Reddit for people who like making their life more difficult
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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No Stupid Questions
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Social media, but it's setup lile e-mail, so there's no one single company that owns everything or enforces universal rules. Anyone can do their own hosting and still communicate with everyone else.
A non-Fediverse person wouldn’t know Mastodon, would they?
Usually I say it’s like a thousand different tiny Reddits that all subscribe to each other. No central owner, no central operator. If any one of them gets unruly, the others can just shun them.
THEN I sometimes say “do you remember Mastodon?” And half the time they are like “oh yeah! That Twitter alternative!” And I say yes like that but for Reddit.
I don't think a non-Fediverse person would be very familiar with Mastodon. They'd be more likely to go "What, like elephants?".
I would keep it really simple, and just go for "Reddit alternative". The whole Federation and decentralised business is going to be a sledgehammer if you introduce it to someone who's not familiar with the concept.
I've found comparing it to email works well. It's about the only (mostly) decentralised service that most people have used.
"It's like Reddit, but is decentralised, like email is.", "This makes it far harder to manipulate to hide information."
Reddit in slow-motion.
Reddit for nerds and political extremists.
Reddit with a slightly more community centred ownership structure so it's a bit harder to enforce unpopular decisions.
A collection of message boards.
It's reddit but instead of r/ we have c/ and there are different servers, not just reddit.com, but most of them talk to each other. Also the devs are leftist authoritarians ~~tankies~~, don't use .ml
Reddit.
Without the cunt on top who put it down.
And there won't ever be one, because there's no chair for him to sit in.
If you had a hundred small Reddits talking to each other like one big Reddit, oh and with fewer fascists and no ads.
What would win in a fight, a hundred Lemmy-sized Reddits or one Reddit-sized Lemmy?
I'd love to know if my enormous blocklist of instances and communities is unusual or if most people end up curating their global feeds massively to keep them interesting. Anime, porn, US-specific politics, authoritarian-friendly politics, furries, wojak-style barrel-scraping memes - I don't want to downvote most of these just because they're not my bag, but I suspect I end up with a tiny fraction of the total Lemmy+Piefed content.
I tend to block at the user and community level, my only instance block is feddit.de and that's only because I don't speak German and those folks are such prolific posters it felt like I was touring central Europe every time I'd go to the All feed.
Blocking what you're not interested in is the second best part of Lemmy, IMO.
"Imagine a hydra with an infinite number of heads. Some of the heads are arguing, some have got their necks knotted, and some are french-kissing. One of them is wearing a pirate hat."
I've learned it's a mistake to try to describe the fediverse to people. It's right up there with getting them to care about privacy
I'd just describe it as Reddit, but less bots. Or reddit but less toxic. Just focus on what might draw them in and send them a link to lemmy.world or whatever home server you think they'd like
"less toxic" can be interpreted in different ways. For example, I don't always find people on Lemmy to be more open-minded across tribal boundaries. But you can perhaps find your tribe and experience less toxicity that way?
reddit without the reddit users
Decentralized and noncommercial reddit
First thing asked "Decentralized?"
And it's one of those things where those who care already know, and those that don't care won't : "get it" by you explaining it.
"Decentralized?"
"Like email" is a quick way to explain that.
It really isn't, I had no idea what people were on about when they said that and it sidetracked me from actually reaching a proper understanding. The analogy makes sense and seems apt, when you already understand the concept but not when you don't.
"Oh, I'm good. I don't need another email. I don't even use the one I have".
Is how that explaination would go.
Nah, probably more "like an email : doesn't matter if you're @gmail or @outlook, multiple servers can communicate together"
I found it pretty easy by explaining that if reddit is a website, then Lemmy is a search engine that just has a similar feel to it.
It isn't accurate, but gets the point across to those who don't understand tech.
Like reddit but mostly politics and no videos.
The worst part about fediverse is there is not enough users for discussions about a specific tv show or anime 😕
They don't need to know what the fediverse is. I'd tell them it's a smaller Reddit without the many assholes and narcissistic mods.
Many parallel reddit-like services which can interact with each others' content if they choose to allow it.
It's essentially reddit but, decentralised like email, aka. you don't have one entity controlling all email.
It's user focused and free from corporate overlords, it's a lot friendlier, kinda feels like the old Internet
Nerd reddit
Haha like saying something is boomer facebook
Social media for antisocial people
Its like reddit without the content and with silly keyboard warriors. But at least not big tech. :)
Ive been here two years and have made 5500 comments so I guess im quite an active user of this place. Its not too bad. But absolutely an huge echo chamber.
I don't even know what Lemmy is but I use it.
News and discussion, but you start from a chosen community and work towards global connection. Also, no ads, no making you the product, and volunteer-based development and moderation.
I call it "socialist Reddit" or "anti-social media"
Reddit12 years sgo
its nerdy reddit and if you want to know more I will have to describe the idea of federation and distributed social media.
A bunch of smaller Reddits all combined together, without karma, and more tech-focused content.
Interconnected group of reddits. Any such reddit is called a 'instance'.
Instead of having one instance, you have multiple independent instances that can see each other's content and post on each.
That makes them federated. Some instances filter what their users can see, others don't. They can be self-hosted.
Unlike in the OG reddit, votes are transparent, and you can see if users got banned somewhere with the reasons why.
I'ld describe it more as "reddit, but without a single company owning all the login servers. Anyone (wirh money) can make their own server and make subs on there, even have their own rules, but you can still visit other servers all on one account, so nobody really has control over all the subs to make up stupid rules for them."
It's the dumbed down explanation, but it's essentially the difference for non-nerds.
If reddit had many servers not just one. Thats how I do it, since people dont understand mastadon either. And using the word instance is ludicrous. It confused me early on myself
It's a popular but inferior alternative to Mbin.
If youtube commnents could be read and interfered from reddit how could it be? The future of Fediverse is like this.
Its open source so you can not just see the source code but also have your own DIY reddit with interoperability with many servers like this.
And lemmy is the modern replica of reddit with this Fediverse foss concept..
Reddit but better.
What exactly do you want to describe? People know social media apps/sites like this one.
The important difference is not the app but how it works.
So I'd rather describe what federation means. For that I always found the e-mail comparison useful. Then I'd add that there's different apps around that but this one's most like reddit, which I used to use.
Don't talk about the fediverse with undesirables. /S
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