It gets better the more familiar you become with it. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in real life. There are parts that are just way too jarring.

I’ve been on the Fediverse since mid-2023, and I’m sticking around!

I bailed on Reddit, FB, and IG, and I’m only on Mastodon and Piefed now. I find that not being on algorithm-driven social media makes me less angry, and I have a much easier time avoiding getting caught up in a mindless scrolling marathon.

I like the ability to filter out by keywords, it makes for a much more pleasant experience

As far as improvements, my main complaint is that I wish there were more people and that the people who are here comment more. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but there are a lot of communities that just don’t have enough people posting and commenting to make things feel lively yet.

I've only been on the fediverse for a total of like 10 minutes, but it seems so far like a perfectly viable alternative to big tech's data collection schemes disguised as websites.

I'm not new as such. I joined up on kbin initially and tried to establish my communities on there, but kbin kinda collapsed. Then I gave up for a while.

When I came back, I moved to lemm.ee and set up television and obscuremusic and got them going (the former especially) and then unfortunately lemm.ee shut down and then I moved to Piefed and rebuilt it all over again.

I’m new here and it’s quite a relaxed experience. I think there are more friendly and reflected people. It’s like people here are able to criticise properly and take criticism and also encourage and praise a little. I thought this was lost since early internet. But also very political / activist. I feel like in a bubble of people who want to change things for the sake of people and not capital. As much as I like it we’re not enough. I don’t care there are not many comments. Less comments, less fomo.

I gave Lemmy a dedicated year. A few notes:

Very few people click through.

Lots of rage bait.

Communities split over instances make it pretty hard to know where to post things, what with defederation and such.

I didn't miss much "news"; lemmy was functional for reporting what people were talking about.

No notification of moderation actions taken against you is a choice.

Those who post small websites that do cool things: thank you! I did discover several other cool places and tools.

I found that about 1/10 of the top lemmy posts (after filtering out jokes and sports) are links to AI slop that nobody bothered to check, comments just take the headline as real if they affirm. Pointing this out in the comments did not reduce engagement or drop the posts.

Cutting it out of my routine, at last for awhile.

One thing I really hoped for from the social Internet was access to people and data that could correct me/fill in gaps. But lemmy doesn't do this, as people see what is upvoted and upvotes are used for affirmations to the reader.

As someone who has been exploring the Fediverse for about 2 weeks, it's been an overall good experience. I've been trying to use it instead of Reddit as much as possible, but it's also apparent that there's a lot less content.

I hope that the verse will continue to grow and that it will solve the content problem.

Otherwise the clients feel like a breath of fresh air and less enshittified than Reddit..

edit: Also the first comment talking about experiences that are just too jarring. I haven’t encountered anything like that but maybe I am just a sweet summer child.

I don’t feel good about being on mainstream social media any more. Any time I spend on Reddit or YouTube is minimal and with a sense of distrust.

I’ve been on lemmy for a few months now and it’s grown since I joined and grows more every day as people hear about it.

Never looking back.

Not much has changed. I might move to Piefed.

Personally, I came here because Reddit mods play king when they're less than a pauper. It is also full of pedos and rapists. Simple questions when people actually need to know are met with mockery and ridicule.

There is less to see here but the vibe is less fucky and I'm staying.

For me, the biggest downside is there just isn't the same amount of content/engagement as reddit. Also, it's even more of a left wing echo chamber than reddit (and I say this as someone left of centre).

I joined today! I tried to post some images, but could only have one image per post. Then someone was rude, and I wasn't able to downvote him. I keep refreshing the front page, but nothing happens since there's no algorithm, the latest posts just stay there.

I think I'll stick around here in parallel to Reddit. Maybe some day I'll understand how instances and all of that works.

I joined two years ago after the Reddit API thing, full of hope and with bright eyes. I even got a couple of doggos in my PMs, which was nice. It got even better after I finally blocked enough weird porn communities so I stopped bumping into them all the time.

Now I only open Lemmy when I’m having trouble sleeping at night. I browse All/Active, and 90% of what I see are bot news reposts about Trump doing something stupid or scary, or some “are .ml tankies” shitstorms.

Also, I got banned on the Linux community at .ml and I have no idea why or even when it happened, which I actually find kind of funny.

I stayed permanently since middle of last year thanks to piefed.social. it has a great onboarding system for anyone that might not have the gumption or will to self curate raw lemmy, mbin and now piefed outputs. A.k.a being lazy like myself.

Although for my close online friends I'm likely to suggest other piefed based instance just because tobspread the load around.

It feels like reddit back when it was smaller and before the abhorrent new UI and their aggressive algorithm. Well we all know the fediverse is practically without algorithm for good and bad.

So with this view it semi forced me to be more active in the communities I'm in. I mostly comment though rather than making posts but hey any little thing helps.

And besides I just love piefed has topics i.e. multireddit a.k.a a group feed of multiple communites, where I either I can subscribe to premade topics by the instance admin or make my own grouping of topics/communities.

I still to my chagrin dip back to reddit for some communities or topics but it's none of the big ones. Things like psychotic people that has way too many x (bags, retro games handheld devices, headphones, fountain oens, paper notebooks, ereaders, knives, pocket trash, etc) and spending way too much money on them.

lemmy is a mess since the same community can be found on a different server. same news have 2 comments, but 62 on the other. this thing is just gonna stay as an underground social media until someone solves this.

In my opinion this platform is great. Most people here are friendly, and smart. Although there are a few exceptions.

I've been here since a year, i think. And its the first contact i made with "the fediverse".

All in all i would say that, apart from power tripping mods, and a few weird users, its a great platform i would definitely recommend.

There's one problem tho, where no android lemmy client, that is compatible with android 7 has avif support

I've been here since the before times.

It was just weird back then. I had no idea what tankies were and the content just seemed bizarre without any content. I wasn't here daily but kept checking in.

Since the reddit 3rd party app fiasco there's been more content so you could block .ml and have a somewhat satisfying experience.

Piefed is very comparable to lemmy but without the ideological stink and better filters - I thoroughly recommend making the switch.

Mods in the fediverse generally have better intentions than their counterparts on reddit. There have been a number of fumbles but for the most part they're better community stewards, although they do still have the same inherent problem of being fieflords.

The content on the fediverse lags behind reddit. For emerging stories there's way more interesting and up to date content on reddit. I've been using redlib for the last few years so I browse reddit but can't log in. It's a reasonable compromise IMO.

I do have some concerns about the fediverse.

Firstly it's an echo chamber. Quite often if a commenter points out some kind of nuance which doesn't align with the approved opinion they just get piled on. One recent example was the "Trump shat himself" video. Someone said something like "I can't really see it, you can hear a little squeak that could be anything and green lady is just looking around", they got downvoted to oblivion and loads of responses basically saying "how dare you not make fun of the POTUS".

We can't discuss things here. There's like 6 types of posts and we all just make the approved responses to each of them.

Secondly is the dwindling content. Things have deteriorated in the last few years with smaller communities drying up. Everyone's aware of it but no one can or will do anything about it. I don't have the stats but I suspect that 99% of posts are made by about 4 different users.

About 3 years in, and same as it has been: Discovery's kinda ass if you're not on the big servers. This is both a positive and a negative. In most cases it leads to a lack of content directly, and for services like Lemmy, it leads to communities being more dispersed.

I think giving servers the option to run on a whitelist basis instead of a blacklist for other servers would be good. Federation is cool for a lot of reasons, but if your goal is to be a dick you can do that on a $5/mo server with a few cheap domains. Plus I've wanted to self-host some things that I don't necessarily want federated, like Bookwyrm. I was looking at setting one up as a fanfic sharing thing, and a lot of fanfic authors don't want their stuff on platforms like Goodreads for valid reasons, and I personally feel like having it federated would kinda defeat the purpose there. While I was typing this out I just had an idea that might have fixed that problem, actually, I'll test that later

In the same vain, allowing servers to share their blocklists with other servers would help a lot as well. Yes you can see the block list publicly (though some servers do disable it), but manually copying it is a massive chore, and keeping it updated is even worse.

Lemmy really needs to get its shit together in the UI/UX dept for the default look of an instance. Mastodon does this much better.

I can’t stand looking at Lemmy without Voyager.

I used an apk called Relay when I was on reddit. Now I use an apk called Thunder on Lemmy.

My experience is almost exactly the same (very similar gui). Only difference is all the missing more niche sub\instances.

For me I started out on Mastodon, has some fun with individuals I knew. Got into lemmy(world) for about a year. Then decided this piefed thing is fun (and found out about scheduled posts). Now I am here.

I also use Gotosocial, Peertube, and for a little while there bookwyrm, funckwhale, and friendica.

So this whole posting and other people on other platforms commenting/sharing has worked out quite a few places! Its awesome to open up a thread somewhere and see many different accounts on many different servers all talking to one another. I enjoy the interactions here much more than traditional social media.

For improvements, I would still very much like an all in one app. I know its quite a bit far fetched, but its a hassle and a half to keep up with all these accounts. I want either:

1. One fediverse app to rule them all (join everything fedi related, comment on everything fedi related)
   OR
2. A way to login to most fedi services I use and use the UI that service has with my login creds.

Its all very far fetched, but it still kinda sucks I have to manage something like 6 different accounts across different software stacks.

It's been a great experience for me since first joining. The spark is still there and it gets better ever day.

I don't understand the politics. .ml, hexbear, etc. It's like going to Christmas dinner with your girlfriend's family for the first time.

I don't understand the broader structure, something about Mastodon being part of all this? How everything interconnects, etc.

I'm happy enough here, I read, I make comments, I move on. Just like I did on Reddit. It's a bit empty, so many of the communities are ghost towns. I get that I'm supposed to help with that, but I'm not much of a poster.

Learning recently that apparently anyone can track my upvote/downvote stats was offputting. I'm going to stop upvoting and downvoting now, I don't want people making inferences from that, but I'm fine with what I write, because there I always say what I mean.

New-ish (I joined during the reddit hooplah a while back) and my experience has been hit or miss.

I'm on my third instance. First I joined lem.ee and that got shut down. Then I joined midwest.social because I thought hey I'm a Midwest leftist, but that instance has been slow as shit and never loads for me. Tried on multiple lemmy clients with the same result. So now here I am on lemmy.world.

Federation is a good concept but I don't think it will ever catch on on a large scale. It's just too user-unfriendly.

Almost as bad as reddit, sometimes for the same reasons, sometimes for completely new and unexpected reasons.

Way, WAY too many suggestive/sexualized anime image communities to have to block. We all have our fetishes so I'm not begrudging them (although some of them are... unsettling even to my sick mind), but the number of communities in my blocklist made up of such content is simply insane. I wish there were categories standardized across instances/platforms that each community needed to associate itself with so I could block everything matching that in one fell swoop. I'll also never be interested in professional sports-related communities, for example.

I'm a redfugee came with the big exit about a year ago. I post prolificaly, comment sporadically and have a couple of comms. I love it, it feels more like the olden days of the Internet when everything was smaller and you knew people. I sometimes idly scroll Reddit but not even once a week, it's fucking dire and atmosphere is shit. Insta I'm on a few times a day for memes and Reels.

Long live the fediverse!

I'm pretty new.

Lemmy is great. It doesn't have as many active hyper specific communities as reddit. But there are still plenty of active communities.
There is no attention based algorithm. But the more basic sortings work well enough. I already spend too much time here.

I tried mastodon and Twitter a few years back. I still have absolutely no idea how that whole microblogging thing is supposed to work. Am I just supposed to scream into the void? Same thing with pixelfed.

If people link peertube videos from Lemmy, peertube works well. But the feed needs work. I don't really care about the topic of the video. So the filter by topic isn't that useful. I'd like to filter by language. And then find well researched videos by someone who is enthusiastic about a topic. Any topic. I don't know if there simply aren't that many or if I just can't find them.

I think attention based algorithms could help retain new users. I think there are many who try fediverse platforms and just don't stay long. And if we get more users that stay longer, we get more content, and then niches can form.

To not lose current users, and just because of mental health, it would probably be better if the attention based feeds could be turned off in the settings.

I've been here for a few weeks now, and I've already grown very fond of it. I love the decentralized approach and how things are managed here. It's the best alternative to today's mainstream social media platforms. Hopefully this project has a long life ahead of it

I like it here. I'm staying.

I've been on Mastodon for almost a month, I enjoy it. I started in the mastodon.social instance then moved to mstdn.plus. I'm still trying to get a hold of Piefed, but it has been good.

came last april ish after a reddit purge, was on another instance before it was shutdown forever. there has been less content though. and i dont like the tankie, or anything related to "tankie politics"

Good! I'm a long time lurker, new user.

If you dedicate a day to figuring out how lemmy works then imo it's quite straightforward. I appreciate the expansion of free speech (i got banned from reddit for telling an AFD member to kill himself) and generally most people here seem ok. it's still rather niche but oh well. We can fix that by inviting friends! It's also much more authentic. A lot fewer covert advertisements and more actual people.

It's the same as reddit. platforms don't make a different. people make a difference

It's all the same people, with the same arrogance and same entitlement and egotism, who take themselves way too seriously and think that justifies their to harass, insult, and report/ban anyone who says stuff they don't like. to the point they will go into other communities to take your commentary out of context to prove how 'evil' you are over a different of opinion or perspective, even if it's a more complex or nuanced take on what they already agree with.

It's just got a lot of extremist weirdos who think their extremists beliefs are some deep profound truth that they must use to browbeat other into submission. A lot of them with superiority complexes that cannot tolerate any admission of limitation or flaw in the glass house from which they throw stones all day.

And the userbase and voting systems generally rewards short, shrill, outlandish, and hyperbolic headlines, commentary, and personalities more than it does thoughtful commentary. Thoughtful commentary with nuance and acknowledging the limits of your understanding... will get you harassed and banned.

It's not an open forum for diverse discussion among a respectful group of people that it wishes it was. It's just tiktok with text.

how has your experience been?

Posts and comments cannot be easily deleted, for one.

Otherwise, the general experience is like being at an anarchists' beer hall. Where there's constant talk of revolution and expressing hatred of various enemies, but only a few actually taking to the streets.

I joined a month ago, and I like Lemmy much much more than Reddit. The federation makes it visible that you're part of a large community, there's no advertising, and I find the discussion to be of a generally higher quality. I also like that one can see upvotes and downvotes. Not sure whether it needs to be fuzzified or embargoed to fight abuse in future, but either way, it's nice.

I'm absolutely sold on Lemmy vs Reddit. I dumped Twitter when Musk took over, and by then I was already on Mastodon, but I don't actually use it much. Didn't use Twitter much either. Any comments on Mastodon vs Bluesky?

Hi & welcome to all new users.

If you feel intimidated or jarred, it's normal. Just keep in mind it's OK make mistakes while trying new things out. There is only very kind moderators around here, well, a few are nice ;)

Don't be afraid to ask questions about anything you find confusing (there are quite a few, to be honest).

And to those that have been here for a while, how has your experience changed over the year(s)?

1. I stopped worrying about the few things I did not like and focus my attention on what I think is great around here.
2. I learned to filter the default feed by showing only 'Subscribed' and learned to use keywords to filter out the many types of content I have zero interest in. It instantly made the experience much better.

couple months, its pretty ok.

id like more users, but thats about it.

That we still can't use a single account to comment and post outside of our home instance is the most frustrating part of the fediverse and the main contradiction to "you just need one sign up".

I have been using Lemmy for about 6 months and truth be had I am still really completely lost on the structure.

But that really doesn’t matter. I have found the communities (I thought they were called instances) that have the content I enjoy and they are reasonably active.

That is has been the biggest surprise for me, so many communities are completely dead. There is one movie community. Whose last post was 1.5 years ago.

I think the strength of the federated model also works against it. It really delutes the community’s content.

Also Lemmy is a total dead zone for any sports discussion. I have discovered an NFL community that seems active but I found it at the end of those year’s season.

Been on here since August and I like it. Left Reddit after I got a permaban for expressing how much I'd love to see the death of billionaires so I came here. Haven't had to worry about a ban for things I say and haven't been banned from groups cause I commented on other groups (I don't know what they're called and I don't want to call them subs). I'm still getting messages from mods of subreddits saying I've been banned cause I commented on an anti-Nintendo sub despite my profile being perma-banned from the site.

Kinda shit, actually. It's mostly just reddit reposts, nazi bot reposts, and furry porn.

I cannot use it, want to get rid of Reddit but this feels and acts like a site from 1980s , navigation and jumping off from one part to another is cumbersome at best and unknown at worst. What is difference between this and what I get in boost app is unknown.

Threads is a Facebook thing and I stay away. The tiny corner of Mastodon that I look at is pretty good. Lemmy, well I'm here and it's not totally bad, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Too much duplication, too much clickbait, and believe it or not too much centralization. For example, your reading history is store on the server instead of the client.

Got tired of the tankies on lemmy, was about to go to piefed, heard about the censorship of piefed, went back to lemmy. So idk

Honestly not great. I was permanently banned from Reddit and the admins wouldn't tell me what I did. I came to Lemmy thinking it was a better alternative to Reddit, only to find out how toxic Lemmy is. It's even worse than Reddit in terms of toxicity.

I am only on lemmy.world so far

I like the people and moderation much more than Reddit. I've had a couple interactions with mods, and it's so weird, it was like they are actually people or something. Very reasonable comparatively.

No advertisements for Jesus is pleasant, also. Thanks!

I use social media a lot less which I like. I like that it’s a smaller area that seems to grow organically. I like that there are different ways to engage and it’s interoperable.

The concept is still confusing at times but I think it’s better for me than non-federated options.

I switched from Reddit a few years ago to give Facebook another try. Not with pride but Reddit just got too political without an account and all I needed was to scroll for a few minutes to see cats and other nonesense and only some news once in a while. Then some guy threatened the EU with war if we don't hand over Greenland or Iceland and that was it for me after years of trying to not mind the bad guys.

The biggest problem with lemmy was and still is the hideous UI/UX. It sucks on desktop but even more on mobile (try looking for new communities, only usable in horizontal). I tried to look into "the" code to find a way to add another theme or whatever goes into that direction (Mastodon seems to have a custom CSS field for users, and it looks bad aswell) but since I'm not yet into Rust and because of parallel personal issues I chose to accept it.

But the problems remain: not having an account means you see Trump in 70% of the threads. The other 30% are usually technological subjects that are driven my Musk and/or the Slop. Getting an account means to solve a damn complicated Captcha. And even though I try to cross out the politics I see them for like 20% in technology or shitposts if I remembered to switch once again to the subscibed feed. And that's okay in my view, noone should post less. Quite the opposite to get things going here (shame on me tough, I'll probably stay a lurker). But I'd appreciate something more diverting from the daily doom news.

A few weeks passed now only going to lemmy when I fancied a scroll and it was quite okay. Then I found something I wanted to share with my online friends I rarely talk to and alas, there are none in the Fediverse. Pixelfed could be the right thing for it but I'm just not into the Instagram stuff and there wouldn't be anyone I know anyway. Perhaps I'll give it a try later but not for now.

So it's not a total replacement for leisure time. There is still the occasional need to buy stuff on Amazon. I still need to increasingly use Microsoft for work. And for events and news of a wider friends circle there is the need to go to ol' Facebook. But my account is no longer in the daily users statistics. It's a marathon... so thanks for being here :)