Warning: This is a rant.
I don’t really know how to describe it but the content isn’t quite where reddit had been for me. Also the comments are kind of weird at times, like they type of person here doesn’t quite seem as ‘normal’ as what I’m used to from reddit.
There’s a lot more open source and privacy focused people and conversations. A lot of people seem to hate on big tech and big companies in a sort of toxic-ish feeling way to me (not to say the other relationship isn’t toxic… just saying). Random conversations go into: “omg your privacy is lost cause you used a Google service.” Then we have the ‘if we don’t defederate with Meta the world ends’ conversations. I personally would like to see what Meta does in the fediverse… maybe it will make it more normalized…idk. Then the: “if your app isn’t open source its awful and terrible for the world” people.
Like that stuff is all fine, but it just isn’t quite my cup of tea.
These things remind me of that one person in my comp sci classes in college who I just couldn’t stand talking to. He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail and would generally look like a dingus).
The bulk of the content that gets comments seem to be mostly meme atm. At least on all (7/10 of the current top for me are memes). I like my memes, but would like some more breadth/depth.
Like I hope Lemmy continues to grow and hope it gets better, but it leaves me missing reddit at the moment.
In a perfect world I wish reddit corp wasn’t such assholes and this whole thing didn’t happen the way it did.
I’m completely skipping the UI and stuff not being as familiar and the various outages/bugs/etc since that’s to be expected with something at this stage.
Please don’t hate me :) Just sharing my unpopular opinion. Though I genuinely wonder if others feel the same way.
/Rant
I don’t think the point is to be welcoming to big tech messing up another platform. Seriously, which big tech platform hasn’t had a scandal around fucking over its users?
I understand the feeling of not having the kind of content you vibe with yet. There’s a lot of stuff on Reddit that I miss too. This is still primarily a Western audience, while Reddit was just starting to get popular in my country.
The insufferable people going on about open source and privacy is the reason we have Lemmy in the first place. If you don’t have strong opinions and a desire to get away from big corporations, why would you make Lemmy in the first place?
The algorithms big tech uses to boost engagement on their platforms is the reason things don’t stay friendly on their platforms. So, it’s fine if they come over but helping extend the reach of big tech over Lemmy is a serious no no.
Think of a union striking. Yes, it could impact your daily life and inconvenience you by making you late to your appointment. But, at the end of the day, they’re fighting for your right to reasonable working conditions just as much they are fighting for theirs. You don’t have to actively support them, just not oppose them for the slight benefit of your present convenience!
For example, the “normal” people are the ones who will complain about jobs going overseas but then not buy American because of minimal price differences! Here’s a link that talks about the case of American Apparel.
I guess for me its to protest reddit’s treatment of their community… not really to decentralize elsewhere. It can kind of be both though.
Reddit is part of the symptom. We need to treat the disease at its roots. And yes, that is going to take at least some amount of sacrifice/inconvenience on our part.
I think it makes more sense if you think of it like a system.