When I first started using Lemmy it seemed like such a nice place with interesting discussions. It seemed like the first group of people to join after the app exodus were being quite careful to be respectful of the existing culture.
Now, it seems as though the culture from Reddit has completely replaced it. Toxicity and all. I will say I do follow a lot of communities from a wide range of instances so it’s clearly not everywhere.
Am I the only one who’s feeling like we’ve just stormed in and bulldozed Lemmy?
The important thing to understand is that Lemmy doesn’t have an inherent culture. Nor does Reddit, or Twitter, or Mastodon, or any other platform.
They are communities, and communities naturally change as they scale.
So yes, of course Lemmy had changed. But I’d argue that the inherent strength of the whole concept of “federation” is that any one particular instance only has to witness as much or as little of that change as they want to.
If you don’t like where Lemmy as a whole is going, find (or create) an instance that agrees with you and de-federates from most others. win-win.
The point is that you are responsible for your own particular Lemmy experience in ways that you never were on Reddit.