Make use of the block function. Lemmy makes it super easy to block assholes and it just makes life more pleasant. In ~2 years, I’ve amassed a block list of 39 users. It turns out that the vast majority of shittiness comes from a very small number of people.
Blocking a total of 6 people was enough to drastically change Lemmy for me
I’ve blocked a few users who’s spammed daily posts, but for me as someone who mainly browses /all blocking communities has been clutch.
Don’t hesitate to block communities and people if they become annoying to you. People on Lemmy can be very passionate, I would know as I was am sometimes still am included in that set. This combined with how vastly different the culture of each instance can be will lead to strong disagreements sometimes, if you choose to engage do so in good faith but don’t expect to convince anyone of anything lol.
Also you are gonna see some very radical politics if you are not used to that
You can also block entire instances.
I don’t want to turn off NSFW since there’s plenty non-porn NSFW but every time I go on all I block time of porn communities and if I see a bunch coming from the same instance I’ll block the whole thing. Makes it so I can actually find new communities on all.
Psst if you want newbie oriented advice ask on [email protected]
One piece of advice as a freebie: Don’t judge yourself too hard if an honest and genuine comment you make now-and-then gets downvoted. Often times the best thing to do is just to move on. You can try to reach a mutual understanding through conversation, but recognize the signs when a back-and-forth isn’t leading anywhere productive and simply back off.
That’s just healthy advice in general, I think. Thanks for thr reminder :)
Sometimes I get downvotes that make no sense, so I just chose to believe it was an accident.
I dont care for upvotes or downvotes. That feels… Anal…
Just for replies to comments.
There’s no algorithm here*, so use the different sorting options (for both posts and comments), as well as setting your favourite as default once you see what works for you.
* the different sort options are of course algorithms, but I mean there’s no automatic, manipulative system like YouTube’s “The Algorithm”, Facebook, TikTok, etc.
Voting doesn’t tune your algorithm, so I’d say only use downvoting for things that are low quality, trolling, in the wrong sub, duplicate posts, etc. Your votes aren’t private, by the way - although Lemmy itself doesn’t display voters’ names, that info is in every server’s database, and some other software in the Fediverse does show them.
There are quite a few apps available, I like Voyager on Android and I stick to the default website on my computer.
Out of curiosity, which sorting option do you prefer and why? I seem to use Hot a lot, but sometimes I switch to Active, honestly not sure what the difference is.
From the Lemmy docs:
- Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time
- Hot: Like active, but uses time when the post was published
My default is set to
- Scaled: Like hot, but gives a boost to less active communities
This is the newest sorting option, I think, and it helps me not miss posts from the smaller comms - particularly ones where people are asking a question and there’s been no engagement. Ideally I’d like to have Mastodon-style lists so I could have “quiet comms” or something and check them all every so often.
I will switch to new or top 6h/24h if I’ve been on recently and just want to see what’s fresh. Top all time or 1y if I’m looking at new-to-me comms so I can see what type of thing to expect from it.
Yeah, I like Scaled, I’ve switched to using that now. Thanks!
And yeah with Active I’ve noticed it seems to put the same posts at the top if I check it multiple times a day (I’ll often pop in for 20-30 minutes while waiting on something else or whatever), so hopefully Scaled does a better job about mixing that up.
As an aside: I am subbed to several political/news communities and I keep seeing the same post cross-posted to all 3 of them back to back, do you know of a way to avoid that? I want the other content from those subs but seeing the same ‘human fire hose of shit spews some more shit’ article 2-3 times in a row is annoying.
The duplicate content thing is kinda impossible to solve perfectly. Some people will tell you it’s a feature, and it can be interesting to see the different instances’ comment sections (especially after moderation), but yeah it can be annoying to have your feed dominated by a few stories.
The default web front-end will merge crossposts, but won’t if they’re multiple posts to the same URL. I think some of the apps do have that deduplication as a feature, but I couldn’t tell you which.
I remember the same problem from my Reddit days, but there wasn’t generally so many similar, overlapping communities.
You know, I just realized I don’t get it (or at least not as much) with Voyager on mobile, and I didn’t even think about it. I’m using the Alexandrite UI on desktop and it’s bad about it, I haven’t found any options for it in the settings or anything. I noticed it a few times on reddit, but I was subbed to so many communities and they were so much more active that it almost never happened. Oh well.
Read the rules for a community before posting or commenting. Take this community, for instance:
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Use https://lemmyverse.net/ to find communities (subreddits) to subscribe to.
Also these can be good sources:
Wow! Thanks. I actually found a bunch of communities I liked that i didn’t know existed.
Welcome! My little tips:
You can change your default sorting. I recommend setting it to hot instead of active.
You can filter things by word content in titles. Useful for filtering out some political content if you need a breather.
Have fun! 😁
I think scaled is better than hot otherwise you’ll never see anything from your small communities.
My default sort setting is Top 6 hour. Seems to have the best newest content. Hot doesn’t update enough for me.
Floss, drink water and live active!
Most claims people make of others and other communities are highly personal and likely not true unless for specific circumstances
Classic example are the few people who go around flaming inter-community drama in comments, then someone else replies showing that poster had recently been banned from that community and clearly deserved it. Modlog ftw.
It’s rare, and mostly the same people, but I see it about a dozen times a year.
Main one is applicable to any online space.
Hang back when you check out a new place. Get a feel for things before jumping in because, like reddit, not only does lemmy have a culture, each instance does, and each community on each instance does.
You go to a meme community in one place and crack a dark joke, everyone laughs. You do it on another, you get banned. Yet another and you’re in a flame war.
But it doesn’t just apply to things that controversial. It can be simple things like calling someone dude. Or talking about cars, or dogs, or weather. Sometimes, in some places, there’s a culture that isn’t obvious until you’ve scrolled through for a while. Again, this isn’t specific to lemmy, or even only online.
Always do a vibe check when you’re new somewhere, anywhere.
You can not post videos on lemmy you can only link to them. I just learned about catbox.moe to upload videos
Pick an instance you like browsing locally, and use that, rather than trying to browse as much content as possible. Specialized and niche instances are often way more interesting.
Click on the menu, hit communities, and go subscribe to all the ones you’re interested in. Also https://lemmyverse.net/communities for finding communities on other instances you want to subscribe to.
Block early and block often. Probably the best decision I ever made was blocking lemmy.world from my feed.
It’s unfortunate that such a big diverse instance goes on the block list. A huge amount of people get blocked just because the platform tolerates enough reactionary jerks that people begin associating it with the instance. And to be clear, I’m blaming the overly-liberalist position of their administration, not you or the typical user.
Sympathy as a lemmy.ml user. There’s usually a few people in these threads saying “just ban .ml” for various reasons.
Out of curiosity, why? I joined on lemmy.world cause it seemed like the biggest/most populated instance, but it seems to get a lot of hate and I’m not sure why.
Not the user you asked, but my impression is they’re tolerant (or undermoderating, I’m not sure) of the kind of behaviors many of us left reddit to avoid, like flame trolling, bigotry, propaganda levels of US-centrism (and labeling anti-US-government or anti-Democrat-Party attitudes as Russian bots), anti-socialism and straight-up platforming US reactionary users like Trump/Musk supporters.
The instance takes a general lax liberalist position, and as a result, allow a sizable amount of toxic users who we don’t tolerate in our communities. So some people take the easy option and just block the whole instance, unfortunately blocking a decent amount of good considerate users too.
There’s also a bit of bad reputation due to the staff being far stricter on deleting support for Luigi Mangeoni, like anyone suggesting what they did was positive or appreciated. Lots of people left reddit because there were banned for the same reason. Whereas my instance (and the one this thread is on) allows me to say that, while I believe history shows PotD assassinations are not the right strategy to solve this problem and there must be a social movement surrounding direct actions, the shooter’s assassination was cathartic, Brian Thompson deserved to die early and quickly, the owner-class mass media’s widespread failed attempt to demonize the assassination as immoral showed clearly their values lie in opposition to the worker class (regardless of electoral alignment), and the fact that healthcare CEOs were terrorized by the event was a benefit, however small, to humanity. You would probably get a warning for saying that on lemmy.world’s communities.
Thank you for taking the time to provide an in-depth answer.
I have not seen much of that, but I believe you. And yeah, I left reddit because I got temp-banned for ‘advocating violence’ because I said Luigi didn’t deserve to go to prison for what he did. It was bullshit and got lifted on appeal, but not before I also got perma-banned for some bullshit about evading a ban with multiple accounts (I’ve only ever had one account in the ~14 years I was on reddit, I never even made throwaways or anything.) It was also lifted on appeal, but by that point I was pretty fed up at how fashy and trigger-happy reddit admins (not even mods) are. I didn’t realize that was also a problem on lemmy.world, that’s disheartening.
I am an ancom myself with what most liberals would consider some pretty spicy takes on politics so I feel like it’s only a matter of time until I run afoul of the bullshit-police here too if it’s that bad. Do you think it’s worth making a new account on lemmy.ml (the only other instance I’ve even considered, but the description talks a lot about FOSS and not much about socialism/etc so I wasn’t sure) and starting over? What’s your opinion on other more socialist-focused instances like Hexbear (or others I may not be aware of)? Or is there some way to transfer my account? I’m still pretty new, like a couple months old, so it’s not the end of the world if I have to start over, but it’s kind of a pain so I’m not sure if it’s worth it.
Not who you asked, but I figured I’d pitch in. Hexbear.net has a good amount of AnComs, as long as you aren’t sectarian against Marxists. It’s a left unity space, it’s where I have my other account. As a Marxist-Leninist, I find Hexbear is generally far more chill and less argumentative because there’s a 0 tolerance rule for transphobia, bigotry, liberalism, etc.
Lemmy.ml is far more argumentative due to being more broadly federated, and isn’t explicitly anti-Capitalist. I mainly stick here for outreach, not to have a good time or anything. You have more visibility sorting by all, and can access Hexbear from Lemmy.ml if you don’t want to make an account on HB, though you lose access to emojis and other HB specific features, like easily accessing the Megathreads for News, General chatting, etc.
You probably wouldn’t like Lemmygrad.ml, it’s explicitly Marxist-Leninist and is sectarian against Anarchists. I enjoy it, though I don’t have an account there. It’s accessible from Hexbear.net and Lemmy.ml.
lemmy.dbzer0 is more piracy focused, and has an Anarchist bent. It’s accessible from Hexbear.net and Lemmy.ml, but can’t access Lemmygrad.ml.
Slpnk.net is socialisty, focused on the Solarpunk aesthetic movement. It can’t access Hexbear or grad, but Lemmy.ml and dbzer0 are connected (I think dbzer0 is, at least).
My advice? Browse each locally for a week without making an account, see what sticks. There’s no downside to making an account or abandoning your old one, really.
Good to know. Yeah I’m pretty chill with MLs. I enjoy debating politics (and religion and philosophy for that matter), but I see no point in getting cranky in the pants or holding a grudge or whatever about it.
I was dimly aware of Lemmygrad.ml and sorta decided to avoid it so I’ll just keep doing that (also I get the impression lemmygrad is defederated on many mainstream instances.) Slpnk.net is the other one I was considering, but it seems kinda dead compared to lemmy.ml or hexbear.
Alright, I think I’ll just go ahead and make an account on lemmy.ml and see how it goes. I’m already subbed to many of the communities on it and slrpnk.net and a couple on hexbear (tho I don’t seem to see posts on those very often). Thank you for the advice.
No problem!
Generally agreeing with Cowbee’s reply. I joined lemmy.ml years ago when it was explicitly “leftist” (as in socialist) but that’s not written in the instance description anymore, and I am interested in FOSS discussion but you don’t have to care about that to use the instance. This was the first instance, which was created by the two core developers who are both communists. I wanted an instance that was socialist-leaning, stable and isn’t trigger-happy with defederating or regularly getting defederated, so this one is great for me.
I have mixed feelings on Hexbear, I like dropping in sometimes and some of their comms are nice, but I see them as prone to mod powertripping and the culture is (overall, not always) a bit low-effort for my liking and prone to idealism/sloganism/dogmatism. So I’m usually only using a couple of specific comms or laughing at /c/slop.
I haven’t kept up with Lemmy software updates so I don’t know where it’s at with migrating an account. I’ve had a couple of different accounts simultaneously (one on an instance which died years ago, one on an interest-themed instance) rather than just having one main account. And like they said, there’s little downside to abandoning an account beyond inconvenience. There’s no ‘karma’ score shown by default, and you can re-use your username on the other accounts if your name had a reputation you want to keep.
Fair enough, thanks for your advice. And yeah even if there was karma I wouldn’t give a shit; I was on reddit for more than a decade on the same account and I couldn’t even tell you what ballpark my karma was in when I left cause I cared so little. Mainly the inconvenience is in rejoining all the communities I care about, but it’s not that big a deal.
You’re welcome :)
I just had another look at the settings options, and it looks like we can import/export account settings, including subscribed communities, blocks and saved posts. (I haven’t tested this, but I can see them in the exported data file)
Holy shit you’re the best, thank you!
comfy actually summs up a lot of my critcisms of the instance perfectly. In a word, it really is like everything I hated about reddit.
Yeah, I think after reading a couple replies in here I’m gonna go make an account on lemmy.ml and see how it goes. I just don’t want to be account-hopping every 5 minutes or whatever, I want a place where I can get the posts I want without the bullshit. I left reddit for many of the reasons comfy mentioned, so lemmy.world does not seem to be the place for that.
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I’ve been here a while, and that’s an awesome new sub for me.
This was an even more satisfying find because my beast of an elderly cat is loudly purring on my lap. Thanks softcat!
