With the recent happenings in the United States, the dangers of the privately owned Internet is more apparent than ever, and frankly, it’s scary. And so I’d like to make a simple request to anyone who is reading this; Please use the Fediverse, just a little more.
I personally hate it when I’m stuck having to visit say, YouTube or Reddit to get information, or to entertain myself in quiet moments, and if you’re reading this, the likely chance is you’re the same.
All I want to ask of you is to just comment a few more times, press send on that post that you felt wasn’t of enough substance to be worth anyone’s time. We have such a small community compared to everywhere else, but what we do have in common is that, in the grand scheme of things, we are the early adopters. And if we take that to heart and make this space a little bigger, maybe it will be just big enough we won’t have to visit walled gardens so often.
Thank you :)
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I think 90% of my posts are deleted before sending because I just know that someone somewhere will find a way to be mad about it
But OK - here is a post that I would usually have deleted :)
As Someone Somewhere, I urge you to post more.
I cannot believe this account is two years old and not made just for this comment haha.
OMG really? How COULD you…
Neglect to offer your valuable opinion. Hey, you’re a human and have valuable things to say. Haters gon hate. Fuck 'em.
I’ve also been posting less after managing to upset someone. We can have a club. The shy posters club.
You’re not shy, you’re just a normally adjusted human.
It’s normal to want to avoid being abused and insulted for, say, having an opinion which is marginally different to the in-group consensus. But unfortunately that’s what happens when we post on text-based social media. Apparently the medium does something to people’s minds, turning them into nasty vindictive unpleasant versions of themselves.
I’m a pretty self-confident person in real life and even I think twice about posting anything here that contradicts the prevailing groupthink. The inevitable insults and abuse and mockery are sometimes just not worth it.
Personally, I have hope that if a larger variety of people are posting and commenting (typical lurkers and such) then hopefully the echo chamber aggression will weaken a little, and hopefully foster a positive and friendly community. I’m trying to lead by example :)
Refreshing optimism!
if a larger variety of people are posting and commenting (typical lurkers and such) then hopefully the echo chamber aggression will weaken a little
Unfortunately I’m not sure the hope is warranted. Putting a lot of people with different views in front of each other, over text, does not, in general, by default, seem to go that well. At least not going by the experience of the first 30 years of the social internet. You tend to get the worst aspect of human group dynamics and speech-policing without the self-moderation that comes with in-person contact - i.e. the effect of audible voices, and visible faces and body language.
I’m not a complete pessimist or I wouldn’t be here. But I think these issues can only be solved by activist moderation that enforces rules with a light touch while remaining tolerant and always assuming good faith. And, of course, that kind of moderation is time-consuming and very, very hard. It’s a skill that hardly any communities have access to. But it is at least a reasonable goal.
I see where you’re coming from, historically the internet and large communities tend to foster that kind of aggression. I, for one, will be striving to build a positive environment though, and just maybe, we’ll see those fruits lead into a brighter future :). I myself am applying for some moderator positions to help take up that effort!
That’s great news. Good luck.
I’ve had abuse for posting a short story that validated the group think. Several times.
I’ve only just managed to overcome my membership in the shy posters club haha! Hey, keep a seat warm for me while I’m away, okay?
Thank you :), and I’ll just let you know, that this comment brought a smile to my face. I’m proud of you.
I do that quite a lot too
Over the years I’ve learned it’s ok to ignore if it seems like someone wants to pick a fight. Not everything has to be a debate, and no it doesn’t make you look weak. You just got better shit to do than argue with strangers on the internet. :)
Just remember that the people getting mad at you are not deleting any of their posts.
That’s a horrible take and you should feel bad.
But I’m a stranger on the Internet and probably a moron so it’s ok to not take me seriously or respond to me.
I’ve taken on the mantra of “Participate, but be respectful.” That’s led me to post a few times where I normally wouldn’t.
Realize that there is nothing wrong with pissing someone off because they disagree with you. It’s only wrong if you pissed them off because of how you said it, or if you are closed minded about being proven wrong.
And in the real world, a down vote doesn’t matter.
I get this. I used to use Threads and someone got very angry at me cause I said Labour, supposedly the left wing party in the UK, are “upsetting the right people”, I should have clarified that I don’t think that they are doing a good job, but never mind.
The trick, plumbercraic, is not minding that they will be mad.
thats reddit, ppl hate way less here, id prime myself to argue before I made a comment on reddit, made me a more argumentative person
Unexpected !dundermifflin@lemm.ee
2025 year of the fediverse???
Jokes aside, i completely agree. Meta and Xitter completely shot themselves in the foot (lol) and pixelfed is gaining mainstream attention, and the new year just started!
I predict we’ll gain a massive influx of new users next year, due to the kindness of Zucc and Muskrat 😊
And who says they’ve never done anything good?
But yeah, let’s ride that momentum all the way into the year of the fediverse!
All I want to ask of you is to just comment a few more times, …
I think I’m fully maxxed out.
God bless you 🫡
And that was after I’d been on kbin.social for six months.
The hero we need
I’m curious, how did you get those stats?
Thunder on Android. Its the best Lemmy app, if only it was less buggy :)
I use Eternity, personally (feels good after having used Infinity so long), just how good is Thunder now?
Eternity hasn’t been updated for two months, so i’d steer clear if possible.
Thunder is amazing, but there’s ONE bug that drives me insane. Some images have weird dimensions that you have to click on to fix.
Example:
Is there an open ticket for the dev to know?
Only this, https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder/issues/1617 and it’s been inactive
I’ll look into it, thanks!
Just took a look and wow, I think you might be right, haha. Be proud, you are the fediverse’s best soldier. 🏅
They’re squeezing water from a stone here DX
say, I hear you do something similar, Pug Jesus.
I already use fediverse an unhealthy amount, if I do more I might die.
you aren’t social mediaing right unless it makes you bleed
Small instance owner here. All are welcome. We have one really busy community here, and a few others that are just getting going that you might find interesting. You like World of Warships? The Last of Us? St. Louis Battlehawks? Abandoned Buildings?
You’ll notice some of these communities are a ghost town. Images are broken and there’s a rat eating pizza. So step up. Avoid the large, overwhelmed, weirdly-political instances and give us little guys a chance.
I’ll begin by introducing myself. Hi! I am oleorun, named after the recently deceased Bob Uecker’s Baseball Hall of Fame speech. My instance, https://real.lemmy.fan/, is known for the !weirdnews@real.lemmy.fan community, but we have more to offer. !aviation@real.lemmy.fan , a college radio station, !wsup@real.lemmy.fan , and more communities waiting to be joined, and built, and best of all there’s no ads, no donation requests, just pure love of a federated instance that thrives on niceness.
I’d be real happy for you to join us.
oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
Edit: Typos
I cannot express how much respect I hold for instance owners, you’re doing something great! Maybe one day I’ll follow in your footsteps (when I step up from small game servers :P). Say, would those dead communities qualify for a post in c/abandonedarchitecture?
Maybe in the coming 4 years people will finally understand why handing over everything to corps isn’t great. Whether they’ll do anything with that understanding is questionable though. The amount of “but it’s so easy” and “I’m just one person” doomerism is fantastic.
I’m a fediverse supporter (obviously, that’s why I’m here), however what you’re looking for requires a critical mass of users that the fediverse (at least the Lemmy side of it) will never achieve as long as two very critical problems persist:
-
sign up is confusing. People are used to clicking “create an account,” inputting a user name, password, and maybe an email, and then BAM they’re a user. I realize the whole instance thing is the entire point, but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.
-
the site (or at least lemmy.world) is sooo slooow. Basic functions like loading images take me back to the dial-up era of “click the image then do something else while it loads,” which is downright ridiculous in the 2020s. Again I’ve stuck with it because I want to support the fediverse, but 99% of users won’t.
And no, these aren’t “features not bugs” unless you want to keep the site small and homogenous.
I honestly don’t understand point 1. no matter how much people say it.
Maybe I’m naive because it wasn’t confusing to me personally, but it is only one extra step to create an account. When people explain the Fediverse to new people they compare it to e-mail anyway, which basically has the exact same sign-up structure. The only difference to me is the way it is advertised. Nobody in general says “you need to join e-mail”, it’s usually “join GMail” or “join Yahoo”. I don’t know how it would be solved without detracting from the “choose the instance that is right for you” experience though, since the instances with the most support and funding will obviously hold the most influence (as we currently see with lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, not to mention pixelfed.social).
IDK maybe I’m wrong, lmk, but I don’t think choosing an instance is all the friction it’s said to be.
The big instances are definitely slower though.
Nobody in general says “you need to join e-mail”, it’s usually “join GMail” or “join Yahoo”. I don’t know how it would be solved without detracting from the “choose the instance that is right for you” experience though
No I think you’re right, give them an instance. They won’t have enough knowledge to choose an instance anyways. If they don’t like the one you gave them then they can move later.
I agree with you on 1. I hope it never fucking changes. The worst thing that could happen is we get the critical mass of dipshits that turns every online service into a fucking shit tornado.
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I’m back after a year away. My two favourite niche interests (wrestling & fantasy books) still don’t have hugely active communities but I’ll start pitching in again with some lukewarm takes.
!squaredcircle@lemmy.zip seems quite active !
What fantasy book community is it? I’ve been looking for one and haven’t found one yet
Probably !fantasy@lemmy.ml
Not the most active, but didn’t find anything better
That’s the one
welcome back, and good luck!
lurk no longer
Lurk No More
One of us! One of us! ONE OF US!
One. Of. US!!
🙌
Y’know what, here I am! This is such a genuine request.
Thank you, friend! This post may very well be the tipping point for many Lemmings/Fediversers, myself included.
And I’m so glad to see you here! I sure hope you’re right, but the fact that I’m responding to you alone shows just how right you are!
Since all this shit started happening I’ve deleted all the social media apps on my phone and I’ve started using lemmy more. Gonna switch my YouTube shit over to peertube when I can.
Intending to actually delete my accounts in the coming weeks too. Bye bye, 13 year old reddit account. Nobody gonna miss ya.
Tbf I have been using Nebula a lot since I signed up pretty cheaply and I enjoy it. It’s owned by the creators. Found it through Jacob Geller.
YouTube is a bit of an issue as unlike the others there’s a lot of content and information you can’t get elsewhere.
I’ve been considering using a proxy to scrape and download subscriptions and add them to a personal server. Probably not practical to do for everything though with how much space that would be.
At the very least see if there’s a wrapper that can strip out a lot of content and just show the stuff I want to watch VS all the nonsense they fire at you.
Bye bye, 13 year old reddit account.
don’t forget to delete your comments there!
A lot of times I’ll write out a comment and end up deleting it. Most times it’s because I feel like it’s something that’s already been said or not worth reading but I’ll try to be less of a lurker.
I’m in the exact same boat. But I kind of realized, if I want to see a bigger fediverse, I’ll have to help build it up. As the classic saying goes, you can lead a horse to water; but first there’s gotta be water. So thank you for taking up the cause of building this lake :)
actually i don’t think that’s the saying
Well it is now that you opened the spigot
I am SO thankful that there are so many people out there working on projects such as this! I gained lots of momentum in the past weeks protecting my privacy and taking digital matters back in my own hands, i wouldn’t have come so far if it wheren’t for all the other people who have been doing this for years! Thanks everyone :)
You said it! I remember years back looking for reddit alternatives and the only things around were stuff like raddle.me. Seeing lemmy and the fediverse develop like this? It’s a dream come true!
Couldn’t agree more.
I think one that can be done is to create a pinned FAQ post in Reddit on the fediverse sub Reddit. I have seen so many questions popping up lately with a lot of potential users that seem confused.
If I had a Reddit account, I would absolutely try doing that. Unfortunately, I think I’m gonna have to hope someone does it for me.
I have one, i will see to it.
<3
thank you!
