this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Ask Lemmy

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And to those that have been here for a while, how has your experience changed over the year(s)?

What has worked for you?
What do you see needs improvement in your chosen platform?

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[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That we still can't use a single account to comment and post outside of our home instance is the most frustrating part of the fediverse and the main contradiction to "you just need one sign up".

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am posting outside of my instance right now by replying to you

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I guess i butchered my complaint. I was thinking of migrating accounts or one account for all instances or something like that. Multiple signups are still a bitcannoying. Although it only matters for defederation corner cases and instances closing up.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Hello from wherever the fuck I am.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can definitely do that lol

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Ok i butchered it.

I was thinking of federated accounts, not participating in posts across the fediverse.

when you want to migrate instances, its annoying to create the same account name again and again.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't understand the politics. .ml, hexbear, etc. It's like going to Christmas dinner with your girlfriend's family for the first time.

I don't understand the broader structure, something about Mastodon being part of all this? How everything interconnects, etc.

I'm happy enough here, I read, I make comments, I move on. Just like I did on Reddit. It's a bit empty, so many of the communities are ghost towns. I get that I'm supposed to help with that, but I'm not much of a poster.

Learning recently that apparently anyone can track my upvote/downvote stats was offputting. I'm going to stop upvoting and downvoting now, I don't want people making inferences from that, but I'm fine with what I write, because there I always say what I mean.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

Votes technically being public and viewable however does mitigate voting manipulation and brigading and overall keeps the fediverse more honest and transparent.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I am only on lemmy.world so far

I like the people and moderation much more than Reddit. I've had a couple interactions with mods, and it's so weird, it was like they are actually people or something. Very reasonable comparatively.

No advertisements for Jesus is pleasant, also. Thanks!

[–] Slashme@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I joined a month ago, and I like Lemmy much much more than Reddit. The federation makes it visible that you're part of a large community, there's no advertising, and I find the discussion to be of a generally higher quality. I also like that one can see upvotes and downvotes. Not sure whether it needs to be fuzzified or embargoed to fight abuse in future, but either way, it's nice.

I'm absolutely sold on Lemmy vs Reddit. I dumped Twitter when Musk took over, and by then I was already on Mastodon, but I don't actually use it much. Didn't use Twitter much either. Any comments on Mastodon vs Bluesky?

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I gave Lemmy a dedicated year. A few notes:

Very few people click through.

Lots of rage bait.

Communities split over instances make it pretty hard to know where to post things, what with defederation and such.

I didn't miss much "news"; lemmy was functional for reporting what people were talking about.

No notification of moderation actions taken against you is a choice.

Those who post small websites that do cool things: thank you! I did discover several other cool places and tools.

I found that about 1/10 of the top lemmy posts (after filtering out jokes and sports) are links to AI slop that nobody bothered to check, comments just take the headline as real if they affirm. Pointing this out in the comments did not reduce engagement or drop the posts.

Cutting it out of my routine, at last for awhile.

One thing I really hoped for from the social Internet was access to people and data that could correct me/fill in gaps. But lemmy doesn't do this, as people see what is upvoted and upvotes are used for affirmations to the reader.

[–] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Communities split over instances make it pretty hard to know where to post things, what with defederation and such.

Piefed can help mitigate this a bit. If there’s a link thats been shared across multiple lemmy instances it will consolidate all the comments into one post 

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[–] LadyButterfly@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I'm a redfugee came with the big exit about a year ago. I post prolificaly, comment sporadically and have a couple of comms. I love it, it feels more like the olden days of the Internet when everything was smaller and you knew people. I sometimes idly scroll Reddit but not even once a week, it's fucking dire and atmosphere is shit. Insta I'm on a few times a day for memes and Reels.

Long live the fediverse!

[–] Cromer4ever@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've been here for a few weeks now, and I've already grown very fond of it. I love the decentralized approach and how things are managed here. It's the best alternative to today's mainstream social media platforms. Hopefully this project has a long life ahead of it

I hope so too. I've been trying to engage with communites I'm interested in like coffee, and tea.

[–] Azrael@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Honestly not great. I was permanently banned from Reddit and the admins wouldn't tell me what I did. I came to Lemmy thinking it was a better alternative to Reddit, only to find out how toxic Lemmy is. It's even worse than Reddit in terms of toxicity.

[–] beSyl@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Really? That is surprising. I don't find lemmy to be toxic.

[–] Azrael@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Look at some of the more political threads and you'll see what I mean. They have a serious problem with ideological absolutism. You're either with them 100%, or you're the enemy. No room for nuance.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Oh, I like that! They're funny and have provided me with a lot of laughter

[–] coffee_nutcase207@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My main issue is that only the political subs are active

[–] Azrael@reddthat.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've had the same experience. Everywhere else is a bit of a ghost town.

If you like coffee and tea I found those groups are quite active if you make a thread.

[–] disregardable@lemmy.zip 43 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

It gets better the more familiar you become with it. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in real life. There are parts that are just way too jarring.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in real life. There are parts that are just way too jarring.

Ugh, this. And I hate that it's like that.

Like, I used to have my instance open to whoever to sign up. My guiding principle was to have a place that wasn't overrun with [parts that are just way too jarring]. Holy shit was that an impossible goal to do alone so I shuttered it up and now it's just a private instance / testbed for Tesseract.

My friends knew I was active on Reddit, and that was fine. But I wouldn't tell them I spend any amount of time here because what they would see going to almost any random instance will ~~probably~~ definitely not look good on me by association despite that I'm nowhere near that.

So if anyone shares this desire, I am open to un-mothballing my instance, rebranding, and taking on new admins and re-opening to users who also want a place like that.

[–] diabetic_porcupine@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (13 children)

Ok so wtf is everyone talking about jarring parts

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe all the ”what the fuck we just made another-moe" communities?

I swear I used to block three every week, until I figured out it was just a few users who didn't know how to use content warning tags, and then I just blocked those users.

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[–] CathyBikesBook@piefed.zip 4 points 2 days ago

I've been on Mastodon for almost a month, I enjoy it. I started in the mastodon.social instance then moved to mstdn.plus. I'm still trying to get a hold of Piefed, but it has been good.

[–] compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone 39 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I’ve been on the Fediverse since mid-2023, and I’m sticking around!

I bailed on Reddit, FB, and IG, and I’m only on Mastodon and Piefed now. I find that not being on algorithm-driven social media makes me less angry, and I have a much easier time avoiding getting caught up in a mindless scrolling marathon.

I like the ability to filter out by keywords, it makes for a much more pleasant experience

As far as improvements, my main complaint is that I wish there were more people and that the people who are here comment more. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but there are a lot of communities that just don’t have enough people posting and commenting to make things feel lively yet.

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[–] DigitalDidgeridoo@kbin.earth 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've only been on the fediverse for a total of like 10 minutes, but it seems so far like a perfectly viable alternative to big tech's data collection schemes disguised as websites.

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[–] Skavau@piefed.social 21 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I'm not new as such. I joined up on kbin initially and tried to establish my communities on there, but kbin kinda collapsed. Then I gave up for a while.

When I came back, I moved to lemm.ee and set up television and obscuremusic and got them going (the former especially) and then unfortunately lemm.ee shut down and then I moved to Piefed and rebuilt it all over again.

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[–] diabetic_porcupine@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don’t feel good about being on mainstream social media any more. Any time I spend on Reddit or YouTube is minimal and with a sense of distrust.

I’ve been on lemmy for a few months now and it’s grown since I joined and grows more every day as people hear about it.

Never looking back.

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[–] JayGray91@piefed.social 8 points 2 days ago

I stayed permanently since middle of last year thanks to piefed.social. it has a great onboarding system for anyone that might not have the gumption or will to self curate raw lemmy, mbin and now piefed outputs. A.k.a being lazy like myself.

Although for my close online friends I'm likely to suggest other piefed based instance just because tobspread the load around.

It feels like reddit back when it was smaller and before the abhorrent new UI and their aggressive algorithm. Well we all know the fediverse is practically without algorithm for good and bad.

So with this view it semi forced me to be more active in the communities I'm in. I mostly comment though rather than making posts but hey any little thing helps.

And besides I just love piefed has topics i.e. multireddit a.k.a a group feed of multiple communites, where I either I can subscribe to premade topics by the instance admin or make my own grouping of topics/communities.

I still to my chagrin dip back to reddit for some communities or topics but it's none of the big ones. Things like psychotic people that has way too many x (bags, retro games handheld devices, headphones, fountain oens, paper notebooks, ereaders, knives, pocket trash, etc) and spending way too much money on them.

[–] unnamed1@feddit.org 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I’m new here and it’s quite a relaxed experience. I think there are more friendly and reflected people. It’s like people here are able to criticise properly and take criticism and also encourage and praise a little. I thought this was lost since early internet. But also very political / activist. I feel like in a bubble of people who want to change things for the sake of people and not capital. As much as I like it we’re not enough. I don’t care there are not many comments. Less comments, less fomo.

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[–] Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Been on here since August and I like it. Left Reddit after I got a permaban for expressing how much I'd love to see the death of billionaires so I came here. Haven't had to worry about a ban for things I say and haven't been banned from groups cause I commented on other groups (I don't know what they're called and I don't want to call them subs). I'm still getting messages from mods of subreddits saying I've been banned cause I commented on an anti-Nintendo sub despite my profile being perma-banned from the site.

[–] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Welcome! They're called communities! /c/

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I’m still getting messages from mods of subreddits

Some of them are fucking bots.

[–] PM_me_your_doggo@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I joined two years ago after the Reddit API thing, full of hope and with bright eyes. I even got a couple of doggos in my PMs, which was nice. It got even better after I finally blocked enough weird porn communities so I stopped bumping into them all the time.

Now I only open Lemmy when I’m having trouble sleeping at night. I browse All/Active, and 90% of what I see are bot news reposts about Trump doing something stupid or scary, or some “are .ml tankies” shitstorms.

Also, I got banned on the Linux community at .ml and I have no idea why or even when it happened, which I actually find kind of funny.

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