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Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

dev.lemmy.ml

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Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#81

Post by arcturus17 »

markdown wrote: post #37

So many noob mistakes in the UI and I haven't even started using the site proper. I see a link "Create Community", this takes me to a form where I get to create a community. I spend time naming and describing this community, and then click the Submit button. At this point it decides to tell me that I need to use lowercase for the community name. So I fix that and hit Submit again. At this point I'm told I have to cre…

The problems in UX/UI in what I've tried span from fundamental interaction design down to code.

I guess it's a young project, so lots can be improved. I think the problems you mention are bad but they sound fixable.

I'd think about contributing or at least start by running my own instance and tweaking the interface to my liking. I'll also need to check if Inferno is worth learning.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#82

Post by djsumdog »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Voat attempted several design choices to make it solve certain complaints about Reddit, and most of those choices ended up being terrible ideas:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/voat-what-went-wrong/

I think the right answer is federation. Having a lot of instances moderated by different people gives people a lot more freedom of choice.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#83

Post by Deimorz »

hypersoar wrote: post #38
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Voat was created intentionally and specifically for the (mostly far-right) trolls too unsavory for Reddit. So, if Lemmy is not that, it'll have a head start.

No it wasn't. Voat was originally "Whoaverse", a reddit clone that the developer created as a school project. He literally copy-pasted the HTML/CSS from Reddit and then started gradually rebuilding some of the backend in C#. You can see the original version in the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20140427060403/http://whoaverse.c...

He tried to get people to use it for a while, but since it was just a less-functional and empty Reddit, nobody was very interested. Eventually some of the users/subreddits banned from Reddit started using it since they had been kicked off real Reddit, and the developer ended up welcoming them while justifying it as "free speech". I think he mostly just seemed happy that some people actually wanted to use his site.

It's all been downhill from there, and the original creator even abandoned the site a few years ago and handed it over to someone else.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#84

Post by MattGaiser »

holidaygoose wrote: post #64
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

Everyone else has no strong reason to leave the existing platform.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#85

Post by detaro »

badRNG wrote: post #67
detaro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that all alternatives have to be "free speech = allowing abuse" alternatives? E.g. a large subset of Fediverse (Mastodon etc) communities are communities that avoid Twitter because they don't feel Twitter is doing enough to be safe for them. And instances have a varying policies about how they handle instances with different moderation standards.

When free speech on the internet is discussed, it is within the context of freedom from excessive moderation on a platform. To call a Fediverse a "platform" doesn't seem quite analogous, these communities are more like their own platforms that are far more intensely moderated than even Twitter or Reddit. Free speech advocates who aren't convinced by the "just go to another platform" argument in a discussion about Red…

And what stops a network of lemmy instances from being that more intensely moderated Reddit alternatives? That's my point: just because other reddit alternatives have branded themselves as "free speech" doesn't mean all of them have to. And federated platforms might make that easier than one-offs.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#86

Post by badRNG »

Miner49er wrote: post #68
badRNG wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the outcome of all of these Reddit clones, even the ones made with the best of intentions. Take for instance Ruqqus, another site created as a free speech reddit alternative. It consistently has horrifying content on the front page regularly; viciously racist content, anti-Semitic memes, unironic pro-Nazism/pro-genocide discussion posts, and generally terrible content. This is likely because it is ex…

raddle.me is a reddit alternative created by lefists after being banned on Reddit. It hasn't been taken over by the far right.

I'd argue that raddle is far more intensely moderated than Twitter or Reddit, probably more so than most subreddits.

I may not have done a good job of illustrating it in the previous post, but the example was mainly focused on platforms that bill themselves as an anti-censorship alternative to Reddit. Censorship and free speech on social media are incredibly complex topics, and the development of an endless stream of tiny, far right echo chambers doesn't seem to capture the spirit of this "town square" that free speech advocates are looking for.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#87

Post by foolfoolz »

as1mov wrote: post #76
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

It's a weird issue honestly. I've been on reddit for almost a decade, and I don't like what it has become. I would love to switch to a better alternative, but the problem is any alternative that pops up seems to be filled with extremists as soon as it starts. This doesn't imply that anyone who wants to leave reddit is a neo-nazi, a lot of us are stuck with reddit because everything else is filled with shit.

there’s extremists on every platform

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#88

Post by ralusek »

raldi wrote: post #33
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

I don't think HN outcompetes Reddit...

Also, Reddit has more moderation than Reddit. Subreddits exist for a reason.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#89

Post by asjw »

raldi wrote: post #33
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

Moderation hides content

That's the biggest limit of moderated forums, they only reflect the opinion of the most active groups who can steer the discussion helped by moderators who benefit from rewarding the largest groups instead of the best comments

If moderation was visible and moderators were forced to leave a note about why the moderation took place it would be a real discussion platform

HN is not

Slashdot is a lot better than many others in this regards, but it's not popular anymore and you can't make money on it, while a lot of people leave by posting shit on Reddit

Worse is better always wins

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#90

Post by bennysonething »

The Reddit redesign made Reddit ridiculously unusable. Also like the web in general the more users it got the horrible it became. The stardard of content fell through the floor. The stanard of comments did the same. It went from be a pretty free market liberal types to angry left wing reactionaries over the course of a few years. It felt like the users got younger and younger until one day I saw a pic bunch of high school students egged on by their teachers holding a "socialism now" banner, this was front page.
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