I like it a lot. I come here often, it’s a good addition to my reddit use, it has some nice people and some interesting content.

I love that it is decentralized, which means that there will always be a server without ads, tracking or bad governance.

Also it feels like being part of Lemmy is being part of something new and novel. The idea of decentralizing services online, away from corporate silos, should be resurrected.

  •  sexy_peach   ( @sexy_peach@feddit.de ) OP
    11•2 years ago

    insisting to people who say ‘it’s too difficult’ or ‘I’m not interested in doing that’ that it is, in fact, very easy to do.

    I agree with your assessment, but on the other hand sometimes people don’t know or forget about the hard work by volunteers to even make things work in the state they are. Aggressively claiming that this project isn’t user friendly and that’s why people can’t use it and it should have a nicer UI and whatnot sometimes is very unfair. There isn’t a behavioral scientist and a shitload of UI designers in every open-source software project ^^

    •  Gaywallet (they/it)   ( @Gaywallet@beehaw.org ) 
      8•2 years ago

      Yea I’m thinking more about when someone posts an article about security issues and a layperson entering and being absolutely overwhelmed by what they need to do to become “secure” and lamenting that it’s difficult to do the things they wish to do, to be more secure. Or when someone talks about how linux gaming is great and then a layperson says I don’t want to learn linux and a tech person tells them how easy it is to install gentoo.

      To be clear I don’t think this is specifically a tech person issue - most people are shaped and biased by their own experiences and the younger you are the less likely you are for this knowledge to have truly sunk in. It just so happens, like you mentioned, that the tech people are the people most inclined to start alternative tech websites such as lemmy and thus are proliferated all over this website.

      The key to solving this problem is to take a more humanistic approach. Always assume the person on the other side of the screen is a human with thoughts and feelings and that they are legitimately trying their best. If they say something is too difficult and you’re having trouble understanding how it could be, ask them why it’s difficult for them. Allow space for differing viewpoints and be respectful of others. Of course, if someone takes advantage of the space you offer them to insult you or derail a topic or otherwise clearly troll then you can ignore them, but we need to flip the script of all the internalized values we’ve taken in from other social media platforms - the protective skills we’ve learned to not waste our time on platforms which don’t take trolling or bad behavior seriously are skills which don’t promote a very welcoming and healthy community.