My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.
I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.
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They’re different kinds of experiences.
Forum-type things like Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker news, Reddit, etc. put the focus on the topic or community.
Micro-blog type things like Twitter, Mastodon put the focus on individuals.
If you want to see what your favourite author is posting about, or what your favourite musician is working on, or maybe behind the scenes pictures from a sporting event, microblogging platforms are great for that. Journalists also loved them because they could follow specific other journalists or other key people in the area they cared about, and get direct info from that source.
OTOH, if what you care about is a certain topic (F1 racing, beebop jazz, etc.) then forum-style platforms are better because the focus is the topic rather than the individuals.
I didn’t like Twitter for that reason. Often I’d follow someone because I saw some posts they made about something I’m interested in. Then suddenly they’re flooding my feed with stuff I don’t care about and often being really annoying while they do it.
I rarely find someone who I like all their posts. So it’s like do I just put up with the furry porn retweets because this person is a genius who occasionally posts about really interesting hacks?
That’s why I rarely ever followed random people on the microblogging platforms. IMO what it’s good for is following journalists, who treat the platform professionally and mostly only talk about things related to their work, or say famous authors who do some self-promotion, but also sometimes talk about their creative process.
This is an important distinction. I follow people on Twitter, while I follow topics on Reddit. It’s also the main reason why Mastodon will never succeed until it reaches the people I want to follow.
Good breakdown! I realized how foolish it is to wish any service be like anything else.
The fediverse is diverse, and the comparison is immature. We should be grateful these alternatives exist at all, because not too long ago it felt like world wide web had been irreversibly overrun by corporations, and resistance was hopeless.
Thank you for helping evolve my perspective!
Yeah same here, Reddit is my mindless scrolling app of choice, not Twitter, so when I tried to use Mastodon I just kinda stood there not knowing what to do
I love being able to read and immerse myself is specific communities and whatnot, and specifically I love Reddit for the discourse, people posting in a community, replying to posts, and replaying to those replies, and so on
So Lemmy has just become my jam, so happy that Reddit has an open source federated alternative now, even if they reverse their API debacle I’m still gonna keep using this app
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I never understood why people were so into Twitter, from my perspective it’s like a new media version of press releases - big name people harp about whatever they harp about and I read about it elsewhere if it’s relevant to me.
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It is not (just) for narcissism: it can fill a niche similar to RSS. When I was using Twitter, 90% of the posts I read were from companies or projects announcing news and updates. It also had a built in comments, so you have a single, shared discussion/q&a space in the same app.
Obviously, the biggest advantage it has over RSS (and Mastodon, so far) is critical mass. More creators have Twitter accounts than RSS feeds and for those that have both, the Twitter account is always more active.
And for me at least, Twitter is almost exclusively read-only for me. There are some people that tweet stuff that I like to keep up with, but trying to engage there is super toxic. Reddit/lemmy is way better for actually talking about stuff with people. There is toxicity but it’s easier to ignore/downvote than Twitter, somehow.
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That’s a great way of looking at it! (First post ever)
Seriousl though, waking up I looked at Reddit, going to sleep I looked at Reddit. All day Reddit, and too often the same crap repeated but I was not willing to risk sorting by new, just hot, best of, or rising.
I use Inoreader to put in the Top Day or Top Week RSS feeds of various subreddits. (Just found out I can do the same here on Lemmy.) It helps keep my usage from getting addictive like I’m trying to squeeze blood from a rock, and it keeps me from seeing the same posts over and over again. I see all the important stuff. Once. When the feed runs out, it runs out. I really enjoy it.
Neato! That is probably a lot healthier than checking in every 30 minutes looking to see if something changed.
I will try it. Thank you!
I like Mastodon, but I like Lemmy more. That said, I liked Reddit a lot more than Twitter so it makes sense I’d prefer Lemmy. I’d rather follow topics than people, and Mastodon/Twitter are about following people (yes you can subscribe to hashtags on Mastodon, but it isn’t the same).
That said, I still have and use both.
I have tried so many times to use Twitter(before Musk) and it never clicked with me. I have been on Reddit for over a decade. I like the idea of the fediverse but will it be able to hit the critical mass needed to actually replace Twitter and Reddit?
Insert meme ‘I like you both equally … that means I like YOU much more’ here…
IDK, I never used Twitter and never understood it: why would one ever want to share short messages? What can you express/explain with 160 characters? This is why I see no point in using Mastodon either…
I gel much better with forum format than microblog, mostly I don’t think I have anything worth saying on a microblog. I could see using it to follow people I’m interested in, but I can’t think of too many who fit that criteria. Also, they are all on TikTok. The only time I really used twitter was to get notifications when the ps5 was in stock somewhere.
I get news posts on Mastadon. Like a rss feed from lots of places without me going through different feeds.
I never liked the UI or design of Twitter. I grew up on image/text boards and migrated to reddit in the late 2000s as it started to take off. I like that the focus isn’t on profile building, or as you said following users, but rather on tagging along with communities that interest and inform you.
You are right. Mastodon is still super valuable and interesting despite its quirks and weird interface implementation.
Micro blogging like Mastodon I like more for following the personalities. I don’t have a big attention seeking personality so I do not get a lot of followers on that type of social media. I am more of a reply guy so Lemmy style content aggregator with comments I am able to participate more in.
For sure there are cool people I liked to follow, and frankly miss. As much as I say that I really just care about topics and go deep into things and ideas, it is still other people providing that information. I ultimately care about people and their passions.
The organization of Mastodon just sucks. Still, the people on there are worth the jank.
What exactly is a conteny agregator, I don’t get it… is reddit a content agregator? If so, why?
It’s in the name, mostly. It aggregates content. You can post links, text posts, images to specific communities and have them displayed in a feed of your communities of choice. That’s what Digg was and Reddit is, and kind of what Lemmy is doing- except on the Fediverse.
Mhm, I see.
So FB is not a content agregator?
I am really confused regarding these labels, social network, content agregator…
I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. I guess the “groups” functionality of Facebook could technically qualify it as such, but its primarily aimed at being a social media website. I’m not 100% on it either, because there’s a lot of overlap between platforms and their functionality.
People post links to articles.
People Order Our Patties?
Mastodon is WAY better if you follow tags. that said, I am very optimistic of Lemmy, it just needs a quality app.
I’m currently using Jerboa (edit: Android). Seems pretty good but I’ve only been here a couple hours. Have you tried it?
I’m on Jerboa now, and I think it’s got good bones, but it still needs some work. Minor stuff tho, like how setting the overall font size affects pages slightly differently.
I also miss how RIF would open articles/media natively, instead of utilizing my default browser for everything. It’s actually nice using reader view in firefox for some stuff, but the extra loading and app-swapping is a little clunky. I’m sure it’s something I could get used to if I stick with it.
I also need to figure out what pages/instances to follow so I can curate what shows up on my home page. I’m on day 2 here, so a grain of salt is needed for my commentary on a project that I can nitpick, but could not build on my own.
I hope the devs from the third party apps that Reddit is murdering are able to get similar/better jobs elsewhere. Maybe the dev teams who are now getting flooded with Reddit refugees could use the help.
anyone who isn’t burnt out by the circumstances would do well to get in early on this. I see it in my industry all the time; shittier companies shoot themselves in the foot, and the laborers that made them big in the first place bail to make other startups better.
fingers crossed
And we should donate to all these new places. I’ll have to figure out where to send my money to support this massive migration.
Developers are already working on a way for 3rd party apps to switch over to lemmy. https://feddit.de/post/768790
That’s amazing!
Do you or anyone know, how does one open the link you shared in their own instance? As in, so I’m still logged in on beehaw and can comment etc. tia
The RiF dev is working on an app for Tildes, I hope that works out.
Edit: tildes.net
I love how similar it is to Boost for Reddit, just wish I could stop the white flash on page transition.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml has said multiple times that he based it on Boost
I did indeed. Boost is (was) the best reddit client… was never open source tho.
iOS? do you have a TestFlight link?
MLEM is the one on iOS. And yes, you do need TestFlight for it.
I installed that one… I am not sure if it’s the server load to blame, but it’s not entirely stable right now. I keep getting signed out.
I have it installed, but I haven’t had a chance to use it much yet. Just in the browser now. :)
It’s Android
Oh dang. Glad to see Android has some good apps coming along, hopefully the iOS community can catch up. The Mastodon client ecosystem exploded back in January, hopefully we can have the same happen here.
You know what, I feel like the second part of my name right now. The solution for discovery has always been there. Like, it is the MAIN feature.
Okay, I think I am ready for another Mastodon account. Just need to find the right instance.
I didn’t even know you could follow tags, that might actually change how I feel about Mastodon, let’s see!
I for the life of me can’t actually figure out how to get started with mastodon. Like how do i even create an account or find where to start?
It’s similar to lemmy where you first have to pick and join a server.
From there it’s essentially twitter with a larger character limit and the ability to follow hashtags.
I kind of see Mastodon as a Twitter replacement and Lemmy as a Reddit replacement. Each has specific use cases. I can see both platforms having value in my online engagement.
The possibility to follow hashtags in mastodon is a real progress : i just follow a few account but i like following hashtags on mastodon/pixelfed and may be tomorrow peertube. lemmy suffer from lack of contents. I hope it will improve in the comming months
Yes, neither is better than the other, they both fill the voids left by the failures of big companies.
Yeah in general, I like forums better than the format Twitter is in. I like topic-based discussions more than discussions spawned from short, potentially out-of-context messages.
Not to mention that the discussion is almost guaranteed to consist of similarly short (or even shorter) witty one-liners. Twitter format is just horrible, and its restrictions promote equally horrible behavior where you have to look for ways to convey ideas and feeling in a short manner, which almost never results in more polite and sophisticated conversations.
Never used Twitter for anything more serious than some announcements from the game devs I follow. Anything else is just plain stupid, which makes me really surprised over the wide-spread adoption of Twitter by officials and ministries and the like.
And raising the character limit is going to be even more absurd, because then it’s going to be reminiscent of an actual forum, just less structured and sensible.
Twitter, as a format, is the worst option between messengers like Matrix and proper forums of any kind.
I’m even a little suspicious that Twitter style messaging has played a part in “gotcha” politics that seem very popular everywhere, where some populists manage to gather a large following mostly by just using slick one-liners with relatively little substance.
Now sure, these have always existed and will likely exist, but I seem to see more and more of them with ever bigger popularity.I know it got me a bit, I used to browse subreddits dedicated to twitter owns, but realised that those were reeeally bad for me.
I think this kind of politics has been doing pretty alright before Twitter as well. They may have been lucky to have an entire platform dedicated to them in some way, but all it’s done is gather all the populists in one place to happily form echo chambers. It’s what Facebook has been for years, too.
We’re probably more aware of it than we used to be when this style was more spread out, but this bullshit has been doing well before, is doing well, and will do well with or without Twitter or any platform that forces short, clear-cut messages. People like this shit - this is the prime reason that counties living under dictatorship often have people praising their leaders for being “strong and effective”, i.e. if it sounds good, it must be good, with little firrheer analysis taking place; stickijg the the dictatorships example, you’ll often see the opposition followers falling very well for the same kind of populist talk or doing away with the past and punishing the dictator and their enablers.
Yeah, I don’t care to engage with low effort content.
How does the saying go? Interesting people talk about ideas, uninteresting people talk about other people.
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
That is it. Thank you for the citation.
I’m gonna be honest Lemmy feels like a very chill place unlike Reddit or Facebook, it feels like defusing a bomb when talking on certain subreddits
People are very chill here. However, we are all going through the same thing… we are trauma bonding over the loss of a loved one lol. As the site grows I am sure the vibe will change.
I for one am extremely excited to see what Lemmy’s first mainstream-news-tier controversy is going to be 🤣
someone “actually famous” is gonna join in and will inevitably get bullied off. i’d throw a RemindMe! here but i don’t think anyone has set up a bot for that here yet
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Yeah kinda, though I think the UX is indeed definitely better than modern reddit, focus on the relevant stuff, and do it well (fast, and simple design).
But unfortunately the richness of information of most subreddits is still kinda missing, but hopefully this will settle over time (and I hope that the sheer mass migration from reddit will not kill/ddos the main instances).
lol, yeah! I hated posting an even slightly unpopular opinion on reddit. Just downvotes and insults returned.
Damn I really miss forums.
I had the greatest times in the internet 20 years ago in forums where you could be part of something that felt like a community built over years. Found some long lasting friendships on forums. Sadly then came myspace and facebook and caused every single forum I used to die.
Honestly the fediverse somewhat can replace that because the instances emulate that feeling of community a little bit.
It feels like the internet has gotten too big for forums. As if they can only support a certain population and then they get too crowded. I feel like the up/down vote system gives the internet a lot more space.
I disagree. The upvote system is prone to creating echochambers. You post bad news and people will downvote it. You post something controversial. People will downvote it. I mean I don’t think it’s a bad system. I just believe that ranking content visibility based on it has some downsides.
The irony of people downvoting this because they disagree with you 😅 Does Reddiquette still apply here?
Then you search controversial topics and find interesting stuff
I think the upvote/downvote system just allows for a larger community before it becomes too big to be a good community
Agreed! I learned so much intellectually. Broadened my horizons, sharpened my views through long-form, slower paced conversations of Forums/Message Boards. They are few and far between now. Boards such as this are the closest thing I can find now.
You should take a look at this instance: https://fedibb.ml/
Ah yeah. That has the fascade that I applaud.
Thank you. I will make an account when I get the time (I prefer not to make major decisons on my phone!).
I know that feeling! Like there’s not enough space to properly contextualize what you’re doing!
I think that instance is more a proof of concept, but you might be able to sign up still. The person behind it has made it available for anyone to use and I’m pretty sure if you’re on an instance that uses it then all of lemmy will be in the same style!
edit: If you’re interested in more info https://c.im/@youronlyone/110519684986917117
Thank you.
I know! Once you found a forum you loved you were IN IT. Those usernames were real people you looked forward to talking to. I think it has to do with the level of effort it takes for participation. The sparse, utilitarian all text design can be off putting. Some people just don’t like to read, you know? Often times it was not easy to make an account, you had to prove you were worthy of acceptance or get an invitation. It was work. MySpace and Facebook made it effortless, and it was appealing because you could immediately talk to friends instead of building rapport with strangers. I think in the end it comes down to respect. Social media is very permissive by design, and people got away with talking garbage with no consequences. You can’t just be hostile asshole around here.
I miss the predecessors to forums. I loved when it all was not web based. Majordomo and nntp.
Yeah, so far I fucking love lemmy! Open source software for the fucking win!
Fuck yeah!
Similar. For me it’s almost a drop-in replacement for Reddit, while mastodon not really
Well yeah but they’re two different things.
Lemmy is a forum like reddit.
Mastodon is microblogging like twitter.
Even then i think twitter works (or used to) because of the algorithm that kept you getting more content, which mastodon doesn’t have (nor shouldn’t) but with content agregators as long as you are subscribed to stuff that interests you you only need to hit a certain number of users for content to keep flowing.
It’s the difference between subscribing to subjects rather than to people.
That’s interesting. I always hated the algorithm on Twitter and just wanted to see and interact with stuff from people I followed. I can get that with Mastodon, but also see other posts from the community when I want to.
At first I wanted a one-service social solution (think Twitter and Reddit and Insta wrapped up), but, for the reasons you listed, the fed is great because it’s not trying to be a one-service solution.
Yeah, Mastodon was half a clone at best. Still, it has potential to turn into something better.
I do too. Mastodon is great software, but I’ve never been much of a user of the micro blogging format. The Reddit/hacker news format has been my preference for many years.
Same for me and I have to say, I’m really liking it here so far! The community is of course smaller, but it’s still large enough to be engaging and the users are nice so far.
This does feel a lot like the reddit I missed, only better. I will also agree that I find myself more likely to engage here, versus reddit where I exclusively lurked.
I used to engage on Reddit a lot, then towards the end of 2015, I left. Started a new account in the beginning of 2020 because Twitter became a hot mess and needed something different.
At first, when I returned, it seemed ok. Started to engage and wasn’t pleased with the results. Been lurking for quite awhile now.
The last 2 days here have been a breath of fresh air. Feels like reddit 10+ years ago. I have found new communities with ease (using chrome on my phone vs an app) and finally am posting my first comment. I posted an article earlier this morning.
Posting on here is more compelling than Reddit ever was.
I also think there is an early adopter effect going on. Reddit is so massive that unless you are posting in niche subreddits, it always felt like yelling into the void.
Yep, Same here! When things went south with Twitter, I tried switching to Mastodon, but after several months, I haven’t become fond of it. Its interface is so terrible and difficult to navigate. When I heard of Lemmy as an alternative to Reddit, the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Oh, please don’t be like Mastodon…’ and I’m glad that it is not! I like the fact that it is kinda’ similar to Reddit (interface-wise), but at the same time, it is decentralized, which means it is (hopefully) going in the right direction.
If your issue with Mastodon was mainly the interface, maybe you could try using a third party app like Tusky. Mastodon’s own app isn’t great, but when using Tusky it’s quite nice.
I was never a fan of Twitter, but I use Mastodon quite a bit. Both for following news and projects as for just posting random crap. I never used Reddit much either, only read when it would come up on an online search. But Lemmy so far has been nice, if not a bit silent. I’ve got good hope for it.
I think Mastodon’s community isn’t really up to par with what most Twitter ditchers were expecting.
The Reddit-Lemmy exodus however, is far more exaggerated because of the tremendous number of users on third-party apps that were being killed.
This probably led to a lot more content generation and activity which makes it a lot more welcoming than Mastodon was.
I guess the problem is mainly, as someone mentioned, Twitter is for following, Reddit for interacting.
The fact that you have to look for people to follow or you’ll have an empty timeline together with the fact that many famous people aren’t on Mastodon makes the switch more difficult for Average Joe than Reddit to Lemmy, as this kind of SNS doesn’t require specific people, just people.
I wasn’t using Twitter for anything but customer care, so as long as I could find some interesting instances and tags I’m fine there. I didn’t switch, just joined, so nothing to miss that I had before.
I guess in that way, Meta has been smart to give their Mastodon-based SNS first to populair influencers before releasing it to the public. Altrough I can imagine Meta’s version possibly getting blocked everywhere due to privacy concerns tho.
Thanks! I will give Tusky a try then.
I would also try fedilab. Though I never used Twitter and Mastodon seems to me like a slightly odd rss feed of pictures and news, and a bunch of stuff in languages I don’t speak.
Mastodon is so confusing to use, and almost none of the people I know use it. Even a few who joined after my recommendation have stopped using it. I’m not sure what type of user Mastodon is targeting, but they have certainly failed to attract long-time Twitter users like myself. On the other hand, Lemmy has the potential to become a refuge for ex-Redditors, especially after today’s AMAs by Reddit’s CEO.
Agree completely. I think people just like this format better also. Some link to discuss and gather around.
Yea, I found Mastodon useful for news, albeit completely random non focused news. It gets updates (I assume by bots) way more than the news subreddit did in the last few years, and now I can just post one of those links into lemmy if I want to talk about it.
I also see pictures on there a lot, but I’m not super interested in a lot of them. I have no idea what the commenting is useful for there - it’s seems like yelling into a void, though maybe that’s the fedilab problem? IDK.
I feel that. I thought it was just me, but it was so hard to just connect to any other instances outside of what flowed in the timeline. When I did it just took me to the website instead of integrating with the instance.
Trying to keep up with the Federated timeline was nauseating, but it also fruitless adding every person with an interesting post.
It sucks. I just don’t like the Twitter format.
That’s absolutely true. I mean we can’t even search for a word on that platform. It’s so ridiculous that only hashtags, usernames, or URLs can be looked up!
Yeah, it is limited in surprising ways. It is just not fun to use. I do hope it keeps evolving and overcomes these annoyances. Still, I am grateful something that matches my speed exists.
I’m from Mastodon and trying Lemmy to explore more of the fediverse, liking it so far too 😃. My Mastodon feed is almost all politics so I’m liking the different content on here.
Ug. Yes. Politics is important and inevitable but ultimately exhausting to look at. Just impotent yelling across the ether.
An analogy that I have been using is that politics is like linguistics. It is useful to study language in a granular way from morphemes to phonetics to syntax to discourse analyses, and everything in between. The structure of a language is fascinating, it helps to discover its relationship to other languages, and it can reveal profound things about the cultures that would otherwise be lost.
Yet, studying linguistics does not make anyone better at learning to speak, read, write, and understand other language. It does nothing for fluency. Nobody learns a language to only talk about the language, they do it to connect to other people or to experience art and media in its original form.
Political discussion is not action, by itself it does nothing to improve the world, it only serves to bias us and disort reality.A person can only hope to be inspirational and change the minds of the prejudiced.
… sorry for rant there. I have way too many opinion about politics for someone who does not care to see it either.
it only serves to bias us and disort reality.
Ehh, i mean it definitely does do that, but political discussion is also important to guide action. We can see plenty of political action that gets nowhere and does nothing, because the people instigating it do not have a solid theory of how political change is accomplished. Political discussions are how that understanding emerges.
That being said the internet, especially platforms like mastodon that encourage short posts, is rarely the best place for productive political discussion.
I admit I am being closed minded here. I just cannot see having a beneficial discussion of politica with all the hair triggered reactions and noise.
Fuck, it used to be that the anonimity of the internet empowered people to be piss-stained jerks. Seeing all the hate and ignorance put to faces is overwhelming. People think free speech means they are entitled to others people’s attention and personal lives. I do not need to participate in that shit, and I definitely never want to look at it.
Personally, I need to be more informed about political theory. There does appear to be an optimal way to things for effective action. I want to be useful in making the world a better place.
