

    Thanks a lot for sharing it with us here! and thank you for the warning at the top about mentioning CSAM - and for calling it CSAM and not the other, worse, seemingly more prevelent term. I appreciate it and I appreciate you! :)

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      11·
      10 months ago

      On the topic of non-anonymous reports: I’ve definitely already found myself hesitating or declining to make reports I feel should be made purely because they’re not anonymous. Sometimes because the people I want to report are admins.

      My instance had a similar situation where a user on a large instance (not beehaw) was reported, and the reports only encouraged the person, who posted the reports publicly and called upon others to join. The admins were slow to deliberate, ultimately took no action, and although I think they mean well, do not strike me as up to the task of running a large social media platform.

      Requiring individual users to block the largest instances (and their communities) in order to peacefully use a platform is just Reddit with extra steps. Without decentralization we just have, as the author put it, Reddit 2.0.

  • Nominel@kbin.run
    13·
    10 months ago

    I’m relieved to hear you’ll still be running your instance despite these issues! Are you thinking of potentially moving the Literature Cafe forums to Sublinks?

    I definitely hear you on the moderation difficulties… with the Fediverse being as far-reaching as it is, good moderation tools are essential and it seems like Lemmy simply doesn’t have these available.

  • Jeena@jemmy.jeena.net
    13·
    10 months ago

    Very interesting post, very long but also interesting. I also agree with most of the points.

    But I wonder why there is no mention of /kbin which has been a compatible alternative to Lemmy even during the Reddit exodus. It’s also written in PHP which many people should have a much easier time to contribute to than Lemmy’s Rust.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      8·
      10 months ago

      I’ve heard Kbin has been having major issues lately, the single dev is not the most active. There is a fork called mbin which seems promising.

      They are different from Lemmy, though, and not for everyone. But variety is good.

    • The_wild_card
      1·
      10 months ago

      Lack of development atleast compared to lemmy. But try mbin tho its forked of kbin and is community driven

  • davehtaylor@beehaw.org
    9·
    10 months ago

    Many users on Lemmy seem actively hostile to the idea of decentralization in a way that feels self defeating. They don’t want a better alternative to Reddit, they just want Reddit 2.0 and attempts to sway them towards something better feels like pulling teeth.

    I keep seeing this, and I don’t really understand. Lemmy is a link aggregator that allows users to organize those links into categories/communities/etc, and lets people comment on the links and have discussions about them. From an end-user perspective, that’s exactly what Reddit is. So I’m genuinely curious what’s meant when people say they don’t want Reddit 2.0 from a technical perspective. From a social perspective, the toxicity, brigading, shitposting, etc are definitely not desirable. But with shit moderation tools, those sort of things don’t get sorted, and federation just magnifies all of those problems. Though I think disabling voting definitely helps discourage shitposting and low-effort responses.

    But I genuinely do think a lot of problems really come down to the fundamentals of federation. And given how many downsides there are to it, I’m not convinced it’s actually a benefit at all.

  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
    9·
    10 months ago

    Why a new software though? Why not fork lemmy? Might as well call it Kilmister too. I just don’t see why reinvent the wheel, especially since the issue is that of management and not technical.

  • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    The link offers a download instead of serving an HTML? I’m on mobile Firefox (I doubt it matters).