I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
Post the kind of content you’d like to see.
This comment makes me want to both up and downvote it, because while it may be true, I don’t think I have the skill to post.
Posting just takes time. Usually you can just take content from Reddit or elsewhere and post it to Lemmy.
It may not be for everyone. Lemmys growth has stalled out and barring musk buying reddit and turning it to shit i don’t see another influx coming. So we’re kinda stuck with the community that exists now. Its a pretty good and sustainable community which can provide a lot of general interest posts like news, memes and cats lately. But for other more specific topics if if it’s not already a large community here it probably won’t be. It’s not even just niche interests, professional sports for example has very little presence on here as a whole much less individual sports or teams, and I don’t see, for example, a baseball community taking off here no matter how much effort you put in since the current lemmy community isn’t much interested in it and your average baseball fan probably won’t be coming to lemmy to discuss things.
My recommendation would be to use lemmy for some of those general interest topics, and maybe some of the more popular niche communities if your into them, And go to other places, preferably independent forums or rss feeds, for other things. We don’t need one unified scrolling app, it may be a bit more convenient, but the internet is better off if you spread your traffic around.
Just wanted to comment and say Lemmy baseball fan here! There are dozens of us, dozens! Also not in IT and I don’t use Linux but here I am. I feel like an imposter on Lemmy.
This is why I’ve made the argument so many times that Lemmy needs ways to categorize stuff.
Let me present you with a situation that happened. I made a post in a patientgamers community. But since I know that community is niche, I cross post to both retro games and the general games community. This made some people upset because they had to see my post three times (understandable).
But if I don’t do this, the only slightly active sub community will benefit or see engagement. As evidenced by my last post that got somewhat less engagement.
What really should be the case is that cross posts don’t show up multiple times and by default the apps need to redirect to the actual cross posted post and not the comments on the cross post itself. They copied the awful cross posting behavior from Reddit and it sucks honestly. Until we are larger, we need better ways to post across multiple communities to keep them all active and boost collective interest.
Let me introduce you the Piefed topics: https://piefed.social/topic/gaming That’s an improvement from the reader perspective
Cross-posts themselves are only displayed once on the Web UI as long as they use the same URLs.
Cool feature and pretty much exactly what I was referencing, thanks for making me aware it exists.
reddit was once smaller than it is now too
Lemmy isn’t just full of political content, but it’s also full of assholes too that take advantage of the small sized community of Lemmy and other instances. So this gives the impression that it’s simply a clique that runs around ‘running things’ and by that, just kissing ass to mods and making you out to be the problem when it was started by them.
With politically charged content and just random pricks mixed in, it’s going to be a hard sell for anybody to stick around here on Lemmy. Moreso, the lack of niche communities, will not give anyone a sense of belonging.
That’s what Reddit will always have in spades against Lemmy. Lemmy just seems to be populated with political people, nerds into programming, jackasses and aimless wanderers.
For context : https://feddit.org/post/5147326
The thing I like about Lemmy is that they’re not banning you over stupid shit.
Depends on your instance honestly
Oh they’re still doing that just easier to make a new space after that happens
The internet has been mostly enshittified. The corporations are guaranteed to continue sucking in predictable ways. It’ll never get better or good enough.
The fediverse is something new. It is, at the very least, immune to being reddited and twittered. If the internet has a future, it’s on the fediverse, or on something like it that doesn’t exist yet. Going back to shitty corporate stuff just delays the future.
Your real issue is that spez, musk, etc all suck. That’s what you hate. This is the place where we are free of them, and it can only get better.
The problem is I hate Musk, etc., but I do love a lot of the people on those platforms (mainly Reddit for me). When you have that many people, it’s easier to have very active communities even if they are pretty niche. If there was some sort of way I could incentivize people to come to Lemmy, I would. Open to suggestions.
You can chime in on /r/RedditAlternatives
That’s pretty much the last space where we can talk about Lemmy on Reddit. Posts asking where to go show up from time to time.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ve been holding fast to zero posting activity over there, but I think I’ll keep an eye out in that subreddit and see if I can’t grab any new recruits.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community.
Please note: you only ever had something like that with Reddit when it had already several years of operation. Even today, you can’t jump instantly and find there a community for any niche hobby.
As with all these things: be the change you want to see. Add content, or else it won’t be there when you or someone else comes in.
(There’s also a feel that Lemmy is “small” becaue it’s not only one place and all that)
Is there a way to ‘view all images’ like RES has a button for?
Lemmy is full of political content lately.
Block lemmy.world politics and news subs, those people are deranged idiots larping too much DNC koolaid.
It will clear your feed for other less active subs that really need more posting and commenting.
I wasn’t saying I disagree with the political content. Only that hyper-fixating on the declining state of my country (US) stops being healthy very quickly. People need to feel empowered to create change, but doom scrolling makes us despair.
But let me be clear, fuck Trump.
Discussion is not constructive, it does not matter if you agree or disagree… they are shilling doom. They did it before election too and they are still doing it.
I would suggest blocking the communities that post all the content you don’t like. After I did that, it’s been smooth sailing, and I read the All feed. There’s not that many large news and politics communities that you would need to block to get rid of that stuff on your timeline.
It’s not the size that matters. Just play with it for a while, maybe you’ll learn to like it.
Give it some time, it’ll get bigger I promise.
Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.
the cats
The voids whence the content shall come!
I get it. I basically have to browse on the everything tab to get enough content, and just block the politics communities because I get enough of that from everywhere else in life. I’ve been using the lack of content to just ween myself off social media though, rather than go back to Reddit. This is the only “social media app” I have installed on my phone unless you count Discord and YouTube
Politics is the one thing we all have in common.
The good old days where everyone watched the same five TV shows and discussed them are over.
firefly was mid, there I said it.
Everything Whedon has ever done was mid, and I’m going to be banned for saying that, probably.
Straight to jail. Right away.
Yeah, I think it makes waaay more sense to complain about US politics infecting all of social media.
US Politics is the one thing
weyou all have in common.Do you come from a country with no politics?
We Aussies doesn’t care less about who is out prime minister. As long as they can make more houses for us to live in without becoming bankrupt honestly
So politics. Like when I see people arguing about whether to keep the king around
No, but how interested are you in HK politics?
Actually, yes. I’m curious how it compares to western politics
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
People often just assume things with American mindset. Especially for hard topic like religious harmony, ethnic discrimination, immigration, etc.
Yes Americans participate, but the person who posted 'politics," is something we all have in common I believe was saying it as in all humans need air, prefer to not drown, appreciate love and have politics in there life. Whether they choose to ignore the politics or not.
The point is, Lemmy, Reddit, and other related platform are overwhelmingly American.
Ironic as no large instance is managed by US citizens
Honestly, enough where I would read an article if it was posted but not interested enough to seek out articles that don’t appear on Reuters or the AP’s front page. It is depressing to watch my country fall to authoritarianism and it would be interesting to see how a formally democratic society is dealing with authoritarianism being imposed on it. An article on a new cat cafe or a dog parade would also be nice.
I only used Reddit for two years, but I’m now really happy I made the jump to Lemmy.
Sadly, I can only agree that some niche content is difficult to find.
But I can’t complain because I’m not creating any of that content and moderating some community.
