Correct me if I am wrong but most of those "personal stories" are pure fiction right?
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
141 points (94.9% liked)
Privacy
34425 readers
809 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
On Reddit I haven’t read a true story since the 💩🔪 story.
I suspect some are AI and others may be creative writing exercises. Some portion are probably real.
Many of the exaggerated stories are fiction. But there are plenty of Redditors posting pictures of things they saw locally and other information which some could consider sensitive.
Based on your question I thought you were referencing subs like confessions, AITAH etc. Not pics of dumb animals or kids.
Don't get me wrong, I was referencing those too. In general, when I visited Reddit there were a lot of personal stories and pictures. These can often provide a unique pov which is not found in the news.
Lemmy is more a forum where people discuss the news. The comments are far more advanced and interesting than Reddit. But because people (including me) are far more privacy minded, I feel like they rarely post personal experiences. This might be an unfixable dillemma.
I just assume they meant the cum box
99% minimum
I mean those personal stores on Reddit are all made up
Most of them. The sonnet I wrote about wanting to poop when I was in the hospital with a bowel obstruction? I'm pretty sure that's still there.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Indeed. What personal stories?
load more comments
(1 replies)
We haven't been infested by the vain Facebook crowd yet.
I know I am wary of doxxing myself, there's so many times I've withheld commenting because my stories are too specific. I've probably shared too much already and do think about just starting over with a new account sometimes. This is my 4th account by now?
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'd say more likely just:
- Not enough users to see that many stories being posted
- Not that many users to make it worth sharing detailled stories
- Lack of communities for that kind of content
You're just not gonna see a lot of tales from retail in a place dominated by chronically online people, engineers, nerds and somewhat older userbase.
For people unaware, there is !casualconversation@lemm.ee
I'm aware of that one but it's not that active especially compared to the big reddit communities like TalesFromRetail, AITAH, MaliciousCompliance, TalesFromTechSupport, etc which is where all the good stories come out of on Reddit.
load more comments
(1 replies)
People that have the need to share "personal stories" with basically strangers are looking for an audience first and foremost. Lemmy has way fewer people so the type of person trying to seek that attention will be going to facebook/twitter/reddit etc. If Lemmy was one of the top-ten most used sites, then we'd see a lot more of that kind of content.
Also, people who freely share details about their personal lives are generally not as particular about social media platforms. They're likely to use whichever one they have heard of the most, or the one on which they already have an account, like Reddit. Lemmy is far from mainstream, so they're not likely to think of it first, if they have heard of it at all.
Personally, that crosses my mind. But I came over in the reddit revolt and saw lemmy as a fresh start. Privacy isn't easy, but at least make them work for it.
Also, I figure (if it hasn't happened already) some federated instances out there are nefarious, set up to harvest data.
We just had a helicopter doing low passed over our house and watching the flight on a tracker, it was clear it was casing chosen neighborhoods. The lengths someone went to sell whatever info they grabbed means it's highly valuable. The fediverse is open and waiting for it to be datamined.
Also, I figure (if it hasn’t happened already) some federated instances out there are nefarious, set up to harvest data.
[Citations needed] or it didn’t happen. There’s precious little extra information that a “nefarious” instance can harvest that any basic web scrapper can’t.
[Citations needed] or it didn’t happen.
I think this mindset is naïve and unrealistic.
People were saying the same thing for decades in response to a small minority warning about government surveillance, often dismissing them with labels like "paranoid". Eventually, Snowden came along and produced the citations, at extreme risk to himself and his loved ones. It's an anomaly that they were ever revealed at all.
History is replete with examples of bad stuff going on for ages before irrefutable evidence of it became widely known. In general, if something can be abused to someone's advantage, it will be, and likely already is.
There’s precious little extra information that a “nefarious” instance can harvest that any basic web scrapper can’t.
You have a point there, but consider also that effective web scraping uses significantly more resources than having the data you want handed to you. Monitoring Lemmy through federation would be much more efficient.
Good point
Credit where due, it is just my best guess. I have no evidence.
I simply think if you have custom code on a machine to ingest data, creating a federation interface may be more suitable and stable in the long run than a scraper. The extra server load may draw attention or run amuck with security policies designed to obscure scrapers.
But that is certainly an option.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
It might also be that out of 97 million daily active users, if 1/10th of 1% are attention-seeking crazies, that's 97,000 people over-sharing at absurd levels.
I think it might be the case for some, but mostly I think that more people on Lemmy are less focused on themselves and personal anecdotes. More often I see people here reaching for cited resources to support what they're saying instead of "Oh one time my Uncle's friend's cousin...". It still happens here, but not nearly in the same capacity from what I've seen.
I think let me has less personal stories than read it because Lemmy isn't infested by bots writing personal stories.
Or copying personal stories from previous posts, and recycling them for votes.
You underestimate the amount of bot activity on Reddit. Some threads on all are something like 70%+ bot comments, with most being at least half.
It's crazy.
Settinging asside the likelyhood that many personal stories there are fantacy. There are just fewer people on this platform and probably the many new people from the last little bit are still testing the waters.
But primarily, I think nowadays people understand that if they put their data online anywhere, there is a chance someone could use it against them. Hence, people here are not doing it as much.
Reddit didn't used to be that way. Slowly over time it devolved into the same self-flagellation that happens more on "share my thought" type platforms like Twitter. I hope we are better able to manage our federations to keep that type of content at bay while remaining open enough to let people speak their truth in the face of oppression.
Nah, throwaways are easy
Dear ~~Penthouse Forum~~ reddit, I'm a 20 year-old college student and I never thought I'd be writing to the ~~Penthouse Forum~~ reddit, but...
It's the lowest common denominator of smut entertainment. The tech companies have managed to veil it all in prestige. It should be called gossip media or something.
Instead people think there's some kind of real human connection. Some kind of deep discussions happening.
Happy cake day!
We don't mind individual points for a story we like the feedback that people like our story, But most places aren't even counting overall points. It's not some reddit race to the top for who can have 300,000 karma. We're here to actually chit chat and socialize and that's just not conducive to throwing out a bunch of personal stories for shock and awe. Nobody is selling Lemmy accounts with 10,000 karma for bank.
view more: next ›