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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • From your post, I don’t think you were really into internet forums. I was a part of several dozens forums, with tons of overlapping and also different discussions. I was sad when many of them slowly died as Reddit dominated niche communities. The current expression of the community-based fediverse such as Lemmy and Kbin are a return to form that I deeply missed. In the old days you could have an art subforum and the vibe of each art subforum was totally different, but shared the general themes of certain styles of art.

    I was very much into Internet forums as a child and posted on quite a few. But I didn’t go on any of the general discussion boards, I focused those on specific topics or niches. That is what’s missing with the fediverse today. Everyone is trying to provide a Reddit alternative right now but forget what made Internet forums of old great - their singular focus on a particular topic, community, or subject.



  • There’s an added cog in the machine here. Every time someone tries (and succeeds) in explaining the issues, the astroturfing (or just regular bootlicking) begins and suddenly there’s seeds of doubt.

    I am seeing many users (especially those who haven’t been around for as long) asking people what the big deal is and why their favorite subreddits are down. Half of the people trying to respond aren’t giving these people satisfactory and succinct answers. The protest is breaking down as soon as it began.


  • There’s an added cog in the machine here. Every time someone tries (and succeeds) in explaining the issues, the astroturfing (or just regular bootlicking) begins and suddenly there’s seeds of doubt.

    I am seeing many users (especially those who haven’t been around for as long) asking people what the big deal is and why their favorite subreddits are down. Half of the people trying to respond aren’t giving these people satisfactory and succinct answers. The protest is breaking down as soon as it began.




  • IDK I also see plenty of posts supporting keeping subs closed too. I doubt a lot of people have left the site for good. But those voices are generally outnumbered by people who don’t understand what’s going on or don’t care about the protest.

    Don’t get me wrong… Lemmy is fine, but I am finding that most of the active posts here are about the protest on Reddit… plus a few discussions on current news and gaming… but little else. I am still spending most of my time on Reddit.




  • Yeah I don’t have a strong opinion about whole API access controversy but it does spark a greater debate about how we let centralized services like Reddit subsume the Internet forum culture of old. Of course, Reddit in many ways is a superior product to the decentralized forums of old (you only need one account to post) but at the same time, this whole protest has proven especially damaging to people who rely heavily on Reddit as a resource for support (like the mental health subreddits, the chronic disease ones, etc.).




  • Well on the Lemmy subreddit, some people are already complaining about moderation issues here, and how you can’t block federated servers you don’t want to see individually - that is up to the federated server itself. Honestly, while Lemmy seems cool, I can see issues arising as it scales, especially with regards to moderation.

    Beehaw seems to be fine, but some users have explained that they take issue with Lemmy.ml’s moderation - chiefly from the main developer who created this platform to begin with. And that’s troubling too. For example, on Lemmy.ml, any talk about Russia or China (or anything similar) is banned. You can’t safely talk about the war in Ukraine here without getting banned from the main federated server.