Just signed up for both. No idea who to follow on mastodon I much prefer the subreddit format over the follow this person to see everything they post format.
Old forums didn't have an upvote system to hide posts. They had actual moderators who kept politics and religion out of most topics.
Exactly why I still use old forums and don't talk about them on Reddit. Redditors will ruin it, look at arstech forums now it's the same as Reddit with the same comments posted here.
Reddit is threaded. Most forum software is not. I'm sure there's a plugin now for you to upvote posts. You still had the post report button which went straight to the mods. No different than how Reddit works.
A closer analogy, to be pedantic, is that Reddit is a dumbed down Slashdot. Which had both taxonomical post voting (not just up/down) and threaded conversation. It just added the subreddit concept.
Without voting, and complete anarchy, you had Usenet. So you had the 'subreddit' concept with each news group. Discussion was threaded. (Unlike forums, which were linear).
But all of the above systems. Usenet, Slashdot, Forums, Reddit are completely different than what Twitter introduced to the world.
I have no problem sharing my forums on Reddit. I don't see what they're able to do. Especially with the taxonomy set up in the sub-forums and how most are moderated: https://www.vwvortex.com/forums/
Spam the 5x112 Classifieds with politics? It'll last an hour at most before a ban hammer.
I always find it funny when vwvortex is dragged out as an example of a good forum system, for no other fact that i have found it as a great resource for all kinds of things over the last 20 years or so, and have never owned, nor seriously considered, buying a vw.
I feel that. Had to leave /r/space because every thread devolved into Elon fanboys and haters bickering. Can’t have politics-free space news. Gotta polarize every damned thing.
At least the craftsmanship subreddits stay focused.
Here is a short guide on finding interesting people on Mastodon. If you follow people on Twitter, a lot of them will have links to their Mastodon or Bluesky.
If you prefer a reddit format, there's Lemmy. I've found the communities there pretty small and the creators are tankies, but the point of the fediverse is that you can choose a server that suits your needs. You can even follow Lemmy users and "subreddits" from Mastodon to some extent, they're built on the same protocol.
Great post. I have the same experience on Lemmy with tankies, who are fundamentally just as big of wing nuts as the far right people they talk about. The drama and toxicity is as extreme as some of their rhetoric.
But it is simple enough to block a community and move on. A bigger problem are them overrunning other communities on other instances since it is federated. Unless an instance blocks another instance, it is difficult to deal with.
Seems to be an ongoing issue within open source at the moment. The Linux community is currently eating itself because a bunch of black-and-white good-and-evil tankies are revolting and putting people through purity tests to make sure their dogma aligns--otherwise they exclude people from projects, abandon projects, or flat out state "open source isn't for xyz type of person."
It is pretty gross seeing politics overtake one of the more noble aspects of tech. Folks are so bad at it right now that they are twisting the GNU manifesto as some sort of communist underpinning for all of open source. The reality is that GNU was largely apolitical; it is egalitarian in nature, is not against business and capital but is against secrecy and authoritarian enforcement which it deemed would be necessary to fully ensure everyone is in compliance with software licensing.
We'll all note that one thing GNU does not call for, however, is to freeze out other users and contributors on the basis of orthodox. Yet that's exactly what's happening with this new generation of FOSS devs. Sadly.
Enemies at the gates, and in the shadows, and at the foot of the bed, and next to you while you sleep, and under your skin chittering like bugs to chew its way out, and finally in your dreams. Some people are extremists.
As another sad but also funny example: Asahi Linux (distro that runs on Apple's M architecture) is having a breakdown because one person used the idiom that open source devs are the "thin blue line" protecting free software. And a couple people got all hot and bothered with low media literacy skills and took that as some kind of endorsement of the police (who are all bastards, they assure us) and so blew up the project in a temper tantrum.
People really, really need to take their meds. It has never been more normalized to get help, yet here we are.
I was briefly active on Lemmy when the whole reddit "exodus" happened, and then gave it another chance a few months later. Both times, I couldn't stay on because every single community would become a forum to discuss US imperialism and the woes of capitalism or something else of that nature. I lean left and am politically active, but I'm just not that interested in US culture war issues. Reddit has the same problem, but at least you can find a handful of small subreddits that have managed to fence themselves off from all the shit.
I have immediately found communities around personal and professional interests on both Bluesky and Mastodon, and I'm finding them much more pleasant to be on that Twitter. Lemmy probably won't be the alternative to reddit, but I'm still hoping something emerges, hopefully open source and/or federated.
I guess it's inevitable that open source projects will be a playground for people's egos, some Mastodon communities can be insufferable as well. I can ignore it for most projects, but it's worse with the likes of Lemmy because the devs have shaped the content on the platform(s), which should in theory be independent of the tech. When the official instance is called lemmy.ml (where "ml" stands for Marxism-Leninism) and the admins have pictures of Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, it sends a message about who the platform is for.
I mean, karma does that. The Slashdot system (score range of -1 - +5) and karma having a verbal description (excellent) was much better if you ask me, but karma I'm sure holds some financial value, otherwise they'd replace it with something better.
Any platform that has a "gamifying" system is going to do that. Not saying it's perfect, but it's better than twitter. Honestly, I would love to see all non-profit decentralised apps design themselves around fostering meaningful communication and not money making, addictive gimmicks that manipulate people and drive them into echo chambers.
That's a problem of the individual users and it's not unique to Reddit.
I'm not saying I haven't ever engaged in the nonsense. I do when a topic isn't serious or a person who I'm replying to has shown themselves to not be too serious or too hardheaded for real discussion. However, I have had many meaningful discussions on every topic here with people I agree and disagree with. I've been proven wrong and enlightened many times over the years I've scrolled here. Real discussions do happen here, it just doesn't always garner the same votes that the "circle jerk" comments get.
Despite the abundant nonsense, I've had and seen better discussions here than anywhere else on the internet in years.
And being down voted is fine, even if it hides messages. But many subreddit are very strict and will ban you for respectfully disagreeing and explaining your opinion
Yes that's the worst thing for free speech. I have been banned from default subreddits for even participating in other subreddits. It didn't even matter what I said. Reddit is becoming very totalitarian.
Typically you can point out that what you said was arguing against whatever that sub stands for, and get manually unbanned. But hey, not always. I got banned from /r/trashy for basically saying that racism against white people is a thing.
But why would I have to advocate for myself? What about people with different beliefs? Should I be banned just for leaning one way or another? How can you convince people to the other side that way? It divides.
The only thing I don't like about votes is that they're abused by bots and people that downvote facts (especially those with evidence to back it up) are pretty annoying. Otherwise it's actually kind of refreshing to have a conversation where people can downvote your stupid thoughts. While occasionally brutal, one could really use this unfiltered feedback IRL at times.
That's true. It definitely has flaws, some of which the site could do better to protect against but sadly doesn't.
However, I abhor the current "mainstream" system that facebook/twitter/youtube have of "positive vibes only" where the only way left to call out absurd content is to either comment (with people being super toxic about it usually) or try to "ratio" someone.
I wonder if there's a way to turn votes into a limited resource instead of it being unlimited. Like not only do you have an limited number of upvotes and downvotes, but you also can receive a limited number over a period of time. Which might promote people making higher quality posts.
Realistically, reddit (the company) loves power users, but I think a better system would involve limiting their influence, and the influence of bots.
I'm sure there are plenty of flaws in that, but it's a thought.
That's down to each subreddit settings. Some of them have temporary blocks to prevent people from getting mass downvoted just because. But in this subreddit I can see the number of up/downvotes in real time
You dont follow people on Mastadon, it's just a site for sharing your favorite pics of wooly mammoths, which makes it by far the nest social media site out there.
I was trying to figure this out, too. I can apparently see posts on a topic via hashtags, e.g. https://bsky.app/hashtag/astrophotography, but there is no way to "follow" tags like you can people? Do I have to make a bunch of bookmarks?
I tried the bluesky classic feed and got a bunch of furry hentai porn and some guy showing his penis. I forgot how huge my reddit filters are to make browsing /r/all sane! hah
Follow a few hashtags for subjects that interest you and then follow people who seem worth hearing more from. With Mastodon I recommend joining an instance that's either geographically themed for your area, or has an interesting focus. That way the local server posts will be more likely to be relevant to you.
Whats with the defensivez bro? I'm asking why you feel compelled to use it. You just said you have nobody to follow and don't like the UI. So what is the point?
Is this really a problem to ask?
I'm literally trying to have a discussion right now, is this how you "allow room for discussion"?
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u/ranchwriter Feb 17 '25
Just signed up for both. No idea who to follow on mastodon I much prefer the subreddit format over the follow this person to see everything they post format.