Rant

So, the thing I've noticed about Lemmy is, a lot of people want to create topics and share them around. As someone who browses /all, I sometimes wanna block someone who posts the same article 10 times in a row (in different communities/instances) and then never interacts with any of them. That last bit bugs me. I swear, if Piefed (which is alternative software to Lemmy, but they're mostly compatible) ever does something where it integrates crossposts... I'm jumping ship. The cool thing about federation is, you can do so easily. Export your settings, join a new instance, import... it's supposed to be seamless. I haven't tried it yet.

Anyway, the users I see often (there are a few) that I really value are the ones who start conversations and then they actually respond to people. Not everyone but they do respond. I think that is really the way to be. You/they/I don't have to respond to everybody, but by responding to a few people, I feel that that encourages others to respond as well.

The problem is, or part of the problem is, a lot of us come from Reddit, and a lot of us were mistreated by mods or admins. I myself was banned for saying people who harm children should face stiffer punishments. I think that's okay in and of itself, but the timing of my comment, they felt it was juxtaposed with the timing of the Trump-Epstein stuff. Reddit is owned by Condé Nast which is a right-wing publication house, so I guess it was a corporate decision. So people tend to wanna control things (or at least themselves) here, so you get more leaders or "leaders" or would-be leaders than followers. More OPs than commenters. And more mods than there are people to join and actively participate in those communities. So, engagement is the key!