Does Fediverse even have what your friends want from a social media? Even the answer is yes, share that content with them and hope they will be intrigued. Unfortunately, the most likely is no in this case. Fediverse is only good for like five topics and everything else is "too niche".

It would change if we had more people on here but the problem is, Fediverse just isn't appealing to most people. They don't care about decentralization and open-source. What they do care about though is algorithms and low barrier to entry - and neither need is fulfilled by the Fedi.

We are truly the Linux of social media haha.

I'd say so, yeah. Either implement algorithms and deal with the consequences or design something that would make discovery of new content as easy as seeing it appear in your algorithmic feed, while avoiding all the problems that personalization brings.

Same. I had my new Bsky account suspended for using a VPN during the registration. I sent an email to their tech support explaining the situation. No response, account was never recovered.

I guess I'm not welcome on their platform lol.

Drama and gossip is fun.

Drama is fun until admins start defederating each other or mods start splitting communities...

Also FOSS just kinda attracts big arrogant personalities

That was my thought also. Communities (in general, not Lemmy-specific meaning) focused on Linux are also often drama-filled. Maybe that's just how FOSS communities are.

It might be it. The contrasting alternative spaces I have in my mind are mainly focused around hobbies rather than politics leading to less heated atmosphere.

Yep, it's accessible through the UI when you're viewing a community's feed, to the right of the sort type chooser.

Should I only ever talk good things about this place?

they can reproduce (they expel gas clouds on death that can eventually create new stars)

I wouldn't consider being eaten by a pregnant predator who then gives birth to be a form of reproduction even if I supplied resources to the born creature.

they can grow and change size over their lifespan

So can oceans but I don't think it should count as growing.

It was primarily from my time on the microblogging side of the Fedi tbh. Although here on Lemmy drama happens a lot too but I avoid getting invested into it. The latest drama I interacted with on here was the whole "defederating from Threads" thing. It made me leave all social media for months lol. Since then I focused on talking about games and stuff on here and never touch any drama again.

In my experience, the best way to ask about unpopular (here, on Lemmy) stuff is to make a post in a generic community. Discoverability sucks here and not many people are on here too so niche communities are often deserted.

So, if you make a post on popular lemmies like this one, you have better chances to receive a helpful response. I'm not sure how the situation with writing communities is, maybe they are active enough to be of use for you!

I do prefer Lemmy to commercial socials even if I don't vibe with most people on here.

For Threadiverse specifically, I blame the laser focus on negativity on here. So often do I come across a comment that makes me think "holy shit, this guy really shouldn't doomscroll right now". It doesn't need to be a political sub either, I find them everywhere. Sometimes I feel like the whole platform was tailor made for doomscrolling. It's wild, I don't see it anywhere else where I've been.

Lemmy in comparison to all other online social media including the rest of Fediverse. I mean, the times are tough and people are angry for a reason, there's rage and despair everywhere but no other place is so entrenched in negativity as Lemmy.

Big socials also have lots of negativity but they are BIG: you can find so much stuff that you can completely ignore what is probably 50+% of the content on the platform.

Small socials, on the other hand, manage it surprisingly well. I don't know why Lemmy can't manage the negativity under control, to be honest. No other small social media I visit has a problem with not drowning in doom. My one theory is that the other small socials have a focus: creativity, technology, some kind of media, etc. Maybe having a common interest in such a tight knit community is a remedy to doomscrolling?

It would also explain why pre-APIcalypse Lemmy wasn't nearly as toxic - the flagship instance was focused on technology.

I won’t take credit for this idea. It was posted on r/worldbuilding but was nuked by the mods for “asking for content”, as usual only after lots of interesting discussion.

OP: "I consent"

Other worldbuilders: "I consent"

The mod: "I don't"

My first thought is that such a scenario would lead to a rise of fascist governments as nations urge to prepare to fight back. These fascists invade their neighbors in hope that they could gather an equal army... somehow.

When 6 months pass and no aliens show up, the fascists whose entire existence was justified by this imminent threat start spreading disinformation about the aliens' message to ensure that their populace still believe in the promised invasion.

Eventually, the fascists exhaust their reserves (and their lies) and the War ends. The broken moon is forever associated with fascism and a conspiracy theory spreads that claims that the fascists themselves crippled our moon.

Reminds me of the emojis I made when I was learning LibreSprite.

Yours are much better though!

It's not. Reread the comment you replied to. I'm not talking about what happens on bsky at all.

I avoid it of course. Unfortunately, whenever Fedi drama leads to a defederation, a split of a community or an active user being bullied away from the platform, it comes to my attention when I try to learn why did it happen.

I never thought about Lemmy's communities as one of the reasons for the combative attitude that's so common here. Although, I disagree that Mastodon and Reddit are less affected by it: Reddit definitely had serious fights between subreddits and they stopped being so prominent primarily because of Reddit's heavy-handed moderation. Mastodon, on the other hand, is defined by defederations (which are worse than on Lemmy) and since visibility depends almost entirely on the amount of followers (tags are rather unpopular on Masto), groups form naturally around popular users whose boosts are the main way to be seen.

I can totally confirm that Lemmy users are susceptible to tribalism - just for the amount of times I heard that someone being called a fascist/tankie/lib because they are from a certain Lemmy instance. And I know I think this way too sometimes.

you can just quietly leave?

And who said I want to leave huh?

Ironic, considering the name