We know... we were there.
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2026
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I don't know, size made it pretty bad. Subreddits with hundreds of thousands or more users create environments where no one is trying to have a discussion. People are just vying for attention. That creates an environment where comments are either all jokes, or all snark. It's really, really hard to have anything that resembles a human experience in a place like that. People stop recognizing each other as people, and just treat everyone as an audience.
That makes for a pretty bad experience.
First
Brute force moderation is what killed it IMHO. Same shit that as happening to .world
This too. Just heavy handed and lazy power mods. No real appeal process either.
I don't disagree, but I think the heavy-handed moderation was often in service of "cleaning up" to make the website more commercially palatable. Like when they pulled r/atheism as a front-page reddit.
For me, the out of control engagement bots constantly commenting on my comments was the last straw that made me leave.
r/atheism as a default subreddit was one of the biggest problems with reddit, honestly. There's only so much smug self-satisfaction that a website can handle before going to shit.
The problem is, they get so trapped up in the vague-at-best definition of “civility”, that they allow propagandaised bullshit as lit as its polite.
This isn’t how a community should be run, and it’s why the divisionists pretty much own the comment sections in any political posts and communities.
No mods have the balls to tell these fuckos to kick bricks.
So, you want mods that power trip harder, just in the direction you like?
I dont fully disagree, but it would be a very hard role. They'd be volunteering to cop abuse from all sides relentlessly.
Yes, actually.
Set the rules, and enforce them. If you, as a user, don't like the rules of the community, don't fucking post or comment there. It's not power tripping to take out the trash. Take the free speech absolutism bullshit to Twitter.
Woah, I'm not advocating for free speech absolutism, you've misunderstood my position. I want more empowered/activist mods as well, all I am saying is that it isnt simple.
The problem with "set the rules and enforce them" is that the assholes will rules-lawyer the mods into the ground. They'll post stuff that the flirts around the edges of the rules, and when punished for it, will harass the mods relentlessly via yepowertrippingmods.
There's no quick and easy solutions here.
The direction of democracy shouldn’t just be the direction I like- it should be the direction EVERYONE likes. And when there’s people yelling that both sides are the same and trying to convince others not to vote-
Yeah… I think the mods need to quit being so chickenshit and kick those assholes the fuck off the instance entirely.
.ml would welcome them with open arms. They can preach to the choir there all fucking day long.
direction EVERYONE likes
That's the tough part of democracy, getting people to agree. And if the assholes outnumber everyone else, then you're in trouble.
IMO, if we want mods to be more aggressive, we need to empower them to be benevolent dictators. Otherwise its far too easy to fallback to doing nothing. Modding is already a thankless task, telling mods to toughen up and endure the hate doesnt help that.
I’m telling mods to toughen up and kick the Russian psyop trolls the fuck out.
Size and commercialisation generally go hand in hand. After all, how do you keep something running with infinite users submitting infinite content for free?
This is a big issue for everyone, it's important that the fediverse understands that size might some day increase the importance of sensible business models or proactive funding initiatives to counter the growth. This doesn't mean harmful profit models necessarily, but it does mean keeping revenues under control for individually run nodes or for archiving services for old fediverse domains that might not exist forever.
I see the point but I don't necessarily agree. Before the intense commercialization Reddit had definitely changed for the worse for me because of the influx of people.
I stopped talking about Linux because Winbros would brigade me. I stopped talking about politics because I would be brigaded by western/capitalist bros. The discussions also got a lot worse over time and nuanced opinion was almost always down voted and brigaded.
I fear the same would happen for lemny if we suddenly had a hundred million users. Having a good community is desirable, but having a ton of people not so much so.
I stopped talking about politics because I would be brigaded by western/capitalist bros.
With the Ghislaine Maxwell WorldNews moderation stuff I wouldn't doubt if there were more unknowns around banning generally cordial leftist/Pro Palestine/Anti capitalist voices. I mean also just look at the Luigi Mangione crackdown.
It bleeds into conspiracy, so I try not to push it much, but I'm sure there's some type of moderation aspect.
I noticed a profound change in moderating about the time TheDonald became popular. People started getting bans after this for things they would have never been banned for before and it wasn't the racist/sexist people getting banned.
I eventually received a subreddit ban after leaving a comment in a conservative Reddit effectively stating the Republicans should take out Ron Desantis like the dirty diaper he was. When I pointed out to the moderators that what I said was rather tame compared to other comments they claimed I was harassing them (for exactly one appeal message). I received a 24hr site ban over this which was both bizarre and confusing. I started to disengage after this and after the API changes I stopped using it completely.
No, what made Reddit bad was incivility, bots, trite comments, and theme accounts (and my axe!). It was massively popular, which exacerbated this stuff, and it incentivized upvotes.
Lemmy has upvotes but people seem less interested in them.
Here, we have the ability to mute toxic groups (defederate). We are decentralized, so it's not just one dickhead in charge. Our users are, for the most part, civil and somewhat intelligent and funny.
I was with Reddit from 2012-2015ish and then lurking on and off until the API shit storm, and we are nothing like Reddit in my opinion - not that that was the intent of the original post but still