A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time.
And that’s just not bloody true.
Couldn't have said it better myself
Exactly! That’s how people usually argue against the Fediverse. People have literally been indoctrinated into believing the internet is centralised.
Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker.
Once that guy flips the regime will have hard time maintaining legitimacy
Americans don't understand the politics of proper opposition and dissent
Voting for the other guy ain't it... And it is a lot more than "politics" it is a life style.
Deny the parasite profit and engagement
Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker
I got a small dose of this at work. My coworker has a safety incident, almost fucked up her hand. She got made the safety champion the next day, and was concerned about the optics.
My lead told her "don't worry what they think of you" but brother you are a leader. Public perception is your strongest tool. You absolutely should be worried what we think of you
I don’t think it’s too complicated, but it is noticeably more complicated than joining traditional social media. People often get immediately freaked out by the whole concept of instances. I know everybody keeps trying to use the email comparison, but that just is not working. People cannot connect the dots between email and something like Instagram.
It would help to change the nomenclature. Joining a Facebook “group” makes sense to anybody. Change insider jargon like “instance” to seeker-friendly verbiage like “village.”
I remember joining reddit when it had the old interface and thinking that it is super unintuitive and complicated compared to all other social media. This didn't stop reddit from growing and i don't think lemmy will be restricted by this in the long run. People generally are just not aware of the fediverse and how it works yet but they will get used to it.
Reddit’s complexity was always vastly overstated. You can login and be posting in seconds in a way that you simply can’t with the fediverse
The only additional step you have on lemmy is choosing an instance and honestly it does not even matter that much which you choose. I'm not saying it's trivial but it is nothing that is inherently more difficult.
Reddit was really strange compared to everything else a few years ago. It only appears easy now because we are familiar with the concept of subreddits now.
You and I know this but people at first glance people generally do not. Then you try to explain to them how Federation works and their eyes gloss over.
I can grab anyone of basically any age and drop them on a computer/phone to sign up for Facebook for the first time and they will figure it out in seconds. Contrast that with joining Pixelfed which doesn’t even let people join the biggest instance anymore. I don’t disagree with their decision at all but the first thing people would likely tap just doesn’t let them move forward. Then a lot of the largest instances don’t carry much if any English content. Do you not see how that’s an issue for adoption?
Imagine trying to join Facebook and when you get through the multi step process everything’s in German, a mistake you made because the largest instance won’t let you in and you don’t understand instances in the first place. For most people that’s an issue.
What I'm trying to say is that every social network has it's quirks that you just need to learn. The willingness to learn also depends on how attractive the platform is. With time i see no reason for lemmy to not grow like reddit did.
If you just google "Lemmy" one of the first results is https://join-lemmy.org/ where you are directed to an instance that suits you. Far from perfect but Lemmy is still young.
People probably don't even really need to understand federation. They just need sane defaults to get started and work from there.
And what I’m trying to say is that the big dogs don’t have quirks. They are intuitive to the point where 98% of people can figure them out in seconds the moment they look at them. They have spent billions of dollars over decades learning how to create as little friction as possible to get new users onto their platforms.
There isn’t a single fediverse platform that is as easy to onboard new users to as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. There’s just no comparison.
Edit: I also forgot to mention earlier: some instances have defederated from major ones and vice versa. What instance you choose can matter an awful lot. Additionally, people are going to be confused when they see multiple variants of the same communities on different instances (e.g. News)
Personally, I prefer an intellectual barrier to entry. It’s one of the things that made the internet of the early days so much better than today.
Everybody who says this assumes they wouldn’t have been barred from entry were they to try and get in now.
I was speaking more to the early days of the internet. You had to be relatively smart, and determined to get on it.
I jumped over here a couple weeks ago at the request of another redditor and it's like a breath of fresh air.
I still check out reddit for a couple subs that just don't have enough interaction over here "yet".
I've mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it's just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots 🤔
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
I’ve mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it’s just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots 🤔
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
Feel free to join us on [email protected]
I lately have a saying:
"If it's not FOSS, it's not worth your time"
Refugee here. Think I'd agree. A subconscious bias / misunderstanding we bought into
Welcome to Lemmy, here are a few pointers to help you settle in
Well said indeed
I would argue it is closer to 60 years.
Honestly lemmy specifically is good enough to scratch my Reddit itch. We may not be able to post our way out of fascism, but we can certainly post our way out of the centralized, enshittified platforms like Reddit where we came from.
I think it's more difficult in applications where you want or have to bring a lot of friends to make the apps useful, but in the case of lemmy specifically if there's a baseline level of activity that's enough to fulfill 90% of what i used Reddit for (i.e. snarky memes and random back and forths with relative strangers).
That's the spirit. Reddit and all other social media died for me during the exodus 1 1/2 years ago. Since then i go to lemmy and I'm fine. Tbh I'm not really sure if more user will not also pull commercial interests into the fediverse and if that is something I'm looking forward to, but for now, everything seems like reddit around 2010, not too big but big enough to not being out of content after scrolling for 10 mins.
Yep, dont really use mastodon or even bluesky, my twitter groupchat is still my hs friends and I like it when they arent talking about sports. I do post there more than I do on X, I miss twitter I used to tweet so much, before the changes. (Stopped seing friends likes on my feed, I followed funny ppl and without that it was over)
It's the social media equivalent of supporting a bunch of Mom and Pop shops (or opening your own!) vs some hyper-sanitized, corporate monstrosity like Wal-Mart.
There are a lot of people who prioritize convenience above all else. Why go shop at a butcher, baker, green grocer, and a liquor store when you can go to one place and get it all? Doesn't matter that the separate entities are specialized and therefore more knowledgeable about the product vs. Walmart where asking an employee is the most useless thing ever.
Same with social media or things like Google. People are lazy. Why shop around when Facebook gives you everything? Why learn how to use the address bar when Google will do the work for you.
So the fediverse goes against that in that it asks users to actually think for a moment about things and requires them to shop around... which, that's just too much work for the average person.
I grew up in the age of Internet forums, in the ancient days of the late '90s-early-00's before the (Eternal September) Smartphone dumped every human being onto the landscape.
Having small communities is so much better. I often hear people complain that Lemmy isn't big because there are not communities with 3 million people like there are some subreddits. Much of the reason that Reddit is shit is because of how big it is.
On the old Internet, you could know the people who were part of the community. I have old friends, that I've known for 20+ years, that I met playing MUDs on BBSs. Now, I couldn't tell you the name of a single person that I've ever interacted with on social media in the past year.
Digg and Reddit came on the scene and pulled a huge crowd because we didn't have The Algorithm to recommend content and these link aggregation sites were the first time people got a taste of that kind of 'See all of the newest things from every corner of the Internet in a single place, curated by a process that produces good quality results' that we now just expect from recommendation algorithms.
The old communities were essentially starved of population. Nobody wants to take the social effort required to become part of a community when they can just scroll Reddit mindlessly.
There's very few people that even had a chance to experience the magic of spontaneous communities full of people working together.
If you still want a taste, check out the Something Awful forums.
The barrier to entry is higher: you have to learn the rules (read the rules), the social norms and there is a $10 one-time fee (so getting banned has some sting to it, read the rules).
In exchange you get an actual community of people. Many of the people posting there (or, in the various Discords now because that's a thing) have been on SA since they were edgy teenagers and are now professionals with careers. That isn't to say that there are not trolls and assholes, those exist in any community, but there's a much higher ratio of good to bad posters.
One of the interesting decisions that they do is that rulebreaking posts are rarely ever deleted. If a person is probated (temp ban) or banned, their comment stays up with a "(User was Probated/Banned for this post)" edited into the post so you can see, and hopefully learn, from the bad behavior. In addition, there's a 'Wall of Shame' section where you can see everyone who's been actioned against, who the moderator was and the moderation reason.
I've always hated the fact that comments on Reddit just disappear. You can never see what a mod removed and there is no reason why it is removed. This allows all kinds of bad and manipulative behaviors to be done by people with moderation access.
Not one mention to moderation. The strength and focus of our "small isles" is on taking control of moderating the contents. We can stop fascists posts, and we can share alternative narratives (e.g. solarpunk) to Sillicon Valley. Plus, spoiler alerts as content warnings, etc. I think mastodon with their covenant is the greatest example of this ethos.
I love the user level control. block urls, instances, communities, users. I really would love like trust cafe where you can rank things from 0-100 where 0 is block and 100 is subscribe and your feed will prioritize posts from things you rank higher for the in between values.
Where moving from one service to another doesn’t mean losing everything you’ve built and everything you’ve ever said.
I generally agree with this post, but this isn't true. It would require portable identities.
The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it.
Part of that is making it monetizable. Influencers can build huge followings (and make some cash) because existing platforms recommend their content to other users.
Mastodon devs have chosen not to provide recommendations and quote posts. That's reasonable, but it reduces the utility of the platform, and it cedes space to Twitter & co.
To my knowledge, the only creator that's exclusive to Lemmy is the unix surrealism author. Until it's easy to monetize content, we're gonna have a hard time attracting creators, and a hard time attracting users.
I hate the idea that everything should be monetised, that only gives us loong videos with laughing heads and so on "to keep you engaged".
We're here without all that crap and well the fediverse is definitely less active but it's content made by people because they like it, they believe in it. Not to shake the money tree.
It’s an interesting take though because a lot of good content requires funding too, as well as hosting etc.
So how can we solve that in a reasonable way that doesn’t lead to all the bullshit?
There are a million and one great reasons to be here on Lemmy, but using it to get cash from fellow users wallets is not one of them.
I think we should be realistic. Content costs money because it requires a lot of effort. It's naïve to think that content would just be created because people feel like posting something. If the Fediverse is to compete with companies like meta, this is only possible if there are opportunities for content creators to earn money. That should be self-evident, but it obviously isn't here.
I'm not saying it's necessary, but it is if the Fediverse is to have mainstream appeal.
Simply because the absolute majority of people are out and about where everyone is. And that's where the content is. That's the point: if you want good content, it costs money. It's not just corporations that make a living from it.
What I want to say is this: The Fediverse could provide fairer conditions for the people who produce content. That makes sense and is necessary because the Internet lives from that.
I just don't understand why people here don't want to realize that work has to be paid for. That's really strange.
I'd rather have one unix surrealism than a thousand influencers with lots of followers. These days, I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way. If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
I feel like this is comparing the mall to the park.
They both attract people, but not always the same people, or for the same reasons. And that's OK.
I get what you're saying though, because I've felt this way when trying to come up with reasons for people (sole proprietors) to get with the fedi, but maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway. I think the fediverse will attract more and more people with its network effects, but probably never all of the people all of the time.
My modest hope is that the fedi bleeds the big platforms just enough to put them in their place and keep from enshittifying to infinity.
I’m mixed on her articles. Is she a journalist or is she just posting fediverse circle jerk on the fediverse? She writes well but feels like pretty much the same article every time
I am a hostage that has been set free from a prison camp. Thank you Fedi.
Don't let the grabbing hands grab all they can.
Listen, I am a Lemmy supporter at the highest level. I believe that the Fediverse model for social media is the next step in evolution for the industry. But Lemmy itself, in terms of the front end, is a near exact copy of Reddit. And was created, at least in part, with the idea that from the beginning, it couldn't be heavily monetized and become a profit-driven and publicly traded company. That it wouldn't sacrifice the quality of the product and lead to the enshittification of the service like so many other digital offerings.
But currently, if you were to compare Reddit and Lemmy. Reddit's digital content offerings are significantly better than Lemmy's. Which makes sense. Reddit has been around for much longer than Lemmy and is much more known by the general public. It has a much larger user base as a result. Which for a user generated content platform is everything when it comes to the pool of individuals that can generate and submit interesting content.
Lemmy was the first Fediverse that actually worked for me, because I don’t like Twitter and don’t care to follow randos I’ve never heard of. I like anonymous forums.
Having more people does help, but only to a certain extent. At some point, it just becomes difficult to moderate and having a higher number of casual users that don’t give a shit about the rules.