Comrade, remember that when arguing with strangers on here, you may have non black and white views. For example, many of us notice undesirable things about Lemmy the software itself, we just acknowledge it and continue using it with the understanding that it’s the best we have. BUT it’s best to state it explicitly (“I like/use/am X but Y”), because most readers will assume skepticism of something as an argument against it.

It’s, however, fine to be downvoted, since there’s no score and old comments will essentially drown away behind pages on your account page as you talk more.

Also, oh no, it’s time to talk about politics! Be aware of political leanings. Unlike some other platforms, there’s no algorithm only showing you what you like, it shows what the majority likes bound by instance rules and norms. Some groups of communities may have slightly different views on average, although in some really rare cases someone on an instance may have a different view. See:

• hexbear net, lemmy ml, lemmygrad ml and subdomains - someone already explained, pro-Russia and pro-China viewpoints
• maga place, kiwifarms cc - as it sounds, usually defederated
• blahaj zone and big “general” instances with majority ex reddit people (including your instance, lemmy world) - “centre-left” in the common sense of the phrase
• anything with the ideology in the name of the instance, like anarchist dot nexus, is likely to be leaning towards it

Everything not mentioned is generally lib left leaning, like democratic socialists. Remember to use “All” and not “Local” to see everyone!

Also, people usually like text walls, sometimes with links to stuff, breaking out of the 4-th wall of just Lemmy. But there are a few people who don’t like visiting links, so you usually state the main point you are trying to derive from what’s linked or referenced. Here’s one thread I’ve been to. (Unfortunately Lemmy doesn’t really provide a way to properly link across instances, but you can just copy the link, then paste it into the search bar and wait around a bit. When providing links to other posts, you copy the link from the colorful “fediverse” button. Anyways, back to the point.) It wasn’t too productive and I’ve got downvoted a lot in my thread, partly because I forgot to elaborate too much initially, and because I was talking to .world people in anarchist language. That’s fine, nothing to be ashamed of. Note the blahaj zone user seemingly jumping in (from search) after a period of inactivity to argue in bad faith. I’ve managed to stall the conversation by providing counter arguments to basically everything stated with long explanations, citing wikis. This may not have convinced anyone to change their thoughts, but now anyone else attempting to jump in from search will see everything I’ve stated. I also used some “charged” language, which is fine around here and I never escalated it further. Not the best example of an argument back-and-forth, but close enough for my points.

Also also, pro tip, to mention a community type ! then the name, and to mention a user type @ and then the name. Do NOT use the autocomplete by pressing tab, because it’s going to create a link that will lead people to your instance, which people may not like. Just leave it as text and it will self convert for everyone to their own instance.

For example of mentioning users, I’m going to mention @pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org , who often posts newspapers of sorts for tech topics. Check it out sometime, when their instance is up (it’s very often down). The newspapers have coupons, you could paste the image into your favorite image editor (like GIMP) then select and copy the coupon to paste it into an argument.

Oh, what’s that - a spoiler tag, it’s called. It’s different from Reddit, you type ::: spoiler {name} and end it with :::. You can press the “view source” button on this post to see how that looks like. Yes, you have to use the word “spoiler” AND a name, so to make a spoiler called “spoiler”, you use ::: spoiler spoiler. The default web UI lets you stack them. Most mobile apps don’t, however, and make the text overflow out of both layers, so I don’t recommend relying on that.

I guess that’s all I have to add.

They banned me for absolutely no reason.

A year ago whenever I saw someone say this my assumption was that “no reason” was like “I only posted a light-hearted joke about murdering queers”, but Reddit has been such an absolute garbage fire recently that they genuinely do seem to be banning people for the most incredibly milquetoast shit.

Votes on Lemmy are basically public.
Mod logs are public, so it’s a lot easier for users to judge a moderator’s actions. This is usually handled over at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Mastodon (Twitter/like) users can create posts on Lemmy communities.
PieFed has more features that Redditors will be familiar with (post flair, polls, etc). It also has some useful features specific to the fediverse such as feeds for combining similar communities and the ability to view comments organized from every crosspost at once.

Welcome to the threadiverse!

Well, you got THIS far, so you’re doing a pretty good job understanding it so far.

Lemmy is made by communists for all of us. Don’t be a dick, remember the human, but be careful about the communists, a few of them are in this to cause a war that they think they’ll win.

Other than that, Lemmy and piefed are truly international, and you’re going to encounter a lot of diverse, real cross culture perspectives. A LOT of people REALLY FUCKING HATE AMERICANS. Like, REAAALLLLLY hate us… If you aren’t American, this is redundant, if you are American, don’t let them get to you because there are good people out there too that understand that everywhere is a mix and the entire point of talking online is to learn to accept each other and try to live together better.

Other than that, there’s a ton of nuance, a fuck ton of infighting, and you’ll just have to learn all of this as you go. Don’t be afraid to be different. Reddit was all about fitting in, this place is all about being true to yourself in an international space that isn’t corporate. I think it could shift that way, at some point, but due to the nature of how instances work, you won’t ever truly be banned unless you don’t fit in with your instance, in which you should probably change, anyway. Yourself or your instance, that is.

I dunno. Go wild. See what feels good. Pour one out for Sir Patrick Stewart, complain about Russians to Russians, complain about Americans to Americans, complain at the Chinese to the Chinese, air your grievances about a semi united kingdom, hornypost, drink milk, talk about how you like holding your phone while you poop, learn about open source software from the .ml users (those are communists), the gay stuff from my instance (those are the gays… Actually, there’s a LOT of gays on lemmy, not just us), try to remember which version of which community is which, or even start your own community and be a moderator of something neat just because you can.

Most mods on here are still used to the Reddit way, but are doing their best to not be. Everybody’s got strong opinions, some even have strong opinions about not having strong opinions!

Poopoo peepee kaka doodoo fuckfuck speckin ze deutsch at yo mama yahear?

1. You are now legally obligated to change that Reddit chibi to something mouse-related

2. Grab beans

3. Boot up Linux

4. Have fun!

But seriously, Lemmy is a diverse place. Take some time to explore what’s in here, subscribe to what you like, block what you don’t. Lemmy leaves it up to you to curate your experience. Also, welcome!

Upvotes don’t mean anything here

Landlords, billionaires, AI, Reddit = Bad

Beans, Linux = good

Marxist-Leninists = it’s complicated

People in Lemmy are still people, I don’t think you got banned off of reddit for “'absolutely no reason” my guess is that you said something (doesn’t matter if the take/comment you put on reddit was or wasn’t good/proper) that pissed someone off and they banned you.

I wouldn’t venture to think Lemmy is thaaaaaat different from reddit in the sense that every single user will be reasonable, level headed and open to civil discussion on here. From what I read from other users, it is still possible to get banned “for no reason” on Lemmy too.

Something I haven’t seen people talk about is the nature of the fediverse in terms of the philosophy of separate instances.

There are a lot of “general” instances that are kind of like mini-reddits. Lots of users sign up from all over, communities for a wide variety of interests. But there are also instances with a specific focus.

For example, I’m a member of midwest.social so when I look at the “local” feed, I only get communities relating to the US midwest. But of course, I can still subscribe and interact with other communities on federated insances.

Think of it like email. You can sign up for the big general purpose emails (google, outlook, icloud, etc). But you might want something different, perhaps privacy focused like Proton or Tuta. Or you can have an “instance” for your work where everyone gets an @company.com email. Or maybe you just want to spin up your own email with a vanity domain.

No matter which email server you use, you can still communicate with people on separate servers.

You don’t have to stick with the first account you create. In fact, I’d recommend that you try a few instances before you settle on one.

Beyond separate instances, there are also alternatives to Lemmy that are very similar but do some things differently. Mbin, Kbin, and Piefed are examples. And again, thanks to federation standards and everything being built to be compatible, you can subscribe to a Lemmy community from Mbin and vice versa.

You should know that you are awesome

You’re gonna need this.

… when the time comes, you’ll know what to do.

There’s about 20 monumental assholes here that are responsible for almost all of the squabbling and drama.

Use the BLOCK function liberally, every time you find someone who’s just a complete asshat, block them.

Eventually you’ll catch the big fish and life will get easier around here and you won’t have these morons to deal with.

first know that there are tankie triads: hexbear, ml and lemmygrad avoid these instances you can block it. blahaj zone, startrekwebsite. com is another ones to avoid, as they ban very easily for very vague reasons.

and yes thier Ai moderation for reddit is still banning people.

There is no karma here. Don’t worry too much about being downvoted every now and then.

Also, I like sorting by scaled. It’s like sorting by hot, except it pushes smaller, niche communities up. Which is great if you don’t want your feed to just be news articles.

One thing a lot of people don’t realize at first: You likely have the option to disable visibility of downvotes and/or upvotes in the settings