Returning to the fediverse is hard.
With Reddit just announcing ai mods for sub reddits I think it’s finally time I fully give it up. I’ve been slowly trying to transition back into the fediverse but damn is it hard sometimes. Listen I have left leaning politics but does every other post have to be about some political shit on the all tab, I feel like I’m forced into this box that is my subscribed feed or I have to actively search out new communities because all is just a political circle jerk that I don’t care about. Not to mention the moment I came back I saw a fucking flow chart on the instances drama of the week. If I wasn’t so dedicated to dropping Reddit I think the average Joe would have left by now seeing all of this. And YES I have been trying to be the change I want to see if you check my profile I regularly post in meme subs non political just funny memes to be like “lmao” and people can move about their day. I’m not saying there ISNT other type of content on lemmy or piefed it just feels like the stuff that floats to the top is political
177 replies
Delete the All feed! It's just stupid. Subscribe to what you like. Maybe have a short glimpse at the All feed on a biweekly basis for 5min, but that's it.
I default to subscribed+scaled, and I check all+top 6-24 hours when I feel like staying on top of news. It works pretty well.
How do you find what you like? I sew, and do dollhouse miniatures, but I haven't seen any of that on the fediverse yet.
Be the change you want to see.
For now you could post to ![email protected] which has a little bit of everything. I'd love to check out your projects.
Ehhh, the sidebar makes it sound like a super depressing place, but thanks!
Fair enough.
Check out lemmyverse.net to find communities. If you set your home instance (top right, button with a home icon, enter
slrpnk.netin your case), then it will open the page where you can subscribe directly. There's a longer guide here with more tips: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/threadiverse/finding-communitiesIf you aren't sure what you want to subscribe to, there is a list pinned on [email protected]
@[email protected] had an amazing list of non-politics communities that unfortunately I can't seem to find right now.Once Lemmy releases the big v1 update, both Lemmy and Piefed will have multi-communities that you can subscribe to in order to get a lot of similar content.
As for your requests specifically, check out these. Some are more relevant than others, and the small ones grow as interested people post to them:
Slrpnk also has a full list of every community on it and I love that
Also, not who you're responding to but I just subbed to all of those, thank you!
No problem!
The list is pinned on ![email protected] !
That's the one I forgot to check 🤦 I looked in [email protected]
Thanks!
Yeah, unfortunately the Fediverse isn't as big as I'd like it to be. I can't find people to talk about some of my interests, either. I'll occasionally put in keywords on https://lemmyverse.net/communities , have a look at PieFed's curated feeds and topics (Edit: another topic list)... But there's probably just not enough people here who are into miniatures...
I just went looking for something similar after getting into battletech. I know thats too niche for fedi but I was hoping to find a comm for minis/painting/wargaming or similar catchall.
There's [email protected]
Sub to all the new com communities, and keep your eyes peeled for any links to interesting stuff in the comments and then immediately subscribe if it seems at all interesting.
But the reality is that niche comms don't really fire on Lemmy yet, so you'll mainly find stuff that's either mass appeal or nerd/leftist stuff.
I tried to create a community about trees (the wooden kind) when I joined. It's still here but after a lot of effort posting there I realized there just wasn't enough of an audience to keep organic discussions going at all times. Same with my local geographic area.
Hopefully someday there will be more growth and these can start to become more viable.
The trouble, I think, is that even Reddit wasn't Reddit (as we think of it now) for years and years. Recall that when it started, there were no subreddits, it was all one feed. The niche subreddits branched off of more general ones after participation grew and critical mass developed, the subreddit topics driven by what users were talking about.
It doesn't work the other way around. You can create a community to house a topic that people want to talk about; you can't make people interested in a topic just by creating a community. I think we've suffered by premature fissioning into a thousand niche communities, each with 1 or 2 people talking to themselves.
It’s definitely a volume thing. With niche interest, you’ll bump into this limitation quite frequently.
[email protected]
[email protected]
give those a scroll and see if anything works for you.
also search for topics you enjoy, or things you would expect to find as a subreddit. i usually sub to the top couple matches by population. this can backfire when i see the same post multiple times in (for example) 4 different linux coms. not everything wil have a com, but thats ok. make one if you feel strongly enough about it.
when i first joined a few years ago there was a tool that would try to find matches for your subreddits. i cant remember what it was called or if it still exists, but give it a look
a combo between the two is to find the list of your subs on reddit, then search them all one by one in lemmy. it takes time, but it will set you up reasonably well
pay attentiin when things are crossposted, maybe you would like one of those communities too
that and just stick with it. youll find your place.
edit: my links at the top broke
If you build it and interact with it, they will come (eventually). I think there's a few crafts communities? I can't remember. If not, create it, share with us your awesome creations!
I get that, it feels small and slow if you only follow the niche stuff. I hate insta but miss the creative and inspirational aspect. I mix in a little pinterest and pixelfed but it is still repetitive.
I guarantee there are sewing and maker/hobbyist communities.
Yeah those posts probably never see the light of day because someone downvotes them while sorting by new
Another problem solved by using subscribed instead of new
Maybe you should try that
I browse all but I have an extensive set of word filters that block stuff that I don't want to see. I like seeing new communities come up and trying to make All work because of that. I did the same thing with Reddit like 20 years ago, though I switched to a subscribed feed there once they got big (before I left). This strategy works well for me.
Word filters is a great idea.
this place would be empty if I did that
Haha, yeah, pick your poison. Though we're a diverse crowd. I really appreciate how there isn't an endless stream of doomscrolling for me. My feed just ends at some point and reminds me to resume with other things 😅 (Also less noise, US politics and mainstream memes, which would be the real reason why I'd advise not to scroll All.)
I believe you're somehow subsconciously expecting an algorithm to curate your feed.
On Lemmy that work is on you.
If you don't curate your own feed, the feed curates you, and then someone, somewhere, is going to have to clean that mess up sometime.
“Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you." — Jack Kornfield
I did a couple things to make my life comfy here.
I changed my default sort to be "new comments" - this gave me the biggest perspective change on Lemmy, I now see where the active conversations are and it makes the place feel more full of people and less pages and pages of empty threads. I also found a lot less political stuff this way, because it gets posted a lot but people only interact with just a few of the political posts, so only those one end up floating to the top. I am finding myself getting less politics this way on Lemmy than I was on reddit. Also has the added bonus of highlighting where the active communities are.
I blocked Lemmy.ml and hexbear. A lot of the wilder leftist stuff comes from them and once it was blocked I saw the amount of politics in my feed drop right away.
"New Comments" is underrated! Active is pretty good too. For my default I use Subscribed+Scaled so I don't miss anything, but if I'm looking for engagement I use New Comments or Active. The Hot sort kinda sucks on Lemmy lol, it's too similar to New. But OP is on PieFed, IDK how Hot is there, it uses different math.
Subscribed+Scaled is my jam too. I've unsubscribed from a few of the news communities because I've seen the same post too many times but otherwise, all is pretty good here.
I’m surprised how many people use subscribed+scaled. I’ve been doing that as soon as the scaled feature was added.
Love sorting by "new comments" I believe old message boards where also sorted like that on default? or maybe im misremembering. Sadly PieFed does not have that yet :(
I dont like that posts from 24h ago are already forgotten and you never really get a broader perspective on things because I think people (me included) don't bother commenting on stuff nobody will see as its not "Hot" anymore. I would love to see threads/posts being active for a longer time.
I also like piefeds "Active" algorithm. It does filter out alot of circle jerk content where there really is not much to talk about instead of agreeing.
idk why you needed to block hexbear, its not even federated with .world
I have accounts on several instances, so I just block all the same things for each.
In case they ever reverse it, they're ahead of the curve 😎
Block users that seem extreme and it will clear up. Its like 10 people responsible for 95% of the posts.
yep.
and like 2-3 instances responsible for those 10 people. they have multiple accounts on various instances.
Yeah, no matter your political leanings, you gotta approach the fediverse in reverse of the way reddit worked. Reddit, you went and subbed to the things you were interested in and only went to the all feed if you wanted random discovert.
With lemmy, piefed and mbin (or kbin, whichever is still in use), you have to default to the all feed because there's only so much activity per community, which means discovery is much harder and your subscribed feed takes months sometimes to get filled in with useful things. It's more efficient and enjoyable to spend the time pruning out the non enjoyed stuff from the all feed so that you have access to more things overall.
That's helped by app that have filters. You can weed out a lot of bullshit just with keywords preventing specific topics coming up even in communities you are in.
The fediverse is more work on the user's part to make work. I don't consider that a bad thing overall, but it does make it hard for ex redditors (aka r/effugees) to on board, and can be confusing for total newcomers to threaded forums.
Tbh though, ten plus years ago, the initial reddit experience for a noob there was worse in many ways. Hell, outright hostile at times, if you were a noob that dared speak your mind against the zeitgeist of a given sub. At least here, you usually only run into that if you're not fairly solidly leftist, or try to hate on linux. That's much easier to deal with imo.
Whatever happened to ![email protected]? That was great for finding new communities which actually had active posters.
![email protected] does posts for community growth
https://sh.itjust.works/c/[email protected] has a bot. I always forget how to make it crosspost, sorry about that.
![email protected], but it doesn't seem to have posted since April
I could have sworn that it just posted last week. Oh well.
They paused it in favor of other things like the new community one in .world (I think that's where it is?).
![email protected]?
That's the one!
Oh man I forgot about that one. Sad it's inactive.
I really miss the old wild west of reddit, but you're totally right it was a much more insane and hostile place for anyone not conforming to the circlejerk. These kinds of smaller communities starting out are also not made for the kinda late adopters that may be wanting to come over and not even just lurk but doomscroll for hours. People will have the best experience if they find a dopamine hit in creating and sharing original content or they can handle lurking for a few minutes at a time and then going out and touching grass the rest of the day.
I'm regularly looking through Last 12 Hours with only my subscribe feed. You just have to take the time to find all of the communities you like. I got 92 communities in my list so far, though I think only 5-10% of them are the popular ones that show up all the time.
It is Mbin that's still alive, yeah. Despite some instances still being named kbin, like the one I'm on, they're actually running Mbin.
Gotcha! I stay confused about it lol.
I have always felt surrounded by right wing bullshit, on previous socials and in life.
This is the only place where I look around, and believe that it is people further to the left of me that are maybe taking things a bit far. I do NOT, for the record, agree with the apologists who want us to let more fash in, I like being in a place where I am, for once, the moderate.
There's a reason it's called the "All" tab and not the "Some" tab, and even then it's mostly making an effort.
The fediverse stuff is already set on the tooling for that. Set your feed view away from All to, say, Subscribed, and block the stuff you don't like.
Come on, this is not a problem. It's a feature. As another user said in another reply, having a algorithm curating your feed ends up curating you. It's even easier here than on reddit since you can even block whole instances! Block the ones that have the most political communities and you will be fine.
I agree with you on one thing, the lack of content on topics that are not tech or political related. But that falls on us, the users. I hope more communities will continue to grow in the future.
I don't know, for me at least, it has been pretty funny, especially these days. You enter [email protected], see the big pinned thread that says "Don't whine", and then hundreds of people whining. It gives me a chuckle.
Yeah, I keep having to remind myself of that. Healthier tech is less convenient and not automatically tailored to our interests/desires by design. More convenience and automatic personalization means more psychological manipulation (at best, into spending more time on the platform so you will see more ads), as well as more data collection and less privacy.
There's also no curated algorithm to cause that dopamine rush, that causes the addiction, so you want to scroll and hit those juicy dopamine posts, but without the manipulation designed to keep you engaged and stuck, not going to happen. So it's also a great place to detox from your brain being in the habit of seeking dopamine that way, it's like a slow lowering to the ground, instead of cold turkey.
I was really feeling the loss of those dopamine hits, when I first transitioned over here, but now I don't look for those hits here at all, and I can just enjoy a small scroll, without getting stuck in here, and put my phone down, which is nice.
What reddit and Facebook do, is hugely manipulative and created and curated to trap you there. I don't know if that needs to be the same here, as much. And maybe curating your home page, really is the way to go.
I don't like how people talk about The Algorithm™ as though any feed algorithm is inherently a problem and exists to keep people trapped in the app.
I'd love to have an algorithm automatically curated my feed so I don't have to manually curate it, since the curation tools are so coarse.
PieFed categories of communities do this, with user-customizable and shareable Feeds. Perhaps check out PieFed.ca - it has the same set of admins that you have now, and even without an account you can view these and then subscribe to those communities in your Lemmy one, see full list at https://piefed.ca/topics.
I mean curation by community is too coarse. Often communities have a mixture of posts I'm interested in and posts that I'm not.
The idea of communities makes sense from a moderation perspective, but I don't like it from a feed/search perspective.
What would be more ideal? The tighter focus that e.g. subreddits provided? More niche communities here keep dying off, so that we cannot have e.g. a community based on a single game, so much as a community like just "gaming".
PieFed has a bunch of features that may help - post flairs (e.g. see posts about the Threadiverse but not Mastodon-style Fediverse posts), user flairs (e.g. see posts by senior "enthusiasts" in a community while excluding all those "hey all I am new and I love the Threadiverse so far"), or do direct keyword filtering. There are also user icons that you can place next to people's account names to help you visually spot posts from people that you might want to either specifically read or perhaps avoid, but whom you did not want to simply block. You can also "follow" users too, receiving notifications whenever they post.
Also, since you can always find content in those categories of communities / Topic Feeds, you can fine-tune your actual subscriptions more so that you make it tighter in the general sense. i.e. I'm saying that you can both have your cake and eat it too! e.g. I unsubscribed from the most popular politics communities, which keeps it out of my Subscribed feed and allows other posts - even low-interaction stuff (with <10 upvotes) like poetry - to come through, but then whenever I want more I can always view those posts from a politics Feed, so nothing is "lost" that way.
PieFed offers a significantly more robust set of tools than Lemmy. Though in general the entire Threadiverse is niche, and cannot replace what Reddit had - like better post organization (across communities) is great and all, but when the actual content creators choose to submit to Reddit but not here, then there is only so much that can be done about that.
The Threadiverse isn't like "dying" or anything, but it's definitely not thriving either, when we used to have 65k active users while now we have 35k - people are leaving us in droves and not coming back.
Automatic personalized feed curation, imo, would make it better, based on tags added by the author, by the reader, and by automatic classification, which is then weighted against your previous interaction with posts with those tags and explicit user preferences regarding those tags.
In other words, an option for an automatic personalized feed algorithm. But people here (and the devs) are against it because it's a boogeyman.
That said piefed at least lets multiple tags be added to a post where Lemmy doesn't, so that's the minimum bar for something like what I'm describing.
But it's a chicken and egg problem because the tags aren't helpful for manual or automatic curation until more people actually use them accurately. So tldr I don't have a solution.
It sounds like you might enjoy TikTok. Those Algorithms exist for a reason - they give people what they want. Sometimes they can be overzealous, like you watch just ONE video in YouTube and it starts showing you more like it... but overall people use those platforms because they enjoy what they offer to them.
And as you say, PieFed takes giant leaps towards offering a user power to find what they want, e.g. in providing hashtags, which of course so few people use since even if they submit a post to a community on PieFed that would support them, if you do that from a Lemmy account, or via a 3rd-party app that does not provide (easy) support for hashtags, then the post will have none.
The entire Threadiverse is an experiment. To see what people will build, and to see what the community overall will use. It's sad to see it struggling so much but... writing code it turns out is so much easier than engendering consensus among people.
In the meantime, I now suggest to people that they not rely upon the Threadiverse and especially Lemmy as their sole source of social media. The tools are still being built, and even then something like 99% of what is already available is simply not being used, and the primary thing is Content - or you might argue rather interactions with people - both of which are fairly lacking here. e.g. so many major events happening irl that I don't even hear about the tiniest bit about here, and many times I have even searched the Threadiverse for keywords after I've learned about the topic elsewhere in case it was here but I simply missed it, only to find that as far as the Threadiverse is concerned the topic simply does not exist. Our low number of content creators is simply insufficient to fully replace Reddit or other sources, unless one's goal is simply masturbatory dopamine hits from exclusively looking at memes, or arguing about which facts exist or not (were there any fatalities in the Tiannamen Square Massacre or not?).
I do enjoy tiktok, although the longer it exists (and the longer it's under American control) the more I feel the negative effects of "the algorithm" in that it's not just building an echo chamber by accident but it's intentionally showing me or not showing me things for their own gain.
I want an algorithm, but I don't want an Algorithm ™
I hope piefed takes off because I like it. But still maybe it's for the best that I use it as an excuse to disconnect completely from social media
What juicy dopamine posts are you talking about?
there are a handful of users who just post shitty low quality rage bait from shitty websites constantly across various communities all day long. many of these users were not on fedi a year ago.
like, websites you have never heard of, that are highly editorialized and frame things as dramatic and hyperbolic as possible.
and these posts dominate many of the news and politics communities, because juicy dopamine headlines mean people upvote.
and the comment sections are dumpster fires of similar minded folks, and anyone who is skeptical/critical gets dog piled and/or the OP comes out swinging calling them a fascist for daring to challenge the 'trump does thing world is collapsing' narrative they are all addicted to.
it's all engagement/rage bait quality stuff. it's not like, respectable moderate journalism that reports facts, that shit doesn't get upvotes because the headlines are not juicy enough.
FWIW I have been on fedi for 3 years and this stuff is exploded the past 6-9 months, I used to like the news/politics subs a year ago because they were not dominated by this low quality content and typically had more respectable news-sources. but you can't compete with low-brow rage bait trolls who are just here to collect as many upvotes and flood the zone with dramatic bullshit to drive engagement, and that's what these posters are doing. if you confront them they just say you are a bad person who clearly supports Trump etc.
Somehow on the backend the wires must have got crossed and sent c/Lemmyshitpost content over to c/news instead 🤪
(/s ...?)
I'm just blocking all political/news communities on sight. It's helped a lot.
The participants do tend to escape, I suddenly found myself in a meme community full of North Korea apologists the other day. Anyone complaining about it was immediately removed.
Rules mean nothing unless they are actively enforced.
This is the (only) way, but it's also like infinite whack-a-mole except slightly more irritating.
Especially when they label themselves like "memes" and "comics" etc.
Real. I have laughed harder at a funeral than 99% of all "political humor". Did you know Trump is orange HAHEHEHAEHAEUAEAUEAUHEAUHEUUHEUHEEUHEUHEHUEHE.
Fwiw there is ![email protected], though with at best one post per week (or almost per month lately), and on the instance that has decided to shadow-censor votes even from other users of the Threadiverse like Lemmy and Mbin without disclosure of that fact. Announcement of the latter might have had a really chilling effect upon the community since this past month the number of posts has really dropped off a cliff.
It's been really hard for people to be the change they want to see in the world, and to share the same spaces despite such major differences in outlook on life. And for all the criticism of their moderation policies (note I am not questioning the validity of that, especially since I don't post or typically even comment in the political communities so have no direct experience there), each time a MAJOR Threadiverse user leaves, they take all of their posting efforts with them - I'm talking about the likes of FlyingSquid, PugJesus, and I almost hesitate to mention AdmiralPatrick since I've already been accused of being an alt of his:-).
I tend to not post often myself unless I really have something I want to share, as people either can respond negatively or else not at all, even for like a nonpolitical comic, and that can make it somewhat un-fun. (So instead I try to make the Threadiverse more lively by contributing comments:-)
Yeah, the only way to enjoy lemmy is heavily, heavily curated. My community blocklist has over 300 entries these days ...
To me that signals someone deeply in their bubble.
But sure, you have that option... Block me too, this comment is probably also too spicy. :)
there is no total and im to lazy to count but mine is quite a scroll to. Im in my bubble of no memes or sports or niche communities im not interested in.
some of us enjoy being a bubble of civil and sane folks, rather than extreme nutbags who fantasize about mass murder.
The somewhat recent Lindsey Graham death news was useful. The dude was an absolute scumbag, but everyone cheering his death and calling for the deaths of other politicians went right into the blocklist. I did some reading about it, and took the pulse of some younger people I know and it does seem that many (most?) Gen Z's and younger Millennials generally feel that violence is the only solution to their perceived problems, with some even going as far as supporting retaliatory genocide in Israel. And that feeling of bloodthirsty revenge seemed prevalent. The notion of "two wrongs don't make a right" is apparently old fashioned. Made me realize that my Xennial views are not very well aligned with the younger generations. Also makes me sad for the future, as I was hoping the foreign interventions and wars would eventually end and peace would prevail. Guess not.
What terrifies me, is yeah i see that in person all the time. Not just on the internet.
It's revenge, and bitterness. I meet 30 year olds making like 200K a year who are steeped in bitterness they can't afford a beach front mansion. A large part of it is pure entitlement and arrogance. Many young people think the world just owes them and they know better than everyone else and are completely delusional about how the world works. And often just spout meaningless cliche bullshit they know from social media rather than having any knowledge of history or any perspective with context.
And they encourage it in each other. I've seen so many awful groups at bars just dogging each other on the say the most heinous shit and openly declaring how they actively abuse and want to abuse and hurt other people. Then they basically think they are good people because they make posts on social media about how they support Trans people, and that justifies their thirst for blood or something. It's insane. It's like a collective psychosis.
And of course the irony is if you confronted them with the same violence that spouts out of their mouths, they will cry foul and play the victim. Because it's OK for them to want to murder people, but they also see a cafe that doesn't have oat milk as 'abusing' them.
Eternal September... except it's fucking Groundhog Day now!!
I mean at least it is a curated bubble which is 100x better than one created by an algorithm.
I don't feel that this is a problem. I don't ever use the All feed, because I specifically don't want to see all. There's a lot of garbage I don't care about out there.
This is... a weird change you'd want to see. Usually people want to see more signal and less noise.
At this point I think a lot of people, OP included, would tolerate plenty more noise as long as it isn't "everything sucks and you should be mad about it!"
Yeah, signal is better than noise, but the signal itself becomes noise when it's all so damn much doom and gloom and aggression and frustration and generally negative emotions. It's not healthy to constantly drink from the fire hose of "this is everything wrong with everything"
And as an aside, I find that the quality of conversation around a lot of the political "signal" has been slipping too.
The breathing space between the constant fire hose of bad news is what I miss most from Reddit. Too many old (I assume) curmudgeons on Lemmy want this to be a 90’s Linux forum with a Politics discussion board and are hostile to any fun. So many times I’ve seen sentiment from users that anything mentioned should only be here if it’s going to lead to deep, informed, structured conversation. I always picture those people like Kyle’s dad from South Park sitting down at his PC in his office with a glass of red wine in hand (minus the vitriol that follows).
While there’s obviously space for those discussions here it’d be nice to have more purely fun memes and discussions. Ones not about an ongoing genocide, or state run police crack downs, or companies invading deeply personal private information. More often than not Lemmy is deeply depressing with no respite.
You curate the content you see on your own, doesn't have to be political if you don't want to.
I suggest to use https://lemmyverse.net/ to find communities you like and keep the feed to subscribed, so you see them and them only.
this way, Lemmy is actually good, no algorithm, I choose what to see and that's a beautiful thing.
What you're missing is the algorithm.
You didn't want to see that on Reddit, and it's designed to steer away. Lemmy doesn't decide what you see. You have to curate your own feed through a long process of blocking users and communities and using subscribe rather than a steady diet of all.
Hey, welcome back.
piefed.world hasn't really invested much into populating their Explore menu, to make finding communities easier.
I've just added a few feeds though, check out https://piefed.world/feeds
Also https://feddit.online/topics is an amazing directory of all the communities. It's a separate instance to piefed.world though so when you find good communities you'll need to manually copy their address into your piefed.world account. Or just move yourself to feddit.online...
Politics is kinda the default for lemmy.world, lemmy.hexbear, and lemmy.ml. If you don't want politics, join an alternate server rather than .world. Or, alternatively, start curating your list of communities to block the comms channels that provide politics. That latter option is kinda what I did.
Notice what instances those posts come from and block them... Notice what users seem to post politics wherever. Block them...
I'll often block lemmy.world, and unblock it when really bored.
Gotta curate your feed.
I really don’t see that many political posts in my subscribed feed and don’t see all that much on my Lemmy.world all feed either.
Most of my blocks have been just furry porn and the worst tankies on .ml
Lemmy.world is defederated from hexbear, Lemmygrad, and beehaw so maybe try blocking those instances if it’s too much for you
You just need a decent block/filter list. I scroll new/all and probably see 3-4 political posts daily.
I would be unable to use Lemmy/Piefed without a well-rounded block/filter list.
Some instances do curate the default communities. Programming.dev hides a number of communities by default:
https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/
Other instances may have similar policies.
I absolutely love how transparent having a list like that is!! Thanks for sharing so that we know how awesome your instance is.
Holy shit, I love that! On my way over there right now! Thank you for this!
There are real people still on Reddit?
Shocking
I'm only still there due to the subs I run. They exist here as well but, not nearly as active.
Let em die
Use block lists. I've blacklisted tons of keywords. Mostly political. If you're looking at an unfiltered feed then you're going to have a bad time.
Adding for context that one reason for this is that Lemmy was created by radical (to remain consensual) leftists, and the default instance (also maybe the first big one) they administrate Lemmy.ml (ML stands for Marxist-Leninist) has the same leaning population.
But, so far, afaik, the software itself is still neutral, so you can find instances and communities that fit your needs.
However, this initial leaning is still going to surface from time to time even after spending time blocking the instances and communities you don't want to see, as users can move around freely.
When I'm scrolling any feed, whenever I see a post I don't want to see, I block that community or add a keyword to my filters.
So far I've blocked over a hundred communities and it's killed most of the adrenal rage-bait political posts that don't do anything other than rile me up. It's one thing to be aware of shitty things happening but it's another thing to doomscroll just for the adrenaline hit, and as a person with general anxiety I want to feel better after scrolling rather than worse
I've been blocking communities that post news. It's a bit of a heavy lift at first because there are quite a lot. But my all feed is now a fairly pleasant place and there's still a decent amount of content. I don't expect it'll be much effort to maintain, either.
To be fair the instance drama was unusually exciting in the fallout of the ban list.
But anyway. I got my ideal experience by joining .today, which doesn't block any instances, and only browsing my subscribed. It only took about an hour to get a solid list built up, one that I add to when I see things recommended or in the community promo groups. The front page of my feed is usually memes, comics, art and tech news.
I absolutely agree, I am also a leftist but constantly stewing in political news isn't good for your head, or even in a practical sense good for your ability to go actually get involved in stuff outside. You have to take care of yourself if you want emotional energy with which to do any real political labor
I wish we could come up with some collective strategy to create better balance cause this platform tends to share politics as common ground, and with not many people here that means a lot of what gets posted and engaged with is all just news and politics.
And yes, I know everything is political. AND, you need to be able to step away from the politics of the world and catch your breath and be mentally well. Any one thing dominating your time and emotional energy can become unhealthy quickly, especially when its all bad news or small victories that remind you of the broken bigger picture.
Balance is important. I'm thinking about creating a seperate account and blocking all the political communities and filtering by keywords so I can just be here for hobbies and folks chatting when I want that
That's what I do, having two accounts definitely help!
Hey blaze, I haven't seen you around for a bit ☺️ thanks for the instance reccomendations a while back when I switched from Cris_Color; I'm appreciating the no-fuss out of the way approach to moderation and governance from the .zip folks!
Yeah, I think I should probably sit down and do that at some point, it'd be nice to be able to step in and out of the news as I please
Hope you have a lovely day!
Yes, life has been busy lately, it's nice to be back here 😄
You're welcome, glad you enjoy it!
Thank you, you too!
With PieFed (as you have) you can both have your cake and eat it too. By unsubscribing from all political communities, it prevents such content from entering into your Subscribed feed, but then visiting a politics feed brings it back to being instantly available at the touch of that button.
PieFed.zip does not have as extensive built-in options related to politics as PieFed.social (where there are multiple layers in a hierarchy, broken down into subregions geographically), so the closest is probably Global News. Though also since feeds are user-customizable and shareable you can always custom-build your own to perfectly suit your tastes or reuse someone else's who has already done so. Noting post flairs where available can help with this too - e.g. a flair saying USA politics if you want to avoid that can help you skip over those posts by color (there are even custom CSS code you could implement to filter those out, if you wanted to get deeper).
Pro-Tip: for low-volume communities where you want to be alerted to every single post (daily comics? or something that you help moderate?), you can click the bell icon in the browser web UI and it will send you a notification upon every single post to that community. Even if that ever became overwhelming (a vacation where you did not pause them before leaving?), the notification area is easy to split up into people replying to your content vs. new posts, and then for the latter you don't have to go through one by one but select all and make as read.
And ofc there's always the old standby of browsing by All and blocking the communities that you are certain that you will never want to see - like those in another language (but unhelpfully not marked as such) that you cannot (so readily) read anyway. That approach is always available anytime.
It's great to have options to choose from! :-)
If you want to make this place a bit less stressful, the most surefire way is to contribute the kind of content you'd rather see more of! Be the change that you want to see in the world, as they say.
I mean the decision you are doing of leaving reddit and joining the fediverse is a political one and people who joins here is not because there's more people or something like that so this means there's a bias in the community towards caring about this things, and it will be like this until the fediverse doesn't become the default (if it ever happens). So just take this into account, as people say, use less the all if that bothers you.
Either avoid the All tab and block all the political communities or just use your subbed tab and use https://lemmyverse.net/ to find interesting communites
I have been recently struggling to not go back to reddit after 3 years on Lemmy...
Almost everything I read here just makes my mood worse and the people are getting worse and worse. I really hoped it would work as a reddit alternative but it's exactly the opposite.
After the reddit migration there was a sense of optimism and feeling that this platform could be something great. People were joking and interacting positively.
Then the I/P happened and agenda posting went crazy you had people attacking people where both people were on the same side of the issue. Its gotten consistently worse since then. I/p, Ukraine, Trump, AI its making people miserable and rightfully so. But I wonder what is needed for the path back to optimism and positive discussion.
The answer is extraordinarily simple, notwithstanding the fact that people refuse to hear it. It is called the Intolerance Paradox.
By allowing bullying and other toxic behaviors, we condone them and even amplify them further. Hey look, come join the Threadiverse, we have pics of cats here! Never mind the fact that for every such picture there are twenty pics saying how Western civilization must fall, so that Russia, China, and North Korea may rise!!
Just learn to block people bro! And then also learn to block instances! Except don't do that! Also, you literally can't bc the software merely claims that you can, but actually haha you cannot really! Then learn to use keywords, never mind that the software does not let you do that either!!
If people go someplace and constantly get punched in the face then... I for one do not blame them when they stop going there? Which leads to less content, and making this space even more of an echo chamber than it already is.
Paradox of Intolerance
Since I signed up to Lemmy I think I've spent about 30 minutes in the All feed. 5 minutes just now to remind me why I don't go there. You are your own algorithm. If all you subscribe to are meme communities, you ought to be able to drastically reduce political content in your personal feed. All and Local are for occasional excursions only.
Did you look at the all feed on reddit? If so there is no help for you anywhere, you make your own choices.
If I could block the usa on here, would I still see posts from people crying about left, leftist, leftism? Awfully ironic from a country where 1% of the people even vote left, let alone know what it is.
If you don't want to hear people complain about leftism, there's always hexbear and beehaw. Why you would complain about it from an instance that tries not to defed anything when there are dedicated leftist spaces is beyond me.
"leftist leftist leftist" ~brainrotted mcmurican
Huh? Are you calling yourself brainrotted or something? I mirrored the language you used yourself.
Point is that there are instances set up in ways to have less of the shit you're complaining about, but instead you're using an instance that isn't... and complaining about it.
i tend to stick to subscribed unless i want to read the worst opinions available
Sort by all and block as you go, I feel like that's easier.
Agreed. Too much politics. I started my own communities for things I'm interested in and I recommend you try that.
There’s lots of content on the Threadiverse that I find pointless or dumb, but that’s why I only subscribe to communities that interest me… If I feel like punishing myself, I go to /all 😂😁😘
You can shape the All feed to your liking by blocking communities that regularly post stuff you don't like. I did this with meme communities and rarely see any memes anymore. Sometimes it's a whole instance that is full of communities you don't want to see, then you might want to block it. Examples of those for me are ani.social for sexualized anime and fedinsfw.app for NSFW content.
Once you do this kind of trimming, the All feed becomes a lot less annoying.
Lemmy is not the fediverse just part of it
It’s the part I use because I’m looking for a Reddit style alternative and I’ve tried mastodon in the past and had the same problem the only reason I didn’t stay was because I’m not really into micro blogging to begin with
We call this part the Threadiverse - bc of threaded conversional style, not user-centric like the microblog style but instead topic-based.
The (some say unfortunate?) term predates the mostly dead and predatory Threads offering by Meta, and people are adamant about not changing it so... there it is. Also, don't worry, threads.net is literally the only instance that is mass-banned by EVERY SINGLE ONE of the servers across the entire Threadiverse. And aside from that, it's actually a good name, which we decided to not let them take from us!!
AI mods, what is going to happen in those subs, just AI generated posts? it wont help in training thier AI if its just those. or they going to try to force the human mods out?
You can set default subs to show, and block communities. It's much nicer to look at the news when you want to rather than all the time.
Agreed. Wish there would be a political filter similar to the nsfw one. In that way you wouldn't have to isolate yourself to certain subs
Tell me all about the political shit going on mate! I blocked them, keywords + communities. Lots of USA communities that never end but populate for no reason.
You can just curate your experience by making changes to the feed and shutting off what you feel are sources of distressing content.
Given the current state of affairs where if being a progressive American is a harrowing struggle, it's not surprising the fediverse is a refuge and outlet for angry progressives and people who have been alienated by spez's war on left-leaning content, as he will ban anyone even remotely or casually talking of committing violence on awful fascists and robber barons.
There's a couple ways to use Lemmy and make it nicer to use, one is curating a well fleshed out subscribed list, the other is using all but blocking every community that doesn't interest you or has topics you actively dislike, making it just as pleasant as your subscribed view.
Personally I do both. My subscribed view is just things I like and no news communities. My All feed blocks everything I don't like, let's me discover new communities, and gives me a dose of news when I want it.
I blocked all the manga shit. And life is now good.
Yeah, I get it, I wish more would people use lemmy and that there is more apolitical stuff on here
However, neither are going to happen, without enormous efforts to buck the existing trends. See e.g. these recent comments from a community that was considering whether to switch from Reddit to the Threadiverse (https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/):
Sadly, these seem representative of how people think of us here. You can see it for yourself too: simply browse most instances from an account without your existing blocks, in order to see what it is like from the eyes of a Redditor. Worse, they are primarily Christian centrists, and not only do they not FEEL welcomed here, but... in truth... they AREN'T ⁉️
There was a brief moment when Lemmy had ~65k active users, immediately during the Rexodus. That quickly fell to ~55k, which then fell to a more stable ~45k, and nowadays we are down to ~35k. And this is despite how Reddit is even in a process of killing off old-reddit, which is what we all said was going to be the signal for the end of Reddit and the great migration here. Tbf it is still early in that process, but it's already started, it's not some future date it's happening now. And the people there say that there is no way in hell that they will come here. Maybe Bluesky, but not Lemmy.
Perhaps that's fine - perhaps we are collectively okay with remaining niche, and most content (even some of the morenhighly technical stuff) staying on Reddit, but since your comment expressed the opposite desire, I thought I would try to point out that it is simply not going to happen - not unless there is a major change (bc otherwise simply doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result tends to not work out so well).
Perhaps the upcoming release of Lemmy v1.0, when moderator reports will finally begin federating out to other instances, can help create spaces that are more free of the types of behaviors that are currently causing people to avoid us here like the plague. I somewhat doubt it but... it's possible? Lemmy will always remain tiny, so it is perhaps best that we make our peace with that. Sorry, it is what it is.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion. Maybe one day more people would lemmy, but you do have a point there
A lot problems are going to have to be addressed and one day more people will use lemmy,
Maybe one day people realize that not everyone on lemmy is a tankie and once that happens more people would use it
That's the thing, many of these people self-report that they have tried. These are the ones who got over the hurdle of "it's too complicated" and bravely dived right in. We here who use Linux btw aren't afraid of such, but ofc to many people that is still daunting. But anyway, there are MANY who did come here... only to nope right back out, some of them retuning to Reddit.
And at least some of those - at least it definitely does not seem rare or even uncommon (it may even be fully common if not quite average) - remained here for years. They did not simply pop in for a day, not like what they saw, and popped right back out: they stuck with us, if not visiting daily then at least off and on for multiple years.
And then they abandoned the Threadiverse, going around trashing our reputation to anyone who will listen. And, given the several posts related to this topic just within the last week alone, not without good reasons. Even we who remain here (for however much longer) don't like what we see.
Perhaps part of the problem is how we talk about it: I don't care about discussions with "tankies" in relation to whatever political beliefs someone may have, I care about discussions with "trolls" and "incels" for whom no means push forward harder, who do not respect any boundaries and so turn people away from this platform, sometimes the moment they set foot here while other times in the longer term sense. We don't so much have a "tankie problem" (that is in reference to a famous title of an old post here several years ago), we have a... what exactly? Though if we go down that route, it's not a simple, single explanation but rather multiple - like trolls (hexbear) and doomerism posts and incels (meh, all social media has those though, it's just that our overall lack of moderation tools allows them to thrive more here than elsewhere). The word "tankie" has come to symbolize all of those, in part bc it fits, if not extremely well then at least better than any other singular word?
But I want to stress that we do not merely have an image problem, so much as major structural ones. For the people coming here, having to choose between man vs. bear (our often unmoderated spaces that in many ways resemble 4chan, vs. the overly moderated fascist partners like Reddit and X that heavily limit what you are allowed to say), despite how we might think that their choice is "stupid", even so they have chosen the bear.
Yeah, this unfortunately. But I’m a bit cautiously optimistic about the fediverse. It’s not perfect, lemmy is not perfect, it has flaws yes, there are some bad people who use the fediverse yes, however in my opinion not enough people use lemmy and the fediverse
Oh the Threadiverse will definitely continue, and arguably it being smaller is even a good thing, helping to avoid attracting bot spam on the same level as corporate enshittified platforms. But I don't think very many additional people will use it than this - in fact all prior trends since the Rexodus have shown quite a dramatic decrease instead - and therefore the topics covered, especially apolitical ones, are going to have to be "carried" by an ever-smaller and smaller subset of people who are willing to put in the work to add content. Which itself is daunting bc then whenever you post or comment you expose yourself to downvotes and toxic insane dumbshit replies, or more commonly merely silence in return.
People are only willing to put up with such for so long, before reaching for other alternatives (like going to a local library and reading a physical book?). And btw this is not unique to the Threadiverse with tankies, it's an extremely prevalent effect across all Fediverse platforms - e.g. here is a very interesting article talking about the identical effect (maybe less on the side of outright trolling) on Mastodon as well: https://wingolog.org/archives/2024/09/24/fedi-is-for-losers. Fwiw I kinda like that terminology, except it can be so easily misunderstood: like we aren't merely "losers" here as in opposition to "winners" as the article claims, but rather in opposition to "gainers" as in greedily trying to always grow, especially at any cost. Sometimes it's okay to just sit there and be who you are, without trying to grow or expand further.
So no I don't think that we will grow. But maybe that's okay? Either way it is what it is - we can't force people to come here against their will, only try to be as welcoming as possible so that they can feel at home here if they do decide to visit.
Yeah, well said. You hit the nail right on the head
Politics is important. If anything it's the most important thing right now. You can try to make your own bubbles but eventually it will reach you. I'm sorry but we just don't have the privilege of ignoring reality. Hopefully we'll go back to those times in pur lifetime.
unfortunately no dedicated niche communities outside of maybe furries and anime to some degree have moved over to the fediverse. That I know of. Like particular games or such. Without those its mostly news, general entertainment, and politics.
3D printing, Linux, Autism, country specific, they are lol.
What kind of posts are you looking for?
Because the upvotes are controlling what people want.
Just every other? You must've spent quite some time filtering shit already, then.
You see, if you don't like all the ragebait you are No True Leftist. Disagree with anyone at any time? Gotta hand that card in, bro, 'cause you've got to be some fascist or something. Or "shitlib" or whatever cringe terminology the tankies use. This may come as a shock to you but at least Random Angry Dipshit was kind enough to inform you about your entire political stance that you thought was something radically different. Neat trick, right? Aren't you grateful? I know I am.
Correct! It's also an unappealing and rather significant workload trying to find real activity on real communities on here to subscribe to, so /all is kinda it. Discoverability is garbage, one of many upshots of the way the federation gimmick was implemented.
I'm sure they mostly do, if they ever even learn of this place at all. That's why it keeps being like this. Parts of the fedv are indistinguishable from satire or outright trolling - that's not counting explicitly blatant troll instances like ml, gr*d and hb. I'd seriously thought some of the leftist infighting meme was... y'know, a meme.... Or that "here, I disagree with this one thing you said and now you're banned from X communities", from people who spent the last sentence whining about Reddit moderators. (They are right in isolation, just big blubbering hypocrites.)
Engagementbait on a platform that isn't even pushing "the algorithm" that way. Nifty, right?
It's not going to change, or even get any less of a pain to try to curate unless tooling gets better. It won't, because the Lemmy devs at least are tankie idiots who have no interest in making anything easy to curate (because then, the very first thing to go is their main shitholes for being blatant assholes to everyone except dictators)
Edit: on that note, instance blocks on ml, gr*d and hb are an absolute must
Fwiw, PieFed has mostly solved the discoverability issue. Here's a neat trick: make a new account on PieFed.social (note that PieFed.World won't work, since they haven't bothered to flesh out their categories of communities) and go through the sign-up wizard. Browse for a week, and every time you see a community that you like, subscribe to it also in your Lemmy account.
Make sure to also check out not only your Subscribed feed, but also the categories of communities too. It opens up a whole new method of browsing content. I get literal and actual poetry posts (despite ~10 upvotes + 0 comments) occasionally crossing my Subscribed feed this way, and if I feel in the mood it's fairly easy (even for you now without an account login needed) to see it at https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft.
Lemmy has nothing remotely like this, even though I like its UI.
That's just the nature of Lemmy. It was built by tankies for tankies, and so this reflects on the user base. The politics here is a bubble and it's inescapable, unfortunately that's just a part of the package. You just have to deal with unhinged, misinformed, and extreme takes all the time. There are tools and strategies that can help you reduce the amount, but you can't get rid of it. Lemmy doesn't have the user base of Reddit where you can find big and active communities for everything. Outside of politics, subpar memes, and some niche tech stuff, there really isn't much else. However, I still think it's worth it for the privacy alone.
says 'tankie tankie tankie'
Block politics and join femcelmemes.
I agree completely.
I see some people below saying "curate your feed". But this isn't viable because:
The problem is with the user base. The user base is extremely susceptible to low effort rage baiting. It's full of immature kids and intellectually dishonest users.
Part of the user base issue is the same with most "alternative social media". A not-insignificant amount of the users will be here because their behavior got them banned from or wasn't tolerated in other spaces.
The world is actively imploding. You desperately want to put your head in the sand, but you're bored down there, so you now want to pull your head out and have the rest of us maintain your childish illusion while you ignore objective reality. Grow up and scroll beyond posts you don't need
You're also showing yourself as confidently ignorant as you're angry, but also obviously aren't filtering certain communities or keywords that your sensitive eyes can't handle with your app. Again, grow up.
or they just want to avoid people like you. because you know, it's insufferable to be lectured how you such by random strangers who just want to go on about catastrophe when most likely they are living a very cushy life, hence they need to be obsessed with politics in a wholly negative way, because that is the only major drama/tension in their life.
That's all you have are insults? Grow up.
Lemmy was created because of Reddit censoring political content.
If you don’t wanna see political stuff go to a different website.
The above is not a value judgement. If I did not want to be exposed to the sun and the public then I wouldn’t go to a park. If I did not want to be exposed to loud car sounds and screaming fans I wouldn’t go to the racetrack. It’s okay that you don’t want to see political stuff (you should think critically about what you think is political and why). You don’t need to go to lemmy or any other fediverse thing. You can just be a Redditor.
lovingly, with approval and understanding go away.
I've been on lemmy since before it even federated, so I'm happy with the left-wing political and tech focused topics of discussion available.
That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to get away from monolithic social media and also want the sort of "non-political" content they are used to getting. There's no reason they can't do both, and I think we should encourage federated social media and direct people away from corporate social media at every opportunity. If people can comfortably get their memes and news and hobby discussions on the fediverse, that's only a good thing. Ownership of that needs to be taken away from Reddit.
I just want to get away from self-righteous agenda posters. who are so indoctrinated they think everyone else is exactly like them and if they aren't, they are terrible awful people.
it's not even a political thing, there are many folks in hobby and other groups that approach life this way, trying to shove their opinions down everyone else's throats and demonizing them for not agreeing, and/or playing the victim when someone pushes back against their shitty 'i know better than you' bullshit.
I think I sympathize completely. I find even people I ostensibly agree with on almost everything to sometimes be obnoxious. I think different people are looking for different things when it comes to using these platforms and this sometimes leads to poor results.
it's just a general attitude towards life. some folks don't mind other people doing stuff differently than them, others can't stand it and take it as a personal attack on themselves.
like, i remember when I was car-shopping a decade ago and people got mad at me for not buying the car they wanted me to buy. it was wild.
They are used to getting “non-political” content because Reddit kicked out the “political” people and closed the “political” subs.
Going to the place that those people and communities now reside and complaining that everything feels “political” is ridiculous, but there might be good reasons why a person would do it, like you said.
You’re right that it’s not unreasonable to ask for what they’re asking for. That’s why I tried my god damnedest to clearly and kindly explain that this might not be the right place for them. Not everywhere needs to be for everyone. It’s not an insult to tell someone they’re looking for the library, this is the bus terminal.
Others are espousing different ways to harness the technology using blocks and a subscription feed. If someone believes that an alternative to corporate social media should be for everyone (an explicitly political belief!) then that will be borne out by successful block and sub use. The user might also not succeed at using those tools. In that case they don’t have to stay. They can recognize that they want the curated, “nonpolitical” experience of Reddit. I am not making a judgement of them for wanting that, only recommending they go and get what they want.
even if I agree politics should be discussed more openly than what reddit allows, dude we need to make this space more welcoming, not telling people to go away.
.ml users think they are being welcoming and kind when they harass and insult other users.
The op is welcome here. When they don’t want to be here they’re welcome to not be.
They can leave. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not an admonition or reprisal for me to say that.
Half of Lemmy is controlled by Ai and bots. Don’t make “Ai hate” your entire reason for doing things.
It’s less ai hate and more the straw that is breaking the camels back there has been a lot of stuff Reddit has been doing that led me to this take
reddit has rapidly become somewhere you go for need, not for want
ie: a particular linux sub, only as needed.
Ideally the subs you follow there, will appear here in time, but the problem with that is that the people will follow, and this (to a degree) will become that.
if the straw took you until now to leave Reddit………………
Yelling at people who finally did the thing you've thought they should do for a while is counterproductive.
Telling me that is… pointless.
you're confusing it with reddit which is truly half is bots.
Lemmy is half bots too I’m afraid.
Yes but mostly labeled and primarily contained within certain boundaries - some users, whole entire instances (lemmit), and communities. And arguably, a bot that is properly labeled as such is not a problem, especially when you can automatically filter or otherwise distinguish such content (e.g. PieFed provides numerous tools for this).
Meanwhile, Reddit is a lost cause in this regard.