My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.
I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.
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Yeah same here, Reddit is my mindless scrolling app of choice, not Twitter, so when I tried to use Mastodon I just kinda stood there not knowing what to do
I love being able to read and immerse myself is specific communities and whatnot, and specifically I love Reddit for the discourse, people posting in a community, replying to posts, and replaying to those replies, and so on
So Lemmy has just become my jam, so happy that Reddit has an open source federated alternative now, even if they reverse their API debacle I’m still gonna keep using this app
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And for me at least, Twitter is almost exclusively read-only for me. There are some people that tweet stuff that I like to keep up with, but trying to engage there is super toxic. Reddit/lemmy is way better for actually talking about stuff with people. There is toxicity but it’s easier to ignore/downvote than Twitter, somehow.
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Strongly agree. Mastodon is alright and I use it a little, but the twitter-type format never really worked for me. I feel like when I have to follow individual people I usually end up either following no one or being forced to follow people who post things that interest me sometimes but a lot of the time post things that really don’t. Following particular topics or threads just seems much more natural to me; I can look at exactly what interests me and nothing more.
Interesting people are not interesting all of the time, and following people usually just results in your feed loading up with complaints, gossip and drama.
I want to talk about things and ideas, not people.
I never really liked Twitter as a concept. It feels like it’s built on an “old man yells at cloud” concept where people just shout their thoughts and nobody gains anything from it.
By comparison forums are there to foster discussions and communities. I thought Mastodon would be better but I spent 5 minutes and it’s exactly the same nonsense.
Same, same. If I follow 3 high-volume posters on mastodon or twitter, there goes my entire day.
I prefer to follow topics / communities, not people / celebrities.
Yeah the twitter style of social media has always confused me, I feel like there’s much more community and fun here than mastodon but I use both
I have tried to go back to Mastodon, but I have not found an instance that makes me care enough.
I’ve been thinking that it is probably easier to move a community from a platform like Reddit to the Fediverse than it is from Twitter. I have used both Twitter and Reddit a lot, but have moved off Twitter and now use Mastodon. Mastodon works pretty well for me, but it’s taken a lot of work to get there, and there are parts of the communities (mostly related to my work) I want to connect with that just don’t exist on Mastodon.
But the big difference between Reddit/Lemmy and Twitter/Mastodon is that on Reddit/Lemmy I am interested in communities for topics that are mostly hobbies/entertainment etc. for me, so I don’t really care about who I’m interacting with… I can’t really name more than a handful of regular users or mods on the Reddit subs I’ve been using for more than a decade. But it’s not really important for interacting there, because it’s about interacting with people who have an interest in a particular topic no matter who they are. On Twitter/Mastodon (at least how I use it), the specific people I’m interacting with are more important.
So it seems the “lock in” of Reddit is weaker than Twitter, and I think it’ll be quicker to establish communities here. A community on Lemmy with a few hundred people contributing (posts/comments) is already pretty successful and enjoyable. It doesn’t matter that the equivalent community on Reddit has over a million people (and in fact it’s often better if it’s smaller!).
That weaker lock in and the fact that Reddit seems to be massively undervaluing the contribution mods and third-party app devs make to the platform make me think Reddit is going to quickly regret this whole fiasco.
True, I also think lemmy is the main star of fediverse (peertube too) because they don’t need network effect qnd milions of users.
Problem with reddit is it got too big l, similar like youtube, it always recommending me videos with milions of views and I don’t like them - they are professionally done and trying to sell me something.
I just want to watch random people sharing their thoughts and hobbies.
Right now we don’t have that part of the internet, but looks like it is comming back.
I think some of that is your YouTube profile, because I regularly reject recommended content on YouTube that has 250 subs or 1000 views. Mostly because it’s someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing in terms of making an engaging video so I get super bored quick. I don’t know how to tell you to change it, I do get stuff I ignore in the newpipe default list thats huge and completely uninteresting to me. But that may just be a default link, and I never go to just YouTube.com without just using it to search for a channel I like. I also don’t like or subscribe as I don’t really want another indicator of the channels I might watch. They can figure it out from what I load anyway.
I’m Gen Z and when I was little my parents were (rightfully) very careful with how much time I spent on the internet. Even so, I saw from a distance the old internet, where forums were a thing and you could find lots of cool websites that people made for reasons that weren’t limited to promoting or selling something.
When I discovered Reddit it was like I could somehow experience that time, but for many the decline had already started.
I love interacting with people, asking and answering questions, discovering and making others discover new things, but I just can’t stand feeling like everything and everyone is trying to sell me something anymore.
Now that I’m here, I feel like this could be the place, at least for a while.
Your instincts are correct! The internet I loved was a library or a coffee shop, not some corprate franchised mega store trying to take your money at every opportunity.
Websites used to be art, exploration was like fringe theater, where you and the author complete the performance.
I hate getting advertized to, even if it is something I want and have been searching for.
I am glad you caught the best of what the internet used to be, and have not been indoctrinated to the worst behaviors, or become too jaded to seek out something that does not disrepect you.
I think that the death of stumble upon reflects this very well. I used to spend hours on it, finding website that were about specific niche topics, art, or were interactive experiences of every kind. Now websites don’t really exist in that shape anymore, or at least don’t have the same resonance. If Internet was the real world, it would be a cyberpunk dystopia
Stumble Upon was such a revelation when webrings went out of fashion. I could spend my entire day clicking to a random website and never get bored.
The problem with mastodon is the same problem as twitter. Its just not a good social experience. I have said this before. Twitter/Mastodon are for individuals with a high follower count to get their message out. Its not for the other 99.99% that want to engage each other and discuss topics o interest.
Yeah in general, I like forums better than the format Twitter is in. I like topic-based discussions more than discussions spawned from short, potentially out-of-context messages.
Not to mention that the discussion is almost guaranteed to consist of similarly short (or even shorter) witty one-liners. Twitter format is just horrible, and its restrictions promote equally horrible behavior where you have to look for ways to convey ideas and feeling in a short manner, which almost never results in more polite and sophisticated conversations.
Never used Twitter for anything more serious than some announcements from the game devs I follow. Anything else is just plain stupid, which makes me really surprised over the wide-spread adoption of Twitter by officials and ministries and the like.
And raising the character limit is going to be even more absurd, because then it’s going to be reminiscent of an actual forum, just less structured and sensible.
Twitter, as a format, is the worst option between messengers like Matrix and proper forums of any kind.
I’m even a little suspicious that Twitter style messaging has played a part in “gotcha” politics that seem very popular everywhere, where some populists manage to gather a large following mostly by just using slick one-liners with relatively little substance.
Now sure, these have always existed and will likely exist, but I seem to see more and more of them with ever bigger popularity.I know it got me a bit, I used to browse subreddits dedicated to twitter owns, but realised that those were reeeally bad for me.
Another Reddit refugee here: lemmy makes much more sense to my brain than mastodon ever did. So far, this has huge promise.
I felt kind of lost when looking for a Reddit alternative. Lemmy feels like the right alternative. It’s not perfect but it’s a better base than what we had with Reddit. I hope it picks up.
Yeah, I like Lemmy’s organisation, but it lacks people. Now when Reddit is shitting om its users, I am hopeful that Lemmy will explode in user base soon.
@President_Pyrus @SmugBedBug It is not necessary that everyone who uses #Lemmy has to be a Lemmy user. Thanks to the #Fediverse , everyone from Mastodon, Misskey, etc. can also participate in Lemmy content (also post in communities, just don’t create your own communities). For example, I am currently replying from Friendica. The circle of people is much, much larger, so it’s not a problem if Lemmy lacks people.
Yep, Same here! When things went south with Twitter, I tried switching to Mastodon, but after several months, I haven’t become fond of it. Its interface is so terrible and difficult to navigate. When I heard of Lemmy as an alternative to Reddit, the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Oh, please don’t be like Mastodon…’ and I’m glad that it is not! I like the fact that it is kinda’ similar to Reddit (interface-wise), but at the same time, it is decentralized, which means it is (hopefully) going in the right direction.
I feel that. I thought it was just me, but it was so hard to just connect to any other instances outside of what flowed in the timeline. When I did it just took me to the website instead of integrating with the instance.
Trying to keep up with the Federated timeline was nauseating, but it also fruitless adding every person with an interesting post.
It sucks. I just don’t like the Twitter format.
That’s absolutely true. I mean we can’t even search for a word on that platform. It’s so ridiculous that only hashtags, usernames, or URLs can be looked up!
Yeah, it is limited in surprising ways. It is just not fun to use. I do hope it keeps evolving and overcomes these annoyances. Still, I am grateful something that matches my speed exists.
If your issue with Mastodon was mainly the interface, maybe you could try using a third party app like Tusky. Mastodon’s own app isn’t great, but when using Tusky it’s quite nice.
I was never a fan of Twitter, but I use Mastodon quite a bit. Both for following news and projects as for just posting random crap. I never used Reddit much either, only read when it would come up on an online search. But Lemmy so far has been nice, if not a bit silent. I’ve got good hope for it.
I think Mastodon’s community isn’t really up to par with what most Twitter ditchers were expecting.
The Reddit-Lemmy exodus however, is far more exaggerated because of the tremendous number of users on third-party apps that were being killed.
This probably led to a lot more content generation and activity which makes it a lot more welcoming than Mastodon was.
I guess the problem is mainly, as someone mentioned, Twitter is for following, Reddit for interacting.
The fact that you have to look for people to follow or you’ll have an empty timeline together with the fact that many famous people aren’t on Mastodon makes the switch more difficult for Average Joe than Reddit to Lemmy, as this kind of SNS doesn’t require specific people, just people.
I wasn’t using Twitter for anything but customer care, so as long as I could find some interesting instances and tags I’m fine there. I didn’t switch, just joined, so nothing to miss that I had before.
I guess in that way, Meta has been smart to give their Mastodon-based SNS first to populair influencers before releasing it to the public. Altrough I can imagine Meta’s version possibly getting blocked everywhere due to privacy concerns tho.
I’m gonna be honest Lemmy feels like a very chill place unlike Reddit or Facebook, it feels like defusing a bomb when talking on certain subreddits
I’d say this type of layout that focuses more on long form textual content is better for tech savvy people who are likely to stick with the fediverse than the twitter clone that Mastodon was.
Personally I find Kbin more usable (while still being reddit-like) as it also has functionality letting you follow on normal microblogging content from Mastodon and other places, making it more intertwined with the whole fediverse.
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Can you move there from an instance of Mastodon/Lemmy or I misundertood you?
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Similarly, I wish Matrix/Element would grow in popularity to compete with Discord, who will also eventually be pursuing and IPO and will allow enshittification to swallow them whole.
I have never liked Discord. It is like IRC with more steps, more surveillance, an excess of security features that doesn’t actually make anything secure.
I should give Element another chance. I think I had it before, but I was confused on how to find rooms.
I found that discord is mostly filled with immature teenagers. It’s tough to have a mature discussion there
