With previous Rexit’s like the API debarcle etc. many users were left looking for an alternative, but with decision fatigue and bad UX etc. most did not find the Fediverse a viable option.
What needs to still improve, how can we be ready this time?
we need more hornyposting and leftist infighting
Let’s be honest, go to any left wing party and you’ll see most people are dating liberals hahaha
Many leftists started out as liberals, it makes sense they’d believe others could also change.
-signed, a vegan married to a butcher, so don’t listen to me lol (at least he’s a leftist)
My wife started out with tons of republican views, she just didn’t vote ever.
Through conversations about the state of things, pointing* out hypocrisy, and validating the feelings her religious family was telling her to suppress, I’m happy to say I’ve managed to marry a leftist. She didn’t even really have the liberal pit-stop many of us take.
I’ll take 100,000 leftists married/dating/whatever to 100,000 liberals over 200,000 conservatives any day of the week.
She didn’t even really have the liberal pit-stop many of us take.
Glad to hear I’m not the only one. Imagine my chagrin after years of rigorously checking the assumptions and programming of my conservative upbringing and converting to liberalism, when I found out that leftism and liberalism are actually different things, with a diversity of opinions and worldviews that I then needed to parse in order to determine where I stand…
This mentality where “If you weren’t born leftist and raised leftist and been leftist all your life and all your friends are leftist, then you’re fascist scum who needs to perish in the revolution” is doing incalculable harm to any genuine leftist movement.
more
I keep saying “We can’t keep alienating potential allies if we want to unite the working class” but they hit me with the “class traitors don’t matter / we don’t want to work with anyone who was formerly conservative [(as if anyone is to blame for their upbringing…)] / you’re just a fascist apologist who needs to die in the revolution too / only our flavor of leftism is true leftism and anyone who disagrees with us is fascist scum who needs to die in the revolution / if you don’t unquestioningly accept everything we tell you without any nuance then you’re an enemy of the proletariat and need to die in the revolution”
They’re really making leftism as a whole look bad, and they don’t even realize it. I mean, how can you claim to represent the proletariat while simultaneously claiming that 60% or more of the proletariat need to be executed as class traitors? It’s like they’re trying to conform to the caricature that the right-wing depicts “radical leftist liberal communists” as. You’re not going to catch many flies with that vinegar.
They’ll say things like “we don’t need help from fascist shitlibs” and other unironic and oxymoronic absurdities of that nature, but if you want a popular uprising then you’re going to need to convince a majority of the population that you’re all on the same team, otherwise you’re nothing but an authoritarian reactionary.
It makes me really not want to take part in their supposed “revolution,” especially when you see what the bolsheviks did to the soviets and anarchists after they helped them win theirs…
I feel like the split between leftists and liberals really isn’t that big at all, assuming the people being talked about aren’t diehards behind people like Schumer or are scorched-earthers. There’s a vein of liberalism that builds towards the same exact goals that are leftist in nature.
I see progressive liberalism for instance being focused on working within what currently is built out to get to those goals of helping people reach self-actualization and living stable lives without having to be concerned about if you’ll be able to retire, have healthcare, have childcare, housing, food, disease, or other common concerns.
Those are irl, whereas the toxic AF perpetually online among us here (e.g. hexbear and Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml) are likely not dating at all.
What’s the deal with lemmy.ml by the way? I know a few marxist-leninists IRL who, as you say, are quite normal.
Is there beef with that .ml instance on Lemmy? I’m new here as you can see.
Welcome to the Threadiverse! You will enjoy it here, once you find your peers:-).
Lemmy.ml only claims to be for marxist-leninists - for actual real ones you may prefer e.g. slrpnk.net or perhaps lemmy.dbzer0.com. The lemmy.ml admins are (in)famously authoritarian, banning people from communities that they’ve never so much as heard of due to comments made elsewhere, citing a rule that does not exist - nowhere is it written down, yet everyone knows that you are not allowed to criticize Russia, China, or North Korea (or not praise them hard enough?). Mind you, they are free to do as they please, but to enforce an entirely different set of rules than the publicly announced ones… yes that generates much friction across the Threadiverse.
The fact that they (both users and even admins) routinely celebrate murder of everyone who merely lives in a Western civilization (collaborators?) kinda puts most people off from them, and also aside from that, their communication style where your consent does not matter puts aside the rest. They famously brag about creating alt accounts to get around bans - for them no does not mean no, but merely that they have to get a bit more clever about their proselytizing. So yes there’s beef, but mostly despite what they claim, it is not mere political differences, and due more to their incel culture that is the leftist version of MAGA’s Alternative Right, upholding “alternative facts”. Plus in true echo chamber style, banning anyone who attempts to say otherwise, and also in general harassing people in other communities, with appeals to their admins to reign in their users falling on deaf ears.
If you are interested, see an absolute mountain of details in the !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works community, such as the pinned monthly megathread “Documentation of Lemmy.ml’s Extremism [Megathread]”, but you can also read other more focused topics such as “Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide” and “[Transphobia Warning] Nutomic’s Stance on Transgender People”, etc.
Personally I user blocked the entire instance, and have never once regretted that. You do not have that option btw, on a Lemmy instance (unless you use one of the rare 3rd party apps that provides it), you would have to switch to a PieFed instance to get that along with just an absolute ton of other features that Lemmy lacks but PieFed has had for months, and it will take Lemmy years and years to catch up, if ever. Also fair warning you do have something that claims to be a user block of an instance, but it is extremely misleading - to the point of disinformation even - as it merely blocks communities located on that instance while still leaving users on it to read, reply to, and manipulate the vote on your content, as well as to send you DMs, even triggering notifications, and there is no way to stop any of that. A better term than instance block would have been a community muting.
And just in general the level of discourse with people on Lemmy.ml accounts seems to be significantly lower - not always but by far it is generally the case, as the most toxic and generally batshit insane comments that you see tend to come from users on that instance.
So now you know!:-)
Wow, thanks for the effort post, I had no idea lol. I guess leftist infighting prevails even on Lemmy, but I personally do find leftist who think Russia Good because USA bad are cringe.
Anyways, can I ask you more about PieFed? It sounds like it’s another technology (which is my jazz ngl, I am trying to not get so involved in politics as I’ve been in the past, sorry for changing the topic so abruptly), are you saying PieFed can federate with Lemmy fully? That we can all interact here despite using (I assume) different technologies? That’s insane.
If there is an iOS app I’m all into trying it. Do tell me more if you’re willing to. :) and thank you for the warm welcome.
Yes PieFed can federate with Lemmy fully, although the reverse is not true since there are just tons of features present in PieFed that are lacking in Lemmy - a few that are relevant here are community polls, user and post flairs, and hashtags, none of which Lemmy can display since Lemmy does not realize that such things exist. There are also still yet another ton of features that are not as directly relevant to this discussion as well, but highly worth switching to use PieFed for, such as categories of communities, user-customizeable and shareable Feeds, the ability to choose whether to receive or arguably more important to cease receiving notifications for pretty much anything at all (comments written by other people, users, whole entire communities - this one most useful for low-volume and/or highly interesting content, or you may quickly become overwhelmed, and yet the notifications also allow you to separate the different types of triggers for them so even then you can still use your PieFed instance even if you are not fully caught up).
Both Lemmy and PieFed are different implementations of the ActivityPub Protocol, both - along with Mbin and some others (nodeBB, perhaps soon flarum, etc.) - are part of the Threadiverse, which is the subset of the Fediverse that is centered not on users as Mastodon or Friendica are but rather on topic-based (aka threaded) centered around communities of a particular interest, like Reddit (except fuck spez).
So Lemmy lacks entirely some post types that PieFed has, since it does not know how to render those (e.g. user polls), and for those types that do overlap, the PieFed version is usually a much-enhanced version - e.g. it collects together all comments across all cross-posts, so that you can visualize them all at once without having to keep clicking on each one individually. This really helps with discovering new communities that you might not become aware of otherwise.
PieFed also has a new user sign-up wizard that walks you through all the questions, signing you up to communities that you express interest in, and asking if you want any content filters, e.g. how many posts do you want to see with keywords like Trump or Musk - all, none (not perfect, e.g. that keyword filter will not block images of the topic in question), or just some. The problem of onboarding new users is entirely solved now with PieFed!
Here is the major caveat: PieFed is new, and while all of the above is available both via its webpage browser UI, and also encoded into its API for use by 3rd party apps, many of the latter have not yet caught up to implementing all of the available features. I don’t use 3rd party apps so I am not really current on that state, though I will note that even using PieFed as the back-end still offers strong advantages over Lemmy, even if the rest of the daily interactions are identical - e.g. PieFed offers the ability to block all users from an instance, whereas Lemmy only claims to offer that but… it does not. That said, note that the 3rd party apps don’t usually allow you to set up such features (yet), though imho having to visit the webpage interface rarely to set up each such aspect just once is not so bad, whereupon after that your app would continue to show the data being sent by your PieFed instance. Having vs. not having the feature in the first place is much more important to me than having super convenient access to it within a particular app of choice.
I am not the best person to ask for recommendations there, but I did enjoy Voyager when I was checking apps out, and it is the most popular one (also Blorp is supposed to be really good at integrating with PieFed? I’ve never tried it so I have no idea).
Definitely check out https://join.piefed.social/, and maybe start with https://join.piefed.social/features/. The devs are super responsive, amenable to feedback, and very active in communities such as !piefed_meta@piefed.social.
Whatever the reason may be - usage of Python + flask vs. Rust and having to customize all UI elements, or perhaps simply programmer skill - that allows significantly faster development time, PieFed unquestionably has the lead over Lemmy in pretty much all respects (faster, more stable, lighter-weight code, see outsider perspectives such as this one), except that ofc Lemmy was first and so has many more users. But again, you will see all Lemmy posts on an instance that runs PieFed, even though the reverse is not true. Case in point: I am on PieFed right now, while you are on Lemmy, and since none of those more advanced features are involved (like polls), this impedes us not at all. Likewise people could comment here from Mastodon, Friendica, nodeBB, etc. - for Fediverse content the absolute best experience will be had from using the software that is designed for, but others can work and I see comments from instances running those other software platforms in this community all the time.
Breathe in the free air of FOSS. No Algorithm pushing things at you. Yes in-fighting because we are humans (would you like to be forced to read MAGA content?), but this is a very different atmosphere from Reddit! You are going to love it here!
I wouldn’t recommend dbzer0. Since the AI purge, where many users who were critical that you can’t be pro-AI and anarchist at the same time were banned, the instance has been largely taken over by tankies. Even their own admins are self-proclaimed tankies, and all their popular users are tankies who have accounts on Hexbear. They’re, at the very least, openly a tankie bar.
Is that just some of the communities, or the instance itself, do you think? I thought their overarching tolerance policy was because they are anarchists, not actual tankies - like, would they be equally as tolerant of conservative viewpoints?
Anyway thank you for posting the link to learn more.
Lemmy.ml was created by the lemmy developers following the quarantine of ChapoTrapHouse on reddit. ChapoTrapHouse was the largest tankie subreddit and extremely toxic.
Following the development of Lemmy, lemmy.ml split into Lemmygrad, where Lemmygrad is where they hold their more extreme opinions and lemmy.ml is supposed to be the more presentable side. However, the users are largely the same. One’s mask-off, one’s mask-on.
they love CCP and russia for example in its current state. thier go-to instead of woke, is calling things 'shit-lib"
But those countries just have a sign out front that says “communism”, with little to no actual ideological communism taking place inside. Surely those alabaster pure ideologues seek out the Platonic form of perfect ideology, rather than this DPRK-like fun-house mask covering up an entirely different ideology.
Probably more NSFW instances? We barely have one.
I don’t think anyone actually wants the baggage that ecosystem comes with. Like, when it’s working well it has baggage. And you wouldn’t like it when it doesn’t run well.
I think so as well. Porn is available in abundance. We don’t really need it here. What I think could be nice is people who like to write erotic fiction as a hobby and post their original content. Or people discuss erotic computer games. Or like relationship advice and NSFW questions in case some country abolishes sex ed. Maybe talking about piracy, mental issues, loss… all the things that are deemed “not advertiser friendly” on commercial platforms. That’d be something positive. But it’s not easy. And it often all gets lumped together under some big NSFW umbrella and 95% of people want to share pron clips anyway. Mostly with zero care for copyright or the creators’ consent.
We need more content especially main stream topic and pop culture.
In the fediverse we have too much politics, lgbt, Linux and environmental topics. Don’t get me wrong those topics are great and should continue existing but your average Joe like other topics more.
Ready for a bunch of teens coming in and trashing the place? No.
Gatekeeping, nice.
Not normal teens either. The tiktok/ipad kid gens who developmentally missed the bus for normal critical thinking skills.
Get ready for sleuths of comment spam with only “Bro thinks” “crash out” and “Not that deep” lmfao
Teens will probably find a way to verify using fake info. It seems like it’s generally the old and jaded who are willing to dump things out of stubbornness.
As a new user (I started using PieFed 2 months ago), the UX can surely be improved, but I feel like the main issue is relative to how users are supposed to use the fediverse: I still don’t have a clue on how the fediverse works and how to use it properly.
And I’m motivated in learning to use it.
But for someone who isn’t motivated, it’s a huge “no thanks, goodbye”it’s weird that, because once you’re in it’s basically seamless. it’s just that first step of picking a server based on your interests that trips people up, because aren’t you supposed to pick interests after you get in? more national instances would probably solve that, i think, so you can just go to your local one.
I think we should just hide all of that complexity and just set defaults for everything that the user can decide to change if they want. You don’t have to understand how the Fediverse works to be able to use it. Most people don’t understand how email works, they just use it.
BlueSky has 40+ million users, and it’s also technically decentralized like the Fediverse.
aka. you can use the eurosky.social or bluesky.social server etc.
We need more cat forums.
As a sys admin with a lot of experience, I am still unsure how to maintain and update my lemmy instance. So I am revisiting again, but it seems like we need work on the lemmy docker containers and possibly docker-compose.
pretty sure PieFed is easier to host
Is reddit blocking VPNs now? I don’t use reddit anymore, but sometimes I search something on the web and like it or not, redditors in niche communities have good answers to uncommon questions. Definitely better than can be found on quora or other places.
But it doesn’t let me view them, supposedly because I’m using a VPN now…
If that’s the case, fuck spez and all corporate sellouts. Reddit used to be a mecca for freedom of association…
VPN is irrelevant here if you will need a government ID to access it, what difference does it make what country you pretend to be from
Are they already doing that?
No, the whole thing is that we anticipate them doing something
So VPN isn’t irrelevant yet, because they haven’t started checking IDs, is what you’re saying?
User experience.
It is frustratingly bad for people just wanting to sign up. The idea of creating a single account, tied to a single instance that may or may not be federated is a confusing concept when most places online now are centralized. Then you have to choose which instance you sign up to, then depending on the instance you may need to go through an application or some other hoops to finally have a working account.
Then you may later find out your instance is not the community you thought it was, may be un-federated from other communities you had wanted to engage with, or the instance just shuts down one day, you loose your account and have to start all over again. That frustration and confusion is enough to turn away most casual and less techy users.
Also, there are lots of apps to pick from, but never a de facto one. While not necessarily a bad thing (in fact it can be generally good!) it does not help with the issues laid out above.
Exactly. Getting my account her took a week. I had to sign up then go through an application process. Like I get it, it helps reduce bots and stuff but golly it’s a pain and the average user isn’t going to do it
lemmy.world is really slow at accepting applications, we should not be suggesting it for new users
but you’re fine to stay there since you’re already in
Well what do you expect when the entire community thinks everyone should sign up for Lemmy.world and make this place even more centralized?
Its really stupid, but thats what it is… Hey look, we have federated technology! Lets all go to Lemmy.world because its the largest instance and users dont know what to pick anyway, so lets just put them there.
Lets make another centralized reddit with federated technology!
Honestly I dont think federation even is a valuable feature. People just want to be where everyone else is. The idea is good, but people dont care about the tech, they just want to use their apps and enjoy the experience.
There are some small advantages to many instances but the trend is to not even federate with instances that you dont like, so… Lol.
IDK I think it works brilliantly.
It prevents the iron grip on users/content like Reddit/Twitter have achieved. Enshitification can be defeated by moving instances, which is way easier when it can be done piecemeal instead of all at once, users can move at will and not even lose their friends and communities. Lemmy.world is less than a third of the Threadiverse, and only like 1% of the Fediverse. Enshitification relies on slowly boiling the frog, but here with federation that would cause a slow bleed of users moving until there’s no one left in your enshitified instance. Finding alternatives is really easy and you’ll already be used to the software since there are other instances with the same software.
If the software tries to enshitify then the code can be forked, instance admins can band together to support the new fork. Or switch to a different platform entirely like PieFed instead of Lemmy. Or even just changing the frontend to Photon or something like that.
Is there any new development around this or are you just speculating? All I’ve seen so far is discussions about age verification for the UK, and most of the conversation was more about finding workarounds than leaving.
What needs to still improve?
The community here is what needs to improve the most. The majority here is hostile to new users and too prone to demand purity tests from everyone who is just thinking about leaving Reddit.
Reddit already requires it in the UK, afik.
But it’s mostly speculation form my side.
Reddit already requires it in the UK
Yes, and do we have any numbers about UK usage before/after the changes? Do we have any idea of how many people there:
- looked for an alternative?
- looked for an alternative and were not satisfied?
- looked for an alternative and migrated successfully?
And for those that were not satisfied, what was failing to them? Was the Fediverse so bad that they rather go back to Reddit, or did they just quit social media altogether?
The UK started asking for age verification ~5 months ago. That should give us more than enough data to take a look at this objectively.
Only way there is a mass rexit is if the bot accounts get fed up and leave.
Can’t say I’m looking forward to swarms of bot accounts descening on Lemmy
Lemmy is not capable of dealing with bots at all I believe
Decision fatigue? Almost everyone picks lemmy.world, and the UX is the same everywhere, specially if you use mobile apps.
Lemmy.world has about 40% of the pop these days.
Yeah there are like a handful of instances with 90% of the users.
Why is it not possible to have a sort of algorithm that ‘recommends’ an instance to each new user depending on which instances have less numbers?
Is that a bad idea?
That is how https://join-lemmy.org/ works now. I just got recommended thelemmy.club and in another browser it recommended lemmus.org
I just signed up, and it’s confusing. I used lemmy.world because it seemed like it was the only means to get my registration approved. It wasn’t clear whether or not this account can still view and interact with other “instances”, so I went with the website that had the largest userbase.
Yes, it can. I’m from Piefed.social.
I agree. This place feels dead? I’m sure I’m just doing it wrong. But, I downloaded Blorp, went to ‘Explore’, and the amount of 'subreddits ’ is so minimal. What am I doing wrong here? Lol
I’m the developer behind Blorp. The trouble with the threadiverse (a term that refers to Lemmy and PieFed) is it’s not tuned by big cooperations to get you addicted. That also means you gotta dig a little more to find the content you’re looking for. I’m happy to help direct you if you have questions!
Thanks for using my app!
