It reminds me a little of the old internet. I like how relatively small it feels, and that people post content for the sake of the content, not to promote themselves. I haven’t found my usual corners yet, the ones I used to hang out in on older platforms, but I figure that’s just a matter of time. I’m not super nostalgic for the old internet or anything, but it’s nice to find at least a hint of something human-centered somewhere.

I hope it doesn’t fall apart and that it keeps growing.

I was skeptical when I switched to Linux, but then I ditched Windows on my dual boot for good. It was a hugely positive experience, and it really felt like freedom. I’m hoping this will be the same.

And don’t be mad at me if I act totally clueless here sometimes 'cause all that is new to me.

all 65 comments

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[–] 58 points 21 hours ago

CLOSE THE DOOR we're hot boxing the place

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  • [–] 53 points 20 hours ago

    Remember to thank all the community moderators and admins that tirelessly take the spammy, horrible and bot posts out to the trash for us, so we can have this nice space without being overrun by the trash!

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  • [–] 37 points 21 hours ago (1 child)

    It's a lot quieter, so feel free to contribute or... it stays quiet :)

    Lemmy is only one part of the Fediverse, Mastodon is there as well

    look around and enjoy

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  • [–] 29 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

    I had to laugh when you mentioned Linux as if it's a requirement to use the Fediverse. It's funny how everyone here loves Linux (including me).

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  • [–] 5 points 7 hours ago

    It's not a requirement, but whatever leads you to Lemmy will also lead you to Linux. Whether that's anti-corporatism, anti-capitalism, pro-open-source, just counter-culture, or whatever else. They're the same side of different coins. (I don't think this is a real phrase, but it works. They aren't actually related, but they're equivalent.)

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  • [–] 24 points 21 hours ago (8 children)

    What are your usual corners?

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  • [–] [S] 24 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

    Niche communities built around specific interests, from chess variants to linguistics projects like constructed languages. And occasionally something else, like a niche heavy music genre or something along those lines.

    But I'm pretty burned out on Reddit, especially the way things are run over there

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  • [–] 17 points 19 hours ago

    There used to be a fairly active linguistics community here, but the science-themed instance it was hosted on went dark over a month ago. Hopefully it comes back.

    I can't imagine there's not a chess sub here, surely it's big enough?

    Music wise there are some communities, maybe !obscuremusic@piefed.social fits the bill for now?

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  • [–] 6 points 14 hours ago*

    There's an entire Mastodon instance devoted to linguistics at Polyglot City, and a Toki Pona PeerTube instance at seka pona la! Lemmy is only partially interoperable with most of the other Fediverse platforms, since their focuses are just so different. However, there's definitely a few ways to interact with them from here I think.

    Also right here we've got communities for:

    And actually lots more, this is just a sample.

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  • [–] 18 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    Welcome.

    I've been here for four years and I love it. No ads. No AI. Human moderation.

    I donate a few bucks to my instances monthly and I'd recommend you do the same. Keeps things nice.

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  • [–] 18 points 20 hours ago*

    Welcome! Bring a friend. Bring another... No, on second thought, one is enough. No need to get crowded.

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  • [–] 18 points 21 hours ago
    [–] 16 points 18 hours ago

    Welcome, I like your energy!

    Try to be an active participant, comment, vote, post if you feel like it around the topics that interest you.

    And a word of advice : heavily curate your experience. block people, communities and instances if necessary to cut down on negativity/noise and you'll have a great time here.

    Hope you stick around!

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  • [–] 15 points 21 hours ago

    Yeah, welcome. You captured the vibe perfect 👌

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  • [–] 14 points 14 hours ago* (3 children)

    Welcome! Glad you're liking it.

    The big complaints that people tend to have are that federation is a bit confusing, and that it's no where near as big as Reddit. They're both valid, and probably won't change any time soon.

    But I think sometimes people overlook the positive aspects of federation and smaller communities. Reddit is damn near unusable these days, and it's full of bots, slop, reposters, ads, and power tripping admins/mods. The Fediverse has been around for quite a few years now and still feels like a place for actual human beings with a lot of freedom to take things in different directions.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 child)

    I actually worry for when Reddit fully implodes, because the ensuing migration wave to Lemmy will bring the same problems and solutions with them.

    Yes, i miss some aspects of Reddit, but I'm aware of the hypocrisy that comes with that statement as well

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  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago

    Probably what'll happen is lemmy.world will become the new reddit and we'll all have to decide if we want to stay federated with them.

    I welcome the schism if it ever occurs. I think it would be really interesting to see how a fully "scaled up" but non-corporate social media handles a challenge like that.

    Even if we have almost exactly all the same problems reddit has, but without being a monolithic corporate platform, I think it would be an improvement.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 hours ago (1 child)

    protip: if you want to feel like an absolute genius here, all you have to do is read the actual articles before going to the comments.

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  • [–] 13 points 21 hours ago

    Welcome! Had a simular backatory as well and so far I am really happy!

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  • [–] 11 points 18 hours ago

    I love it too. I really feel that this will be the future of the internet. Public non-commercial spaces to just interact. That's what i love the internet for.

    The incentive structures of the major platforms made me feel awful before i understood what made them so grating. I thought i hated social media but what i really hated was attention media.

    I also have a sort of fetish for minimal utilitarian design that lemmy specifically scratches. It just feels and looks so good. The interface exists purely for what it is supposed to do and nothing more.

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  • [–] 10 points 20 hours ago

    Warm welcome! It’s nice to have such a place to read about topics you like and get help when needed.

    Also most people here are really friendly despite a few less friendly ones.

    Enjoy and try to support if you can!

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  • [–] 9 points 21 hours ago

    We are not mad. We love that you love it here. I love it too.

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  • [–] 9 points 20 hours ago

    Welcome! That's what they do here, build up your expectations and then...BOOM!...call you a stupid-head for saying things. Just kidding. Have fun. Also, lots of users here provide me with lots to learn. There are bad apples for sure but so far they are not spoiling the bunch.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 hours ago

    Your corners may not exist here, that's ok, you just gotta make them. Some folks round here have done a great job of it already with their corners

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  • [–] 8 points 5 hours ago

    I disagree with everything you said and I poop on your enjoyment. Just kidding, howdy.

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  • [–] 6 points 21 hours ago
    [–] 11 points 20 hours ago
    [–] 5 points 15 hours ago

    Welcome! I love it here too

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  • [–] 5 points 19 hours ago
    [–] 5 points 11 hours ago

    Hello, person.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

    Welcome!

    Also, tbh if you make a new community for something you want to see, and post to it maybe once every couple days, your people will eventually find it.

    It takes a bit of upfront work to prime the pump, but eventually you'll find a steady little stream of posts just start to appear.

    It almost feels like it's addressed to you when it happens, like oh! Someone posted in my community! And it's something new to me! It's a real treat.

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  • [–] 3 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    Welcome :)

    Most of us were clueless when we arrived here :)

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago

    Welcome!

    Just like reddit, there can be a ton of downers and doomers.

    Just ignore them.

    Lemmy's been great for the couple years I've been using it.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 hours ago
    [–] 2 points 16 hours ago

    Great enjoy your time

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  • [–] 2 points 16 hours ago

    Welcome in!

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  • [–] 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (15 children)

    Welcome! It's cozy here :-)

    But make sure you filter out what agitates you. For many here, that is the Tankie fraction. Lemmy has a fair bunch of left authoritarian instances with users that are prone to having unpopular takes, and being very adamant about them - if that isn't to your liking, block out the lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net instances to avoid most of it.

    (But if you like heated discussions with delusional people, by all means, go ahead lol)

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  • [–] 9 points 16 hours ago (14 children)

    Welcome! It’s cozy here :-)

    Except for the centrists and conservatives here who are terminally obsessed with tankies who feel the need to warn everyone in every single "I am new" post.

    Stop

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  • [–] 3 points 16 hours ago (13 children)

    Lol i am neither centrist nor conservative. I am a Socialist, and even i am tired of the bullshit the LeftAuth is spilling all over Lemmy. Stop pretending otherwise.

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  • [–] 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (12 children)

    I am not pretending their aren't leftist idiots here, I am pointing out the unhealthy weird obsession some people have in this place with hating on them... especially given the flood of violent rightwing ideologies happening globally right now it feels especially disengenous.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago

    It is a little weird. I'm a leftist and I don't agree with tankies, but they aren't something I think about very often. Actually, I only think about them when a thread like this one pops up. For something which is supposedly a huge problem on Lemmy, I've found them very easy to avoid. So easy, that I don't even remember what I did. Probably blocked a couple of instances early on?

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago (10 children)

    With the difference that I haven't seen many rightwing chuds around here (thank god), while we have a fairly active community of leftwing chuds with a boner for Putin around here, which need the same amount of resistance - as all authoritarians do.

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  • [–] 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (9 children)

    I mean sure, fuck Putin, russia is just an authoritarian dictatorship but also my president literally acts like a damn russian asset so I just find it tiring to listen to all of this alarm over leftwing people being pro-russia when it just kind of misses the point of who has the power, who is hurting people right now, and who we need to be focused on as a group of people that may launch unprovoked, violent acts.

    Across the board, all over the world, the political parties that are most aligned with russia/Putin are rightwing, in Europe, in the US, everywhere... so yeah there are leftwing idiots here who support russia but also gestures at the globe again it kinda feels like a distorting narrative to focus on.

    With the difference that I haven’t seen many rightwing chuds around here (thank god)

    Here is the thing, there are lots of rightwing chuds with extremely toxic beliefs that use fediverse software, some of them have even tried to integrate with the larger fediverse... but invariably these rightwing communities end up being so toxic that nobody wants to connect with them.

    Trump's bullshit Truth Social is literally just stolen Mastodon code that doesn't really need to have any federation capability because again nobody wants to connect with them....

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/trumps-social-media-site-quietly-admits-its-based-on-mastodon

    My point is that maybe the reason you see more leftwing idiots here than relative to your experience in other mediums/spaces is that while there are dangerous idiots of every type leftism does not largely endorse ideologies of violence and exclusion no matter how much conservative snowflakes accuse leftism of being this way it is just projection... so the instances you are on may not feel the need to censor leftist communities the way they do the equally "extreme" rightwing communities because the leftists don't start attacking the humanity of trans people and harassing them in public, they don't engage in rampant antisemitism or islamophobia, leftism doesn't idolize the capacity for violence or obsess over there being specific ways you have to perform your gender socially, even if you hate leftists there just is way less reason to completely hard cut them off then there are for extremist rightwing communities...

    Make no mistake though, there are tons of rightwing extremely toxic communities out there using fediverse software (or stolen fediverse software as is the case with Truth Social being stolen Mastodon code without attribution) and the reason you don't see them is they already caused too much of an issue for everybody in the community you joined that they burned the bridges that would naturally lead you to listen to them.

    TL;DR You are more likely to run into a Hasan Piker type here gasp!!!! than a Tucker Carlson type because the Tucker Carlson types tend to say some really scary shit in the process of doing things like criticizing Israel, like genuine antisemitism or other things and they were already blocked by most normal communities that widely federate on the fediverse whereas the Hasan Piker types are just maybe from your perspective focused on the wrong politics but are not advocating directly for violence and exclusionary ideologies. The mainstream media and the billionaires who own corporate social media refuse to hold Tucker Carlson types accountable even when they say really twisted, evil things, the fediverse does not.

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  • [–] 0 points 12 hours ago* (6 children)

    The main problem are authoritarians, regardless of flavor. I do not know what you are all about here. Just because we are in the pretty unique position of having a more active left-wing auth population, doesn't mean we have to accept their bullshit. It doesn't matter that they are on the left wing if they play it loose with human rights.

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  • [–] 2 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

    I am pointing to the reality outside of this little bubble that globally we are experiencing a rise of authoritarian rightwing, openly racist and exclusionary political movements.

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  • [–] 2 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

    Yep, but replacing rightauts with leftauths doesn't accomplish anything - in the end you are under the heel of the boot.

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago (2 children)

    Is an "auth" anyone that supports having a state? Is it not better for the working class to have a state than the capitalist class? These kinds of zingers are common, but they don't actually say much.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (1 child)

    Wouldn't they become the new dictators, elites, dictating what others should do? The cycle would just go on changing from one master to another with same bullshit. You underestimate how power changes people when they reach it.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    Why would it be a problem for the working class to control society? The working class is the mass of the people that creates new value, democratically deciding how to run society and planning production for our own needs is a good thing. I don't see how "working class controls society" as the same as "elites."

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  • [–] 0 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    leftism doesn’t idolize the capacity for violence

    Agreed in the main, but there is a pro-gun left and some aggro anarchists (and lots of overlap), and some of them have as much bloodlust as any right-winger I've ran into. That is, assuming they're a real person and not a bot or the persona of a Russian troll. Also, I seriously doubt any of them would bust a grape in a food fight, whereas I have solid evidence that right-wingers can and will get violent if given the opportunity.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

    Also, I seriously doubt any of them would bust a grape in a food fight

    This person disagrees and captures the energy well I think lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Tiwtwr_dg

    If your point is that angry leftists are far less likely to shift into advocating for or directly doing violence without the leftist context around them immediately shutting them down for going off the deep end, sure but also... don't mistake people using guns for a stand in for their identity as the whole of gun ownership, they are just the most immature and loud ones....

    More importantly, don't conflate the aesthetic attraction to violence and physical violent (nonconsentual) dominance over others as the same thing as the capacity for violence or self defense.

    The largest subset of gun owners who actually identify deeply with their guns are hunters... which cannot easily be described as simply "conservative" exhibit A being how many hunter based environmental groups have consistently advocated for habitat and wetland protections in a way conservatism is hostile to.

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  • [–] 0 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 child)

    Old Internet? Nah, to me the internet was born in 2010 xD

    Edit: Damn nobody gets the joke.

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