Asklemmy

43776 readers

1384 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

172

Your journey with Lemmy: When and why did you join? When did you leave and come back? Are you finally settled? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by cyclohexane@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

95 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.

Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.

After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren't active on lemmy.

What about you?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What kinds of opinions do you think are lacking? And what niche topics you wish lemmy had communities for?

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'm not the original commenter, but I have a similar experience.

I come to places like Reddit/Lemmy/Mastodon/Twitter to see other views and ideas. Lemmy doesn't have that - at least for Canadian politics, commenters tend to voice opinions compatible with the current government. Lemmy has an extremely narrow Overton window.

A great example is discussion on Canadian party leaders - when links are posted about the leader of the opposition, commenters generally agree he's a jerk, totally regressive, and doesn't have much policy to offer. When links are posted about the prime minister, the consensus is that, as lousy as he is, the leader of the opposition is worse. I agree, but it's basically the same conversation each time.

The conversation goes roughly the same way when policy issues come up. Posts about the housing crisis inevitably have a comment saying we just need more density or better transit; that Conservative premiers are terrible; etc. These things are true (enough), but there's not much more than that. Posts about election interference are filled with comments saying US companies are at least as bad as state actors, etc. It's just a lot of the same.

Generally speaking, I agree with a lot of the points. But I'm not here for that. I want to read comments that I disagree with that forces me to think.

EDIT: wording.

tl;dr: the Canadian Lemmy consensus has a tinsy Overton window, and that's boring.