I think the fewer number of people, compared to reddit, on Lemmy combined with the fact that it’s not nearly as well known, plays a huge advantage to the quality of the comments. Not that there aren’t people like that here either, but I feel like the more popular a platform, is, the more it gets filled, proportionally, with people trying to make witty, shitty, pointless remarks that are often clickkbaity and avoid actual discussion, all in the interest of just getting more imaginary points.
Also the process of “enshitification” (not a term I made up, look it up if you hadn’t heard of it) has already started taking place on reddit due to its popularity.
I do hope that lemmy continues to grow into non-tech demographics. I’m somewhat into tech myself, but I also like a lot of other stuff and I miss that influence from reddit. Lemmy is VERY tech focused right now and we need some other voices in here.
Also the process of “enshitification” has already started taking place on reddit due to its popularity.
I started using reddit in 2011. Trust me when I say this isn’t a new trend. Reddit’s has been noticeably and actively getting shittier since at least 2015 as it continued to get more and more popular
Shitty changes Reddit made that I can name off the top of my head:
New Reddit
Reddit Live
Anything beyond Reddit gold (the concept of paying for Reddit gold was, by itself, not a terrible idea back when we thought Reddit was a decent company)
Instant chat feature, when DMs already existed
Pay for API
Fired their only popular employee, the AMA assistant
You could argue creating a comments section was also a dick move, but that was before my time and it’s fair to say Reddit never would have caught on without it.
They also populated the site with fake accounts in the early days to make it look more popular than it really was. I would be zero percent surprised to find out that they still had fake accounts floating around for purposes I don’t feel like speculating about.
There’s also a big issue of the sheer mass of comments in a post simply drowning out any chance of discussion because only the first few most upvoted ones will usually get seen, so people generally just respond to those to get any interaction on their comments. It’s why the frontpage stuff is always so much worse than smaller subs - because by the time people see it, there’s already 1,000+ comments there.
I think this is a huge problem with democracy as well. The larger a country, the worse democracy works. Any apparatus of power or wealth attracts parasites only interested in exploiting it. And the larger the lever, the more profit from manipulating it. And the larger the potential gain the more investment costs can you justify.
This isn’t necessarily an argument for “states rights” or federation though, with “divide and conquer” strategies you can copy and paste the same strategy to multiple instances. If there is monetary gain to be had, there will always be an unrelenting force trying to exploit it.
Eh, am from a country with 9mil people, and this society simply doesn’t get democracy. So being smaller is hardly any indicator that democracy will work better.
I think the fewer number of people, compared to reddit, on Lemmy combined with the fact that it’s not nearly as well known, plays a huge advantage to the quality of the comments. Not that there aren’t people like that here either, but I feel like the more popular a platform, is, the more it gets filled, proportionally, with people trying to make witty, shitty, pointless remarks that are often clickkbaity and avoid actual discussion, all in the interest of just getting more imaginary points.
Also the process of “enshitification” (not a term I made up, look it up if you hadn’t heard of it) has already started taking place on reddit due to its popularity.
I do hope that lemmy continues to grow into non-tech demographics. I’m somewhat into tech myself, but I also like a lot of other stuff and I miss that influence from reddit. Lemmy is VERY tech focused right now and we need some other voices in here.
This. So. Much. This.
Yes! If I had money for goldz, I’d give it to you. Please accept this 🥈in it’s place.
I started using reddit in 2011. Trust me when I say this isn’t a new trend. Reddit’s has been noticeably and actively getting shittier since at least 2015 as it continued to get more and more popular
Shitty changes Reddit made that I can name off the top of my head:
You could argue creating a comments section was also a dick move, but that was before my time and it’s fair to say Reddit never would have caught on without it.
They also populated the site with fake accounts in the early days to make it look more popular than it really was. I would be zero percent surprised to find out that they still had fake accounts floating around for purposes I don’t feel like speculating about.
Oh, and Spez edited people’s comments.
Victoria was the one they fired aka /u/chooter
There’s also a big issue of the sheer mass of comments in a post simply drowning out any chance of discussion because only the first few most upvoted ones will usually get seen, so people generally just respond to those to get any interaction on their comments. It’s why the frontpage stuff is always so much worse than smaller subs - because by the time people see it, there’s already 1,000+ comments there.
Reddits is end stage enshitification
And now they’re going to train AI on that dataset. The intellectual equivalent of a diet consisting of nothing but chicken nuggets.
I feel like you’re gonna be able to tell if an AI was overly trained on reddit data.
Hey Chat XYZ– write me a prompt for my essay about George Washington
"More WashingDeezNuts! Gottem.
Came here to say this.
Edit: wow thanks for the gold kind stranger"
Most of the people that would have made good comments on Reddit moved to Lemmy as well
These have to be bots.
I think this is a huge problem with democracy as well. The larger a country, the worse democracy works. Any apparatus of power or wealth attracts parasites only interested in exploiting it. And the larger the lever, the more profit from manipulating it. And the larger the potential gain the more investment costs can you justify.
This isn’t necessarily an argument for “states rights” or federation though, with “divide and conquer” strategies you can copy and paste the same strategy to multiple instances. If there is monetary gain to be had, there will always be an unrelenting force trying to exploit it.
Eh, am from a country with 9mil people, and this society simply doesn’t get democracy. So being smaller is hardly any indicator that democracy will work better.
It’s certainly not a guarantee but I do think there is a “scalability problem” with democracy.