I’m a huge nerd, so the reason I joined Lemmy is because I was looking for a social media platform that conforms with my views on FOSS, moderation, and internet privacy. I would assume many other people are in the same boat, but is that accurate? Who’s just here because they looked up “Reddit alternatives?”
90% of people who joined Lemmy (or the fediverse in general) are tech savvy enough to wrap their head around the concept of federation.
Is it really so tough? It’s the very similar to email providers, and who doesn’t understand those?
I work in a computer shop and talk to regular computer users all day everyday.
The average user might know what a browser is. Most don’t know that the Internet is outside of their computer.
Real quotes like this happen everyday: “I just get on the green one to check my Google”. Translation: I check Gmail using the Edge browser.
It took me 25 minutes the other day to explain what video chat was and that FaceTime is only one kind of it, and it’s only available on Apple devices, of which an HP laptop is not.
Do not underestimate the computer illiteracy of the common person.
I always find this article fascinating: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
It isn’t tough at all, and anyone who says the concept is can’t wrap their mind around it is either a Luddite or is willfully dismissive.
Yet you’re describing 99% of internet users, so…
Who are all being willfully dismissive and are faniliar with emai, so…
but do you need to understand that
reddit is a cesspit, on reddit it used to be that misinformation or incompetency cope would be promptly identified, now its the top 5 comments on any thread…and the next 5 are circle jerks.
in other words: welcome reddit refugees. please please feel free to leave the reddit mindset at the door on your way in :)
I started using reddit just for the memes and would use some 3rd party frontend to get rid of the ads and nake the interface way cleaner. When the API pricing was announced, I serched for a better source of memes and somehow found lemmy. No ads, no bullshit, and there are some cool communities here that I actually want to participate in.
I’m not a tech person. Art and craft is my thing. I joined Lemmy after the Reddit API issue.
+1 on this camp.
Me too, actually
Healthcare person here. Same camp!
Not a tech person. Working on my PhD in theoretical computer science.
okay 🥲🧻😤😭
It depends on the community, but in general people on Lemmy love FOSS. The linux community is very helpful and friendly (although headstrong). Moderation depends on your instance (.ml is quite politically motivated). Privacy on the platform is non existent due to how the software works, but in general, people here do care about privacy related topics.
That is true but doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a tech person. I don’t consider myself one, in fact I come here for help when I have questions or issues. I do appreciate foss and privacy but I’m not hardcore on either. I’ve certainly known a lot of people with even less understanding than me about tech, but I don’t think I qualify as a tech myself and I believe there are many others here in a similar situation as me
True, I didn’t actually answer the question. I suppose it’s because yes, I am a tech person. I am a senior systems engineer and software developer with a career of over 20 years. I have run my own tech company for 10 of those years, and recently went back to work in a corporate setting as lead developer for a contact center software company.
I’m a little of both, I joined for escaping the reddit blackout shutdown, but I stayed for the advantages of the fediverse. I grew up working with a lot of proprietary software, and I’ve had growing pains as I’ve grown bitter about proprietary software over time. I’ve been self hosting, working on migrating my machines to Linux, and trying to find workable alternatives to everything.
Edit: yes I’m quite techy, a DevSecOps/software engineer. I worked with Linux a long time through VMs and containers, but gaming and Adobe kept me from having a daily driver machine for more than a little while. I don’t think I’ll ever fully escape Windows because I’m a big .NET developer and work with a lot of legacy code, but I’m more than happy to leave that to a QEMU VM.
Not a tech person. I’m currently a PhD student in civil engineering and wood science.
I promise I’m not being sarcastic when I say wood science sounds fascinating, lol.
What made you decide to use Lemmy?
Was on reddit for many years, didn’t like the direction it was going. Also I’m permabanned from there!
Oh! What’d you do to get banned off of Reddit of all places??
I’ve had a few accounts banned from a few of the larger subreddits, then I got a general permaban for ban evasion. Among the things I was banned from big subreddits for:
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Making even vaguely pro-Palestinian comments on r/worldnews
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Commenting in r/politics, that if the SCOTUS ruled that the president had complete immunity and was effectively a dictator, he should drone strike Supreme Court justices until that power is taken away. (Actual news stories proposing this were allowed on r/politics. But the comments section had an idiotic zero-context zero-thought “no violence” policy. IMO, the only moral use of dictatorial powers is to force through changes stripping yourself of those dictatorial powers.)
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Literally on January 6th, as a group of armed insurgents was actively trying to overthrow our government in a coup, asking why they weren’t being met with automatic weapons fire. I have zero doubt that if BLM tried to storm the inauguration of a president Trump, they would be shot by the dozen. But right wing extremists were allowed to openly attempt a coup in broad daylight. (We later learned the reason this didn’t happen is that the president had deliberately kept troops from being deployed to protect the capital building.)
My primary account on reddit had several hundred thousand comment karma on it. I’ve had accounts with 15 year histories on there. But the main subreddits have been completely taken over by either right wing radicals or pro-advertiser zero-thought censorship policies. I literally had my main account banned from r/politics for wondering why my nation’s military wasn’t defending the peaceful transfer of power from a group of armed revolutionaries.
Looking back, I think we would have been a lot better off if January 6th HAD resulted in scores of thugs being gunned down with machine guns. Instead, the people who planned it haven’t been brought to justice and have been left to simply try again. And since then, in right wing circles, it’s been recast as some noble peaceful protest. We would have been far better off if the leaders of that movement never made it off the capital grounds. If we’ve learned anything from history, it’s when fascists try to seize power violently, you need to come down like the Hammer of God upon them. Giving them a slap on the wrist to appease them does not work, it just teaches them that you are weak, and that they should keep trying til they succeed. If a thousand of the countries most violent right wing extremists had instead never left capital grounds alive that day, I think today we would be in a far better place.
But…you can’t post that kind of thing on r/politics without getting instantly permabanned. They censor any discussion of violence, even when it is entirely justified and legal in the defense of a nation and its democracy. It’s been said that from time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants. But on r/politics, the tree of liberty is doomed to wither, as discussing watering the tree with the blood of tyrants violates community guidelines and doesn’t make advertisers happy.
Or, as a final example, I think there was a story on there once that was hyperbolically lamenting, “OMG, what happens if Trump raises a group of right wing militias to stage an armed revolution if they lose in 2024?” I replied truthfully and correctly. What do we do if any group of people tries to overthrow the government by force? We shoot them. We send in the most powerful military on Earth, we shoot them, and we put them in the ground. That is what you do with rebels. That is what any democracy needs to do if it wants people to respect the results of elections. When you try to overthrow a legitimately elected government, your life is now forfeit, and you will be met with unrelenting merciless force. That is how that scenario would actually go down in real life. Democracy is worth fighting for. And democracy is worth killing for. And I wasn’t afraid to state this plain and obvious fact. That got one account permabanned from r/politics.
In short, I am not afraid of saying that under certain circumstances, it is entirely just and legal for violence, even extreme and lethal violence, to be used to protect a nation and its republic. But on a big subreddit like r/politics, you’ll be permabanned for saying it’s OK to shoot people trying to violently overthrow the government.
Lemmy isn’t immune to bans for people speaking their mind or promoting violence. It happens all the time.
Sure. But again, it’s a distributed platform. And it does tend to be less subject to zero-thought zero tolerance policies built to appease advertisers. If you start posting death threats to politicians, you’ll get banned (and probably visited by law enforcement.) But I never posted anything like that. I never threatened anyone. I never advocated vigilante violence. I never posted anything that I couldn’t, completely legally, write on a big sign and literally walk around in front of the White House fence advocating for.
Hell, Lemmy.world will ban you for OPPOSING violence. But the bright side of federation is the lunatics taking over the asylum on one instance doesn’t impact using others.
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They wouldn’t shut up about their “awesome, super-hard wood”.
Well, first, I’m not a guy. But two, if anyone ever makes a comment like that, I just say, "look…my work involves cutting, grinding, smashing, burning, and straining wood specimens until they break and buckle. If you really want to associate that with certain body parts, be my guest. But…it sounds quite painful.*
I was formally studying Software Development before I came here, and yeah, I’ve been a sort of techie for the better part of 24 years. Been a LiGNUx user for probably a combined 18 years. If it wasn’t for FOSS I probably would have lost interest long ago, because when I recently tried out some new hobbies I was shocked as I was reminded how much other basic activities cost to seriously engage in. I also happened to migrate from that other website you mentioned, but that’s not important. I really wanted to simply find other forums that weren’t based on one centralized website. Lemmy is kind of a compromise with that for me.
i never heard someone using the term LiGNUx, is it some new way of saying GNU/Linux?
it’s an alternative to GNU/Linux proposed by Richard Stallman. I use it because I don’t want to write out as much and I still want to differentiate from my use of Android’s OS which is also technically Linux but it’s not GNU.
What would you call Alpine Linux?
it’s an outlier for sure. I don’t think I have a specific use-case for it as a distro but I do find it more respectable than Android.
Yup. Techie, but with other interests. There are dozens of us.
Edit: gave up on Twitter and Reddit after being early adopter of both. Moved over to Fediverse and not regretting it one bit. All good.
I just answered on the other lemmy post (about are you on here 100%) but I’m not a tech person. I googled alternatives, plus I understood the benefits of federation so that’s how I came to Lemmy.
Not a tech person. I’m a seamstress/tailor who will make you feel like the smartest person in the room when I ask questions about computers. Never knew so much about internet privacy before Lemmy, either. It’s been eye-opening to learn about tech-stuff on Lemmy!
I left R×ddit out of spite, then found out youtubers made videos reading out my posts and said goodbye to it forever. It became a free content farm ripe for mishandling, astroturfing, and paid propaganda.
My stubborn ass will learn something beyond simple navigation because I’m always wanting to skirt injustice and do what little I can to not support rampant capitalism (I have no money!)
I mean… I learned Blender. I’m capable of pretty much everything!
We’re happy you’re here! 😊
Compared to most people in my IRL, yes. Compared to lots of people on Lemmy who work in industry or are much more serious hobbyists than me, no.
Me too, know my way around a computer but have never setup a linux distro or anything like that… yet.
I left in one of the mass exodus waves of reddit (during the api changes) and i feel like its not that consequential to be one person less on one of the biggest sites on the internet, but every person counts. Especially when what is becoming increasingly apparent is that all reddit will soon have is bots and ‘normies’ who use reddit instead of facebook/whatever.
I only used reddit through an app so when they closed the api that was the day reddit shut down for me, I came looking for meme pages. I forget about reddit, I have my memes and shitposts. Sure, fewer than the before times but I also see less guerilla marketing so that’s nice.
Yes, I am and before you ask: no, I will not help you fix your grandma’s PC.
Negative, I am a meat Popsicle.
Smoke you!!
Gimme da cash!
