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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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…
The thing I like about Lemmy is that they’re not banning you over stupid shit.
Oh they’re still doing that just easier to make a new space after that happens
Depends on your instance honestly
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.
firefly was mid, there I said it.
Everything Whedon has ever done was mid, and I’m going to be banned for saying that, probably.
Whatever the social media ability to “create” your own algorithm is important. One way being a subscription and sticking to it.
Second being keyword filtering. I use Connect for Android which let’s me filter out posts and communities containing keywords.
Same thing I do on reddit with reddit enhancement suite.
It’s just the nature social media where anone can sign up.
I hate reddit as a platform but I still have to use it every once in a while because people won’t move to Lemmy/mbin/piefed.
I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.
It’s aggravating how dumb people can be but hey, that’s the world we’re living in. I’ll continue to use Lemmy and visit reddit if I have to.
Yeah. It’s the same with Mastodon. “There are a bunch of toxic people making me feel unwelcome” can be met with “so I left” or “so we flooded the place and took over, because there were only lile 800 people there”
I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.
Network effect in full blast
Is there a way to ‘view all images’ like RES has a button for?
Try this, it improves lemmy’s web frontend
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.
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.
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
I would suggest blocking the communities that post all the content you don’t like. After I did that, it’s been smooth sailing, and I read the All feed. There’s not that many large news and politics communities that you would need to block to get rid of that stuff on your timeline.
It’s not the size that matters. Just play with it for a while, maybe you’ll learn to like it.
Give it some time, it’ll get bigger I promise.
Post the kind of content you’d like to see.
This comment makes me want to both up and downvote it, because while it may be true, I don’t think I have the skill to post.
Posting just takes time. Usually you can just take content from Reddit or elsewhere and post it to Lemmy.
I get it. I basically have to browse on the everything tab to get enough content, and just block the politics communities because I get enough of that from everywhere else in life. I’ve been using the lack of content to just ween myself off social media though, rather than go back to Reddit. This is the only “social media app” I have installed on my phone unless you count Discord and YouTube
Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.
the cats
The voids whence the content shall come!
Post what you want, comment on everything, make your own community, etc etc etc
I see this all the time like some kind of catch-all for complaints about how effectively dead this platform is.
Not everyone is cutout to pioneer any kind of community, let’s just assume that OP takes this advice to heart, if their interest/hobby is niche enough, what’s even the likelihood of someone else tumbling upon it? Let alone contributing. Maybe this hypothetical other person wants to contribute but they see that it’s only one other person posting anything and they figure, “what’s the point?” Maybe they don’t agree with OP’s opinions and would rather find another “community” where their opinions won’t be contested even if it doesn’t exist. There are a myriad of reasons why, this is going to happen with every channel, fandom, interest group, etc. it’s a natural part of the process. The problem lies in the simple fact that there’s fucking no one here, there are enough bodies to come and stay and go and continue the cycle until a community is established.
Yes, there are plenty of channels or w/e they’re called here, but most of them are effectively islands in a sea of shit you don’t care about (or bots.) They’re not managed, and there’s nothing going on in them. Why is it up to you the user to stop what you’re doing and make something out of nothing? When there are already communities that do exist on other platforms, even if said platforms are trash like Reddit or Xitter are. The majority of users in large communities are lurkers, they might not actively contribute, but they do share content with their own friends or interest groups and that is what’s more likely to bring people in, those people might be people that do end up contributing, or they might be more lurkers. But it feeds into the growth of the community either way.
Most of Lemmy doesn’t have any of that though, because there’s no one here.
Community building involves more than just posting. It’s “If you post it, post about it everywhere else, and talk about it with everybody who will listen”. And then dealing with months if silence while you keep posting things that inspire others to join in.
Not everyone is cutout to pioneer any kind of community, let’s just assume that OP takes this advice to heart, if their interest/hobby is niche enough, what’s even the likelihood of someone else tumbling upon it?
The general advice is to go to more and more generic communities until you meet enough people to discuss the topics.
Originally, Reddit had no subreddits, there was only one single space where everybody would post.
Reducing the number of communities and merge some of them would definitely be useful. For people interested on that topic, there is !fedigrow@lemm.ee
I only used Reddit for two years, but I’m now really happy I made the jump to Lemmy.
Sadly, I can only agree that some niche content is difficult to find.
But I can’t complain because I’m not creating any of that content and moderating some community.
A lot of focus is put onto posting, but I like to encourage commenters. I’ll post and respond all day, but if nobody is interacting, it’s going to stay quiet. Put the quiet to your advantage by doing things like:
If you like an image, say what you like about it. Lately, I’ve been having people talk about how they really have been enjoying dawn/dusk pictures, so I’ve been collecting more of that so I can post what people are in the mood for. It gives me good feedback, it gives people a chance to agree or disagree with you, and you got to participate.
Do you ask anyone any question? Take advantage of the relative quiet. With not having a million comments on every post, I have plenty of time to give you really detailed answers. I got asked how to differentiate between 2 animals yesterday, and I had time to make a nice visual guide, highlighting key differences and giving multiple visual examples of potential variations while still simplifying the process of identification. If there’s a million people talking like on Reddit, it’s hard to give people that much attention, but here it’s easy. I pretty much take time to respond to every comment.
Don’t be afraid to go off topic. Rules seem to be looser in many communities because of the low post count. This week, I posted something from a country with a different language, and I ended up having 3 days of conversation with a native speaker who filled me in on tons of subtleties of the language pertaining to our niche topic. I got to learn so much, and they got to learn a few things about English.
I feel you have to do something to have a good time here, but it needn’t be to post multiple things every day, but it’s more than just up or downvoting something like you can get away with on Reddit. We’re too small for you to have a free ride. But make someone laugh. Let them know that you liked their post with a short comment. If you don’t like it, say hey, do you have any content on such and such instead. Make a post saying, hey, what’s your thoughts on this? It doesn’t need to be something groundbreaking or insightful, you just need to give a sign of life so we know you’re here, and one of us will probably talk back to you.
Interact enough like that, and you may find what you enjoy doing, if that turns out to be posting, or you become the resident expert on a topic even if you’re not an expert, being a serial commenter, or whatever it may be. It’s a great opportunity if you make it one because it is so easy to get attention here if you try.
I’m not typically a social person, but being here has let me talk about what I want, when I want, and somebody will listen to it, and I can ask about things I want to know and get answers. There’s much less shouting into the void like at Reddit. Play Lemmy to its strengths and you will find enjoyment. And if you don’t like it, go to where you’re happy. Nobody’s going to hate you if you split time between here and Reddit.
