I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
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Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It’s a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way around it. Fediverse is small, and while we should always encourage people’s migration, it will probably remain small for the time being.
And freedom to express everything combined with people learning their behavior on algorithmic content will be an issue until a strong Fediverse culture is established. The times of pioneers are over, the times of “truly a place for everyone” are not yet there, and in between, we have a very weird mixture, sometimes bringing out the worst of many people.
I hope Fediverse will survive through this phase, and if yes, bright times will be ahead. But it will take a lot of work. Many non-political communities have already started blocking political content, and for the time being, I believe that’s for the better. People need a place to chill and have a corner of their own, not face what they ran away from in the first place.
Use one of the apps so you can filter out content. “Trump, Trump’s, Republicans, Musk” seems to take care of the problem so far.I think I have some communities blocked and maybe a user or two aswell.
I don’t want another app. I use lemmy exclusively in the browser, and that feature is missing :(
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
It doesn’t look like you mentioned subscriptions, which gets you out of the ‘all’ / ‘filtering’ side of things entirely. But just as with Reddit, you’ll need to spend time building your personal feed over time and tweaking it.
The good news is that there’s no limit to your subscriptions (unlike Reddit’s cap of 50 displayed at any one time), but that you’ll need to use the right tools to search the Fediverse to find those communities you want to subscribe to.
The main tool I typically use seems to have a bug right now (based on the recent software upgrade?) but I suspect will be back up in a few days. You might take a look at this, tho, plus other resources.
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I like it as a platform but the userbase just isn’t there.
Block FlyingSquid, it improves the community a huge amount.
Block FlyingSquid
You mean the user that moderates some Star Trek stuff and Out of Context Comics? What’s the problem..?
You’d be blocking half of Lemmy.
Do it before they drag you into an argument, lose, then ban you.
Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.
If the BlueSky migration keeps up the pace, I think it will be a good bet that Reddit to Lemmy will be the next big user migration. There’s signs it’s already started, within the last year I’ve been here I’ve seen the community and sub-communities grow significantly and there’s been an increase of self-proclaimed converts over the last several months.
I don’t see the connection between Lemmy and Bluesky/reasoning, can you elaborate?
Probably the hope, not completely unfounded, that the migration from one “legacy” (from the 00s) platform to a more recent alternative service - twitter to Bluesky - will help inspire people in other legacy platforms to also realize that alternatives do exist now, they are part of a broader conversation that they weren’t a part of even two years ago.
Even a year and a half ago, this place felt like it hadn’t yet installed the drywall, the wiring and tubing was incomplete. Now it feels more seamless, ready for a spurt of growth.
“Hey… Bluesky isn’t all that bad, I’m glad to be out of the clutches of a billionaire asshole, and not feel utterly lost here”, now cue what OP believes a number of people will also think: “Hmm… maybe I’ll check out Lemmy, too. See what the alternative to reddit is like.”
Some of them could have tried it, didn’t like it, might come back and be like: “Hey, Lemmy’s not too bad since last I last looked a year ago”, and here’s a clincher that definitely wasn’t here a year and a half ago: “The app works pretty good”, and there are a lot of new apps, having a choice gives a sense and weight of legitimacy.
I still remember the DDoS attacks
Dreams.
I know I can post and be the change I seek.
Imo, this is your answer. I’m not sure exactly other solution you want. Content will not appear on Lemmy without someone first posting it. Advertising the platform to help draw people in is also important.
You have fallen for the ultimate trick: wanting a “big” community.
You only get that from big, centralized social networks that want to maximize the amount of content you are fed, because it maximizes your ad views, and their profits.
Embrace the smallness. Lemmy still has room to grow, and having lot of different options for communication that aren’t all owned by billionaires is a good thing. The fact that it isn’t constantly trying to earn your attention is a feature, not a bug.
I don’t think it’s that we want “big” communities, necessarily, as much as we want active communities. For instance, if there’s a niche game I want to talk about, it’s currently a roll of the dice whether or not there’s a Lemmy community for it, and then if it does exist already then it’s pretty much guaranteed to see 2, maybe 3 posts per week, tops.
That’s really the only thing I miss about Reddit, being able to pretty much always have a discussion on any topic you’d want, at any given time.
For instance, if there’s a niche game I want to talk about, it’s currently a roll of the dice whether or not there’s a Lemmy community for it, and then if it does exist already then it’s pretty much guaranteed to see 2, maybe 3 posts per week, tops.
Why not create a thread on a genre community like !jrpg@lemmy.zip or !fgc@lemmy.world ?
For niche things, you kinds have to go to reddit.
I mean the worst of reddit is on mainstream topics like politics anyways. You’re less likely to see toxicity in like a gaming subreddit. (Less likely than politics anyways)
People wanting more activity than the small exclusive private club Fediverse has become isn’t a trick or capitalist fallacy, they just want other people to see their fucking posts. Is that so strange and wrong? Why post things if no one is going to see them? You’re seriously missing the point of a social media, if you really think having small nearly dead spaces is a good thing.
A while back there was some issue with the Lemmy code and people kept being served posts that were over 6 months old. Peple started replying and the original posters were often “wow, you found my post!” It was kind of awesome.
Jokes on you the political content here is from the redditors who pretended to quit their award fueled addiction by also joining lemmy.
Seriously though, compare c/Politics to c/Worldnews or c/News. There is a very large dissonance between the comments shared despite both communities posting the same news info…
I believe in Lemmy and the fediverse. But the subreddits with content I like aren’t here yet. So I still have to go back for that stuff.
But I always check here first.
Politics is the one thing we all have in common.
The good old days where everyone watched the same five TV shows and discussed them are over.
US Politics is the one thing
weyou all have in common.Do you come from a country with no politics?
No, but how interested are you in HK politics?
Actually, yes. I’m curious how it compares to western politics
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
People often just assume things with American mindset. Especially for hard topic like religious harmony, ethnic discrimination, immigration, etc.
Yes Americans participate, but the person who posted 'politics," is something we all have in common I believe was saying it as in all humans need air, prefer to not drown, appreciate love and have politics in there life. Whether they choose to ignore the politics or not.
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
Ironic as no large instance is managed by US citizens
Honestly, enough where I would read an article if it was posted but not interested enough to seek out articles that don’t appear on Reuters or the AP’s front page. It is depressing to watch my country fall to authoritarianism and it would be interesting to see how a formally democratic society is dealing with authoritarianism being imposed on it. An article on a new cat cafe or a dog parade would also be nice.
We Aussies doesn’t care less about who is out prime minister. As long as they can make more houses for us to live in without becoming bankrupt honestly
So politics. Like when I see people arguing about whether to keep the king around
firefly was mid, there I said it.
Straight to jail. Right away.
Everything Whedon has ever done was mid, and I’m going to be banned for saying that, probably.
The Fediverse is virgin territory. The trails aren’t blazed for you here; it’s your job as an early adopter to make it the way you want it to be. You want a community? Start it and participate in it.
I just realized, it’s no wonder much of Lemmy’s current base is in their 30s (and older.) The social aspects of the internet we grew up with was more forum-based. The slower pace we currently have here isn’t a deal breaker, because we knew a time where this was normal. We participated in and built communities because if we didn’t, they wouldn’t exist. There was no pre-made social media behemoth for us to get lost in.
But people who’ve grown up with modern social media didn’t have that experience. They’re accustomed to riding fast-paced rapids, where things quickly change, and where algorithms control their feed and direct the whole experience. That’s their normal. By contrast, Millenials and older came online to gentle, quiet streams. We had to learn to row the oars manually (creating novel communities and content.) That gave us greater control over where we’d go and what we’d see.
Lemmy is a gentle stream right now. People who come here expecting white water rafting are going to feel like something’s missing. People who grew up with pre-made online communities probably never took the steps to build one up before.
I’d love to see younger people taking up the mantle of building a new corner of the internet. Especially in an era where personal control is increasingly limited by powerful monied interests, learning how to create and run communities can be very empowering.
Enjoy being the only one posting.
Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable; the fewer users it has, the less useful it is. Reddit has more users than Lemmy. It’s that simple. People won’t start switching until everybody else switches.
Bluesky is only barely starting to compete with Twitter, and that’s after Twitter drastically worsened. Lemmy is a long, long way from competing with Reddit.
To me, it’s a matter of time. The structural advantages of the fediverse mean that it’s more stable on the long run; what i mean by that is, for-profit Reddit will get worse while Lemmy remains good, leading users to migrate here, so Lemmy will eventually outlive Reddit. And then along the way there will be a few big moments where Reddit really fucks up and a wave of people washes up on Lemmy. This is already happening, i’m pretty sure all of us here made our accounts after the Reddit API changes.
Enjoy being the only one posting.
Pack it in now then. This platform isn’t going to see huge influxes. Normies are too stupid to pick a server. I don’t really mind it being somewhat of a niche space, maybe the advertisers will continue to mostly ignore us.
Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable;
Forums used to be lively and self-sustaining with memberships in the low hundreds. You only need “mass adoption” if you want and unending stream of novelty bullshit that you don’t actially want to engage with to entertain yourself with while on the toilet.
Yeah and Lemmy and Mastodon at the moment but more so Lemmy seem to be working against that goal by opting for onboarding methods that are unintuitive and frustrating to normies. Opting to make people apply like this is a fucking club, and deny people if they are too boring.
Great job guys, you’re really gonna get lots of engagement that way. You don’t want engagement? What are you even doing wasting money on an almost empty site barely anyone is joining?
You seem overtly negative over the whole platform.
People are trying to keep communities active, as shown on !fedigrow@lemm.ee and !newcommunities@lemmy.world
Joining an existing community is usually easier than starting a new one.
!newcommunities@lemmy.world can be a place to find an existing community?
Joining an existing community is usually easier than starting a new one.
There’s also the problem of management. Lots of Lemmy comms are abandoned and, while there are some I would like to exist, I just do not visit regularly enough to be responsible for moderating more and more and more communities across the fedi. So I don’t create new comms.
Definitely
