I’ve been using Lemmy for more than a year now and in the last month I noticed this tendency to dunk on people that complain and make memes about reddit.
Let me get this straight: I agree with the sacred commandment “thou shall not compare the two platforms”, because Lemmy is trying to be its own thing and the comparison keeps holding back this process.
But people that bring reddit up are usually new users that are angry with it and the just found a new platform where they can express this anger. They just need to vent for a second until their frustration is gone.
And you dunking on them is the same as if you were dunking on your friend who’s angry they got fired because that’s a topic you already heard.
lots of people are going to be assholes on lemmy, because that’s what they’ve always been. If lemmy communities are going to be better than subreddits, it’s not because of what regular users do as individuals, but because of what the moderators and admins do with the collective
lemmy has one big advantage though, and that is that people have been registering at instances that align with their values (or lack thereof). Being able to remove a whole swath of users from your community because they’ve self-identified as incompatible with your values is something that hasn’t really been possible on reddit
It must be a mix of both. You must know the rules before authority can enforce them.
Are you familiar with the concept of “The Eternal September”?
If you’re interested in the internet early history have a read (I find it fascinating), otherwise TL:DR: when there is an overwhelming wave of inexperienced new users, it becomes nearly impossible to educate all of them.
That’s where individuals become the key of communication with these new members.