This has come to mind because all the chatter about Meta federating.
I see a lot of people saying they’d love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.
I truly don’t get this.
I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
If you want mass-produced trendy content, please, consume it elsewhere, and when you are inevitably fed up, then come here and enjoy the slow-paced, real community.
PD: I hope this doesn’t come across as wall-keeping (or however it’s said lol), It’s my honest opinion.
I agree completely.
I recently compared it to sitting in a comfortable little cafe that serves delicious food and looking around and saying, “Gee, I wish this was a McDonalds.”
It just doesn’t even begin to make sense to me.
And I’m with you - gatekeeping or no - anyone who wants Twitter or Reddit or Facebook content can already go to Twitter or Reddit or Facebook to get it, and that’s exactly what they should do.
But I’m here because I can’t get reddit content anymore in the format I want to consume it. I didn’t have an issue with the content of reddit, just the owners.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I just think that the solution is to cultivate the content here. Not connect with the same old corporate platforms that caused the problems in the first place.
I wouldn’t mind if someone stole and curated the top posts from certain subreddits I’m interested in.
I really don’t dislike reddit for their communities but for their CEO and corporate greed. The content is great.
I’m not there because I don’t want to give them money after they mistreated their users.
Same. Ideally, Lemmy would be a Reddit replacement for me.
But it can be a replacement with original content. Even if they have the same topics, it’s beneficial to let each community grow their own culture.
I’m in the same boat. I want Lemmy to be a firehose of content, the overwhelming majority of which I won’t ever want to interact with. I want that because different people are interested in different things, and that’s what allows for even the niche communities to find their footing with more than a small contingent of people.
I think the tools at our disposal as users and administrators of Fediverse systems are already good enough to manage and control your own experience, and I’m confident that they’ll continue to improve at a rapid click. The experience of using Lemmy as a Reddit replacement has already improved dramatically since June 12th, and it does so every day. I appreciate that others may feel much more strongly about the “dumbing down” of the overall content and community than I do, and for those folks joining an instance that outright defederates is a great option.
Folks are quick to tell people how they should be using Lemmy. “Don’t sign up for one of the big instances, you should use a small one instead because federation” is a big one - but there’s a lot of appeal in this model with being signed up to the instances generating the majority of the content the broader community is consuming because it makes finding that content easier than it otherwise would be. My hope is that the larger instances like lemmy.world will at least test the waters with Threads federation to see what it actually does to the community before taking the step of defederation, because right now those large instances are what’s feeding the rest of the rest of Lemmy.
As it stands, having those large instances federated with Threads and having smaller communities defederated seems like a best of both worlds scenario, because a small instance defederating with Threads won’t lose out on the other content being generated by those larger instances, but those who want to trudge through the mire of mass appeal can do so in one place.
I got a tired of the cliched site culture and some people’s attitudes. I suppose it’s because it’s such a large slice of the public that you get more people being dicks and leaving drive-by jerky comments. The overdone in-jokes and pun threads got to be a bit much too. I needed something like Lemmy to demonstrate what I was missing on reddit.
Also, I don’t think that the way to deal with “there is content on a platform that I don’t like” is to run from it. It’s to make better filtering systems to choose what I want. Two reasons:
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First, some people like different things. They shouldn’t have to use different platforms just for that.
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Second, stuff like spam will show up anywhere that has decent size anyway eventually, once there are enough eyeballs for it.
I think that the goal should be to have plenty of content of all sorts on the Threadiverse, and then just have good filtering tools that are hard to subvert.
Reddit didn’t let people build the filtering tools they wanted in and in some cases – like when it came to their own ads – were actively opposed to that. The Threadiverse solves that problem for me.
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I thought I didn’t until I came here and realized how nasty Reddit has become. You can go days on Lemmy without encountering an angry asshole.
that’s a great analogy
It’s appropriate because that kind of shit happens irl, too. Small city with a cool local vibe becomes popular, people move to the city because it’s popular, all the popular stuff gets priced out and paved over to make room for more Starbucks. Then people whine about how cool the city used to be. Gee, I wonder what happened to it?!
Having gone through that, there are also Starbucks suits and the owners of the buildings housing the Starbucks yelling at you that this is WHAT YOU NEED!
The issue I have with this analogy is that the food here isn’t quite that great. Maybe the service is better and it’s less crowded and more friendly, but the menu is pretty limited and not everything it serves even matches the fast food’s quality. I guess there’s merits from being loyal to your local cafeteria and its community even if it’s not always the best, but lets not exaggerate the quality being delivered here.
I used to browse reddit for gaming news, especially indie games, and the communities I found for this on Lemmy didn’t pick up any momentum yet.
Mm… you do have a point, but I would argue that the content is generally better at the very least to the degree that it’s actual people sincerely posting things rather than bots, shills and karma farmers spamming and/or astroturfing.
And yes - niche communities are extremely underpopulated here.
I don’t think the solution to that though is to aim for more generic “content” with the hope that it’ll lead to broad growth and that a byproduct of that will be to bring more people who happen to share your interests. The solution IMO is to get on the communities you want to see grow and start contributing stuff, right now. Even if you’re just posting to one person, keep at it, and pretty soon it’ll be two, then three, then…
Just defederate the Meta instances, and your problem is solved, right?
It’s not like saying “I wish this awesome little bar is a McDonald’s” but “I don’t want to go to a bar in a city that also has a McDonalds”.
Well… yes and no.
I’m not talking about any effect I think it might have on me, because yes - I can just avoid the instances favored by morons.
To belabor the analogy a bit more, it’s not quite accurate to say that they want this neat little cafe to be McDonalds - they want the entire town to be McDonalds. They want to be able to open up their door snd see nothing but McDonalds, stretching to the horizon in all directions.
That that literally can’t happen - that the decentralized nature of the ActivityPub means that the most anyone can ever do is turn instances into empty wastelands of brain-dead “content” one at a time - doesn’t make their viewpoint any less perplexing to me.
More like a small town that used to have real restaurants that got driven out of business when McDonalds came to town selling shit on a plate so cheap it was impossible to be price competitive with food suitable for humans.
The mere existence of McDonalds dramatically hurt the options available.
For sure if they want that content they can just go there. Lets not turn our cozy little café into a McDonalds as you say.
But, I think part of the issue is that communities that folks are interested in being a part of, about certain topics/etc, just aren’t active enough here yet. I’m glad to see some are growing, and my personal experience is improving over time, but I keep finding communities that look like something I’d love but have zero activity ir content in them. So I do understand folks wanting to fill parts of this with content in general, even if it’s content similar to what they would’ve gotten on Reddit, because content and activity is what will help build those cool communities over time.
I only wish I had interesting or important things to contribute to the communities I’m interested in, I never know what to say or do to help build a community that’s nonexistent or essentially so. 😥 so far I’ve just been commenting wherever I can, for the most part, hoping that helps.
I hear you! You and me both, I’ve always been more of a lurker on almost every social media. However here I feel more comfortable posting than anywhere else because I know people aren’t here just to troll, gain followers through controversy or self-promote, so it feels way better.
You’ll get comfortable soon enough
I appreciate your comment and points you made. Hope you keep at it too!
That’s what had me confused at first when people were leaving Reddit but going “bRiNg ReDdIt CoNtEnT oVeR aNd DeLeTe ReDdIt!” and using the whole “we need content” as a reason.
Like, if y’all want content from social media platforms… use those social media platforms. In my mind’s eye, I see the Fediverse as more of an old-school forum where people can make any forum for specific communities, not as a content-vomiting platform.
“can’t wait for all that meta content”
the content: someones racist uncle yelling at you in the comments
Get off my lawn, boy!
Couldn’t agree more. The reason I came here was to get away from the algorithm driven inanity of big social.
And I can’t help feeling that the only reason Meta wants to federate Threads is to kill the threat of the fediverse off.
It feels like I found a nice mom n pop shop but Walmart and Starbucks are trying to force their way on the same block. I get that you can defederate or block communities you don’t want, but having FB shove their way in this space feels intrusive.
This site is an aggregator. I want to use it to aggregate content I want to see.
It’s trivially easy for you to not be exposed to things you don’t want to see here, so I’m not really understanding the issue
Yea, most content isn’t original anyways. If it’s actually good content I don’t care where it’s from
I truly don’t get this.
I think it makes sense if you realise that people are here for such a huge variety of different reasons.
Some of us (including probably yourself) are here because we’re hoping that the fediverse might be an open alternative to corporate social and everything that entails.
Others are here because one of their favourite reddit subs might have closed.
Others probably got caught up in the fuck /u/spez thing and just think it’s cool to hate spez without really understanding what’s going on.
Others are probably here because it’s a just a new virgin landscape for trolling, or building a following or being some kind of influencer.
That’s why a lot of these people would see Meta’s arrival as great news. More people more content.
I will say though, the fediverse is the first platform that can cater to all of these people. For example, you might end up with a group of lemmy instances which refuse to federate with any instances which federate with meta. I’m not saying that’s a good idea, just that it allows everyone to be catered for.
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More people also = more problems, exactly the reason those places turned to shit too.
A big part of the reason yes, but I think advertising has an insidious role also.
Lemmy instance admins have no financial interest in user’s time on site. There’s no outrage machine to drive engagement.
More people, introduces different problems.
For example, not having enough people engaging in a more niche community is a HUGE problem, which can only really be fixed with more people.
i mean if you want a social media network to grow…
Things don’t need to grow to be successful.
Right. Growth is how shit fails and ends up artificially kept alive.
Absolutely no. Facebook is absolutely terrible. Keep them racist Karen boomers away,
Already seen racists, nazis on Lemmy, and enough tankies to arm an entire country lol.
Unfortunately they will just congregate everywhere. Best we can do is defederate.
I personally want to consolidate all content in the fediverse because I see it as more archival-proof. Companies can come and go, brands can sell and change, but a community effort like the fediverse has a huge potential to last.
Just look at reddit and how many useful guides have been taken down.
If you know where to look, there are a lot of useful news, posts, guides, articles and media floating around but often, these are at the hands of big corporations and companies who can turn their backs on their users any time (and with it, our access to these files/media/etc)
I see a lot of people saying they’d love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.
And that right there is why you see the expression “Embrace, Extend & Extinguish” thrown around a lot lately. This is exactly what companies have done to demolish competition in the past.
I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
The problem with the fediverse is that it’s not really filled with posts at all. Maybe the Tech or Random magazines, if that’s what you’re looking for, but if you want to talk about cars or suits or model trains or whatever, you’ll be lucky if you see one post across the fediverse in a month. Niches are empty, because most people here mostly have one interest in common, which is the fediverse itself.
Conversely, the value of large-scale social media, and the theoretical ideal of the fediverse, lies in positive network effects. You’re into some obscure Japanese manga only four people who speak English have ever read? odds are, three of those people are on reddit, and you might find them. Looking for a review on a bootmaker you saw at the thrift store? Go to /r/goodyearwelt, there will be twelve threads about it, none of them sponsored or anything, diving way too deep into details you never could have imagined wanting to know.
But right now, look through lemmy.world or whatever, and tell me:
- What are some good anime? Some good Shonen anime? Some good non-Shonen anime? An anime that represents trans issues well?
- Where is a good place to get a suit under $400? In the US? In Europe? What’s the difference between Huntsman and Edward Sexton’s cuts?
- What’s a good recipe for a cake? What about a salad? How do you deflame a red onion?
- Who is the vice president of the United States? Who is the secretary of state? Who is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office?
Trivial questions, right? Most of them haven’t come up here at all. Reddit is a massive corpus of knowledge, answering questions way more obscure than these, with enough people around to answer whatever question you might have in a variety of niche communities. People want that on a service they can trust.
I don’t think many people want more tools to talk to strangers about nothing. Scale gives rise to better conversations and interactions in niche areas.
I’ll take that a step further: the big default subs on Reddit were essentially worthless. Did anyone really use Reddit primarily for stuff like r/technology or r/news? You would have gotten almost the exact same, if not better, coverage of those two with a couple of tech Youtubers and AP News. Repeat for r/politics, r/worldnews, r/games… etc. Anything that was on there was mirrored elsewhere. If they had gotten Thanos snapped out of existence, it would have ultimately been a mild inconvenience at worst.
The real Library of Alexandria are the small subs. Those are the niches that need to be filled to make Lemmy a viable replacement, and we can’t get there without further growth.
the things you like about Reddit didn’t exist when Reddit was the new alternative to the enshittification of Digg. KBin is brand new and Lemmy was not much more than a tankie hub until recently.
KBin and Lemmy will build the communities you’re looking for over time. The question is: do you want those communities to develop under the shadow of the same algorithms, bots, and content you see on corporate social media, or do you want something new?
I totally get your point and agree that this is still the niche inside the niche, and growth would be good, I just don’t joining Meta is a good growing strategy
This is a very good comment. I’m basically repeating what you said but the thing about Lemmy is that there aren’t as many people as there are in Reddit, and most Reddit users are lurkers who don’t have the awareness that Lemmy exists as a viable alternative. So it’s natural that Lemmy users will refer to Reddit content, and content from large social medias for that matter, when talking about the topics relevant in their communities.
Having been on the Internet through the period when AOL connected to it, I’m a little skeptic of the idea that linking a behemoth to the fediverse won’t totally fuck up the culture of the latter.
Oh god, the Eternal September when 90% of Usenet was people replying “me too!” to a post that said “me too!” in response to a post that said “me too!” which referenced the previous post that said “me too!”
… there are too many Reddit posts on here. I wish lemmy could have its own content and vibe.
I mean most of the “Reddit content” on Lemmy is thing that get posted to Reddit from other sites anyway. I don’t think the reddit vibe has existed except the same tired comments for a long time now
it’s literally screen shots of reddit. it’s weird to be on another platform, but still look at reddit.
And Reddit was just screenshots of Twitter/insta/FB
Start posting the content you want to see. That’s the magic of the new beginning.
You could try to find content you enjoy on a community instead of just browsing All… It’s a big topic right now so of course you’re gonna see a lot of that when you’re scanning everything.
I’ve seen plenty of posts that are original, or are at least as original as they would be on Reddit.
I’m sure it will eventually, it might just take a little while to wash off the Reddit stink
Federation with Meta will probably not have a huge effect on Lemmy. Threads has no communities after all.
It will probably be mostly a Mastodon thing.
That was my take as well but I’m also an ignorant slut so more than happy to hear reasons why I’m wrong
I’m also an ignorant slut
Just wanted to say that ya made me laugh with that phrase lol. I too enjoy using “slut” in a myriad of fashions
Your username is a hell of a reference, haha
Purely text based content is way easier on the servers. If all Lemmy users uploaded videos and high res images all the time, the servers could not keep up, right?
- consider that they use hardware that is run on donation (or their own) money
Do people running servers have any options for limiting the amount of pictures and video that users upload to their instance?
Having text-only communities sounds like a good way to attract the right people and be an unattractive option for people who just want max content.
I really like that idea.
It would absolutely demolish the risk of a community turning into a meme sub, or one of subs where people just post pictures of their Raspberry Pi in some retail case over and over again.
And as long as pictures are disallowed on the main post, people could still be free to post links to guides or other important content that contains pictures.
Hmm, links to pictures elsewhere seems like it would be less work for the computer running the instance.
Which would be pretty important if we want to keep monetization as unobtrusive as possible on Lemmy.
That said, I do think we need to figure out image hosting at some point.
I asked a similar question previously one of the makers of lemmy responded to me:
Open an issue on that or write a bot
… I thought sometime in the future I will make such a bot … but turns out I need to use typescript for that.
Write it in Rust, bro!
I might be willing to help with this if you want to tackle it and are interested in help. I’m newish to Lemmy but want to get my feet wet. What tech stack do you prefer? Typescript is a very short leap from Javascript if you already know it, IMO.
Personally I want the Fediverse to become the norm. So that means not having an opinion on what sort of content I do/don’t want. I get why people like the “secret club” vibe but secret clubs of smarter-than-average people don’t make the world a better place. Letting the masses do what they always did in a better way does.
That’s not to say I’m pro-Threads; I don’t think gaining users through a single massive server which will be the way 90% of users engage with the Fediverse and can kneecap other servers that don’t follow their rules (which particularly worries me because of their ban on porn; I think most popular Fediverse servers ban porn, but not all, and with Facebook it’s clearly in the name of “advertiser friendly”) is healthy growth for the idea of federation.
Especially given the armies of people who cross post any decent content to all networks. I hope that here, due to no monetary benefit and no karma, it is only for the love of sharing. All the good content will make it here, but rather than being a firehouse of crap, the community nature should make the relevant communities more focused.
I still use Facebook for local groups. I think even they realise that niche communities without outrage are where the growth will lie. That’s likely why they are scared of federated networks. It could easily kill them over time.
No karma? What are the little arrows for?
I think what it means is that it doesn’t add up all the little arrows across all posts and comments, by default. Although, I suppose an instance, external tool, or browser plugin could still do that.
Thank you for explaining. I was wondering about all the talk of (lack of) karma.
