Fediverse

Reddit began in a similar way - being very tech focused until it started to become much more mainstream.

Block instances which have nothing you want (foreign languages, for me)

Block communities spamming gaza / war / techbro

I like to browse new across all instances, and block rather than only view subscriptions

Personally, I feel like you can have fun on fedi, but it all depends on the accounts/communities you follow. My Sharkey feed AND my Lemmy feed are both full of memes, fandom nonsense, and shitposts. If you only follow serious communities and people that talk about serious news, you'll have a serious time.

That said, one thing that I thought was unpleasant about the fediverse, and then realised was a feature rather than a bug is... The fact that you can run out of fediverse content. After 2 hours on Lemmy, I have functionally read all of Lemmy (or, well, all the communities I care to read), and maybe 1 more hour to join conversations I'd like to join.

Compared to the seemingly infinite content stream of The Other Sites (tm), this initially struck me as bad and weird, but then I realised... I actually prefer it this way. Doomscrolling a fedi site/app is actually not possible, and that has done wonders for my mental health.

For the moment, a lot of the fun on some of the federated platforms is behind several steps of effort that many of the corporate platforms have streamlined people out of being accustomed to taking, which is part of why they've kept their larger audiences. If a single click/tap is too much, that's enough to keep some people away from here.

It's not a matter of laziness either, it's more of, how much effort do I want to put into something that I'm using for casual entertainment? For many people it's minimal, but many federated platforms currently don't really work like that. They've arguably thrown the baby out with the bathwater in an overcorrection away from commercial algorithmic feeds since existing platforms have conditioned people to not have to put effort into finding silly/fun content.

The types of people to post won't be as inclined to post if they find their posts aren't reaching people because people mostly have to actively seek them out to engage with them at all. The types of people to more passively engage won't be able to as easily as those posts they might engage with may never reach them because they mostly have to actively seek them out. The end result of a lack of feedback and content for both types of people, despite there being a possibility and existence of both for them, results in this recurring sense of dissatisfaction.

Note that this is written largely with Mastodon in mind, and to a lesser degree Lemmy. In Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/PieFed/Sublinks's cases I think they're potentially better off in terms of structure and offering different ways to sort one's feeds, but it's a matter of more people joining to round out communities and discussion more.

Yeah Lemmy, besides news and technology, is very quiet and I think it suffers from having communities fractured between instances, so niche interests get even less traffic than they would on Reddit. But my Mastodon feed is always busy and interesting. If it isn't you're not following the right people yet. I recommend some hashtag searches for things you're interested in.

People on here and on mastodon are really pessimistic overall I've found. I still need to go to Twitter despite all the bots and engagement farming going on these days if I want to learn about new product releases or the newest possibilities of the newest technology that was released just yesterday.

I feel like the only news that get shared here and that actually get engagement are the bad ones about the war in Ukraine or in Palestine, or about anti-minority laws but we never see the good news like the fact that France added abortion as a constitutional right.

I see this as a positive. Instead of being fed content to keep me engaged by an algorithm until I suddenly realize the day is almost over and I didn't really enjoy myself, I reach a point where I feel like I'm done for the day then I make plans, play a game, read, etc.

Now I read the news, fuck around on lemmy a bit, then actually get on with a "real" day.

I recommend some keyword filters. I use them to reduce certain topics from my feed, specifically about certain wars or politicians or celebrities. I did the same thing on reddit to filter out some of the "awareness" campaigns where everyone posted about the FCC chair to every single sub.

I also just browse local communities instead of the entire fediverse. This defeats the purpose of the fediverse, but it drastically reduces the number of duplicate and NSFW communities. I then mute the communities I don't want to see. I'll also mute the hyper specific communities that usually have complete overlap with the more general community, i.e. dogs and dogpictures.

It takes some work to get your feed to your liking, but it's worth it in the end. There's still far less content available than on reddit, but the amount of quality content feels similar.

The issue is that the majority of people on the Fediverse are "techies" with specific interests, which skews the spectrum of content quite a bit.

The Fediverse is in an awkward spot. It needs more people like you to keep technology communities from becoming Linux circlejerks, but at the same time those circlejerks are driving people like you out.

You’re a consumer. If you see something interesting post it to Fediverse so you can also be a contributor.

It sort of sounds like you want people to entertain you for free.

The Fedi is what you make of it. Since there's no algorithm telling you who to follow or pushing posts to your feed, it's up to you to curate who you follow.

My feed is a mixture of shit posts, memes, cats and dogs, flowers, a little politics and a little tech. Chaos is why I'm here and who I follow reflects that. If your feed is full of info you don't care about, then you're following the wrong people.

Give it time. The porn on lemmy is growing exponentially, so the more varied content will start trickling in. My guess is roughly 3 more months before the memes really start to pick up

Fedi is the worst social media, except for all the others.

The only thing I’m missing from the fediverse is a platform where animations and animators can connect and share their work with the possibility of having it discovered. Pixelfed still isnt in the app stores, peertube is not user friendly and has no official apps, mastodon doesnt have amy kind of upvoting or algorithm or ability to browse lemmy communities, lemmy doesnt have native video support or user follows.

Yeah, where's the fun? There's no posts about owls/bats/invertebrates/cats/dogs, no cooking or food posts, no pictures of people knitting socks, nobody asking general questions, no articles and pictures about space, no discussion around movies/tv/books, nobody ever posts about gaming of any kind, there's no memes to be found anywhere, no poems or short stories, no digital/traditional/AI art.

For some reason browsing news/politics/technology always seems to revolve around depressing and infuriating topics which is different from every other platform.

I don't know man. If you enjoy Facebook and Instagram more then just get there more.

I had to leave a Mastodon instance because it was about activism, gaza and politics the whole fucking day. So I perfectly understand what you feel. But I think there are ways and/or servers where everybody can feel comfortable. The mastodon server where I'm on right now, people talks about US stuff the whole day, and I'm very annoyed because of that because I don't give a damn shit about US. But the admin is cool, people support Ukraine, and I follow funny stuff too.

I have multiple accounts for seperate feeds. One seriouse one just communities of fun shit. Helps filter out the mindless doomerism.

Not a perfect solution by any means, but you can block communities you have no interest in.

jUsT mAkE coNtEnT

After i scroll my subscribed communities, if i have extra time i scroll all. I often find something new to follow - art, cats, or that new music lyrics/AI art one that i still can't figure out.

Youtube Shorts give me Brainrot but I can't stop watching them. I don't know what they did to the algorithm, but it perfectly captures my attention.