Maybe it’s because the content here just isn’t as vast. I’m nkt going back to reddit for awhile, but there’s so little to see on lemmy to me. Despite numerous subscriptions, I see very few memes and far too much political content. Of that political content it’s all the same. Sometimes this place feels like a hive-mind. Not that Reddit wasn’t, but it depended on the sub. Now it’s shaped by instance and everything here just feels stale
I quite like beehaw and their communities, and yeah, you’re missing out on those if you’re on world, from what I understand. (Fairly sure they’re still defederated.)
I personally like lemmy.ml, but I know it’s not for everyone, and the admins would prefer to keep it a smaller instance, I think. I’m only here because there weren’t as many federated servers three years ago when I made an account.
You also might check out !196, they flood my feed with good memes.
Kbin doesn't have an api yet, so apps aren't supported (there are some in the works though for when the api goes public). In the meantime, you can install the pwa through a browser.
The PWA is very decent for a basic browsing experience. There are a few in the works, most notable being Artemis which is now in public beta I think. It uses the new Kbin API which is also in beta.
For now, the app can only be used with the artemis.camp instance, but soon Kbin.social and the rest Kbin instances will use the API and be usable with the app as well. It is inspired by Apollo btw
So just like reddit 14 years ago when I first left Digg for greener pastures. When I joined, it was years before my local city subreddit sprang to life, and for years, it had around 1000 active accounts and only now has over 10k accounts.
Man, if the people on reddit back in the day had sat around complaining about lack of content like this, the site would have died. Instead they started making fucking content.
It takes time for communities to grow, and it feels like a lot of the folks who left reddit only ever knew reddit as a ready-made-community filled with thousands of people already. As in, they were latecomers and missed all the slow growth.
Well, considering we are in a post about the userbase shrinking maybe the situation is not quite the same.
I also don’t have that kind of time and energy to get a whole community running just for the kicks anymore, and I definitely do not appreciate to have the deficiencies of this place thrown on my face as if that’s my responsibility. It’s not exactly welcoming or motivating.
Well, considering we are in a post about the userbase shrinking maybe the situation is not quite the same.
Reddit admins literally ran bot accounts to fill content on reddit and make it seem more active at first. The users who came from Digg had similar complaints, and reddit userbase fluctuated at lot in the first few years. It’s actually exactly the same (minus the admins using bots to make it seem more active).
I also don’t have that kind of time and energy to get a whole community running just for the kicks anymore
I see very few memes and far too much political content.
This is what is turning me off from lemmy, worst of it I see a lot of shitty political memes, it wasn’t this bad at the beginning of the reddit exodus.
And then there isn’t seem to be a neutral instance, I was in world and then they banned the piracy community, I moved to lemm.ee and all I see is stupid hexbear posts, I appreciate that they don’t defederate willy nilly but Lemmy urgently needs the block instance feature from user level.
In the meantime there are some apps that “block” instances. Connect has it, but it doesn’t fully block the instance, more like it shows up in the feed with a content warning that the message is from a blocked instance and you can choose to view it if you want. I also do think lemm.ee will defederate from hexbear pretty soon. The admin has had personally horrendous experiences with their users and that meta thread about it was a dumpster fire of hexbear users making unrelated political comments and blocking the actual instance users from having a discussion. It got locked at almost 2000 comments so I’m sure he’s still digging through that toxic waste to make his decision.
I think the default activity sort is part of the problem. Sorting by activity means everyone is just looking at and engaging with the same topics for 24 hours or so. There needs to be some “hot” category or something so that new stuff gets churned through a bit more regularly. New is too new, top is even more stale, activity causes things with high activity to stay high. It makes for very samey content.
Have they finally fixed this to not show old posts out of nowhere in the “Hot” feed? I’ve been avoiding this sorting because of that and hadn’t read anything about it being corrected… yet.
In my experience, Active and Hot have been opposite extremes of freshness. Active shows posts that are more than a day old, and Hot shows posts that have no comments and are just a couple of minutes old.
Not to say it’s all bad. Your post was just a couple of scrolls down on my feed.
Not that Reddit wasn’t, but it depended on the sub. Now it’s shaped by instance and everything here just feels stale
Been saying this for months. No one seems to understand what made reddit grow, and it is ironically very much like /r/place when you get down to it:
Reddit was a singular canvas that all users worked on together. Posts, comments, and voting shaped the site as a whole. The front page of Reddit was the result of it’s userbase, and it’s userbase was diverse. Because Reddit forced all users, of all backgrounds and ideologies, to exist together in the same space, and work on the same canvas, it created something living and varied.
You may not have ever gotten along with people from a certain subreddit in th comments, but I promise, the two of you worked together at one point to get a post to the front page or a comment to the top, and you didn’t even know it. Thos little moments where diametrically opposed people shared a liking of something by how they voted. On the surface, everyone bickered. Under the hood, they were all unknowingly agreeing and cooperating all the time, and that was what powered reddit’s engine: it’s diverse userbase’s activity.
That’s why gated communities like Tildes and all these curated instances will never reach Reddit levels: they are starving the engine.
That’s why gated communities like Tildes and all these curated instances will never reach Reddit levels: they are starving the engine.
The phrasing here kinda implies this is a bad thing and everyone should be focused on 🚀 constant growth 🚀.
Tildes in particular has an extreme focus on quality over quantity and has some really interesting ideas on moderation (that haven’t been implemented due to lack of time on Deimos’ part). The site is still considered an alpha after all this time.
As I said in a comment below, I would like this to be a signal for interest groups to choose one of the dozens communities they have, stick to one and make it grow.
Looking at gaming or books, always seems detrimental to have the . world, .ml, .sh.itjust.works and so on with the same content posted everywhere.
But just remember: Some of those people that are not staying are the types of people you wouldn’t want to interact with anyway. If the roughly 10k people who quit were Nazis (for example), it’s a good thing.
Yeah, I tend to think that most of the people who left wouldn’t be valuable members of the community anyway. Maybe they’re too impatient to deal with software that isn’t fully mature, maybe they can’t deal with the fact that most Lemmy instances are somewhere between leftish and outright communism, or maybe the somewhat chaotic nature of the fediverse turns them off. Whatever. I hope they find something that suits them.
I also hope, for their own sake, that the “something” doesn’t involve going back to reddit.
Right. Everything negative about Lemmy is being turned into a positive for some reason. Truth is this is still a difficult concept for a lot of people to get on board with and the overall reliability of instances leaves much to be desired. All we need to do is continue to contribute and see what takes off.
If the stats are accurate then this is not necessarily due to people being unhappy and leaving as both comments and posts are still stable - indicating that the lower active count are lurkers, duplicates or otherwise non engaging accounts.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if duplicate accounts are a part of this but that seems like it would be a natural part of growing pains for lemmy. The way the fediverse is built would suggest that people who are serious about long-term participation may bounce around a bit. For example, I joined in June but in that time I still managed to test out two other instances before settling on a third that seemed to strike the ideal balance between admin policies and reliable uptime to suit my needs.
The reason I’m still here instead of there is that I absolutely can’t use their official app. I just can’t. It’s so awful. Lemmy isn’t perfect but at least it isn’t that. So I do spend less time doom scrolling and that’s probably good for me.
Client as in app? I go back and forth between Connect and Voyager. They both have some benefits and drawbacks but overall I really just want something super simple and plain. I used RIF for so long and it was just to the point and functional. I never had a single issue with it. The lemmy apps will improve though. They’ve been developed fastly and furiously (haha) but it usually takes a little more time to put something together that’s really good.
First impression is that the UI isore customizable and I can get closer to RIF which looks way better to me. I haven’t even logged in yet though but at first glance I don’t hate it. I guess I need to check liftoff too though.
I used Reddit Sync for about a decade before switching to Infinity for Reddit, tried giving Sync another go after the Lemmy version released and it just felt wrong whereas the Lemmy fork of Infinity is a joy to use (and is FOSS)!
There is a middle ground between “infinite doomscrolling” and just barren. I miss a lot of communities I used to browse on Reddit and they aren’t taking roots here. Losing more people isn’t a good sign.
A variety of fandom and franchise-based communities, some artistic communities, some more specific sub-communities like Patient Gamers which exists but it’s pretty slow.
Same here, I actually have a much healthier relationship with social media when on Lemmy vs Reddit. That might change as Lemmy grows in user content but for now I’ll enjoy the quieter experience
Tbh it did affect me, I had just joined and it was out often, & it seemed like a hassle (being new) to find and join new instances or w/e especially when I had to create a new account for every one. Didn’t necessarily think it was trash just buggy and unreliable especially for that to be happening during such a big migration (after Reddit changed the api’s)
Idk it’s nice here but that did reduce my usage. Something that I’m new on being down for a day or two means I’m less likely to use it the next day and incorporate it into my daily routine
You probably figured it out by now, but you don’t need to create a new account for every instance. You can just go to www.yourinstance.com/c/[email protected] and comment or subscribe there.
I think a good third of what I have typed or posted so far on Lemmy has never succeeded as submitting them would cause it to stop responding and never compete. Refreshing will bring the page back up and allow me comment, but it’ll not work most the time.
Their downtime has been pretty severe… growing pains, I get it, but it’s not just that.
After several attempts at retyping it all, then trying to copy and paste to try to post again just got to me a bit. It’s taking a lot out of me as I’m personally struggling in life to try to communicate with people, with it being flakey all the time, it’s feels like when you have to repeat yourself, then just give up.
It’s a shame because I wanted to post in me communities, but I couldn’t. I keep seeing “View reply” on my comments, but they frequently never load or just vanish. I do wonder if they’re broken/incomplete replies.
You are definitely right that it’s not that common an occurrence on the other instances. But yes, I should have clarified these issues are with lemmy.world.
And at the beginning everyone was worried about “Eternal September”. It’s only been two months.
People will come in waves, instances and communities will grow and die, just like how it was on reddit, we’ll probably start seeing meme/politics free or even more specialized instances soon. But all of this is going to take time.
The turning point will be when companies/websites start spinning up their own Lemmy instances as their official one to replace their forums, which I think will happen.
So, being on Lemmy is a long term investment for me.
Hopefully this works out, gotta get that first mover advantage in, then Lemmy’s only real celebrity will be recognized as the marketing genius that she is. :)
I like Lemmy better when it’s when it’s nicer and quieter a month ago honestly.
Yeah, so that’s why I’m expecting way more alt hopping and defederations and people splitting into smaller groups soon until everything finally settles.
One of advantage of the fediverse honestly that it prevents powertripping mods, since it’s so easy to move to another community on the same topic on a different instance with different admins and mods, and while a person can be banned off a particular comm or instance, they can’t be banned from Lemmy as a whole, so reputation matters a lot more right now when everybody kinda knows each other here.
No, they’re the mod of an android comm on here so obviously not her. I think the roleplayers from back in the LiveJournal days are showing up here cause you can still grab newish usernames to impersonate someone.
The turning point will be when companies/websites start spinning up their own Lemmy instances as their official one to replace their forums, which I think will happen.
I don’t know if this is going to happen, and to be honest I hope it doesn’t. Lemmy is not designed to be a forum and shouldn’t try to be used as a replacement for one.
Lemmy is a link aggregator. Yes it can serve a lot of (if not all) the functions of a forum but it’s not designed to be a drop-in replacement for something like Discuss or phpBB. It’s different enough that I feel like calling it a forum is not the right term.
Id say finding the latest comment is harder here. Sure, its not that hard when looking post replies. But comment replies? They can be nested, pretty much buried behind the “See more replies” button.
Oh i wouldnt say its worse at all. I prefer nested replies all the way. Regardless, i still wouldnt say lemmy fits the forum format, again due to the way you access the most recent replies.
In a forum thread, you go to the last page and youve found the latest comment. In a Lemmy post, even if the nested comments arent hidden, its not obvious at first glance which one is the latest comment.
Also, if you “bookmark” a forum thread, youll get notified of any new replies in said thread. On Lemmy, you can check the latest comments from an entire instance or community. But not for a specific post.
Again, id never phrase lemmys format as worse, for i greatly prefer it. But i wouldnt consider it a forum. It simply displays the information diferently
I’m getting pretty tired of the obvious “Big tech company bad, Twitter dead, Linux good” bias that Lemmy seems to have. It’s definitely decreased my usage over the last week or two. I guess it kind of comes with the territory given Lemmy is a more complicated platform that will naturally attract more tech-oriented users, but it’s still getting super old seeing the same flavor posts every single day.
Yeah but it’s like screaming into the void sometimes. You just hope more people somehow discover the community. A lot of my interesting communities are pretty much dead now, so I just subbed to a bunch of porn and get on here once a day to look at boobs.
Opinions definitely feel stronger on lemmy, with a sense of judgement roaming around. But, for what it is worth, I found it lead to some actual discussions that I rarely find on other sites.
The biggest issue for me is the stale posts keep showing on my feed. Either the posts are too old, or it’s too new with low engagement. I think the sweet spot for me is when a post is in its 1/3 of its lifecycle. Already got a discussion going but not too far that I can’t engage meaningfully.
What’s annoying as well is that if you browse Everything, there’s bots reposting stuff from reddit at the same time, so posts from certain communities are all clumped together.
Add Firefox in there and yes I’ve seen this everywhere. So many posts about browser news or the web that just devolves into a circlejerk about how great Firefox is.
I get it with the others, but given what Google is currently trying to do with Chrome and the open web, I think the Firefox evangelism is the least sinful of these by far. Or maybe I just became part of the problem.
It’s not inherently bad, I don’t even disagree with it. It’s just that (A) we all get it, enough already and (B) the open web is about letting people use whichever browser they want, so it’s kinda paradoxical that we all say we should all be using the same browser
It’s not even that these evangelizers think we should all be using the same browser. It’s that there are currently only two realistic choices: Chrome (and it’s derivatives) and Firefox (and it’s derivatives). There is safari too, of course, but it hardly compares to either in it’s current state.
Given those two choices, only one of them is in support of the open web. The other is literally trying to add DRM to the web.
As to your first point: I agree that here it may be preaching to the choir and that we all get it. But it has such a small marketshare, I’m not sure it is good for those encouraging it to be quitened.
There is safari too, of course, but it hardly compares to either in it’s current state
Curious to hear you elaborate on this. It’s the #2 browser by marketshare and Apple, while slower in the past, seems to be hearing developer feedback and catching up to what we’re asking.
Switching between “Active” and “Top [1h/6h/12h]” at different times of the day has provided me with enough content & interactions to make Lemmy my new home. I always was a lurker on the old site, no comment nor post, not even an account. Now, I’m slowly trying to break from this habit. Being on Lemmy feels like I’m not shouting in the void; when a platform gets too big, you get lost in the crowd. It’s always nice to see recurring usernames on different communities.
I’ve been following the stats closely. There were actually several times that the active users ticked down and then ticked up the next day, the most recent being September 19/20. But I suspect that may be a statistical artifact, whereas the increase on September 28 is legit. It looks like about 1000 new accounts were created/became active on that day.
User attrition has slowed significantly in September compared to August. We should stabilize somewhere in 30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year, which is not too shabby. We are unlikely to see another big wave of growth until the code is significantly more mature, but the current userbase is fairly well established and self sufficient.
I can’t wait until we get that next wave so we can have more sports fans and humanities types, but you guys are alright for now 😅
It looks like about 1000 new accounts were created/became active on that day.
I remember @antik mentioning similar numbers, so that’s probably this.
We should stabilize somewhere in 30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year
That’s what I foresee as well.
so we can have more sports fans and humanities types
Discoverability of those communities is probably the first issue to fix. I tried to address it a while back, maybe I should do another one of those posts: discuss.tchncs.de/post/2410183
Same. Using Linux and FOSS for over 20 years but that Boost announcement thread was toxic. We just started removing those comments and banning them from the community. Those people don’t see those 1000 people that came here thanks to boost will now more than likely come across Linux and Foss related subjects anyway. No need to push it down their throats and push them back to reddit.
Honestly there are people doing this because they know it annoys people.
Ofcourse there were people calling me a “poweradmin” because of it, but I have thick skin 😁 And a large banhammer 😏
30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year, … current userbase is fairly well established and self sufficient.
I see it differently. It looks like the majority of communities struggle with not enough content/discussions, many de-facto are blogs of mods/creators where others are passive subscribers.
It looks like the majority of communities struggle with not enough content/discussions
This is true, but also subjective. How do you define enough? Enough to doomscroll or enough to check for 10 minutes daily? All we really need to be self sufficient is enough content to keep people coming back regularly, we don’t need to replicate reddit.
many de-facto are blogs of mods/creators where others are passive subscribers.
This seems like an exaggeration. Most communities that have quality content also have quality discussion, in my experience.
This is true, but also subjective. How do you define enough? Enough to doomscroll or enough to check for 10 minutes daily? All we really need to be self sufficient is enough content to keep people coming back regularly, we don’t need to replicate reddit.
Right, this is subjective. For me the main criteria is: if I want to get an answer to a question, especially a non trivial one which is not releated to lemmy/fediverse - I should better go to reddit. And I think lemmy should better replicate reddit with this
This seems like an exaggeration. Most communities that have quality content also have quality discussion, in my experience.
Probably, can you give me example of such communities which are not about fedeverse, technology, foss or memes?
For me the main criteria is: if I want to get an answer to a question, especially a non trivial one which is not releated to lemmy/fediverse - I should better go to reddit.
You’re not wrong, but I don’t see why Lemmy would want to replicate reddit in that respect. You don’t need to spend any time on reddit or even make an account to take advantage of that functionality. You just Google your question and add reddit to the end and voila.
Probably, can you give me example of such communities which are not about fedeverse, technology, foss or memes?
I also skipped the gaming and political communities because there is an absolute boatload of that content on Lemmy, as I’m sure you’re aware. These are some communities that I am subscribed to that jumped out as being fairly active.
You don’t need to spend any time on reddit or even make an account to take advantage of that functionality. You just Google your question and add reddit to the end and voila.
I was talking about asking my specific question, not googling for information.
Thanks for the list - agree - these communities are are rather alive, what is promising.
As I said a bit lower in this thread, on Lemmy World we recently switched the default view from ‘local’ to ‘all’ for the new sign-ups. But it might be a good thing to do this once, for all existing users. Ofcourse with a proper announcement and an explanation on how to change this to ‘local’ or even ‘subscribed’. It might give communities on other instances a bit more exposure as well.
Sounds great. I mean, given the size of lemmy.world it sure doesn’t hurt it and it will certainly distribute more user attention to smaller communities, which will hopefully activate smaller communities from remote instance, which will in turn make the overall conversation quality on lemmy better.
Excited to see whether it will be a noticable effect but I would think so
Did you notice that the Average Lemmy Comments by Day looks really weird? Some of the sudden jumps could be attributed to real life events, but I’m more inclined to think there’s something buggy going on with the way three numbers are logged. Besides, there’s also a sudden dip!
It always dies down after the initial hype. It seems pretty stable now. Compare it to pre-exodus and it is still like hundreds of times more popular then before.
Yeah, still we lack variety because our algo doesn’t do a good job of promoting smaller communities. I’d like a lot more niche subs get more popular rather then our few dozen or so that have gotten big, which is still a good thing don’t get me wrong.
I feel that you underestimate how stubborn I can be with low effort comments. I’ve been making off color, not particularly funny attempted witty comebacks on BBSes, the Internet, and then the World Wide Web for longer than… Oh, it’s been since the early 90’s now. Lemmy is the latest stomping grounds and I’m not giving up here just yet.
I do not think people understand. Lemmy is not going to become a forum guzzling behemoth like Reddit. Nothing will. The userbase will expand over time, as people on Reddit start getting fed up, and at some point there will be a combination of aggressive censorship (if IPO goes through) and privacy intrusive authentication. Many hobbyists do not like it, and are only quiet because they can make unidentifiable accounts, even if it requires official Reddit apps or websites to access.
People do not even understand how platforms work. Lemmy has become a non-mainstream, sane platform with federation that is not a shithole like any other previous alt-right failed Reddit clones. There is plenty activity for what are initial days, as users figure out the signup part and the cultural differences between Lemmy and Big Tech social media like Reddit. As a long term Reddit user, Reddit has been becoming shittier by the day, and is largely used due to decades of valuable posts and comments, and niche hobby communities. Ones that exclusively use frontpage are worthless audience and overlap hugely with Tiktok and Instagram users.
I think this is a fundamental property of social media. It’s a basic catch-22 - you need new users to attract new users. Sometimes a seismic shift will occur like the migration from MySpace or Digg, but neither of those websites were as big as any of the big social media sites are now, so the gravity well wasn’t nearly as strong.
People will just normalize the new anti-user features and get used to them.
It’s a basic catch-22 - you need new users to attract new users.
This is the best thing about federation.
If the Fediverse became really popular and I created a new alternative to Lemmy/Kbin that was significantly better than both, it would be way easier to gain the momentum required to become a real player in the field compared to trying to compete with Reddit when most people aren’t in the Fediverse yet.
Yeah people act like Reddit has some inevitable death date because Digg did, but the reality is we are getting further and further away from a time in which a big social media entity actually DID die. I mean people say Facebook is old and washed but it’s still growing in users and has been non-stop for over 15 years. The only one that has died since the end of Digg was Vine, and that was partially just because its owners didn’t really care about its fate anymore.
The only one that has died since the end of Digg was Vine, and that was partially just because its owners didn’t really care about its fate anymore.
Vine was killed by facebook & its regulatory capture. Otherwise it would’ve killed facebook and we never would’ve gotten tik tok (for better or worse).
FB, the gram and now twitter are dying. Just because they still exist doesn’t mean they’re not on their way out. Anyone with accounts on the first two can tell you that the number of active users on their feeds has been the same people for 5-10 years and are dwindling (and the feed of the third is lmao since boosting paid user content). Their traffic numbers might look fine but that’s because they lie about those numbers and they make it impossible to delete accounts.
Most importantly, it’s been 15 years since any of these companies couldn’t get free financing. Often a focus on profitability results in misplaced user-hostility over short-sighted moves, which is what killed a lot of companies in 99 and again in 2007. We just haven’t had a financial climate that requires it since. Hilariously this climate would make it a perfect time to take twitter private to push it past the other two and tik tok but it got bought by the worst failson the world has ever seen.
Don’t mistake still existing for not being dead. Digg.com still employs dozens of people, that doesn’t mean its been a useful link aggregator for the last 12 years.
I dropped off because I am unbelievably sick of seeing the same thing posted across 20 different communities. No matter which sort I am using, my front page is CLUTTERED with the same crap.
There should be an option for communities to form unions between them of some sort, or at least a client-side option to combine communities into a single big one
Never really had that issue. Are you referring to you sub feed or all? If the issue is all maybe start blocking the duplicates that you deem unworthy of your time.
The lack or rudimentary algorithms lemmy has compared to corporate social media is both good and bad. Less dopamine/doom scrolling but you also have to curate the feed a bit to make it work for you.
Pretty sure it’s going to just be like 12 of us. If the third party app thing on reddit didn’t drive users here, unfortunately I don’t think anything else will. At this point if you are already content with the reddit app it’s going to be a hard sell to say, yeah come check out Lemmy, it’s like reddit but if you have a question about your sick betta fish instead of getting a helpful answer in a few minutes, you need to first create a betta fish community, then go back on reddit and recruit users to your Lemmy community. Post content on it daily to maintain interest, and then, if you are really lucky, ask your question and wait a few months and maybe if your fish is still alive (doubtful), you might get a response, but it will probably be just be an anticapitalist shit-post. I’m sorry to say it is this way, but this be the way that it is.
Hexbear has been very active for 3 years before we even federated. There’s plenty of room for growth. We’re not going to become reddit (and that’s a good thing) but acting like it’s just going to die (or is already dead) is just ridiculous
Hexbear has become a cesspool. Not exactly a great example to aspire to. I actually wish we would become very much like Reddit used to be back in the day. I very much enjoyed that experience and want it back. I’m sure plenty of others do to. Im just disappointed that it seems much more likely that Lemmy fizzles than soars. I can’t emphasize enough how big and bad a deal the stripping of third party API access to reddit data is. I wish more people felt more strongly about this beyond posting pictures of John Oliver. Not sure if you are old enough to remember when high quality RSS feeds were a thing, but this direct access to data that users could custom curate was amazing. When you take control of how users consent data, you start to take control of the users. Lemmy has immense potential and at face value people are largely fed up with being manipulated and taken advantage of by internet giants, but most are clearly not fed up enough to leave their comfort zone. Spez and the others are well aware of this and happy to take advantage. It takes a ton of effort to keep something like Lemmy afloat. Just like a new restaurant, if after a few months it’s not taking off, it’s pretty unlikely to do so with more time. I hope I’m wrong, but the Spez nonsense was a huge gift to growing Lemmy, and in the grand scheme of things the effect was quite small.
Hexbear is an aggressively inclusive space full of thoughtful people who are passionate about making the world a better place and educating their fellow man. If every online space were more like hexbear we’d all be much better off
I actually wish we would become very much like Reddit used to be back in the day. I very much enjoyed that experience and want it back. I’m sure plenty of others do to
Oh yeah back in the good old days of /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots and /r/sexwithdogs
Lol… so inclusive wanting to bring down America, listing out a bunch of people you’d love to get rid of (anyone you consider bourgeoise), unyielding fanboying of China…
I think the overall Lemmy experience has gone downhill since hexbear federated. I also think seeing the propaganda posts constantly hitting the All feed will drive people away. Are there even any non-political hexbear communities? All I ever see are anti-is and pro-China posts.
I still can’t wrap my head around being so pro-trans rights (a fabulous thing), yet in the same breath simping for China. Not the most stellar LGBTQIA+ record there.
Everything is political. We have comms that we don’t consider political, but you would still consider them political because you would rather they cater to your politics rather than ours. We have !games for example, but because it’s not a liberal comm you would consider it political.
I still can’t wrap my head around being so pro-trans rights (a fabulous thing), yet in the same breath simping for China
You’re literally professing your support for trans rights and simping for the US in one comment so you must be mega confused
We have comms that we don’t consider political, but you would still consider them political because you would rather they cater to your politics rather than ours. We have !games for example, but because it’s not a liberal comm you would consider it political
This sounds like treating politics like religion. No thanks.
I still can’t wrap my head around being so pro-trans rights (a fabulous thing), yet in the same breath simping for the USA. Not the most stellar LGBTQIA+ record there.
I live in the US and it’s pretty bad for LGBT people here. I don’t feel the need to cheerlead US interventions because they have a coat of rainbow paint.
Good for you! They cloak not only in that, but in Human Rights and Democracy. Yeah, right, sure Sleepy Joe. :-) My gay daughter hates Putin and loves the war because Russia doesn't accept homesexualtiy. I think that's a very poor reason to go to war, especially when the raesons stated aren't true. It's colonialism all over again. Russia has all the raw materials and rare earth metals that the west covets.
> I live in the US and it’ pretty bad for LGBT people here. I don’t feel the need to cheerlead US interventions because they have a coat of rainbow paint.
“What if they invaded, pillaged, and coup’d the countries WE were going to invade, pillage, and coup! Can you imagine the tragedy?! Better that us, The Good Guys, exploit these countries than The Bad Guys!”
I still can’t wrap my head around being so pro-trans rights (a fabulous thing), yet in the same breath simping for China. Not the most stellar LGBTQIA+ record there.
Yeah, it reminds me of the behavior found on 4chan. A lot of the things I’ve heard about hexbear - someone made a mega post about their userbase and how it’s filled with trolls, just lines right up with 4chan type mentality and pushing contrarian ideologies that are meant to put people in an uproar - like ragebaiting.
And then all hear from hexbear users is this creepy rhetoric about how they’re free thinker with ideas or some shit. Sounds like what Jehovah Witnesses say to get people to join their cult.
I am critical of China and I’ve never been attacked for it on Hexbear. It’s ok if you approach topics in good faith and have nuanced arguments rather than just “CPC evil”.
Personally I think wanting to destroy the American state as it is today and historically is actually very inclusive.
how come everything I hear about hexbear sounds like 4chan though? Like there even seems to be mimic of the 4chan lgbt board mentality coming from hexbear users.
You think collectively antagonizing, using “libs” in a derogatory form and calling others “imperialist running dogs” constitutes as defense and not toxic behavior?
Calling out imperialist running dogs isn’t toxic. Just like being aggressively anti-racist isn’t toxic. If a person upholds capitalism, which is by nature exploitive and anti-egalitarian, they are toxic and deserving of rebuke.
So as long as they don’t ideologically agree with you it’s acceptable to be toxic towards them, because their “wrong ideology” makes them toxic?
Are you also aware that most of the proletariats unknowingly uphold capitalism? Considering you say they’re toxic are you against the proletariat or are you a fake socialist trying to create a class divide, the ones who agree with you and the ones who don’t, within the proletariat?
if you asked questions in good faith, you’d know that the community is also aggressively welcoming to such people, even when we disagree. but you don’t so you won’t.
Let’s forget forget about the rest of our discussion and focus solely on the very first response you wrote to me. Based on that response I could’ve applied that same thought process you just described, decided that you’re here in bad faith and respond in the way Hexbear users tend to reply. And all this current discussion wouldn’t have ever happened because based on that response you’d believe I’m here in bad faith and responded in kind. In fact that way no discussion would’ve happened.
The way we communicate is prone to errors and misinterpretations. It’s why I’m focusing on your your first response because it’s an excellent example of miscommunication. You used “you” which implies it’s directed at me, but in a later response you clarify that it wasn’t directed at me. Thus discussions require a certain level of benefit of doubt, because it’s actually very easy to misrepresent what was said and just as easy to misinterpret what was said. I gave you that benefit of doubt and we seem to be having a rather civil discussion. And I’ve already somewhat explained what would’ve happened if I hadn’t given it. That benefit of doubt is crucial if you’re wanting to discuss in good faith, because you need to give a chance to correct miscommunications.
And that’s why I think the thought process you’ve described is a bad faith thought process, because it doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt. At least that is my general experience with Hexbear users. Someone says something disagreeable in a manner that could be misinterpreted in the way you described and it’s very rare to see a Hexbear user give the benefit of doubt. Instead you see, well everything here. One guy says Hexbear is a cesspool and seemingly only one of you gives him some benefit of doubt, the rest very much troll, antagonize, make snide remarks etc. The vast majority of you responded in the same way you’d claim someone else is responding in bad faith. What if he previously had a miscommunication that Hexbear users didn’t give benefit of the doubt either? He gets piled on in a manner you’ve described as bad faith. With those bad faith responses he now believes you are all acting bad faith, hence the cesspool remark. And what is the response he gets? More bad faith responses from Hexbear users because the vast majority don’t give him any benefit of doubt.
You think others act out in bad faith so you respond in bad faith which makes others believe you act in bad faith which prompts more of you to act in bad faith. It’s a a bad faith feedback loop. Genuine question, what’s the goal of such behavior?
my first response was directed at you. the second was not. I was answering the question you asked.
Genuine question, what’s the goal of such behavior?
to apply adequate pushback to erroneous understandings of the world. the goal isn’t to convince the interlocutor. it’s to encourage the people reading to investigate the topic. on many of the topics in question, the history and ideologies involved take entire books to deconstruct - doing so in an internet comment is extraordinarily difficult. the people we’re talking to don’t even agree with us on the meanings of basic words - there’s not even a basis for debate. because such debate is so unproductive, the aggressive tone encourages many people to stop and ask more serious questions. this undoubtedly works because so many of the posters on hexbear responded in exactly that way here or on reddit at some point in the past. and when they asked those questions, they got detailed answers, including links to sources so they could investigate for themselves. in actual fact, many of the people on hexbear received exactly the kind of aggressive pushback you’re decrying and ended up eventually convinced that our viewpoint had something to offer.
and as point of fact, when someone starts asking questions, we’ll tell each other to stop treating them so harshly cause they’re acting in good faith. that courtesy is not extended to people who continue down a path of antagonism. nor is it offered to someone who devolves into racism, transphobia, or other forms of bigotry. one of the benefits of the aggressive approach is that it encourages so many bigots to immediately out themselves.
lastly, civility is not an unmitigated good unto itself. civility is the false peace – it masks tensions, pretending they don’t exist. real peace is not civility – it’s a state in which tensions are brought to the fore so they can actually be resolved. civility is a white, middle class sensibility – our world is incredibly fucked up and the people affected by it do not owe anyone that masking of the horrors of our world. nor do we owe anyone an education they will neither ask for nor appreciate.
to apply adequate pushback to erroneous understandings of the world. the goal isn’t to convince the interlocutor. it’s to encourage the people reading to investigate the topic. on many of the topics in question, the history and ideologies involved take entire books to deconstruct - doing so in an internet comment is extraordinarily difficult. the people we’re talking to don’t even agree with us on the meanings of basic words - there’s not even a basis for debate. because such debate is so unproductive, the aggressive tone encourages many people to stop and ask more serious questions. this undoubtedly works because so many of the posters on hexbear responded in exactly that way here or on reddit at some point in the past. and when they asked those questions, they got detailed answers, including links to sources so they could investigate for themselves. in actual fact, many of the people on hexbear received exactly the kind of aggressive pushback you’re decrying and ended up eventually convinced that our viewpoint had something to offer.
Maybe at one point but if recent events are of any indication that is hardly true anymore. The reason these defederation threads prop up if your aggressive presentation made people inquisitive. It’s an indication that people respond negatively to such behavior. And I’m inclined to believe people respond more negatively than positively because the responses I’ve seen about subject I know about have been less about making people inquisitive and more about just throwing in their face that they don’t understand something the same way you do without explaining anything.
lastly, civility is not an unmitigated good unto itself. civility is the false peace – it masks tensions, pretending they don’t exist. real peace is not civility – it’s a state in which tensions are brought to the fore so they can actually be resolved. civility is a white, middle class sensibility – our world is incredibly fucked up and the people affected by it do not owe anyone that masking of the horrors of our world.
I disagree. Yes, there’s no space for niceness as you need to be ready for conflict to test your ideas and beliefs. But it doesn’t mean we should completely disregard civility. Are you really going to take me seriously if I call you shitstain in this post, bitch lover the next, steamy turd the next etc? I know I wouldn’t take anything you say seriously if you came with such disrespect. Similarly I have no problem trolling the living shit out of you, but that already means I have zero respect for you or your beliefs and nothing you say or do will even get true critical examination, outside of how to better troll back. I could easily derail this discussion, drag you down into shit slinging contest and then sling shit until you stop responding but that’s pretty far from civil discourse and not at all constructive. Discourse needs to have some mutual respect and if none is given then none is received, which means the discussion will go nowhere. The world is fucked but slinging shit between eachother doesn’t really unfuck the world.
nor do we owe anyone an education they will neither ask for nor appreciate
And this is probably where we completely disagree. Your stance is that nobody asks or appreciates it so we shouldn’t give it unless they really ask. I believe we should give it regardless because it’s still a chance for them to open up to something new. I would’ve never familiarized myself with Das Kapital if not for someone else explaining to me that Marxist understanding of “capital” is not the same as “capital” taught to you in school. Had someone told me “How did they get the fucking money mf?” I would probably still believe capitalism is not that bad. Explaining socialism to someone who won’t listen doesn’t take a piece out of me, so why should I act like it does? To me it’s a net positive. If someone listens and becomes a socialist that’s good and if someone doesn’t listen then really nothing actually bad happens because as you said, the world is fucked regardless.
So as long as they don’t ideologically agree with you it’s acceptable to be toxic towards them, because their “wrong ideology” makes them toxic?
Think about this in the context of, idk, race science or something. Let’s say you have someone who is openly a big fan of Charles Murray, owns a copy of The Bellcurve, gets the whole nine yards. Would you deny that such a person is necessarily toxic?
Actually, without any other context, I would. I would label them as misguided. Just because they believe in what I believe as the wrong thing doesn’t mean they’re automatically toxic. If they’re unwilling to even consider alternate perspectives or decide to just be antagonistic then they’re toxic.
So if they come in swinging about how they “don’t deny” that black people are genetically less intelligent and say that their opposition is either propagandized or propagandists, that would tilt the scales for you?
We might be running into a Nazi Bar, paradox of tolerance type issue here. If you treat him that way, there’s a fair chance that he’s just going to use the opportunity to propagandize to whoever will listen.
Right, being in a federated instance isn’t lurking. Glad we agree.
And no I don’t, I’ve had a few meaningful discussing with some true leftists but most of y’all only have a knee jerk reaction available to criticism. You end up pushing near-allies away for lacking your dogmatic devotion, seemingly to xi? As you have a bunch of photos of him saved?
You should come to Hexbear. Have a real look around. Not being a fan of NATO bombing (like Yugoslavia) or puting children in cages at concentration camps at the border, doesn’t mean someone is a dogmatic follower of China. But they are far better that USA, that’s for sure.
But come to Hexbear, let’s challenge years and years of western indoctrination. And we also have an awesome colletion of emojis! (or, as you call it, “photos”).
Summed up my feelings too. Reddit’s larger communities were trash, but for really specific questions, it was unbeatable. Not to mention the fact that most Lemmy pages are either tech-related or tankie propaganda. There’s very little in the way of active hobby/lifestyle boards so unless you’re in either a nerd (non-derogatory) or a communist (derogatory), Lemmy’s not got much going on for you
There’s very little in the way of active hobby/lifestyle boards so unless you’re in either a nerd (non-derogatory) or a communist (derogatory), Lemmy’s not got much going on for you
There’s a bunch of really niche subs I used to be on. Finding info on some of my old cars has been a bitch since I cut out reddit but it’s taught me a lot about self-reliance haha
Well, i am here directly due to reddit policy changes. The loss of a viable mobile option forced me here. I can’t believe I am not an average case. I am enjoying this experience so far and will definitely spread the word. But i will continue to use reddit on the computer… I am surprised that there are only 60,000 of us here though.
Long time hexbear user, I’ve actually had pretty good luck getting input on non-political questions. No sick fish, but I’ve asked quite a variety of questions and gotten help. Maybe I would have gotten a higher quality answer on Reddit, but my experience with modern reddit (last 6ish years) has been hit or miss. Reminds me in a way of the forums I used back in the really 2000s. Even though the forums I was on were primarily oriented around tabletop gaming, the “general/off-topic” sections would have quite a variety of people and interests. And those people, since they all had a common interest, were far more talkative and generous with their time than what I’ve experienced in Reddit. IMO this makes up for the smaller population. Hexbear has that vibe for me, just with a non-sectarian socialist shitposting focus. Which works for me.
Just came in from reddit, so from a newbie point of view so far so good, altho the content and users are not as expanded as reddit i think its a matter of time. people are haphazardly looking for alternatives and the only reason people stay is because of the interaction. I for instance immediately tried looking up the threads i was subbed to reddit as well. Its there just not as big and ill gladly trade it in instead of dealing with reddit any longer.
Be the change! There was a community dedicated to rail enthusiasts in my city that I really liked on Reddit, and it’s not super active here but I’m doing my bit and trying to get something posted everyday. It’s taken a bit, but the people have come!
Also I think it’s one of those things where there are actually people there but nobody knows what to post, or is worried they won’t get any engagement. My experience is that there’s actually a lot of people that just subbed to the communities here that are similar to subs they liked and then either forgot about it or again, don’t want to be the only one talking
Yeah absolutely agree with you! When people started “protesting” in the absolute most hypocritical ways i knew it was done (people joining /place out of “spite” was an absolute joke to me)
And in my experience only 2 types of people roam reddit now, the ones who dont give an ef (and thats fine) and the people who complain but secretly don’t know they are in a unhealthy relationship and just stick with it because thats all they know and just like to complain.
So id we all put in a bit of effort in it itll be just as big as reddit.
There are many fatal problems on Lemmy, worst of all is you can’t click this link /c/books and see every /c/book on every Lemmy instance of the fediverse. This is out of convenience to moderators and it is killing Lemmy. One people figure out communities only exist on a single instance, the promise of federation is broken and they fuck off.
Very good point-a way of connecting communities on Reddit that seems fairly innocuous but is actually a massive means of the “transmission” of users between communities, allowing users to find communities they like quicker and thus making them more likely to stay.
Propagation and agglomeration is a problem for clients not servers. Server only need to propagate a “we have new stuff” message and it’s up to the clients to pull it and cache it. In any case, users should be able to click /c/books and see the content of all /book/ on all instances in a single location. Unless most users can do this with one click, there will not exist a fediverse wide community.
“multireddit” are nice to have but they do not address this problem Which a common view for all user of an entire community across the fediverse. “Multireddit” require client to pick and choose individual communities. This means less than 1% of users will every use it. This means there will never exist a fediverse wide community around topics.
There is no way for a user to block whole instances, there is no way to know if you’ve been banned from a community or instance, it’s extremely easy for people to evade bans and blocks, you can’t make private communities, armies of extremists are brigading other instances and they’re exploiting Lemmy’s flaws to do it, the list goes on and on.
Lemmy blows, but give the rubes time. They’ll figure it out.
That’s a trivial problem to fix client side. Same as any regular spam filter. If Lemmy gives that power server side to be moderators instead of clients, then Lemmy will become a North Korea style dictatorship like Reddit.
There’s instance-wide blocking on the Connect for Lemmy app, including the option to block everything or only block the communities of that instance and not users. You can make a private community by not federating with anyone on a private instance.
does this also block comments, or only posts? Sync has a similar feature, but only for posts, once inside a post you’re still subjected to their comments. Which for troll communities is honestly the worst part
Connect for Lemmy has an option for blocking both. The comment still shows, but as “blocked by filter”, which hides the content until clicked on, and can be re-hid.
IMO ideally there’d be two separate options. I want to block stuff like foreign language instances or some niche instances so that I don’t see communities hosted on them, but I don’t want to block the users from those instances when they post in other communities.
Those are just cop-outs. They need to be hard-coded features on the original Lemmy app. If we have to rely on third-party apps for it, we can and should just use another fediverse app entirely.
They don’t but they get aglomerated together anyway for having the same name . The community is the whole, which specific instance is hosting a particular /c/book post doesn’t matter. That it is on /c/book is what matters, not that it is on Lemmy.world
But just because !books hypothetically exists doesn’t mean !books or !books have similar enough content. You can already view these communities from any instance. You’re essentially trying to apply something like federation on top of something already being federated. They can all have very different rules and different content.
If people have to hunt each post storage location individually, then it will be as if they don’t exist to 99.99% users. What will happen is there will be one big one, and they most likely be all on the big instance, and federation becomes just a weird thing that does nothing because functionally that will be just like Reddit. Centralized servers, centralized servers under the control of a tiny priesthood.
Not at all. Reddit has communities that are similar but with different names, rules, and culture and different people use them because they want different experiences. The same is true here.
The crucial difference is that those are differentiated by having a unique name, note a unique hostname. Which hard drive a community is stored should not be considered an important aspect of that community. It only specifies who is allowed to delete and edit content posted to that harddrive
That’s like saying everyone that lives on 123 Main St is the same regardless of the city or everyone with the email “Bob” is the same regardless of what their email provider is.
Lemmy has nothing to do with email. I’m sick and tired of this incorrect analogy being used to explain how Lemmy works and people stubbornly not understanding why it’s broken because of it.
If you think it through, what you’re asking is that the communities will exist only on one server. That’s Reddit with extra steps.
Goober, I am literally not asking that and yes this is very similar to email. My home instance is programming.dev. We are both still talking. I did not have to make an account on lemmy.ml to respond to you here. I did not even have to go to lemmy.ml to see or respond to this post. This community does not “exist only on one server” by any means.
Yes because we’re in a server default subscription. A server decided list of viable communities, probably a list shared across the fediverse. Again a gayekeeping system by the system elites
We are in the !fediverse! community, only big one that exists.
It’s double centralization. This is recreating Reddit.
You’re moving the goal posts, you’re talking about default subscriptions being a problem now. That’s totally different. And besides, it wasn’t on my server and yet I found this.
lemmy.fediverse.observer
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