Lemmy fell off
It used to be interesting before with engaging posts and looked like a burgeoning community. Now it's just stagnant, full of politics and tankieism has become more commonplace.
Idk though, maybe it's just me
View original on lemmy.world
Not if you use filters and blocklists. This platform has been full of politics and porn since the first day. On day 2, I created a short filter list and blocked a few instances and communities and now I see absolutely 0 posts daily regarding it.
As for stagnant, that's what you get when you move to a platform that doesn't use an algorithm and ragebait to keep you engaged. For all the people that say they hate the manipulation used against them by the big platforms, they have been conditioned to want it and many move back or keep visiting while here. You can either choose to catch up on your feed here and then go touch grass or you can doomscroll reddit with the assurance that you'll never run out of psychologically tailored content to peruse.
I do wish they could make the 'hot' and 'active' calculations a little bit better. Hot quickly becomes 'scaled' after just a few pages, it seems, where older posts are very quickly pushed down.
I agree completely. I use my adblocker to block the sidebar, since it's of no value to me. I appreciate the extra post space more.
If you want advice: Maybe unsubscribe from like the political memes communities and specifically join replacements which are better aligned to what you need. Some people are trying to make an effort.
If you want validation... I see shitty things here as well.
Thanks for the thoughts. I'm well aware that there are a lot of good people making a genuine effort to build something and genuine props to them for that; really. I just feel like things have slowed down a lot since when i first joined, and I've grown tired of the "sameness".
Any ideas on what to do? I mean you've been here for a long time. I've also been here for quite a while. I've also made disgruntled posts about the general atmosphere, waited for things (and people) to change. Or a different kind of people join and bring some breeze of fresh air. Some of that is happening, yet on a small scale and usually in niche corners of this place. But I think overall we're looking at something like stagnation. We have all this potential in the Fediverse... I see sparks here and there, but they never really ignite anything on a broader scale. So overall we more or less stay where we are (or who we are). So, what do we do? Because I think the usual ideas on how to change the atmosphere ain't working, or we'd see some progress.
I think the biggest problem the fediverse has is a lack of diversity. This is the same problem platforms like Bluesky have. It's chock full of Americans, so most of the content leans American. I'm not American and don't really have too much of a problem with American content (it's entertaining), so while I've gotten slightly used to Americentrism on the internet, at least on Reddit there were niches and local communities i could use to detox when it got too much. This is lacking here.
I'm not really sure what the solution is. Back when i first joined, the niche communities were burgeoning and quite active. Now it seems like they've mostly stagnated.
Hmmh. Thanks for your perspective.
By the way, the Germans kinda established their own niche with (I think) with a noticeably different atmosphere and behaviour towards each other. Not necessarily better, we're also doing mostly politics and the meme/shitlords are very active... But yeah, maybe we need some niches which aren't just because of some language barrier. And like... more than Linux content. We also have that. But I see how that's not everyone's leisure activity. 😅
Oh nice i see. Maybe i have to start learning German just to see whether what's going on on your side is more to my flavour😅
I've been working to change the atmosphere on the Fediverse and get weirder with all of this reality stuff.
So. Any prospect of the future? How do you feel with what you're trying? I mean you launched an entire instance a while back... Do you have insight on what works and which strategies don't work? And how willing or receptive are the people you talk to?
Not gonna lie, a bit disheartened since dbzer0 defederated us. They didn't want the atmosphere to change. But I still believe in the Fediverse and in Piefed. I've met some pretty cool people in the Piefed space, like Rimu, and I believe in that guy. He's got the vision, the skill, and the dedication to build some great communities. I want to support him by being part of the Piefed community. And anecdotally, I see a lot more kind and accepting piefed.social users than on most Lemmy instances.
I hadn't noticed this until I was reflecting just now, but I banned a lot of people on remote instances for using slurs when MULTIVERSE was new, and lately, I haven't seen many slurs. I think it done worked, I made a safer space for the people who use this instance. I was chatting with Rayne Blight yesterday, doing an interview about antirealist history, and they put an idea in My head I want to pursue: a soulist breadtube channel. So I've been speaking with an amateur film producer I know about doing some collaboration. And maybe Piefed needs some youtube ambassadors too. But I know if this youtube thing gets going, we're gonna point people to MULTIVERSE, and there's going to be an influx of weirdos posting into Lemmy's communities from over here.
But yeah, it's a lot easier persuading people of antirealism face to face than on a social media like Piefed or Lemmy. People come to quicker snap judgements on here, so you need to react faster by giving up quickly on people you can't reach. And you need to be patient and just keep putting stuff out there, because people are gonna come to appreciate it slowly with exposure. So it's speed and patience. Some strong neutral jing stuff, which I kinda suck at and have been practicing.
But in terms of the whole of the fediverse, it's bad apples. And you know what they say, a bad apple can turn a whole barrel rotten. So our leaders, and I guess that includes Me now, or admins, need to be willing to say no to these bad apples like Hexbear, .ml, lemmygrad. And I dunno, maybe dbzer0, maybe not. Can't say I'm proud of them for the recent pro-death-penalty drama. But that ship has sailed, I didn't need to make that choice in the end.
And one thing everyone can do, is just post more fun stuff. Just post more about video games and cool sticks and the stuff that makes you smile. Anyone can make this big community a little bit better by doing that.
Will do. Got a bunch of stuff I think is cool that I can post.
By the way, do you have any advice for someone interested in starting their own instance?
Sure do.
Thanks for sharing your perspective and writing all of this down.
To be honest, don't worry too much about the dbzer0 users. They've defederated from you, I've defederated from them. There's all this other thing going on with them. I share your perspective, I also get to read less slurs and toxicity since I started pulling some ripcords... I don't like it either. But maybe that's how it is.
Best of luck anyway. I think the YouTube thing is a good idea. I mean you can probably make quite some impact, considering the current scale you're operating at. But I also think the entire Threadiverse isn't huge compared to YouTube people. Larger "influencers" sometimes fill Dicord communities larger than all of us combined. And smaller "influencers" sometimes have a very loyal and committed fanbase/community. All of that is useful and/or positive traits. I see how the hard part is finding someone with overlap and who wants to cooperate. And you're going to have to welcome them and provide them with whatever their wants and need are... All of this is quite some effort. But certainly worth it in my eyes.
And I don't think there's an issue with weirdos in itself, just be a tolerant and positive kind of weirdo and it'll be alright.
i'm having a great time
Good for you
why thank you, it's pretty awesome. i have almost completely cut out other social media at this point.
Do you miss the bean posts?
Yes, i do
The what?
There are better examples but I'm struggling with the search.
https://lemmy.world/post/1755787
https://lemmy.world/post/13547743
Jeez, I think i joined right when this was dying, or something similar
this reminds me of im leaving reddit posts. when I left I did not post about it. I just left. now im here and i have blocked enough communities and users that its a fine experience for me. granted my instance does some blocking to so we will see if I ever get off my tuckus and move over to zip.
You didn't post about leaving reddit because you didn't feel any need to.
I didn't post about leaving reddit because I got shadowbanned.
We are not the same.
The qualities swing and sway in various ways. Some days, it seems to be a giant wall of 'fuck trump/ice/anyone right of me.' Some days, it's horny memes and cat pics. Some days, it's 'I made bread today. It's delicious.'
It's too bad all the bread posts are the types that aren't delicious. Fucking sourdough has rotted the collective world's mind.
I've curated my feed to things I find sensible. And yes Lemmy is slowing down. We just have to keep reasonable conversations going until the next reddit exodus and the cycle continues.
The tools are getting better, Lemmy 1.0 is in public beta. I don't think Lemmy is dying, just in a slump right now... And yes the userbase I mostly block is driving normies away. Which means less of the conversations I enjoy. So... Better tools!
You can always be the change you want to see.
Waves go down before they come up.
I've been here almost 2 years...
Right, and reddit has been around for how long? I know I was introduced to it by a friend in ~2012. Give lemmy time. Maybe it'll be this weird, small niche for a long time, maybe it'll grow.
That's nothing. Go look up adoption curves for various technologies
I'm having a fantastic time running the kinds of communities I want to see and only browsing by subscribed.
What? You don't want to spend the whole day talking about things that you don't like and make you angry?
Are you sane?
Case in point ☝️
I've stopped following most of the politics communities, but more often than I would like, there's some thing going up about how this niche tech babble is the end of all things, and it's a bunch of terminology that I know nothing about.
That I can indeed confirm. However, filters and blocklists do work if you don't need that sort of thing.
I think the biggest issue is that most people don't know what to block, but they know how to block.
Maybe i do need to try that. I've only ever blocked specific users/belligerent communities. Any ideas on what filter out?
It depends on what the truth is to you, and you want to avoid what's considered lies.
In my case, I don't really tend to do well with those who aren't intellectual (to the level of philosopher Vox Day, for example).
I'd agree there is a kind of rhythm to Lemmy posts and comments. It does make it less dynamic.
This matches my experiences as well. When I joined years ago, it felt like there was so much more variety. By available stats, MAU is pretty consistant (although the stats are lacking in key details like MAU excluding bot instances, or posts/comments per month) but it feels like so much of the new content is exclusively politics while other interests and niches have fallen off.
Even Lemmy.world is starting to be infested with commies
Humans are the most political species. Politics is group decision making, and humans have the best group decision making processes. They even have organised structures for passing on knowledge and wisdom, which have ensured that nearly every generation of humans are smarter than the previous.
You know who has just as much raw intelligence as humans, but no politics? Octopuses. Fucking apolitical savages. They’re capable of learning so much, I saw a youtube video where an octopus learned to play the piano. And by now he’s probably dead, and his knowledge lost. Octopuses aren’t political enough to teach each other. That’s why they’ll never get as much done as humans.
Billionaires are trying to convince you that you don’t like politics, so you’ll be as easy to control as the apolitical animals are. Do you want to be used for labour value by a smarter animal, like oxen are? If you aspire to apoliticism, you will be!
I think the problem is that people get politics fatigue after a while on the Internet. Our brains weren't prepared to handle any and every political event all of the time. Even the experts whose job is to keep up with politics can't do it, so they focus on particular regions. And those who try to have an opinion on everything end up not having a well-formed opinion on anything.
I think rich people brainwash us into thinking politics=controversy, and then inundate ourselves with controversy, as you say. But we spend the entire rest of our lives engaging in uncontroversial politics, and we love it. Human beings go insane and die if they aren't given enough politics.
Good point. I guess the solution is to promote politics that isn't drama/controversy, then. Things most people can agree on, such as getting lobbying out of government and getting rid of mass surveillance and Silicon Valley tech monopolies.
We can think even more pleasant. This conversation here is politics. Deciding what to have for dinner, that's a group decision, which makes it politics. Fandom discussions are politics. Agreeing that a cat gif is cute, that's politics. And it's nice and fun and sweet.
That's a pretty broad definition of "politics", at least compared to the common one or the dictionary one - and its one that waters the term down to the point of uselessness.
Wikipedia: Politics[a] is the activity of settling affairs in an organized society.
Merriam-Webster: the art or science of government
Collins: Politics are the actions or activities concerned with achieving and using power in a country or society
We live in a society where power is concentrated in the hands of the few. In other words, an authoritarian society. This society wants us to believe that the power to govern society can only be wielded by an economic and/or social elite. If we're going to move on to a libertarian society, where everyone has the power to change their circumstances and help govern their community, then we need to accept that politics is something we do every day when we work together to make decisions.
I believe that the unfairness of our society is maintained by a mind prison. This narrow definition of politics trains us to think of ourselves as powerless. That's one brick making up the walls of our mind prison. Let's smash it.
Still, "agreeing that a cat gif is cute" is as far from politics as it gets.
By all means, power to the people. But surely that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is politics?
That's the thing. I don't mind politics on my feed. It's only when it's nothing but politics that I start blocking and adding new content filters. It's a forced binary choice. I'd consume a moderate amount of that kind of content if it was an option, but it's not. It's all of it or none of it.
Maybe make a curated non-political feed, and access political communities on your own terms? At least that's what I kinda did on Bluesky (removed the "Discover" feed so I only look at the feeds I am already following)
I've been building such feed for over 2 years already. I have over 250 keyword based content filters and I don't follow any political communities and I've blocked most of the news communities too. It helps but the issue still remains quite bad.
Also, blocking only removes content but doesn't replace it with better one - it just slows down the already slow feed even further.
The thing is, though, that the people on Lemmy aren't even united by common political views - just common enemies.
I care about politics, but not enough that it saturates my feed. I think these two can coexist👍
The average American has the weirdest, silliest of takes. Go back to Reddit where Western imperialism is praised and political discourse is within your acceptable limits. 🙄
Or just block any community that discusses anything non-scientific seriously? Politics are an extension of ethics and ethical convos happen all the time, it's unavoidable if you discuss life and society.
Are you calling me American?
I'm on lemmy just to wait on the waiting list https://rhyme.com/ to be honest 🤷♂️
Sounds like an ad
Well stay on lemmy then 🤷♂️
lemmy did fall off massively but the piefeds are here to save the day
Different platforms, same problems