this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy

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Or at least less so than Reddit. It's good, but, I can't put my finger on it. Even when the content is good, the servers are up, and I'm getting notifications responding to comments, it's never come to me doomscrolling for hours.

Edit: Guys, guys, I'm not trying to say Lemmy should be addictive or Reddit is better because it is. The opposite. I thought being addicted to something was always a bad thing? I was just curious as that I rarely ever see the content droughts people talk about, so I can scroll for as long as I want to with no interruptions, but unlike with Reddit, I don't, and I would want to know a reason why. Is it psychological? Something behind the scenes? The type of people here?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Cut out Reddit completely if you haven’t already, that helps a lot.

Reddit is so much bigger, but if you remove that competition to cure the same “itch”… you’ll be here more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's really good in small doses, like early Reddit used to be. You can quickly exhaust the best posts of the morning/afternoon/evening before you're basically browsing by "new".

It reminds me of the times when reddit would get notably slower and weirder during certain times of the day. Before it became an endless 24/7 stream of content.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I like it but yeah there's a lot less users so less content. Hopefully it keeps growing and the communities get more active.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Most of my time on Reddit was because of the constant flow of actually new content and "new to me" content (binging subreddits that I had just found out about).

Lemmy only has a constant flow of actually new content and it's slower.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Just enjoy the detox.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Right now the biggest barrier for me is the interface. Too many instances favor this very spread out, low information density, optimized for mobile (but not really) look, and group information in ways that are irksome. A certain amount can be fixed by user styles, but some functionality can't, like on kbin when I click on reply notifications and am not actually taken to the context of my reply because the comments have split across multiple pages even though I've set my preferences to infinite scroll. If I'm on another instance, clicking context gives me... well, not the context of my comments, just the damn comment and a series of "load parent comment" links to click. It's, well, irksome.

Most of my gripes aren't insurmountable, but that doesn't change the fact that right now every instance is a little janky to use.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

There are a lot of channels that are missing from what i did back in Reddit. Many i have no interest in modding so they most likely wont show up for a long time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What I find sad is that on Reddit I was on lots of tech stuff, but also just talking with random tran drivers, firemen, cyclists, and meme people.

On Lemmy its mostly just tech.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

For me it's a little bit more addictive than Reddit since I get more comment replies. This is probably just because I stay away from any big subs on Reddit though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

There are so many automated bots posting links every couple of minutes. I feel like I sometimes have to wade through tons of garbage to get to interesting posts. I've been blocking tons of bots and communities but it still feels like it takes effort to find content which isn't what I want. I want somewhere that I can find interesting content when I'm taking a shit. Lemmy isn't quite there yet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Are you interpreting that as bad or good? It was clear there was some fuckery going on at reddit for the past many years, increasing rage/anger, bots everywhere, engagement focused bullshit.

Is "doom scrolling" a thing you want to be doing? I'm not implying "you could be doing something better with your time" because it's your time to spend. But at the same time, change is good, right? Maybe instead of having one active platform, mix lemmy up with mastodon? Or start watching every Crash Course and Sci Show video that exists. Look up ZeFrank and dash down that rabbit hole for a couple years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The big difference for me it's the overall lack of comment interaction on posts here. I was addicted to reddit not because of the content but because of the community interaction below the content.

Side note: Just now my phone keyboard did NOT autocorrect to reddit. It appears I have finally doesn't enough fine away from their for my phone to recognize it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I guess this would be just as addictive once gifs and video work as expected, and we start seeing tons of short videos.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think it's primarily because Lemmy doesn't recommend content, whereas Reddit does. (Reddit isn't as blatant as other social media, but I feel like they do recommend content.) I find that I actually have to go out of my way to search for new communities to subscribe to or more content to consume. It's a bit hard and takes time. But I think it's overall healthier to have control over what you see and can't see.

In any case, if/when Lemmy picks up in activity, I don't expect that we'll need recommendations as much to find new content

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

There a few things that we just haven't crossed the threshold for yet that I found engaging (if not "addictive") at Reddit, several of which were live threads about an event (NFL/NBA/Soccer/F1/etc). We're not big enough here for that yet, where Mastodon is (you can get awesome interaction on hashtags about topics while they're happening). The other thing was when a post got popular you could scroll through hundreds of comments with at least some thought behind them, and here it's more like 10-25. The content is often better here, there is just less of it. Which is fine for me, it's just a slightly different experience than I was having at Reddit, but I think some of those things will come with time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

There is less content here than Reddit because there are less users here—less users creating content each day. Each of our comments and posts have far more weight and impact on the Fediverse because of this. The more we push ourselves to engage, create posts, or moderate communities when we normally wouldn’t before, the faster we will see Lemmy grow!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Less content, and the sorting seems to favor posts that are getting comments rather than new and rising posts. So you frequently have posts over a day old that stay at the top slots of your feed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Lemmy has pretty much replaced my other social media scrolling. I probably spend about the same amount of time here as I used to spend flicking between fb and reddit, but I spend more time reading and interacting here.

Weird that I'm actually more engaged with a platform that doesn't really have an aggressive engagement algorithm.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Lemmy is definitively less addicting than Reddit, but it is still addicting, because it uses the up-/downvote mechanism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Doom scrolling wasn't there in the early days of reddit. Lemmy is still new. I think people just had high hopes and expectations that lemmy would be a 1 to 1 replacement for reddit, but that was never going to happen. Reddit has had years to grow and optimize while lemmy is just a fledgling with a niche user base.

Also I think lemmy is missing that hook or gimmick to get, for lack of better words, the attention seekers here that will make posts and content just for upvotes or to show up on everyone's front page. Not saying lemmy needs to be reddit, but I do think it needs a little extra something than just being a decentralized reddit alternative.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is down too often to be addictive

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you tried snorting it?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have a habit of scrolling during downtime during the day but I don't have an attachment to lemmy specifically. One thing I like about this app is how mundane a lot of the posts seem, it's not overly exciting and doesn't cause tiktok-style dopamine addiction.

All forms of social media could be argued as being addictive to some degree but lemmy IMO is relatively harmless. Though there is something to be said about rage farming, many of the posts seem to be negative or anger-inducing in some way, but it's not bad compared to many other platforms. And of course there is the ability to filter your feed by blocking certain communities but the personalization in that regard isn't as good as reddit was.

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