I finally made the leap to Lemmy. It's a little confusing, but it's doing a pretty good job of scratching that reddit itch. Some random thoughts:

1. I just need a place to spit out my random thoughts and have random conversations and make random jokes; it's really not that demmanding. Do I miss having 400 upvotes instead of 11? Sure, but the main thing is that I'm communicating with people.

2. Definitely get an app. I'm using Voyager on my phone with a KBM--how I mostly get around.

Big difference from Reddit:

1. Those 400 upvotes come at a cost--posts are dead within a few hours. There's almost no point to leave a new comment in an active thread--nobody is going to see it. And there's also no point in leaving a detailed explanation of anything on reddit for the same reason.

On Lemmy, I'll get replies to posts and comments DAYS later, and people seem more willing to be helpful; maybe because things are less contentious, and maybe it's just people are naturally more helpful to strangers in smaller communities (see cities vs small towns)...

So really, the only downside to lemmy--the small size of the population--ends up being one the best things about it.

1. It's definitely nice not having to compulsively check to see if my comments have been shadowbanned--which happened quite frequently and seemingly without reason on reddit.

2. It's nice to be in a space where I can be more frank about political remedies.

3. It's nice that I can view the comment histories of people I'm talking with to determine if they're an inveterate asshole or just having a bad day (only found one asshole so far).

That's it! 10/10. I'll try not to burn my reddit account in case I have a tough question, but I honestly think a technical question is more likely to be answered on Lemmy with it's small platoon of nerds with little to chew on than the hordes of ignorami on reddit rapidly trying to solve everyone's problem by free associating the title of the post.

!casualconversation@piefed.social is perfexct for point 1!

Be aware that your comment applies to reddit more strongly than it does here, except your weird hyperbole about Linux. Sorry you're so mad most everyone here hates windows so much

Posting or commenting was like yelling in a hurricane even several years ago when reddit was good. There's just too fucking many people on there.

To be fair, tux is a lot sexier than 4 rectangles.

Unless maybe you have sometype of domination fetish?

One of my formative experiences here was regularly commenting on a new and small, but active Stardew Valley community. I also got like 11 upvotes for my comments, but those upvotes and the few responses felt so much more qualitative than those on Reddit. It actually felt like a community where you recognize the people after a while.

lol projection

It's nice that I can view the comment histories of people I'm talking with to determine if they're an inveterate asshole or just having a bad day (only found one asshole so far).

Is that not a basic feature of both platforms?

Maybe a year or two ago, reddit gave the option for people to hide their comment and post history in their profile. It gave people a false sense of security, because you could still pull up a smattering of their history by searching their user name, and also there's third party mirrors....

I eventually turned it on because it's not unusual to have someone go through your history to find ways to insult/discredit you, often taking you completely out of context.

I eventually settled on a hybrid--I allowed comments on the more anodyne subs through, so people would see a history and not accuse me of being a bot, and it would discourage them from searching because they would likely see a bunch of boring comments about cats and give up.

I am glad you like it here :)

This is the only place I have found where I feel I can comfortably express myself without getting banned (at least not banned much)

Yet it is not a total 4chan-style free-for-all. I reported a comment for saying "Adolf Hitler was right" and it got removed, yet all my references to the French Revolution remain happily up to inspire others.

My thing is I feel like I have as many or more decent little convos as a member of the federation. So really its mostly about not having the garbage filler. I mean there is some but not nearly as much. The one downside to me is no niche community I would like to be a part of hang out here and it would be a little hard to follow as I track all. One thing piefed tried to do is make it where it subscribes you to a bunch of communities based on interest but that does not work well for me. I peruse all and just block things im not interested in. I would love a setup that gets rid of subscriptions and makes voting a private thing along the lines of trust cafe. rank everything 0-100 and everthing defaults to zero and have a feed option that takes your ranking into account.

ah yes I'm jerking in a circle so hard and everything. I am such a target for homophobic references, much wow.

Great job being the awesome rebel, the only freethinker on the platform. Must be nice being the acceptable human here.

By the time id get to a post everyone is already on the third repeat of earlier comments. Theres no point in even bothering.

it’s not unusual to have someone go through your history to find ways to insult/discredit you, often taking you completely out of context.

Pfft you would say that. Is this you:

ends up being one the best things about it.

Yeah. I think were done here

Right, you're simping for Microsoft and mad that most people won't join you

I want the ability to follow users. It's trivial on Reddit.

Haha, I do not miss it, my friend.

No, but I calls em like I sees em.

On mbin, following is easy too. Dunno about lemmy.

What are "shadowbans"? I've seen this term used multiple times by reddit people and have no idea what to imagine.

You ban a shadow? But what's a shadow?

You're banned from a community and then shadowed / followed by the moderator?

You're banned and everybody who responded to you too? (Everybody in your shadow).

So lost.

A shadowbaned comment is a comment you wrote that only you can see. You are not notified that it has been removed. You are not notified that nobody can see it. The only way you know it's shadowbanned is if the viewcount is suspiciously low, and the only way to be certain is to log out to see if you can view the comment outside your account.

There's an extension (reveddit?) available which will notify you when a comment has been shadowbanned.

A user can be shadowbanned from a subreddit by the subreddit mods, or from the entirety of reddit by the admins. Most of my experience was with shadowbanned comments.

I've been permanently banned from plenty of subreddits, but only shadowbanned by one sub. I called them cowards in a mod mail and requested a full ban instead. In return, they reported me for bullying. I received a seven-day ban and came to lemmy. I remain shadowbanned in that community.

Also: fuck Israel.

Some apps have this feature, even if it's not part of Lemmy itself.

Just have a good time and dont take everyone and everything real seriously. It's a fun place

Hell yeah. Fuck Israel.

Reddit fucking sucks. I got a permanent ban myself.

Yeah, I do wonder if my bans were the result of being put on a list where all my comments were reviewed by an IOF soldier to see if they'd be good candidates for reporting...

Still haven't managed to get permabanned, but my score is now too low for some subs, even though my karma is really high.

Reddit is doing a great job of keeping out regular users with all their anti-bot measures and a terrible job keeping out bots. Pretty obvious the best financial play is to charge money to allow bots to operate.

Yeah when you get three rogues in a community and you know exactly who it was haha

And then one day there's a fourth upvote and you're like what? someone new? a stranger??

This functionality I believe has been incorporated for Piefed, but not (yet) for Lemmy or Mbin. Moderators of piefed communities can mute comments (if not individual users) so they don't federate. Only the instance the 'shadowbanned' user posted from, and the instance of the user they replied to, will be able to see the comment.

The ability to silence someone invisibly is too tempting to abuse. I hope it never arrives. As an anti-bot measure, it serves no purpose since anyone running a bot will also be checking for shadowbans. As such, it has no legitimate purpose other than modding w/o accountability.

At least on the private voting front, piefed has a feature, at least on the website, where if you long press(/ right click? ) the voting arrows ,you get options for either local or federated votes.

At least on piefed, there's a sort of similar mechanism, where you choose to get notifications from specific people.

E: I'm on the Web UI, I'm not sure if a similar feature is available on other apps

it is mostly propaganda AI bots, and Bots promoting thier own traffic to thier own sub/or site now.

nobody can see your posts or account at all. it was originally reserved for serial spammers, botters. but now it includes almost anyone they think its a bot, because thier AI cant really tell anyone. secondly a shadowban also wont inform you that you were banned, and what you were banned for. it was originally an excuse to combat botters, spammers. it now it obfuscates thier AI as the sole cause of your ban.

with sitewide bans, people can just wait until sometime has passed and us another account(before the purges last year). apparently with shadowbans they lockdown your IP, DEVICE, fingerprinting much more aggressively than a sitewide ban. because as soon as you try to make a new account an comment they almost know immediately.

reddit allows hiding now, because it allows them obfuscate propaganda bot use, and hide how much bots are pervasive on the sites.

#FuckIsrael 100%

P.S thanks for the explanation. I doubt I'll be able to remember it as the name doesn't really allude to the action or result and I can't make up an etymology to help me remember. Thanks nonetheless!

I'm not your friend, buddy.

It's simply a ban you're not notified/aware of. You can still log in and post, but no one can see your activity

You rarely notice your own shadow... and you would rarely notice a shadowban.

that would be nicer as a global option. I mean the only reason I upvote everything right now is to clear it from my feed.

That "dead after hours" was always one of the most annoying aspects of Reddit. Like Reddit feels a bit like a fancy forum but forum threadslast for ages getting replies.

It's very satisfying and very wild and I'm still not used to it after 3 years. You can make a comment in a post that's a couple days old and people are still there, interacting, reading, voting.

technically the activitypub protocol should allow it, but i think lemmy hasn't implemented it. it should work if you follow a lemmy account from mastodon though. i haven't tested it but in theory it should work.

also !showerthoughts@lemmy.world and the various chat communities (there's one for almost every instance)

I feel bad for anyone not in a USA-consonant time zone; you wake up every morning to a bunch of dead threads. It's bad enough when I'd get up early and start posting commenting that got buried in the 9am rush.

There is a checkbox for that under settings

I love the itch of seeing my comments get upvotes. 👀let's get this comment to 100 upvotes ->

ooh. thanks.