When I first started using Lemmy it seemed like such a nice place with interesting discussions. It seemed like the first group of people to join after the app exodus were being quite careful to be respectful of the existing culture.

Now, it seems as though the culture from Reddit has completely replaced it. Toxicity and all. I will say I do follow a lot of communities from a wide range of instances so it’s clearly not everywhere.

Am I the only one who’s feeling like we’ve just stormed in and bulldozed Lemmy?

  • ren (a they/them)
    81•1 year ago

    It’s scale.

    Scale is the enemy of social networks. All of them, including Lemmy.

    Let’s say 0.1% of the population are just straight up assholes who ruin everything.

    If you only got 100 people on a site, no one is an asshole.

    1000 people? Well now you got that asshole Andy in the group. Fucking Andy. But we can deal with him.

    But we scale up to 1,000,000? Well now you got 1000 fucking assholes to deal with!

    • r00ty
      34•1 year ago

      I don’t want to be that asshole Andy. But 0.1% of 1,000,000 is 1000. :P

    • @[email protected]
      4•1 year ago

      So you’re saying it’s proportional all the way up and not a big deal, or people love assholes and upvote all their material and comments for greater proportional impact?

      If anything I would argue that the first and early adopters are less likely to be assholes, to where eventually you reach that tipping point and move back towards the average, which feels worse in what is a collection of niche communities, because the average engages slightly different content than early adopters.

      Moreso, I think it’s just confirmation bias. OP is hyper sensitive to a change in the culture so every example of it weighs a little more.

      To be clear, like most things, I don’t think it’s one thing or another; a little from A, a little from B, and probably a slew of other factors.

      • @givesomefucksEnglish
        5•1 year ago

        The bigger an asshole someone is, the more theyre going to comment…

        One asshole is just one asshole, but 100 assholes are going to make more comments than 1,000 normal users.

        Which makes it look like there are 10x as many assholes as there really is.

      • @[email protected]
        4•1 year ago

        I want to jump in and say that people do love assholes. You need look no further than celebrities and the people that hang on their every word.