this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy

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I know and can accept the response that say I should register to X site if I want more activity. I do plan to, least with Reddit, just biding some time before I make yet the 20th disposable e-mail and probably the 100th account before it gets banned again if I cross a glass person. Glass person being someone who's so fragile on opinions and things that they'll scream 'BAN THEM BAN THEM!'.

I've been on KBin Social, Lemmy World (least 2 dedicated accounts), KBin Run, Mastodon, Blue Sky .etc

And I'd stay for a good while but I also found myself bored immediately. I check for questions to answer, it's the same questions I've seen days and weeks prior. I check around for things that are reported and they'll be hours old and some of them can be years old.

I love the idea of the Fediverse, I like some of the features that are implemented. Especially when you do ask questions on here and you're allowed to expand on it. Unlike AskReddit for example, they don't really like that and will remove your post because explaining what your question is about and backing it with an example is just unacceptable to them.

I don't know. 43,000+ people sounds a lot on paper, but in practice, it feels like you're dealing with 50 people at any given day.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

It just takes time. More passionate posters will come. Reddit is mostly ai-generated at this point.

I wish more technically focused communities had a real home here. I'll google something, and see that the project I'm working on has a dedicated subreddit where someone asked my question. Wish I could see lemmy in my search results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 minutes ago

I got my first reddit ban today!! I told a gamer advocating for bikini armor or something that he should just get a second screen and watch porn while he plays if he's so fucking horny all the time and it was flagged as "harassment". It's only for 7 days so I guess I need to work harder to get a permaban lol.

[–] Macaroni_ninja 15 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I personally love the smaller userbase. Less spam, more quality, less screentime, no doomscrolling. Its a win-win in my book.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Same. The only thing being niche subs on local stuff. But I remember early Reddit, and that had the same feel. Maybe with a bit more generalized memes because the hivemind was so much more exciting.

But the lack of automated astroturf and shorter comment sections makes it easy more pleasant.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I've been on KBin Social, Lemmy World (least 2 dedicated accounts), KBin Run, Mastodon, Blue Sky .etc

Blue sky is not on the fediverse. They've decided to come up with their own federating system from the ground up, which I think kind of squandered what could have been a pivotal opportunity to help facilitate a mass exodus from Twitter, contributing to fragmentation and confusion.

But anyway. I think they intend to have their own version of federating soon but I don't think it's up and running yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

They are not really allowing federation.

Details here: https://lemmy.ml/post/20064488

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, I wish there would be more. But I am okay with the state it's in. The engagement is good enough, and I discover interesting things every other day. You can't force it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

When I used to have Reddit on my phone, I'd look at it as soon as I woke up. There was new content constantly throughout the day so I kept coming back.

Lemmy doesn't have the content churn, so I can genuinely just look once a day and spend an hour or so catching up. No FOMO! I much prefer it.

However I do miss some of the niche subreddits that got reasonable activity on Reddit and absolutely zero activity here. They were my favourite part of Reddit.

I'd take more activity in those niche places, but I don't miss the addiction I had.

Spez let me go cold turkey for a while. Thanks (fuck) Spez.

[–] GeneralInterest 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Niche subreddits can have good content, and also I find myself looking at Reddit threads that come up in web searches, like if I search for a tech problem I'm having. But yes, the behaviour of Reddit as a profit-hungry corporation makes me want to not use Reddit or see their ads.

[–] Sine_Fine_Belli 1 points 2 hours ago

Same here, Reddit has a lot more people one there. With more people posting funny memes, videos and other things that make using Reddit more enjoyable. I try to limit my time on Reddit as much as possible

[–] Sine_Fine_Belli 1 points 2 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

I like it. There is good engagement. 10 to 20 comments on a post is enough for me to move on to the next post

[–] GeneralInterest 8 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Lemmy seems to have quite a lot of people to be fair. Apparently Lemmy.world has nearly 7,000 users a day, which is quite a lot when you think about it.

One thing I think about is that maybe there are drawbacks to the Reddit-style format of Lemmy. A cool thing about old internet forums is that posts were show in chronological order with no upvotes, which is more similar to a real world conversation. You'd read the most recent posts, rather than the most upvoted posts. This means somebody new to the conversation can have their opinion seen.

The upvoting system means that a small number of posts get nearly all the upvotes and attention, and people who post later have their posts largely ignored.

Maybe I'm wrong but it's just something I thought about.

[–] ooli 2 points 24 minutes ago

The problem with chronological forum, is that it was a used tactic to post massively new topics to "hide" some controversial topic on the "second page". Not to say that voting doesn't have its own problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

"New comments" allows to see the latest comments in conversations. Which is why I'm replying to you, while there are already 97 other comments here.

[–] GeneralInterest 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Sure that is true. Thank you for looking at my post and replying to it by the way. But I was just thinking how some people might just look at the top comments and nothing else. Maybe the upvote system does have some benefits though, like making bad posts less visible.

[–] redhorsejacket 1 points 8 minutes ago

I imagine it's something of a difference in expected audience behavior. I would think that, for most people, looking at a few of the top comments and their replies is all the engagement with a post they want to have. So, a voting system facilitates that process by highlighting a few items the hive mind likes, and leaving the rest in relative obscurity. Whereas forum style posting sort of assumes that everyone present in a thread is in conversation with one another, hence chronological organization.

[–] spiritsong 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I personally think maybe it's also in need of quality posts or engagement, but in larger quantities.

That said I know my post may not be quality input, but this is how I feel.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

Feel free to have a look at [email protected] to discover other active communities

[–] ApollosArrow 13 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe less content good? Infinitely scrolling is not great, and we all know that. Having limited content on Lemmy at allows me to at least move onto something else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but also the content is quite repetitive imo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah and it depends. The fact that there is no easy way to search the fedi for similar posts right now is a bit cumbersome for sure.

I see a lot of new users post something that has already been answered a 10000x times (What's the best Linux distro? It depends !) And luckily there's always someone to give a mature and comprehensive answer to a new comer without scaring him or down voting him to oblivion. This shows that there are a lot of people who believe in Lemmy and are ready to repeat themselves to keep Lemmy alive and give new comers a warmly welcome ! However I have only seen that kind of interaction in the Linux/self-hosted communities... Most memes/ask Lemmy/political views/... Communities seems rather hostile on their own opinions and quickly become a cesspool of anger and hate :/.

Also a lot of people think because some communities have a lower user base they won't get any answer or interaction I was quite surprised to get a comprehensive answer and help in the [email protected] community which has only 50 users/month !

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

I wasn’t referring to that kind of posts, since they β€œplague” Reddit too, but the posts from Reddit that gets crossposted on Lemmy. It’s like there is little to no original content here. Maybe mastodon is a bit better, though I feel like it’s slowly dying ngl

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Ohh my bad !

[–] Anticorp 14 points 11 hours ago

I do, yes, especially for niche communities. But other social networks aren't the answer. Go look at what Reddit has become, or Twitter, or Facebook. It's all junk. Half of it is AIs talking to AIs. There's almost no meaningful conversation taking place. At least here we occasionally get some good conversations, although those are rare outside of politics and Linux.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (12 children)

I just wish it had more diversity.
Everyone's a white 40-year-old born male Linux admin in here.

[–] Sine_Fine_Belli 5 points 2 hours ago

I’m a 25 year old Asian American

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Hey! I'm 32.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago

Who tf is born 40 years old???

[–] FinishingDutch 2 points 5 hours ago

Funny, I don’t think I’ve had to fill that out on a registration form here…

[–] [email protected] 21 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Hey! I'm a white 30-year-old born female Linux user, clearly Lemmy is burgeoning with diversity!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

I'm a 40-year-old white man? I had no idea

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Sorry you had to find out this way

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

Welcome! Here's your complimentary Thinkpad and cat.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago

Yes, but also no.

More users would be great for the fediverse, in theory. Right now Lemmy (and Mastodon) can attribute a lot of their users to people unhappy with Reddit Inc. (or X) in some way. Throwing more unhappy people into the user base would probably not lead to good outcomes.

Personally I think Lemmy and Mastodon will never get the critical mass of users needed to maintain healthy communities because the only thing they have to offer is a less bad clone of an existing network.

X is bad because a malignant political demagogue is actively destroying what most people liked about Twitter. Reddit is bad because reddit inc. cares more about profit more than the needs of the user base. But the platforms they created and/or operate aren't designed with a federated model in mind.

If the fediverse is ever going to move out of the technically savvy, early adopter nerds phase I think it's only going to do that through something new and better than what already exists.

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