I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
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I like lemmy because I can’t doomscroll
Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.
Niches really need a way to advertise themselves and then congregate in one place. It’s a bit sad to see two communities for the same thing in different instances and neither get the critical mass of posters needed to survive.
Whatever the social media ability to “create” your own algorithm is important. One way being a subscription and sticking to it.
Second being keyword filtering. I use Connect for Android which let’s me filter out posts and communities containing keywords.
Same thing I do on reddit with reddit enhancement suite.
It’s just the nature social media where anone can sign up.
Lemmy isn’t just full of political content, but it’s also full of assholes too that take advantage of the small sized community of Lemmy and other instances. So this gives the impression that it’s simply a clique that runs around ‘running things’ and by that, just kissing ass to mods and making you out to be the problem when it was started by them.
With politically charged content and just random pricks mixed in, it’s going to be a hard sell for anybody to stick around here on Lemmy. Moreso, the lack of niche communities, will not give anyone a sense of belonging.
That’s what Reddit will always have in spades against Lemmy. Lemmy just seems to be populated with political people, nerds into programming, jackasses and aimless wanderers.
For context : https://feddit.org/post/5147326
I don’t want to simply repeat what others have said, but on a personal level, I’m actually enjoying the smaller overall community - it makes it a bit more personal, I feel. I enjoy that. Yeah, fair enough, it’s not great for niches, but you don’t have to be tethered down to one place for your content.
Back in my day, you had to go to completely different websites for your niche content! Forums were the mainstream!
Hmm maybe I should post to niche communities then repost to broader categories.
Or just assess whether your niche is sustainable at all, if not then just use the broader category
Thing is, it can be great for niches! The Star Trek instance is very Star Trek. The TTRPG instance has a lot of potential. If we try to build the fediverse out from these niche nodes first, instead of starting from the general and trying to branch out, it could work a lot better than what we currently have.
One time I complained about a response I got in a separate post and then that person found me and responded again.
I wasn’t even mad, that’s good dedication.
I think the people who grew up a bit later may feel this more keenly than some of us olds who used to have to use the yellow pages.
I agree that, asking with the bad things OP mentions, there are good things about a smaller site. I remember a lot of times on Reddit when I had something to say, but when I went into the thread there were thousands of comments and I’d feel like there just wasn’t a point in adding mine.
On Lemmy, when I make a comment, it’s very likely to be seen (for better or worse), and I have much more of a feeling of adding to the conversation. It’s more like joining a conversation at a party.
I guess maybe the reason I fell into niche communities on Reddit was that I liked the smaller feel. So I do appreciate how many people actually see my comments. But I also appreciate communities that are focused on specific topics. Maybe I need to consider broader categories on Lemmy.
I think you’d be surprised how many people here share your interests. You may not be able to scroll through an album of other people’s projects relevant to your hobby right now, but I bet you can post to a more general community with a very specific question (or show off your own project) and get a good amount of engagement and feedback, maybe even with broader perspective than you might get in a subreddit with an established “meta” for your hobby.
Ya I don’t mind and I think it’s because this place reminds me a lot of old forums or old reddit. I really miss some of my old forums and the community that would be built there.
. The smaller feel also encourages contributing over lurking, because every individual’s comment can actually get read, unlike the huge megathreads of reddit.
Feel free to block communities with political content.
You can also use an app or alternative frontend to filter keywords. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has a post about that.
For communities, !newcommunities@lemmy.world can help
For home kit, the Apple communities are probably more active, and you should be able to post about it there too
And if the user uses Mbin instances, he/she can even block posts that link to other domains, as often political posts link to news sites.
To add to this using these two features has really helped remove a lot of the threads that were taking a toll on my mental health from my feed.
How do I do this? Because honestly, yeah, I’ve come to a point where I’m realizing that, while it’s my responsibility to do what I can in the world, it is not my responsibility to just bear witness to suffering when I can do nothing to prevent it. All it’s doing it hurting me for no gains to anyone.
One of the front ends that have keyword filtering is voyager.
definitely agree. this has helped save my sanity in recent times.
From small seeds… I had noticed a huge improvement regarding lemmy posts and threads, before the US election, and then it all kind of went backwards.
But if you have any questions about anything - niche or otherwise, you should post them on lemmy, helping it to grow faster. Even if the answers can already be found in other community forums.
You should get specific replies to your question anyway, but also anyone coming behind you won’t have to go to reddit or any other place for the answer. It requires everyone to help, but questions are the fastest way to grow in most cases. Not including the likes of subs that can post original content, A TON of reposts on them too, but some OC. But mainly asking for help with anything should get people with knowledge on the subject replying. With the idea that eventually many answers can be found here without having to go elsewhere. Start ‘spamming’ your genuine questions now…Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.
the cats
The voids whence the content shall come!
i would also like to like lemmy.
Unfortunately it’s userbase seems to have a fairly significant infection of stupidity. (also the lemmy platform is just, underbaked, in general)
But i’m starting to think my standards of not being completely uneducated and spouting literal bullshit on things, is too high for most of the population…
I think i just have a problem with all of humanity, to be honest.
We have to be the thing we want to see out in the world. If we want open source communities and an internet free of corporate influence then we have to do the work required to build them. It’s not going to happen by magic.
I only used Reddit for two years, but I’m now really happy I made the jump to Lemmy.
Sadly, I can only agree that some niche content is difficult to find.
But I can’t complain because I’m not creating any of that content and moderating some community.
Unpopular opinion: it’s okay to like Reddit, if that’s how you feel. I don’t - it’s far too toxic overall, and that was affecting me to the point where I made the decision to leave it, regardless of the outcome of the protests (based in large measure on having read this article that further developed the thoughts that I was already starting to think: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb ). And I don’t like where it’s going in the future - you may use it for awhile then be surprised when yet another horrendous decision by Huffman or the people behind him sends content creators fleeing to other platforms, again.
But if you have found a particular niche group there, and they are not willing to leave Reddit, then you go to where they are, right? Perhaps you can also help make moving here more welcoming by starting a similar community of your own here, even if you are the only one posting there for awhile. That said, we simply don’t have the userbase here to handle e.g. most individual games (some fairly major exceptions such as Minecraft aside:-) or sports teams or some such, and you may want to enjoy interacting with more generalized content, possibly in addition to rather than fully replacing Reddit.
Conversations here tend to be better than there. Deeper, richer, and fuller. But to each their own - if Reddit meets your needs while Lemmy does not, then it sounds like you have your answer. But perhaps read my link above and think about what it means: Reddit is predatory, and you’d be willfully walking back into that, hoping against hope that the leopard would not eat your face off (spoiler alert: it will:-D).
Thank you! I would say I like the people in certain niche groups on Reddit, but I hate Reddit as a company. I wish I could snap my finger and move those communities to Lemmy.
Many people lead busy lives and don’t use Arch btw (you know that funny saying here on Lemmy? well if not, you’ll learn it soon - in fact you’re hearing it now!:-P). They use what works best for them. We could improve our tools to entice them to want to come here, but we can hardly blame them (imho) if they don’t want to yet, if Lemmy (or Mbin, PieFed, etc.) does not meet there needs (yet).
We are growing though. e.g. check out !loops@midwest.social, which I would guess probably has no counterpart on Reddit atm? (their internal video player sucked, and presumably still does since they seem so focused on profits rather than usability)
Ew you use arch? Real smart people use templeOS.
I am fortunate enough that my workplace offers me a Mac OSX:-). Which I promptly use to ssh into a Linux ofc, but that one I do not have privileges on. And I don’t do much rooting or OS replacing on my Android at home lately.
My point is that they all are “under God” (from templeOS perspective?). Except Windows ofc, which is under Satan:-P.
Lol, I agree that Windows is the only true villain, lol. I’m actually a macOS user. I have recently come around to Vim (technically Neovim), and I’m trying to get better at basic terminal utilities like grep. These mostly work the same on macOS, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all by not using Linux. I tried daily driving Linux, but Mac really satisfies all my needs. But I am very grateful for Linux and all its open-source contributions.
Mac is awesome!:-) Sorta. Apple has become “The Man” that it used to despise but… the product, I mean the desktop product, is still good. For now.
The GNU utilities are some of the most highly optimized on planet Earth. Actually they probably are the most highly optimized!:-D
Also, Mac OSX is POSIX compliant, making it more fully “Unix” than even Linux itself is - or at least, some flavors of Linux are allowed to not be POSIX compliant. templeOS is not POSIX compliant, and some parts of Arch (e.g. fish shell) are not either, reportedly.
Whenever I say that I enjoy using Mac OSX, the only pushback I tend to receive is that it typically runs on expensive hardware. However, it is unix with a pretty candy shell - e.g. that Preview program if f-ing amazing! and the Anti-aliasing everywhere, and the Spotlight search, and… it has much wow factor overall!:-P - and I think a good fraction of people who like Linux would enjoy using it, if it were free (which technically it is, the OS I mean, and that doesn’t even get into Darwin…). The major caveat being Arch users, who want to customize every tiny thing to their heart’s content. Which is fine - we don’t all have to enjoy the same things:-).
I really like your take! I agree Apple has amazing products, but I do fear that will degrade as they become more of a monopoly. I never thought of it as pretty Unix, but that makes a lot of sense. Admittedly, I don’t know the history that well, but I’m assuming Steve Wozniak was a big Unix guy, and Steve Jobs is responsible for it being pretty. So it makes sense.
I spend most of my time in Vim and the browser, and those are both extremely customizable. So Mac has never felt too limiting for me.
Though Apple is expensive, I bet you could pick up even an old M1 Mac and still have fantastic performance. I know people argue Apple sabotages their old phones, but I think their hardware actually holds up really well, except for a few exceptions over the years.
Lurk on Reddit. Post on Lemmy.
hell yeah
Well you should come hang out with us at Out of Context Comics! Not a lot of politics but a lot of gay innuendo. A lot.
Love it! Subscribing
Welcome aboard!
