I installed the official Reddit app and went on it to see what the old place was looking like now. My inbox was filled with spam. The “home feed” shows subs I never subscribed to. There are so many ads. Between the ads and the the extra subs in the feed, it’s hard to just scroll. I also noted a lot of spam in some of the subs. Maybe they are subs with no mods? I’m not sure what’s up with that.
I think what communities and instances youre on really affect that.
Like ive noticed posts within my instance (solar punk) tend to be very kind and helpful. Likely because it is a small instance full of eco friendly sci fi optimists. I even joined a discord based book club that has weekly voice chats through the instance.
Ive noticed the big conversations that end up in all (often from lemmy.ml) tend to have more bickering and general nastiness. The same was true of reddit, niche things tend to collect fewer trolls because there arent as many people there for them to mess with.
Lemmy.ml is my home instance too, so that could explain my overall experience. I started out on lemmy.world and it seemed pretty friendly. Then I switched to ML when Threads was federated because I didn’t want to see Threads content. It never occurred to me that the change of tone might be from switching instances rather than Lemmy itself just growing. I guess it could be both, since I frequently browse the everything feed which has content from everywhere.
Both would make sense. Lemmy has definetly had some growing pains and lemmy.ml has been targeted quite a bit recently by bad actors. Plus since its the biggest instance, it is going to be more influenced by the energy of the new sign ups.
I hope as things continue to grow you find friendlier spaces and good discussions :)
Thanks!