Fediverse

While I think there's some merit to the idea of talking about the fediverse on corporate legacy social media platforms, I think the best and most effective thing we can do is put in extra effort to engage with the fediverse itself, making posts and comments, building up new communities, and so on.

Reddit is no doubt getting worse and more closed off all the time. They treat their users like shit, or at least, like a resource to be harvested for profit.

But at the same time, Reddit users will sit around complaining about the platform until the cows come up, but when it comes time to do anything about it (like, for example, go check out the fediverse...) they don't ever take any action. And this problem isn't unique to Reddit either, people just love to complain about X on X, complain about Facebook on Facebook, complain about Tiktok on Tiktok, etc. It's hard to tell how much of that is just performative internet shit vs genuine addiction to their particular algorithm of choice, but in my view it's a real problem...

In other words, the question is "where we should be spending our energy?"

Should we be spending it on Reddit, trying to convince a bunch of people (who frankly range from ambivalent to straight-up addicted) that Reddit sucks? Or should we spend it here on the fediverse building the communities from the ground up?

We definitely need the 1.0 release of Lemmy now more than ever... Keep up the good work devs btw!

im never going back to ad supported algorithmic brainwashing. decentralized open source, or nothing for me

Moved over here after I kept getting a popup I couldn't close pushing their app.

Reddit is finally dead to me. Good riddance.

A million and one people said they'd leave Reddit if old. got shut down. Let's see if they come.

Lemmy needs to grow organically, so communities can form their own cultures, instead of importing it wholesale from the largest forum on the internet.

I’m on Lemmy for the first time today after discovering it because Reddit was doing this to me today. Good Riddance. Happy I found an alternative.

I joined Lemmy like a lot of others, when Reddit shut down the API. I soon went back to Reddit but also stayed on Lemmy.

The big problem for me with Lemmy is it’s still way too small to use it the way I use Reddit. I’ve subscribed to a whole bunch of communities equivalent to the subreddits I read and comment on. On Reddit those subreddits have a few hundred people active on a daily basis, whereas on Lemmy they’re lucky to see 1 post and 2 comments a week.

Small communities and real discussions were always what I liked about Reddit, never the big subreddits with millions of users. For now, anyway, Lemmy’s communities are just too small to foster those discussions (on the topics I’m still on Reddit for, anyway; there’s plenty of politics here obviously).

I haven’t posted on Reddit since they killed third-party apps. Funny thing is, I was a paid subscriber for years before they did that.

Here to be the change I want to see in the world. Go Lemmy.

I got hit with that BS yesterday. They claimed it's to "keep reddit safe" lol. Just say it's because you want more money.

Why bother, if they want a good community they will seek one out. Growth isn’t necessarily good for this place.

I always browsed Reddit without logging in, created an account once, and deleted it hours later because the algorithmic feed was too much filtering for me. I want to click on posts as a one-off without permanently altering the way the platform sees me. Now I can‘t browse Reddit anymore, which gave me the final push over to Lemmy. It‘s tragic how much collective knowledge we lost though, as the „You scrolled too much!“ tracking/blocking also applies to search results.

Fun fact, safereddit.com still works perfectly fine as a frontend in my experience! (not the only one out there, just an instance of redlib If you need to bypass the login requirement just add "safe" before "reddit" in the URL and it should let you in :)

Brother Lemmy has slowly taken over my news aggregator usage, conversations are better, with old reddit gone its even more of my usage going to lemmy

No, just no. Just stay off reddit lmao, not trying to be harsh or whatever but it's a very simple answer.

there will definitely be some users over there that discover the fediverse and join us, there will also be some that won't. And we don't want them all to come, ghislane maxwell can stay on reddit forever from her country club prison computer, for example.

So just keep doing whatever it is you're doing to contribute to the fediverse, either by being a powermod or just a lurker, and as the fediverse grows and adapts it will attract those it should attract.

Going back and contributing to a website owned by literal trump funders just seems like a complete nonstarter to me.

Idk, tell your IRL friends, discord friends whoever, sure, i just don't think posting on reddit is the answer to doing anything positive for the fediverse.

It's always worth pushing for the fediverse.

Reddit is dead to me. I blocked them at the router at my house. I should redirect them to a landing page that says simply.

"Don't be a sucker"

Meh, leave them be, if people are interested they will find Fediverse.

Diffusion of innovation theory might apply here

God I hope the fediverse gets bigger than it is now

I don't want to be mean but Reddit has a fuckload of really niche and weird interests and hobbies that I happen to be in that lemmy just doesn't have.

sooner or later they will follow the FB method, require facial recognition, ID scans. and google which is the most common email reddit usually attaches to account started thier more invasive datamining, by requiring QR code scan with your phone to make an account on google.

This may be unpopular to say here, but the fediverse needs to be less toxic for the average user. I'm probably going to be downvoted to hell for this, but here goes: the whole tesseract situation was a clusterfuck and the dev is a jackass, but in one regard he is right - there is a toxicity problem. I mean, let's look at it:

• Lemmy's main dev is what many would refer to as a tankie. He regularly spreads misinformation, supporting fascist governments, so long as they claim to be socialist or communist - and don't belong to the west. Anything the West does is, by definition, evil.

• Lemmy's flagship instance is lemmy.ml. An instance where many communities have a "be nice" rule, but say anything against the (similarly aligned) group think and you'll be ridiculed, insulted, and banned. Meanwhile, some pretty insane calls for violence stay up. And lemmy.ml isn't even the worst in that corner of the fediverse.

• There are many other instances that aren't great, either. Wander into an instance and accidentally say something absolutely factual that someone doesn't like - ban, because some thin skinned mod sees it as derogatory. Remember the whole dragonfucker saga? Yeah, that's very off-putting to your average user.

Look, I'm no stranger to Reddit group think, I've had it turn on me, and trust me, it's no fun. Hell, I've had it on Facebook back when that was still a thing (yeah, I'm dating myself here). But it was nothing on what I've seen on here. I've been able to avoid it here (or, sometimes I've purposefully wandered into it in an attempt to disrupt an echo chamber, but then I knew exactly what I was getting into and expected as much), but what I saw happening to others - holy shit. I mean, to be fair, the instance I'm on is an instance that very rarely defederates, which I like because I like seeing different viewpoints including ones with which I vehemently disagree with (although the viewpoints are very unbalanced, that does have to be said). But it's a hell of a lot more fun to not have to keep your guard up all the time.

So, you might argue, be careful which instance you chose. OK, so I chose an instance like Lemmy.world, which as far as Lemmy goes, is definitely more on the normal side of things. But then, who are they federated with? The next rabbit hole. And how do you know which ones have less crazies? Experience. And as a saying goes, experience is what you needed just before you got it. Then many people suggest putting together blocklist and what not. Another rabbit hole. Put briefly: it involves work, a lot of it. People aren't on Reddit to work (for the most part), they're there to have fun. If you need to put in so much work, at some point it's not fun anymore. And that's what's off-putting for the typical user.

What can be done to make it more palatable for normal users? I honestly don't know. I see it as a chicken and egg problem. We need more "normal" people to drown out the crazies, but then the "normal" people won't come because of the crazies. Maybe Piefed is better in that regard - although I've heard there were/are?tesseract-style problems there, as well - I just haven't had the nerve to go down yet another rabbit hole to figure out what's actually going on. Which brings us back to square one - that's already gone way, way too far for the average user. And I can't exactly blame them. I'm "only" here because I care about open source and decentralisation. And I insist on staying here on matter of principle. But I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone I know IRL.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Maybe someone has some better ideas.

I was also prompted to log into the new reddit earlier today (as in full blocking login popup of the kind you see with news paywalls), so even that is off the table.