Lemmy is an experiment from the developers to control the masses
Posted by AdvancedHard@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 53 comments
Something I started to notice a lot on lemmy is how it's so easy to be censored and controlled, in fact easier than Reddit.
On Reddit you have one community which act in unity againest bad mods and shitty reddit actions.
In comparison, lemmy does split it's community in a way that make them easier to control and censor and more likely to never go against bad mods.
The result: The active mods (45-60% of the mods there who did not ghost their communities) are power hungry mods who have unchecked powers.
On lemmy, a lot of instance admins remove stuff that think they are bad and ban people who don't agree with their values.
on Reddit, your posts could be removed by site admins in only 2 usual cases:
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Illegal material and copyright infringement.
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Spam.
I had never personally got my posts removed on my old accounts on Reddit, while a lot of my posts got removed from lemmy.
The developers of this project is using funds and donations to build their own utopia where they can control the actions of most people using it.
One final point here, on reddit a lot of times bad communities get bad mods and that result in the people creating a second community with better mods and try to move to the second community.
On lemmy that is almost very hard that I would say it's kind of impossible, once you create a community there other instances don't include your community or show it's activity till someone actually make the server he is registered on index your new community, despite the fact that he cannot see it on his own server.
Conclusion
I think that the only people who is interested in lemmy are the developers who developed clients for it and around it. which attract more users to try lemmy despite the fact that many developers who developed clients for it left it within a year.
I am currently hoping that Discuit or any future open source reddit alternative get more mature and offer more complete future set and have native clients, so I can switch to it fully.
ChingChong--PingPong@reddit
Not in a way that actually works though, as is evident by the large number of awful mods, which control all the largest subs, and the fact that Reddit got away with so many shitty things.
kdjfsk@reddit
agree.
the problem with this federated stuff is that it didnt kill the hydra. it just cut off the heads and that did was allow a bunch more tiny heads to grow.
the true solution is p2p, no admins, no mods, just as if we met on a sidewalk and started a conversation.
UnflinchingSugartits@reddit
Do u have any examples of current p2p social media that could be a reddit alternative?
kdjfsk@reddit
No.
Aether showed promise, but it ultimately turned out to not -really- be p2p. the dev just offloaded the costs of bandwidth and such to users, but he still had admin control. he did make it open source, so it could be forked. its kinda like the ring from LOTR. i dunno who has the courage to fork it and then throw away the admin password and just let it run free.
UnflinchingSugartits@reddit
Interesting. Can you tell me what's the difference from p2p to web3 ? I keep thinking p2p is web3 I know that it is not, but I don't know the specifics about p2p. You don't have to give a long explanation but maybe just like a specific point I guess please
kdjfsk@reddit
no, not my expertise, sorry.
UnflinchingSugartits@reddit
💯
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
Federated means you have to make your own head if you don't like it. You can't force other people what to do with their heads.
kdjfsk@reddit
yea and? fact remains...result:
a bunch of terrible heads. lemmy is dogshit. end of story.
habarnam@reddit
What do you expect to happen when usually the mods are also the site operators of each instance of lemmy? They enforce the ethos of the community they want to foster on their server. If you go against that, why do you expect to be left unchecked? Do you think it's fine for people to show up at your house and yell at you about things that you have no interest in?
In my opinion the biggest "mistake" lemmy made was to insist on allowing multiple communities on the same instance, that being the reason why communities are in competition instead of collaboration.
jdbolick@reddit
The issue is that the people who most want that power are the ones who shouldn't have it, as they end up abusing it to exert authority and enforce their views, not applying it uniformly via a code of conduct.
habarnam@reddit
If you think that doesn't apply to 90% of humans (most likely including you or me) you are very naive.
I repeat, people that try to create a community on their own money are entitled to be as abusive with their power as they want because it's their community. The only power we as users have, at least when it comes to lemmy and the fediverse, is to move to different instances until we find one where the power the operators/mods exercises is in a direction we approve, or which is hosted by someone from those 10% left, who are willing to tolerate these nebulous things that people like you say or do and which gets you under the scrutiny of mods. However I must notice that nobody that complains about mods being abusive is ever forthcoming into giving examples of the things they did or say to get banned, and I must wonder why.
jdbolick@reddit
I understand that you're trying to flip my own comment back on me because you feel embarrassed about being corrected, but decades of behavioral research prove you conclusively wrong. It is absolutely not true that 90% of humans crave authority over others, much less exert it.
Ok, now I understand where you're coming from. The problem isn't just that you're ignorant, but rather that you're inclined to abusive behavior and seek to excuse your own anti-social, domineering tendencies by pretending that your behavior is normal.
No, paying money does not entitle people to be abusive and punitive. Saying that indicates a complete lack of basic compassion and respect for anyone besides yourself.
People are forthcoming about that regularly, and sometimes even link to specific posts or comments as evidence. Many times, the comment is genuinely innocuous, but the mod or admin is someone like you, with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies, so they react angrily to anything that doesn't comply with their own viewpoint and exert authority to ban that person from the community.
habarnam@reddit
Good for you on having me pegged as lacking basic empathy, compassion and respect. That's exactly what my comment was showing. Probably you could tell from all the name calling I did at your expense.
jdbolick@reddit
Saying "people that try to create a community on their own money are entitled to be as abusive with their power as they want because it's their community" is wildly abnormal.
habarnam@reddit
Dude. If I put money down to pay for a server and try to foster a community of people that don't feel the need to say the n-word in every comment, why would I not be ban the assholes that do? How is it difficult for you to imagine that there are people out there that view different things with the same distaste that I do racists? How are you so entitled to expect those people to tolerate you when you share things that they consider abhorrent? Is it so difficult to imagine that what you consider normal, others might consider as completely wrong? Where does this lack of empathy come from? Why are "mods" less human and less deserving of empathy than the "victims" you seem to rally for?
jdbolick@reddit
That is not what we are arguing about.
I said that rules should be applied "uniformly via a code of conduct."
You said that "people that try to create a community on their own money are entitled to be as abusive with their power as they want because it's their community."
Again, that is not what we are arguing about. You directly stated that if someone pays to create a community then they can be as abusive as they want for any reason.
You said that because you were justifying your own inclinations to be abusive. You're exactly the type of person who should never have power, because you want to exert authority to silence anyone you disagree with. It's not about social standards, it's about your standards. Either everyone complies with what you think or they get punished.
UnflinchingSugartits@reddit
💯
Smokeweedlol@reddit
Yeah, you gotta find a decent instance.
Lemmy.World = run by stupid control freak assholes
Lemmy.ml = run by stupid tankie control freak assholes
Sucks they are the two biggest ones, but I guess the crowd size attracts mod/admin types who like acting that way.
cerevant@reddit
Reddit admins can censor or ban you from the site for whatever reason they want to, and you have no recourse.Â
Reddit mods can censor or ban you from the sub, and you have no recourse except to appeal to the admins who are primarily interested in keeping the peace, and that means pleasing the mods.Â
If you get banned from a Lemmy instance, you can create an account on another instance.Â
If you get banned from a Lemmy community, it is no different than being banned from a subreddit. Â You can still join other communities, some with the same or similar content.Â
MigrateOutOfReddit@reddit
This post is almost a textbook example of Brandolini's Law.
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
Then get the fuck off far left lemmies and go on lemmies you actually like. There's more than one.
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
You need to type a normal sentence so I can understand you.
MigrateOutOfReddit@reddit
You need to improve your reading comprehension so you can understand other people.
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
There's more than one lemmy. Stop using ones you don't like.
swashinator@reddit
Then they're really fucking up by making it open source and something anyone can deploy and run.Â
You should visit lemme.ee. admins there seem to be the most dedicated to being neutral.
I think what you're really seeing is that right now it's a small community that's hyper far leftist at the moment. If it ever takes off and gets more moderates, it will be a different story.
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
They got the funds and donations due to lemmy being open source, just this year they got a huge fund which was given to them due to being open source and currently they take 3,000 dollars monthly as donations.
As I said splitting the users while controling the main instance and several big communities guarantee a total control.
I don't want to be super pessimistic here, but most probably(you can mark my words here and check in a year or two) the developers will add features later on that violate users privacy and make content easier to censor to make get more control.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Nlnet funding stopped this year: https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/foss_funding_vanishes_from_eus/
swashinator@reddit
They can already completely control the ml instance and who they federate with, and several of them have made sure to ban trump leaning instances from interacting with them. What more control could they want?
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
Adding "Optional" demographics fields for example:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4786
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
As I said multiple times, the server is not important, the communities are.
If the community I like is on lemmy. World, I am under their control, If it's in lemmy. ml, I am under their control.
My account instance does not matter, the community instance does.
swashinator@reddit
In the lemmy model, the server is the community hands down.
luciferin@reddit
No real argument here. The idea behind Lemmy is that if you have a bad instance, then the users would just pick up their toys and go to another instance. So when reddit started having issues last year, the community could have walked off to another server.
Unfortunately that is never going to work out, due to the time, knowledge and financial barriers to running an instance.
I think we are all just chasing what Reddit was like 10 to 15 years ago.
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
In lemmy communities is what matter, not instances.
You could open account in any lemm instance and still get banned from politics community for example.
All of that builds on what I said on my post, communities don't federate, users do. the result is easier ways to censor users of lemmy, Which does not exist in any of the other alternatives.
The easiest test to see it in action is to check the front page of lemmy . world, you will see the same ideas and memes being circled over and over with little to no original content.
Also if you checked the communities beyond the top 20 communities, you will notice little to no new posts, which would show you to some extend the limited flow of information there.
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
You can get banned from the lemmy.ml politics community. You can't get banned from the lemmy.advancedhard.com politics community. Whose fault is it, that there isn't a lemmy.advancedhard.com politics community?
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
In theory that should happen, in practice if you did that you will be posting into void.
Also a lot of communities have only 1, a good example is people twitter, there is only one community for that and a second one for memes, that is it.
TLDR: There is only 1 active community for a topic at a time, posting on alternative communities is like posting into the void.
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
Tell everyone who hates the lemmy.ml politics community to come over to your community. Why should lemmy.ml be the default?
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
I was talking about lemmy . World.
I just can't, you can't force create/ redirect any community.
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
Make your own community on your own server and tell everyone who hates the politics community on the lemmy.world server to come to your server.
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
Funny Story: I tried running my community for long time on lemmy. World, which resulted in only 15 users looking at my community and about less than 5 users joining my community, I had to close it later due to zero activity.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Did you post it to !newcommunities@lemmy.world?
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
you made a mistake using a server whose admins hate you, but anyway, did you advertise it? to people who want a politics community different from the normal one?
barrygateaux@reddit
That's just, like, your opinion man
AdvancedHard@reddit (OP)
If that is just my opinion, what is the reality of lemmy?
MaleficentFig7578@reddit
That you should go to lemmies you actually like
barrygateaux@reddit
It's a phrase from a film for big ideas that are impossible to prove.
https://youtu.be/pWdd6_ZxX8c?si=eWljdL53MgjbhN29
I can't answer your question. To me it's just another social media site for Americans to circle jerk and argue with random strangers. I have no interest in it.
kdjfsk@reddit
except the whole clicking on it, reading about it, thinking about it, and commenting on it thing?
barrygateaux@reddit
i did that because it's it's a bonkers post by someone in an almost dead sub that is sometimes entertaining because of posts like this lol
i also clicked on your reply, read it, thought about, and am replying, but i have no interest in you either.
kdjfsk@reddit
except the whole clicking on it, reading about it, thinking about it, and commenting on it thing again?
FocusPerspective@reddit
You think Reddit Legal only removes content based on those two scenarios? lol
justaghostofanother@reddit
I've found Reddit far more restrictive than Lenny admins to this point. I've been banned from a few communities because of mod abuse here. Never had a comment or post removed on Lemmy.
qwerty30013@reddit
Stopped reading right here
cliopedant@reddit
Reddit and Lemmy are very differnt. Reddit has less incentive to remove comments which are controversial and upsetting because that drives engagement and sells ads.
Lemmy mods have to pay to host their instances, so if anyone annoys them they can just kick them out. There's no incentive to keep bad actors around since it reflects directly on the whole instance. One asshole on an instance is liable to get that whole community blocked.
Any open source / federated alternative where you and your content are not the product will have this advantage against bad actors, which is why it's worth moving there. Of course, sometimes the mods (instance owners) are themselves bad actors so you have to use more time to vet an instance before you join.