this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy

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I know and can accept the response that say I should register to X site if I want more activity. I do plan to, least with Reddit, just biding some time before I make yet the 20th disposable e-mail and probably the 100th account before it gets banned again if I cross a glass person. Glass person being someone who's so fragile on opinions and things that they'll scream 'BAN THEM BAN THEM!'.

I've been on KBin Social, Lemmy World (least 2 dedicated accounts), KBin Run, Mastodon, Blue Sky .etc

And I'd stay for a good while but I also found myself bored immediately. I check for questions to answer, it's the same questions I've seen days and weeks prior. I check around for things that are reported and they'll be hours old and some of them can be years old.

I love the idea of the Fediverse, I like some of the features that are implemented. Especially when you do ask questions on here and you're allowed to expand on it. Unlike AskReddit for example, they don't really like that and will remove your post because explaining what your question is about and backing it with an example is just unacceptable to them.

I don't know. 43,000+ people sounds a lot on paper, but in practice, it feels like you're dealing with 50 people at any given day.

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For more diverse content I indeed wish, but you can't build a healthy social network with an explosion of members without the moderation and toolings required to handle such a wave.

I'd rather be there while the Fediverse grows organically and gather my info from multiple sources the old fashioned way.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Yeah. I feel like Lemmy doesn't have the tools needed to moderate a larger community outside of defederation.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No.

I have actual internet friends here. People who, based solely on their efforts and words and interactions, align with my own beliefs and ideals and help me temper and adjust accordingly as time goes on. Adults. I'd happily stay like this or with more, similar people, growing slowly and legitimately.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Agreed. The past year has been a great change from other social media personally. I was Reddit only for the prior 7 or so years and Lemmy feels like a time hop back to pre-dystopic Internet days. I approach it more like my favorite forums from the 90's-00's.

Less content and users are ok when it leads to more civil engagement's.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 month ago (9 children)

For me the biggest problem is not volume in general but volume of niche content. The best thing about Reddit was all the active, engaging communities that would sprawl around any niche subject you could imagine.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You know, you actually hit the nail on the head in the context I had failed to articulate. Like yes the Fediverse does have some interesting communities, but they're communities we expect of the fediverse to have that everyone else has. But, it does not have a dedicated Nostalgia community, it does not have AbruptChaos or anything else. Just the basics.

And I think if more people took on tasks like running the communities while educating people the benefits of the fediverse, then we can see a bit more growth. Because the point of the matter is if people are desperate for a Reddit alternative, they're going to want to feel like they're home. If there's nothing here that's going to help make them feel that, then they're going to just stick to Reddit for better or worse.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But, it does not have a dedicated Nostalgia community, it does not have AbruptChaos or anything else. Just the basics.

There's only so many communities you can maintain active with 45k monthly active users

And I think if more people took on tasks like running the communities while educating people the benefits of the fediverse, then we can see a bit more growth.

Why do you think we don't?

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (13 children)

I just wish it had more diversity.
Everyone's a white 40-year-old born male Linux admin in here.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Hey! I'm a white 30-year-old born female Linux user, clearly Lemmy is burgeoning with diversity!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I'm a 40-year-old white man? I had no idea

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sorry you had to find out this way

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Welcome! Here's your complimentary Thinkpad and cat.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Who tf is born 40 years old???

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's plenty of diversity if you join boards focused on them, like LGBTQ communities. I think the defaults just lean excessively into the demographic you described.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I personally love the smaller userbase. Less spam, more quality, less screentime, no doomscrolling. Its a win-win in my book.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago

Plus you get to see the same accounts, the entirety of Lemmy feels like a community

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Same. The only thing being niche subs on local stuff. But I remember early Reddit, and that had the same feel. Maybe with a bit more generalized memes because the hivemind was so much more exciting.

But the lack of automated astroturf and shorter comment sections makes it easy more pleasant.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

I would say I miss some specific people or groups, both on Lemmy and on Mastodon, rather than generally "more" people. Friends of mine, certain people I used to follow on Twitter that haven't made the jump, some communities about specific hobbies, that sort of thing.

Overall, I enjoy the fact that I can get a rough idea about who is who instead of interacting with a mass of faceless strangers.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yes there needs to be more people. There's barely any active discussion here. If you don't want to shit on Israel, there's just shit posts and Linux. We need more people to get active sports discussion, movies, TV, or anything else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I moved to lemmy hoping it would be like classic Reddit, which it is to some extent. Unfortunately, my experience has been more like browsing Imgur – just endless memes and shitposts.

I tried blocking all the meme-focused communities I could find, but now my feed feels like a ghost town.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yes, I wish there would be more. But I am okay with the state it's in. The engagement is good enough, and I discover interesting things every other day. You can't force it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

When I used to have Reddit on my phone, I'd look at it as soon as I woke up. There was new content constantly throughout the day so I kept coming back.

Lemmy doesn't have the content churn, so I can genuinely just look once a day and spend an hour or so catching up. No FOMO! I much prefer it.

However I do miss some of the niche subreddits that got reasonable activity on Reddit and absolutely zero activity here. They were my favourite part of Reddit.

I'd take more activity in those niche places, but I don't miss the addiction I had.

Spez let me go cold turkey for a while. Thanks (fuck) Spez.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I used reddit for two things: news, and niche subcommunities around small hobbies and fandoms.

We've got the former here, but I don’t know if we'd ever have enough of a critical mass to sustain the latter. And that sucks for me, because I no longer have a good space for that stuff, but I still don't ever want to go back to reddit now.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (5 children)

We do, people just have to put in the work. I run two niche communities. Satisfactory and Taylor Swift. Both take time to run and manage, I had to be the sole poster in both for a good long time before other people started jumping in and posting with me. Someone has to be willing to put themselves out there.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Maybe less content is good? Infinitely scrolling is not great, and we all know that. Having limited content on Lemmy allows me to at least move onto something else.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Yeah but also the content is quite repetitive imo

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Since the vast majority of website users are minimally engaged, I would love for a few more active posters for stability of content and discussion, but not a massive influx of users just to have users.

I also don't want a plethora of users who get banned repeatedly for not being self aware that their behavior is the problem. The occasional crossed wires ban, no biggie, but thinking there are so many glass people that creating dozens of alts is necessary is not a good look.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I worry sometimes that the reddit exodus brought mostly bellyachers.

The sheer boringness of these repeated questions about the size, growth, health of the fediverse.

Fuck metrics. Jesus, do you mot get it at all?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Agreed! Seriously people this is not reddit. It does not have a bajillion users. Stop asking for it to have a billion users! This question has been asked So. Many. Times. I'm content with the amount of users here, of people want to invite more than invite more, but what is this post? "I have noticed that there are fewer users". Correct! Next question.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Use the site less frequently and you will discover more content each time you come. I kind of like how it moves slower.

Of course, I want the fediverse to grow to. If it ever moves to fast I can always block lemmy.world and be crazy with my fellow dorks on lemmy.ml

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

I do, yes, especially for niche communities. But other social networks aren't the answer. Go look at what Reddit has become, or Twitter, or Facebook. It's all junk. Half of it is AIs talking to AIs. There's almost no meaningful conversation taking place. At least here we occasionally get some good conversations, although those are rare outside of politics and Linux.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (11 children)

The largest Lemmy instance is the most boring, full of unfunny memes and the worst Redditor culture. What you want is high quality postrs, not simply more people!

As Lenin said: better fewer, but better.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

At this point I've blocked so many .world communities that I don't see that as much. There are some users who I notice bring the reddit antagonism and I tend to block them too. If I come across a post that is full of reddit quips I just block the whole community. I guess I've blocked fewer .ml communities overall.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Personally I don't find a huge difference with reddit and threadiverse, at least for larger subs. Sure, on paper there are hundreds of comments, but most are the same tired decade old memes. You can predict what the comment sections are gonna be like from the title alone. At worst you get similar comments here, but you don't have to dig through hundreds of comments before finding something worthwhile.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It just takes time. More passionate posters will come. Reddit is mostly ai-generated at this point.

I wish more technically focused communities had a real home here. I'll google something, and see that the project I'm working on has a dedicated subreddit where someone asked my question. Wish I could see lemmy in my search results.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Idk man, in actually seen here and not drowned out

Little a comment I make that doesn't have any interactions, I like that

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I kinda like the lack of content. I don't feel like I'm missing anything here. Mastodon is too busy.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I wish there was more people on not-so-general communities.
If this means less meme or political posts, it would be for the best. However, more specific communities that are not part of a themed instance have very little activity. If I want to learn about ecology and its science, I know I can find many active communities on slrpnk.net, if I want content that matter to Germans, I can go it feddit.org, jlai.lu the same for Frenchs. But if I want people posting picture of nice looking sticks or find !foraging stories or connect with people doing [email protected] I know that I have to be patient and that's to bad 'cause if people spend less time commenting US election or some shower thoughts, some people will find time and fun interacting in these communities and many others.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Lemmy seems to have quite a lot of people to be fair. Apparently Lemmy.world has nearly 7,000 users a day, which is quite a lot when you think about it.

One thing I think about is that maybe there are drawbacks to the Reddit-style format of Lemmy. A cool thing about old internet forums is that posts were show in chronological order with no upvotes, which is more similar to a real world conversation. You'd read the most recent posts, rather than the most upvoted posts. This means somebody new to the conversation can have their opinion seen.

The upvoting system means that a small number of posts get nearly all the upvotes and attention, and people who post later have their posts largely ignored.

Maybe I'm wrong but it's just something I thought about.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

"New comments" allows to see the latest comments in conversations. Which is why I'm replying to you, while there are already 97 other comments here.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

Post something then. Go to whatever your niche sub is and post on it. People will see it and you might get some engagements. I recently posted in [email protected] and [email protected] and got engagement.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

register on X site

No, not that one.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

.world is no different than reddit so you shouldn't expect any improvement there.

for me the lemmyverse is better so far than reddit, x, or facebook but that's because i spend most of my time away from the diet reddit lemmyverse instances; maybe that'll work for you too.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes and no.

Yes, I wish the fediverse would become more adopted by the general public because it will continues to improve.

No, because people are stupid assholes

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Not overly. More people will be good at first because it'll mean more content, but with more people and more popularity comes the corpos and enshittification.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Yes, but also no.

More users would be great for the fediverse, in theory. Right now Lemmy (and Mastodon) can attribute a lot of their users to people unhappy with Reddit Inc. (or X) in some way. Throwing more unhappy people into the user base would probably not lead to good outcomes.

Personally I think Lemmy and Mastodon will never get the critical mass of users needed to maintain healthy communities because the only thing they have to offer is a less bad clone of an existing network.

X is bad because a malignant political demagogue is actively destroying what most people liked about Twitter. Reddit is bad because reddit inc. cares more about profit more than the needs of the user base. But the platforms they created and/or operate aren't designed with a federated model in mind.

If the fediverse is ever going to move out of the technically savvy, early adopter nerds phase I think it's only going to do that through something new and better than what already exists.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've been on KBin Social, Lemmy World (least 2 dedicated accounts), KBin Run, Mastodon, Blue Sky .etc

Blue sky is not on the fediverse. They've decided to come up with their own federating system from the ground up, which I think kind of squandered what could have been a pivotal opportunity to help facilitate a mass exodus from Twitter, contributing to fragmentation and confusion.

But anyway. I think they intend to have their own version of federating soon but I don't think it's up and running yet.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They are not really allowing federation.

Details here: https://lemmy.ml/post/20064488

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