expired

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.

Same, same. If I follow 3 high-volume posters on mastodon or twitter, there goes my entire day.

I prefer to follow topics / communities, not people / celebrities.

Thats my feel as well. The whole idea of small text blurbs that arent conversational and not grouped by topic never really worked for me. It also just feels too personality driven, where large accounts are what gets major precedence - I prefer when a small account or whatever can make a great post that gets a lot of attention.

I can already tell the Lemmy is going to fit me a lot better than Mastodon, even tho I did enjoy that for a few months

Yes! I remember A LOOONG time ago when Twitter was just beginning, and the articles about it were very confused about how to use it. It was described like a kind of social telepathy, where the sharing of thoughts brought about a quick intimacy with strangers. Now it is just a playground for corporations and narcissists. Well, I suppose it was always like that.

Yeah, and I don't like Twitter threads with their character limit and using multiple post to make 1 message. It looks stupid imo.

The real discussions are really limited by this concept, and it makes reading those a chore.

Agreed. I think a forum-like interface is much more apt to allow interesting and rewarding discussions. Never liked Twitter's interface either, I only think it's good to spread announcements and the likes, which benefit exactly from that "person yells at cloud" idea :P

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?

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!

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 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.

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.

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.

I'm currently using Jerboa (edit: Android). Seems pretty good but I've only been here a couple hours. Have you tried it?

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 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?

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?

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.

True, I also think lemmy is the main star of fediverse (peertube too) because they don't need network effect qnd milions of users.

Problem with reddit is it got too big l, similar like youtube, it always recommending me videos with milions of views and I don't like them - they are professionally done and trying to sell me something.

I just want to watch random people sharing their thoughts and hobbies.

Right now we don't have that part of the internet, but looks like it is comming back.

Mastodon needs to absorb a critical mass of the users who drive content on Twitter in order to be a viable replacement. A Lemmy community only needs enough members to keep itself fairly active.

For sure the main appeal with Twitter was the direct communication with celebrities and other notable people, or at least some fascimile of interaction. It did a lot to close the gap between the famous and their fans/denouncers.

Reddit had some cool AMAs, but otherwise it was just regular people dedicated to their interests and passionate about sharing it.

What really disgusted me was how easily a few people could hijack a sub and make it their business platform to sell products.

It is important to have spaces that are completely insulated from advertisement and all the facets of capitalism.

You can follow hashtags on Mastodon. You can also follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon! Search @<community>@<instance> (ie @fediverse@lemmy.ml)

Every celebrity is an agenda. The agenda is always to make money.

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.

lol, yeah! I hated posting an even slightly unpopular opinion on reddit. Just downvotes and insults returned.

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.

Fuck yeah!

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.

You should take a look at this instance: https://fedibb.ml/

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.

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. Major doom and nntp.

Yeah, this micro-blog approach is so one-sided. Some people want engagement, but most people are only looking for agreement.

It is a bit numbing to let an indefinite amount of people have "access" to you. I get annoyed whenever I have anyone text me more than once at time. I am not interested in everyone who is aware of my existence, so I hate the attention. Nor am I necessarily interested in every inane thought a person my have even if I really like them.

Still, Mastodon is really good for making friend, so I don't think it benefits me to ignore it completely, but it is foolish to think I will ever find a balance. Like any relationship, strangers or lovers, it is paramount to set up boundaries.

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.

Well yeah but they're two different things.

Lemmy is a forum like reddit.

Mastodon is microblogging like twitter.

Yeah, Mastodon was half a clone at best. Still, it has potential to turn into something better.

I love that you can follow PeerTube channels from Lemmy. This user influx on Lemmy could mean big things for PeerTube.

Can you explain? how do we interact with mastodon here for example?

Thank you!

I think this is absolutely the case. I've noticed that after migrating mastodon instances and losing my hashtag follows that my home feed has improved significantly. Unfortunately this is extremely counter intuitive. I would love to be able to see a particular hashtag exclusively from the people I follow. This brings up another problem with mastodon and that is that development has been incredibly slow. I suspect threadiverse will not have this issue due to the popularity of tree-ed forums among programmers.

I have never liked Discord. It is like IRC with more steps, more surveillance, an excess of security features that doesn't actually make anything secure.

I should give Element another chance. I think I had it before, but I was confused on how to find rooms.

Matrix is a company too, expect enshittification there too. Use XMPP if you want actual freedom

Now we just need Matrix to join the fediverse 🤷🏻‍♂️

I rely hope it takes off like Mastodon did. Like everything worthwhile online, its the efforts of one person doing miracles to create something everyone can use, so if I want it to exist I will have to contribute to it somehow.

I felt kind of lost when looking for a Reddit alternative. Lemmy feels like the right alternative. It's not perfect but it's a better base than what we had with Reddit. I hope it picks up.

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 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.

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.

That sucks. If asking for a feature ends up with hostility from the developers, it is not worth your time and attention.

People share a lot of useful information that can absolutely make life better if it was shared, so it is insane anyone would be against search. Search is the most important technology on the internet, every large website needs it.

The number of companies owned by Metaface is so stupid. People really do give up their privacy for money, or in the case of Instagram, to quench their thirstiness.

It sucks that the draw of Facebook is still such a primal one, connecting with people and getting that gossip. None of that is worth its continued existence.

Real friends are in your contacts list, not on a website.

Interesting people are not interesting all of the time, and following people usually just results in your feed loading up with complaints, gossip and drama.

I want to talk about things and ideas, not people.

Big same here man big same

I've been following hashtags on Mastodon, and that has worked pretty well for me. Still, it's not the forum layout that I enjoy, but it's still useful.

Well, that is when looking at the federated timeline, which is basically breaking open the dam and hoping to catch something cool before I drown.

if you're on a major instance the federated timeline should have close to everything not specifically blocked. it's a flood of stuff tho

Just checked out Kbin from this comment (and signed up) - the functionality definitely feels better. I love that I jumped straight into this same thread immediately from the Kbin homepage. Federated content is awesome.

I will check that out! One of my confusions with the fediverse is that I thought having one account would allow me to access all the services, and the account acted as a kind of "base" through which I did everything. I now understand that federation basically happens at the application level, or really at the administration level, and how many services the community provides for any given account.

What I wanted was to avoid having to create so many accounts for everything the fediverse offers, but I guess it is not possible, and honestly is no different than having separate accounts for any other online thing I participate in.

I'm not quite sure how exactly everything works but it seems like a lot of things on kbin get thrown to /m/random, does anyone know what's up with that? A lot of communities from lemmy show up as a 404 and posts end up there.

To me, it seems to be the most "reddit-like" of the options out there. It pulls from across the fediverse so it has content from Mastodon, Lemmy, and whatever gets posted locally on kbin itself. While not perfect, it is being actively worked on so I'm really hoping it'll get even better.

I literally just posted that in r/RedditAlternatives to answer the question, "Where would you go?" lol

I've had the exact same experience as you lol.

Your instincts are correct! The internet I loved was a library or a coffee shop, not some corprate franchised mega store trying to take your money at every opportunity.

Websites used to be art, exploration was like fringe theater, where you and the author complete the performance.

I hate getting advertized to, even if it is something I want and have been searching for.

I am glad you caught the best of what the internet used to be, and have not been indoctrinated to the worst behaviors, or become too jaded to seek out something that does not disrepect you.

This all still reminds me of Usenet, nntp before it was ruined by spam. I would love an nntp client like thing for this. I can bring the data to me once per day. Efficient, I don’t need to linger more than necessary.

I love how cool this is. Imagine being able to read and comment on a Reddit thread from twitter and Facebook and have it all work seamlessly and visible to all parties. That's literally what this is and that feels amazing to me

High Five from across the universe!

Good point. As much as I want to love RSS, I do not like. I always find awkward somehow.

Maybe I just need the right app, but nah, I prefer the news when someone I like is excited about it.

Where do I go for the Zelda memes?

That tracks. I think bird app started out as a great resource of experts sharing all the cool things they know, but it quickly became a game of who can get the most followers, which is the most banal and pointless thing a person can do with an account.

R app was always more idealistic, but somehow contained all the bad parts of bird app like it getting flooded people by people trying to sell you themselves or their crap.

Yeah, I think I will subscribe to Zelda memes too.

Yes, and those conversations can go on indefinitely, which is the beautiful thing with forums.

https://lemmy.one/post/1600

This whole thread is super useful.

The FOSS site it !foss@beehaw.org

Yeah, it super fun! It is the internet I miss.

E.g. !linux@lemmy.ml, !freesoftware@lemmy.ml, !opensource@lemmy.ml

I'm on an instance where that never happens.

Mastodon, like Twitter, suffers from the cult of personality. A few people get all the attention and think they get to dictate how things should work.

Mastodon does not need to be like Twitter, and it is a good thing the creators are not programming in all the faults like thought-shaping algorithms and automated censorship. These entitled idiots need to cool it or build their own program that works like they want.

mastodon servers usually subscribe to a generic block list, and have sensitive moderators that are even worse than the ones you find on reddit. it creates a boring feed that scares off new users and kills any differing opinions. its annoying that something with so much potential is stomped on like that. im glad i found a good pleroma server. still like the mastodon software better though.

Wait, the fediverse Isabel to cross the platforms? I had not picked up on that. I thought the fediverse was an IAM thing. Is it more of an ESB?

Okay, this is a lot different than my previous understanding of the Fediverse. I know it all connects, but it is more profound than I realized.

I have a lot to learn! I need to learn how to audit a server to know if I want to be part if it.

I like the idea of each service being a unique lens over the same information spread across the network.

It feels a lot like the internet promised in Lain Serial Experiments than what we ended up getting.

Yep. This is more my pace as well.

True. A space like Lemmy (or Reddit) is always valuable because of the sheer amount of information that gets shared. I am really loving the thread on FOSS recommendations; there are some awesome projects I had never seen but definitely want to use.

I've said before, there's a preference for filtering of normies from primarily Mastodon servers that i don't see on other fediverse servers like Lemmy and i hope that means we'll be able to effectively capture the Digg moment.

It would be amazing to see a pro-user regression from the progressing venture capitalist changes to Reddit

The sheer negativity is unreal sometimes. I know the world sucks right now, but there is no virtue in being miserable all the time.

It is so strange that people so readily share there personal issues, practically demanding sympathy, and frequently a donation.

I have no interest in spending all my time comiserating with others. I like to be happy, and I like positive people.

Mastodon has benefitted from news articles and the sheer novelty of an alternative to Twitter, even before Elon Musk bought it out.

Lemmy probably won't have the same fanfare, especially given the stigma Reddit has, like it was a secret to have an account, or talking about it betrayed you as some weirdo or pervert. Whatever, Reddit never seemed to have the same social acceptance as Twitter or anything Facebook owns.

I think it is good to have a community that is self-filtering. Let's keep the IQ high on this one (with the exception of me, of course!).

It really sucks. Using a service run by a bad actor is tantamount to supporting and condoning the actions and viewpoints of those people, even though people don't actually think that way.

Anyways, I did feel like Reddit was something special, even with all the dumb changes. I am hope Lemmy becomes a new, better home for you.

Mastodon is exponentially better than Twitter ever was. I just need to rethink what community I want to be with and find the best instance.

Sounds like a cool future. I like it when my world expands.

Hell yeah. I love books and I hate everything Amazon touches.

I think I am just so lazy about creating and managing many accounts, but I owe it to myself to explore all of the experiences.

I agree. I absolutely hate any feelings of urgency. Social media, all media, should be completely voluntary. I do not like being rushed, and I want to establish my own expectations of me.

How much misunderstanding and thus violent argument has been produced due to low effort responses?

I never to figure out how to navigate the fediverse from here!

High Five from across the 'verse!

Nice. It is comforting that the people running the platform are conscientious and have made a guide so the transition is as smooth as possible.

I have tried to go back to Mastodon, but I have not found an instance that makes me care enough.

You are right, it is brilliant. The hegemony over a word or phrase is ridiculous, and it made discovery a pain in the ass. I love how federation naturally resolves the name clashing issue, letting multiple communities live side by side.

There is no competition, just different levels of participation.

I will check it out! I am familiar with Stux, or just their name I guess. I initially thought that I would be happy in a smaller community, but that is just means less active people to talk to. Thank you.

Maybe! A professional networking to connect people with similar principles would do a lot to improve the working world.

I remember going to my university's career center, hoping to get guidance on what kind of jobs to look for after graduating.

All the guy did was show me how to follow people on LinkedIn who graduated in the same field. None of them have advice, none of them know anything. All they can offer are tips on how to look "more professional," they have no idea how to help ohers craft a career.

We can't let corporations control our lives, and as much as we try to escape it through technology and our buying choices, there is no easy way to escape it with our jobs.

Yes, I think it is necessary.