I just wish more people were willing to try out the alternatives
I mean have they seen how good Ice Cubes and Mlem look? How can they choose the default Twitter and Reddit apps over those masterpieces.
Yeah, a lot of people have quit Twitter over Musk being a huge douche and migrated to... Blusky. And they think they've done something really great. It's sad.
Mastodon is not a twitter clone.
Bluesky is a twitter clone, without musk. That's all these people want. They've never heard about the fediverse. They're not protesting corporate centralism.
They just don't like twitter being a right wing agenda. They want a twitter experience circa before musk bought it, simply because it was left wing before.
That's bluesky. That's not mastodon.
Bluesky is...fine. Currently, it operates the way that I wish Twitter did. It lets you curate your feed, it shows the feed in chronological order, and finally and most importantly it has a critical mass of users so there is actual content there, rather than every 5th post complaining about how everyone is on another platform or not using Linux.
Really, the only issue I have with it is that it is owned by a corporation. But like Twitter and Reddit, I am willing to abandon it for something else when it gets shittier.
What are your complaints (iiuc) for Bluesky?
Not OP, but the leadership has just shown themselves to be unable to run the platform how users want. They're refusing to ban serial harasser Jesse Singal. Its head of trust and safety banned a bot and its creator because the bot pointed out that they liked a porn post on their work account for 'harassment'. Bear in mind the entire point of Bluesky is for all this info to be public and easily accessible.
my personal dislike for it is that the claims of decentralization are countered by how expensive it is to operate in a truly decentralized manner.
To be truly decentralized you would need to run a relay server, not just a PDS which many people already do and simply holds your data. Unfortunately, the cost to run a relay server today is already about $500+ a month [1] and will only be getting more expensive.
Lastly, while the fediverse has figured out decentralized DM's, Bluesky DM's are completely centralized [1] and only work thanks to being funneled through their servers. I wouldn't call what they have private considering they can read what everyone on Bluesky is saying privately. Granted, fediverse DM's are not encrypted either, but at least they're decentralized and don't allow a single provider access to everyone's private messages.
[1] https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
Just that there's nothing keeping Bluesky from enshittifying the same way Twitter (and all the other centrally-corporate-owned social media platforms) have. By migrating, the former Twitter users are just delaying the inevitable.
See the context and discussion on previous posts here:
I guess most people don’t want to wade through dozens of “eat the rich” posts every time thay open their favorite social media platform.
Nah, people get overwhelmed by choosing a server instance.
Both true.
Weird. That’s like my main kink.
Same, but not everybody shares that.
Or any political content at all. Most people just want to look at funny cats or memes.
Other people want absurd humor without the racist degeneracy of other outlets.
I quit FB and reddit because they became mostly "kill all who don't work minimum wage at mcdonalds", "all minorities r bad" and "ukranians are nazis but check out this 3d model which is the next russian wundewaffe that will kill your countries civillians"
Lemmy doesn't have much to offer compared to the "billionaire run" social media.
This is the real answer. I forget the exact numbers, but the vast majority of people on reddit are just lurkers. When you have an enormous user base, that still translates to lots of content to consume. Lemmy has way less content and very small communities (if any) for most niches.
Of course you can point to bots on reddit inflating those numbers and that Lemmy has more meaningful interaction, but that's not what most are looking for that are on reddit.
Also, as others mentioned, there's no negative engagement algorithm drivers on mastodon like there is on Twitter. Fact is, a lot of people just like to be angry and combative.
Good point, if I just wanted to lurk reddit would be fine for that purpose. But the users are so wretchedly toxic that commenting is a no-go.
This is not entirely true, at least as phrased here.
So all of this is not "nothing", even though yes it is also not "everything" either.
Yea but can lmy run on Lynx browser?
...seriously asking cause I want to start using the Lynx browser for more.
The quality of discussion is the exact same. Lemmy isn't more elite, hell I'd say an average user is more angry in general than on reddit. As for the rest - a regular (non-power) user doesn't care. The privacy angle is bogus - you can get everything you want by hosting your own instance. Even more so - things that should be private, aren't (reports, upvotes). The only "good" thing is the modlog, but that is also debatable.
If all the average users were here, it would be just as awful as Reddit became when it hit mainstream acceptance level.
Remember that subreddits there were quality when small but sort of became too large to have character after a certain threshold, I seem to recall 300k subscribers and up being about where that delineation was.
Lemmy could stand to be more popular, but not too popular or it would attract the bottom feeders that make stupid one liner comments and upvote wrong answers.
Enjoy the smaller lemmy while it lasts
Edited for clarity, gotta drop the reddit shorthand
I seem to recall 300k subscribers and up being about where that delineation was.
Interesting number, but why not have it based on active users rather than subs?
Because that’s just an easy metric you can eyeball to gauge a subreddit community
I remember it being roughly true but I have no data other than anecdotal to back that up
I think "subs" in this instance refers to subcommunities or subreddit, not subscribers.
NM. Missed the word subscribers in the original comment.
"The problem isn't corporate, the problem is audience size."
Shut the fuck up about this.
Lemmy isn't anything right now. No impact or relevance, no practical effect in terms of community and influence. It's just small conversations and mild entertainment.
If you enjoy that, go ahead. But don't campaign to hold the whole fediverse project back.
Just get together in a niche instance with your small town types and defederate if the project successfully becomes a full fledged alternative. The Internet needs a successful full scale alternative to corporate social media to have a chance at recovery from enshittification.
It's not a campaign, its an observation based on whats come before. It'll come for lemmy the same as it did for reddit.
I'll adapt as it grows like before, but the fact remains that online communities are at their best when it isnt 3 million subscribers shouting over each other. On the flip side, 3 million users would likely spawn enough interest for super niche communities to self sustain themselves. The broad interest communities though, those will become just like reddit is now.
Both of you can be correct. Some communities (e.g. technical subjects like photography, self hosting, etc.) can work well at lower numbers. Some others might be more social were numbers might allow more organic interactions.
Here like Reddit, the best experience is achieved by trying to find the ones you are interested in and following them. It is more apparent here I think since there is not as much content.
Shut up and take my upvote.
r/angryupvote
/s of course.
In other words: Advertising works.
It's unfortunate, but there's a real chicken-and-egg problem here. Those of us who are on here are here because of how strongly we believe in the ideal of it, but for the average person who just cares about talking about their favourite interests, there's a serious lack.
I'll use two examples, one that you clearly care about, and one that I do. /r/stopkillinggames is hardly super active, but in the last 3 weeks it's had 11 posts with a cumulative 68 comments. !stopkillinggames@lemm.ee, by contrast, has had just 8 posts, all by a mod, with just 6 total comments. /r/AgeofMythology is very active with artistic appreciation posts, balance discussion, and advice just within the last 24 hours. !aom@lemm.ee has failed to attract a single post from anyone other than myself, and it's been over 3 months since anyone other than myself has left a comment. It's disheartening, not being able to have conversations about the stuff you love, when you know that just over there it would be so easy.
Lemmy's excellent if you want to talk about politics, or open source, but there's not a huge amount outside of that. The Star Trek communities are pretty good, but they pale in comparison to a great sub like /r/daystrominstitute, and the amount and depth of discussion on ttrpg.network is slim compared to /r/pathfinder2e, /r/dndgreentext, /r/dndnext, etc. And these are some of the best-supported hobbies on Lemmy.
So as much as I'm staying here and trying to do my part to make it better, and frequently encourage others to join...I also can't really blame people who don't.
(I feel less charitably towards people on Twitter. Because that place is a total shithole, and Mastodon is surprisingly good, if you like microblogging platforms. Plus even Bluesky is better than staying on Twitter, and it has most of the celebrities and micro-celebrities some people might want to follow.)
It’s disheartening, not being able to have conversations about the stuff you love, when you know that just over there it would be so easy.
Have you tried more generic gaming communities? !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works is quite active, I'm sure a regular thread about AoM there would definitely get some traction (or even just a one-time promotion thread)
The problem with more generic communities is that you might be sharing it with more people, but they're not people who are engaged with the topic. And that's what I really miss. The deep conversations on theorising, community drama, etc. that can only come from a large number of people who are really interested in the subject. Posting to a generic community limits the type of discussions you can have to those that are more accessible to a generic audience.
As another example, just now I've been playing Kerbal Space Program for the first real time (I toyed around with it briefly many years ago, but didn't try career mode and completing contracts). Right now, I'm struggling to understand why something I'm doing isn't working. I would love to be able to go to !kerbalspaceprogram and ask an audience of people who know what they're talking about. Sure, I could try my luck in !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works or something even more generic like !games@lemmy.world. But neither of those are really the appropriate venue for something that's so specifically only of interest to people who know about KSP. Posting "I've been playing KSP lately and really enjoying it" makes sense on patientgamers. Posting a detailed scenario of what I've been doing and what I've done in the past, and asking why it doesn't work for me right now even though it seemed to work before...probably doesn't.
Another example: I've been posting every useful or interesting guide or analysis of Age of Mythology I've come across to !aom. It wouldn't really feel right to post that kind of thing to patientgamers. But I probably will post when the upcoming expansion comes out to more generic communities
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe posting niche game-specific content to generic communities is a good way to bring attention to them for more people who would be interested in it, while also bringing attention to an audience that didn't know they might be interested in it. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this. Maybe I should put a post in !fedigrow@lemm.ee for this discussion?
To add to Blaze's point: as lemmy's still small, there's not much point to super specialized communities when the more general ones are "slow" enough that pretty much any post you make can remain "newest" for 2 days straight.
I understand this perspective, and I occasionally flirt with it myself, but mostly I disagree.
My main view is that content should go in a community that will be interested in it. There's a balance to be struck here to avoid getting hyper specific (for example, I've stopped using !brisbanetrains@aussie.zone in favour of just putting train stuff in !brisbane@aussie.zone), but I also think content that is fundamentally not about the topic of one community shouldn't go in that community. I wouldn't post Brisbane-specific local council politics in !australia@aussie.zone, for example.
My view is that subscribing to a community costs nothing. Creating a community costs nothing. Even moderating a community doesn't have any very much cost for the moderator on a per-community (as opposed to per-post or per-comment) basis. There's no actual harm caused by having 10 communities with 1 post per day, compared to one community with 10 posts per day. Instead, doing the former simply allows people to more easily filter for the content that they are interested in and avoid that which they are not.
I've given a more detailed reply to Blaze about the specific discussion at hand here, but since you brought up the general principle, I thought I'd reply to you with my general principle.
At least we have tankies, so there's that.
I jest, yet that's a real worry that a large number of people have, like on Reddit when people (Blaze) promotes Lemmy that is quite often their first response ("hey, isn't that the one where tankies who got booted off of Reddit went and made their own Reddit software?").
That, and the fact that we are first and foremost, primarily a "Linux forum". We do have general communities like AskLemmy and I even helped start an AskUSA so I'm not saying that there's nothing else there, but we definitely lack the breadth and depth present on Reddit.
Maybe we can find better talking points, like "we have less content but our discussions are more worthwhile, where people tend to be kinder and also real rather than bots btw".
Although Lemmy.World's massive policy change announcement is definitely going to absorb all of our attention for the foreseeable future.
Honestly, if I weren't politically as far left as I am, lemmy would have scared me off a long time ago.
As a non tech expert, in my view, the biggest concern for the fediverse to grow, presently, is how difficult it can be to sign up.
Go to a instance listing, try and choose one, signup... all of this should be acessible but mostly invisible for the average user. The user should only be questioned what sort of content they mostly intend to browse, have a NSFW explicit option, perhaps a server location preference, and that should be it.
Beneath the hood, this process should trigger a call to the network requesting a user slot for any server that could cater to that generic profile the prospect user filled. Even bans should be handled differently, in my opinion.
Imagine to go over all that... To end up on .ml
You're 100% on point. From first attempt to getting my final account it took me a few weeks. Had an instance close down days after joining, another blocking communities I was interested, sign up denied...
In fucking reddit you don't even need a real email
I only used my email for safety purpose; I tend to forget passwords.
Again, as someone with very low technical skills, I think things could be tweaked to increase traction. Even funding.
I'm not even adverse to see advertisement on the Fediverse, as long as those trying to advertise here keep in mind they want to reach the user base here, not the other way around. To this, it would imply low impact, discreet and highly curated advertisement.
Instances closing down don't shock me. People have other things to do: real life should take precedence over social media. I like to be here but when my smartphone broke and I was back on a Nokia brick, I didn't missed it.
An instance shutting down should automatically request to the network transfer of its subscribed users. Again, something the users should be aware of but completely invisible to them.
And even bans should work like that. A user may become persona non grata but they still should be capable of accessing the rest of the network or, at least, request transfer. Hard bans, in my view, only create malice and the creation of other accounts, that will just eat the capability of the instance to receive new users.
What do you think about this?
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
Hey, I'm on sopuli!
https://sopuli.xyz/ if you’re European
Out of curiosity, how come you don't recommend your own instance, feddit.org?
I think the main concern new users have are "Can I see everything across Lemmy, or will I be getting a fragmented experience?". This was my initial concern and I've seen Redditors also voice this concern. People don't know if being on an instance means you can only be isolated to that instance, which would mean missing out on wider content, or whether you see everything (at which point you might ask what is the point of the instances then?).
By presenting people with "here's an instance if you're American, here's another if you're European" might support the idea that people will get differenct experiences based on their location. They might ask: "Do Americans see different content to Europeans? What's the difference? Maybe the American instance will have more users so I'll pick that instead."
In reality it doesn't matter, you can sign up to an instance and subscribe to 0 communities on your own instance, but people don't know this if they don't know anything about it. I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?
It would be good if the join-lemmy site could randomly create you an account on one of the instances that qualify. Take that cognitive load away from the user and make that choice for them - and make it clear that they're free to sign up to any instance they want.
The fediverse is like a cafe with an unusual menu and interesting conversations. Most social media is like a McDonald's in Altoona PA.
Which one is Ice Cubes? First time I hear about it
It is an IOS client for mastodon that uses a glassy design aesthetic.
Ah, make sense!
that uses a glassy design aesthetic
What, like Windows Vista? (Ngl, I actually loved that design aesthetic. I kinda miss it.)
I wish that lemmy had the population to sustain more niche communities.
Feel free to come help us promote it on https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/
Fruit is not addictive. Cocaine is. There's the answer
I haven’t done cocaine in awhile but I eat fruit every day. Am I doing it wrong?
Are you looking for a ceremony or something?
Switch for awhile and let us know how it works out? 🤠
Tell that to my Mbin addiction.
We are all addicts.
Another contributing factor is that Lemmy & Mastodon "care about privacy". Odd, in my opinion, for a public social network.
Their interpretation of that is that they don't send referer headers. So to any site receiving Lemmy traffic, we're invisible.
Pretty sure that it's the browser which is sending referrer headers, not the individual sites. That being said, even if a provider were looking at the refer headers in their analytics to determine where people were coming from, it would not show one url, but hundreds for all the different instances there are. This would cause Lemmy to be under represented in analytics, even if in aggregate it's the largest source of traffic.
billionaire ran
Billionaire-run
That coke-rush is just temporary and afterwards, leaves you feeling like this:
Obligatory reference to SNL's parody take, though more for Oscar the Grouch: https://youtu.be/kqpak5lFxvs.
I wish most people were more interested in learning. But ive settled for people being entertaining at best due to that disinterest.
eats a red delicious
Cosmic crisp or gala for me, but they're all pretty good
People follow celebrities accounts like good sheeps. Let them stay there.
I have a feeling that spez was an ordinary man when he started reddit. Then he became an asshat, of course.
I can't even blame spez for becoming that asshat. Trying to ride herd on something as large, diverse, and popular as reddit has become, requires someone who is willing to be an asshat.
If you ever find yourself in charge a group of diverse people remember that you will never satisfy everyone. And a lot of the time the best you can hope for is to piss off everyone equally.
Do you think you can be benevolent and also not try to satisfy everyone
That behavior is not up to the standard known as "average".
This is now the community's Top All Time post.
It beat the simpsons bar one!
Yeah, kicked that back into third!
We live in a time where you could have a really good alternative FOSS Platforms with all the cool bells & whistles
But they'll never join it because, "It ain't Youtube" or "muh favorite creator is not there" or that there's no large userbase
Honestly, I would use Lemmy more except that some posts are just people being overly negative or strangely political in the comments. There are good communities without this don’t get me wrong but it can get old
Feel free to chime in on this thread, it's a proposal to solve this exact issue: https://lemmy.world/post/24268267
Yeah a lot of people on here have sticks up their butts hehe
I've found a massive reduction after blocking only a handful of users. It seems there are fewer of them than it first appears.
I might have to do that then, thanks! Might make my experience a bit better.
Also something I didn’t think about, there are enough users on Reddit to let the garbage comments sink to the bottom and not be seen. Here, you see them all
People do try it and then are turned off by how crazy the hivemind here is. Wild conspiracies about musk is fun for me to scroll through and laugh at, but lots of people run in the opposite direction.
The alternatives are annoying to sign up on and letting the community be in charge just leads to hate speech being allowed. Which tbh also is an issue with traditional social media but there at least they are reliant on advertisers so they have an interest in controlling it.
When I have seen hate speech and slurs on here, it’s been in screenshots of big corporate social media.
Yeah people don't want rotten fruit, cocaine is way funnier and comes with ONE website, one mobile app... etc.
Cocaine is deadly, rotten fruit only makes you sick
“everyday people” being autistic furries with opinions on Linux distributions and/or preachy anarchists who take Star Trek a little too seriously
Cuz you said so
You seem cool
No, they haven't. 99% of people have never heard of the fediverse or any app within it.
People here are so out of touch here; it's super interesting
In a way, it's a good sign. The threadiverse is tight-knit and comprehensive enough to become people's primary social site. I've never seen any other reddit alternative get to this point.
I don't think so, just activists who like to complain about not enough people being aware of the alternative.
I told everyone in my family, and it was one ear and out the other.
My sister told me the other day, "I didn't know I could add reddit it to my Google search and get better results." All I could think is, "you figured that out right when everything went to shit, damn."
Even if Reddit is way worse now, it is still very useful for specific topics. For example how to make soap, reddit is very useful in that regard. Though it is still funny when a clearly fake story gets alot of attraction https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1hz1y5y.
Lmao thanks for sharing this.
My wife still uses reddit. She's well aware of the controversy, and why I left, and just doesn't care.