Bots vs people
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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You could be right: The bots have been very bad but I agree that I’m seeing them get shutdown faster lately.
I think part of it is that Reddit has gotten so bad that even casual users are noticing that it's basically indistinguishable from any other corporate social media.
Concidentally, as of lately, Reddit has seemed more "dead" to me than usual.
And that's not even counting the egregious "cloned threats" where, within the span of one or a few days, the exact same comments, but with all-different user names, are being copied underneath two headlines with similar topics; or the weird, LLM-written and machine-translated comments that very badly match the topic at hand or the OP they're replying to, something that's especially obvious if you visit non-English-language subs.
There has also been an influx of users on Piefed which might explain why things seem more active on here.
I automatically assume Redditors are bots from some state actor. I've seen enough obvious campaigns that it's impossible for me to trust anymore
As more of the world is moving into the #boycottUS movement more people are moving to open source alternatives. I personally wish more people would move to more open source things rather than alternative closed source things that could be sold to a US company.
Lemmy has been one of my primary social networks for some time. It is excellent.
yeah I agree to I avoid "All/Everything" and just build my fave feeds:
Browsing "all" I can get through "top 12 hours" in about 30 minutes.
You say that like it's a bad thing!
Yeah and no. When I moved from Reddit, which I also browsed on /r/all it would be an ever ending stream of content.
When moving to Lemmy the amount of content was much less, even more so in 2023. It's been getting better and better since then.
It was a shock at first and my immediate reaction was of disappointment. However it quickly became apparent how addicted I was to the phone, and not having the content and an absolute refusal to go back to Reddit, meant I started living.
Lemmy has been an absolute plus to my life. I am grateful.
Well said!
I find that I often use Lemmy to point me to music, books, movies, etc. instead of just being an end in itself.
Also I find myself posting more. The fact that niche communities tend to be smaller means that I can be an important part of those communities.
I come for conversation. Granted its just snippets here and there but im not here to got links or media dropped on me without context.
It feels a lot more organic. Once in a while, I get into a heated argument where we go back and forth.
But it doesn't feel like I'm arguing with an obvious troll. Just two people with disagreements.
On Reddit, argue with someone and they go, "Yeah will you're a cuck and you post on lolcats" and then you find out theyre a Indian teen or a bot.
I mean im sure many folks are all sorts of ages. I have blocked accounts were the responses are swears or other bull trump.
same- I come cause I reddit banned my 14 year old account cause of a trigger happy mod. Lemmy gives the vibes that brought me to reddit in 2012. I try to stay away from the political threads cause of the surveillance state but oi can't really help myself
I think it’s partly because reddit has become an overflowing bucket of shit where bots accuse bots of being bots and real humans get permabanned for breaking bs rules or saying no-no words.
Like "Linux" in linuxsucks101...
When you say 'everything section' do you mean the 'all' section or a specific community? Sorry if there's an obvious answer, I just joined a few days ago & I'm still learning my way around
I'm using Sync (I'm lazy with getting new apps and it hasn't pissed me off yet) and the button is called "Everything". So I guess it's the All section!
I love Sync but be aware that it is no longer being actively developed. It has some bugs that will never be fixed, and might break entirely in the future.
I've been using "Thunder" and so far it's done a pretty wonderful job of things. Very easy to view and scroll on a phone. A lot of options you can set and customize.
Thunder was still not quite what I was looking for last time I tried it. I am very happy with Summit now, personally.
Haven't tried summit. Thunder is pretty close to a clone of what I was using on reddit before the api fiasco they had and I bailed. Relay for reddit.
Has the developer confirmed he's dropped the project for good, or is he still just MIA? I know he's gone over a year between updates before, so unless he's announced that he's done, there's still a small possibility of an update in the future.
This is longer than he's ever been MIA for before, this time I think it's about 2 years since the last update, and there are several literally critical bugs. But this is the downside with absentee developers like that, you never know for sure whether it's abandonware or not. But he seems to be actively working on other stuff still so I just don't think Lemmy took off enough in popularity for him to feel like it's worth his time monetarily. Makes sense if this was always more of a business than a passion project, which is the way it appears to be to me.
The least he could do would be to just say that he is done developing the Lemmy app. Just vanishing is a dick move.
I'm using photon in my mobile browser, but the 'everything' tab as well. Still learning but it's not too steep of a curve. Feels very organic & I love the lack of ads
I'm sure that's what they mean. I scroll with "New/All" and this is a fantastic way to read new stuff you have never heard about BUT the caveat is: this is an enjoyable scroll ONLY after you've developed a good block list of users, instances and communities. Otherwise, you'll get inundated with the few but very vocal and toxic communities that make Lemmy feel like a clone of Reddit/Twitter/etc.
Ok cool, I figured but never hurts to double-check. I agree, the posts from some of those groups are insane, but it's fine once you block them
I’m someone who just re-joined after trying out lemmy & kbin a couple years ago then dropping off after a few months. I can say the experience now is a lot better. There’s so much more content and activity.
I still use Reddit for more niche topics but I don’t miss it nearly as much as expected to.
NGL, I got permabaned there in October.. just 2 weeks shy of 15 years.. Found old.lemmy.zip, fell in and fell in love.
Haven't missed Reddit at all.
I keep catching reddit bans for calling Trump a pedophile lol. Really tells you where their moderation is at these days.
I just subscribed to new communities and i've gotten more involved in Lemmy again. New content yey!
Very cool feedback, i hope newcomers enjoy their stay too. It's not perfect but i do hope the fediverse is a fun place whatever fedisoftware you are on. 8)
fedisoftware
"Fediware" ;-)
Fediware, is it widely used ? Cool name :)
Yes widely by all my alts!
Amazing ! Let's spread it even more ! :3
I think a lot of it is unfortunately tied to how quiet US politics is, when more outrageous things happen, the worse the lemmy experience becomes.
We are just not the type to put our heads in the sand.
This is why I I try to limit the political stuff to the extent that I feel energised for action.
The last few months I’ve had a constantly changing and active homepage but for my subscriptions and on all. Lemmy is the real deal.
Had some gems recently indeed
I jump between social networks every few years. My social network path has gone from AOL chat groups, to Yahoo News groups, to Facebook for a few years, to Twitter, to Mastodon, to Reddit.
Last week I decided to test Lemmy out. Best thing I can say about it is that it's not any worse than all the others. Which is a pretty good compliment really, considering the resources and network advantages that all the others have.
Absolutely. It's a testament to what people that care can do.
I love it here.
AOL chat rooms were my jam. I remember role playing games in the gaming chat section in middle school. You would create characters in your bio. I miss that.
They were so... Innocent.
Like, everyone trusted everyone. Like, sure perfect stranger online, I don't mind telling you my real name, home address, and age. What's the harm?
Haha I don't know about that!
It was ingrained into me to never share anything until Facebook normalized it. I always feared some nutcase would come to my house because I made a solid yo momma joke that broke him.
I did a/s/l in a vague way, telling people I was 1-2 years older than I was, which was required to meet hotties also in the AOL chatz.