yeah but if you join, and your friends join, and they’re friends, you know what nevermind
[Edit] holy shit people I get it, people like it small, take it easy it’s just a meme, don’t need to keep commenting and DMing
Most people just wanna doom-scroll, they have no interest in having conversations.
man if I start my day without a healthy level of existential dread and depression what’s even the point?
You know what? I think I’m okay with the fediverse simply never getting as big and popular as Reddit is/was. Over the years, as it got more popular, I definitely noticed that the average quality of interactions I had on Reddit slowly but steadily declined. Lemmy feels like old-school Reddit, which I am honestly pretty happy about.
That’s what I keep saying. I keep getting told I’m wrong though, that Lemmy needs to be easier to join, and hit critical mass and become the reddit killer because that’s the only way we can exist.
Like, no thank you. I’m happy with Lemmy NOW, I don’t need it to keep growing!
the only thing I miss from reddit are the niche communities
but that will come with timeDepends. If instances keep going into defederarion wars over philosophical beliefs it will become really tricky to have small communities. If I like some kind of bizarre miniatures, turtle crocheting, collectible wooden marbles, etc. I shouldn’t have to worry about whether the other person I want to talk to who collects toy unicorns is a “tankie” or not. As long as the communities are moderated enough, political philosophies shouldn’t be an issue.
Its the same as how the vast majority of the US citizens hate both main political parties, but the majority also says “I wont vote for a third party because they could never win.”
This isn’t a fair comparison because there’s nothing stopping you from being on Lemmy, and the same evening watching some YouTube.
Most US voting systems are first-the-post which results in the spoiler effect. They would be wasting their vote if they don’t vote one of the big two. (Other than areas which allow for proportional representation).
Don’t vote for a third-party present, or governor or whatever. Y’all need some preferential voting to make that work.
People have gotten used to content being served to them. Meanwhile I still enjoy discovering something new.
Honestly? I think a big issue with getting more people over here is kinda the attitude. This place is really elitist and condescending when the real reason go to threads or stick to twitter is cause
- Thats where their friends are
- The sign up+finding communities process is way more intuitive and 3) Folks over here shit on them a lot
I like it here, its been my prefered site, but between the stale memes and elitism the Fediverse has been like the Linux of social media. Probably better, but not really worth it for the average user.
Like, I know that wont win me any friends, but it’s the truth. People are usually going to go the path of least resistance, and Lemmy instances being confusing to navigate for an average user, or looking at Mastodon.world and seeing they banned shitposts and not understanding that they can use a different one or spin up their own is going to turn people away.
If you want a more niche userbase that’s fine, I certainly do, but it’s wild to insult them for being stupid for not joining while actively keeping them away lol
Edit 2: Removed the first edit
I have nothing against people that want to use Threads, truly, and I would welcome them to Lemmy. That said, I do draw the line at federating with Threads. I’m here specifically because it’s not part of a big company. If anyone wants to enjoy that content, go for it! Just create an account over there.
This place is really elitist
Folks over here shit on them a lot
I feel called out. And I can’t even try and defend myself, if I’m being honest, best I could do is try to defend my elitist point of view, that people who don’t want to bother putting the slightest bit of effort really don’t have much to do here. There’s also the problem that instances can only grow so much before their home servers get strained with traffic and hosting costs soar.
In a way, we are and will remain the linux of social platforms. Small, vocal, divided by the pettiest reasons and annoying to no end to “the normies”
Exact same for linux
Lots of my friends are going absolutely nuts trying to get into Bluesky asap because a bunch of big queer/left voices went there and they want to get in “before too many people join and it starts to enshittify”. It’s hard to compete with people that a lot of others want to follow dictating the direction with their influence. I must admit, so far my Mastodon feed is not all that interesting. Lemmy does entertain me, though.
The truck is not to tell them all the complicated shit. Just tell them it’s another social media site that you browse. Don’t need to tell them about the fediverse. Don’t need to tell them it’s independent. All that stuff is like a Naruto headband is to girls.
They’ll discover all that stuff afterwards.
Watching this whole thing go down has made me realize that regardless of what people say, it’s not about the number of people, the quality of the experience, or anything like that.
A lot of people actually want to be surrounded by “brands” and “influencers”. Some people even get a kick out of “hate following” people who they don’t like, which blows my mind.
That’s why Threads feels so right to them. Threads has been designed for one thing, and one thing only: connecting companies to customers, often via influencers and eventually through traditional advertising.
Cool, the community is big enough. I’d welcome more, but I like social media better when the techies are the majority.
Just like the Internet in 2005! Which means…
Oh no
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Lemmy is more like the old school Usenet than modern social media, and I would like it to stay that way. I don’t want the average doomscroller to come over here, I like the cozy atmosphere.
Was usenet pretty much a bunch of federated forums back then? When I first heard of it, around 2009, all I could find were places charging upfront for registration.
The Fediverse is a resurrection of an old concept,and yes, Usenet was a bunch of servers talking to each other, very much like the rest of the Internet. It has been supplanted by the World Wide Web in the 90s, and now that the Web is choc full of SEO spam, bots and intrusive ads, Usenet style communities are popping up once more.
As for the modern Usenet, it is mostly being used for ahem “file sharing”, hence why some companies offer paid access.
I went to Reddit for the first time this month to speak up in a relevant thread about it and got a bunch of tone deaf replies about they‘d rather join Threads cause “its popular and you sound like crypto bros with the decentralised stuff” and also some “Lemmy was made by tankies” and so on.
You know what, I don‘t care, don‘t want these short sighted people here, let them get screwed a few more times by the corpos if they enjoy it so much.
I’m perfectly fine with this sort of hierarchy as the mainstream platforms inevitably become terrible.
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The same problem is in politics in Germany. They vote only for the big politicians who have already a big group of supporters and so a high chance to win. Like „ I don’t vote for xyz because they have only 0.5% of voters in Germany and can’t change anything by that“ . With this attitude they also grow very slowly.
This problem is a property of the way elections are done. Take a look: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
There are alternative voting methods that can solve this. Ranked Pairs and Schulze are my favorites, but Instant Runoff would solve this problem as well.
Edit: format
Take a look: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
Isn’t that specifically about First Past the Post? (which is mainly only used in places that were once British)
In Brazil we use a 2-round system where, if no one gets the majority, the 2 most voted will run the second turn. And it leads to the same problem.
This is the ”insurmountable” challenge of almost every tech platform from Google to Reddit to Twitter and so on, the competitive advantage is the user base. So without a notable performance advantage (like Google usurping Yahoo) or tangible user experience benefit (Facebook replacing MySpace), these platforms will remain the dominant player in their niche.
Good news is the shitification of tech has really presented some opportunities in some of the niches. Obviously we’re all aware of reddit’s recent actions, Twitter is trying its best to fail, Facebook went the cable TV route and made itself uncool, and Insta keeps flirting with real bad ideas.
Fediverse might not be the answer, but there hasnt been a better time for viable alternatives in a very long while.
If Lemmy isn’t the answer then I’m not sure what hope we have. This seems like a perfect storm and I doubt there will be a better alternative coming any time soon.
One of my concerns is that we are running out of people who remember the pre-corporate internet at this rate. This platform has a gaping hole of Gen Z users as far as I can tell. Many of them never experienced the internet when it was cool, so they don’t have any particular dissatisfaction with the curated dopamine drip feed it has been turned into.
It just feels like this is the moment to revive that original dream of the internet for a new generation. Let’s make it happen here so we can take credit for it 😅
Ok but I don’t post on twitter. I only view posts on Twitter, and they’re pretty much all from relatively big people. So before I can move away, the people with big follower counts needs to move first. The only people on Mastodon that I follow are tech people. All the other people are on Twitter, Threads, or have just straight up left twitter altogether.
Nitter
Yeah don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with what’s happening on Twitter, but Nitter doesn’t work anymore
don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with what’s happening on Twitter, but Nitter works again.
Honestly, I’m fine with the normies staying on Reddit and Twitter, while all of us ‘new cool’ folks explore our rebel alliance.
Exactly. And the same applies to Linux, if it becomes majority then hackers and scammers would start targeting it. This things are better off thriving in their niche than dominating the environment
