tl;dr: The large central instances that host a majority of the content here are operated by people with a talent for software, but do not display a degree of emotional intelligence I feel is required for responsible stewardship of a social media platform.

tl;dr of the tl;dr: nobody stopping anything less than the most obvious harassment, sexism, ackchyually guys, reply guys, drama queens, and tantrums tantrums tantrums.

The result is that even if you choose sanity and block every instance that does not moderate the above behaviors you are left with too little of content to fully replace reddit.

I’m speaking mostly of lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.dbzer0.com, hexbear.net, and yes, lemm.ee (who’s administrators at least admitted that they weren’t capable of assuming the mantle of social responsibility).

I think Lemmy is a really smart idea. I have a lot of respect for people who choose to maintain the software host instances for free. I am not here to tell anyone how to run the instance they pay for, and I have no doubt these administrators are running exactly the kind of instances they want to be running. But as long as they remain in control of the majority of content, Lemmy will have a big obstacle for anyone without extreme levels of patience and inch thick skin.

Just so I’m clear I also think Reddit is garbage at keeping out the bad apples, and the community moderators on Reddit tend to be free speech absolutists too, but at least on Reddit there is more actual human content. Most of the “hot” sort on Lemmy is 10 year old memes trying to fake an illusion of activity, while also drowning out any actual human activity.

OK I’ve spoken enough. Take my 2c or leave it. I hope future administrators and moderators can identify and have the backbone to stand up to this sort of thing but maybe I’m asking too much of volunteers. All I can say for now is that in it’s current state Lemmy isn’t for me.

I’ll probably check back in a year. See you 'round the web ✌🏼