Fediverse

The internet has been mostly enshittified. The corporations are guaranteed to continue sucking in predictable ways. It'll never get better or good enough.

The fediverse is something new. It is, at the very least, immune to being reddited and twittered. If the internet has a future, it's on the fediverse, or on something like it that doesn't exist yet. Going back to shitty corporate stuff just delays the future.

Your real issue is that spez, musk, etc all suck. That's what you hate. This is the place where we are free of them, and it can only get better.

Unpopular opinion: it's okay to like Reddit, if that's how you feel. I don't - it's far too toxic overall, and that was affecting me to the point where I made the decision to leave it, regardless of the outcome of the protests (based in large measure on having read this article that further developed the thoughts that I was already starting to think: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb ). And I don't like where it's going in the future - you may use it for awhile then be surprised when yet another horrendous decision by Huffman or the people behind him sends content creators fleeing to other platforms, again.

But if you have found a particular niche group there, and they are not willing to leave Reddit, then you go to where they are, right? Perhaps you can also help make moving here more welcoming by starting a similar community of your own here, even if you are the only one posting there for awhile. That said, we simply don't have the userbase here to handle e.g. most individual games (some fairly major exceptions such as Minecraft aside:-) or sports teams or some such, and you may want to enjoy interacting with more generalized content, possibly in addition to rather than fully replacing Reddit.

Conversations here tend to be better than there. Deeper, richer, and fuller. But to each their own - if Reddit meets your needs while Lemmy does not, then it sounds like you have your answer. But perhaps read my link above and think about what it means: Reddit is predatory, and you'd be willfully walking back into that, hoping against hope that the leopard would not eat your face off (spoiler alert: it will:-D).

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

It doesn't look like you mentioned subscriptions, which gets you out of the 'all' / 'filtering' side of things entirely. But just as with Reddit, you'll need to spend time building your personal feed over time and tweaking it.

The good news is that there's no limit to your subscriptions (unlike Reddit's cap of 50 displayed at any one time), but that you'll need to use the right tools to search the Fediverse to find those communities you want to subscribe to.

The main tool I typically use seems to have a bug right now (based on the recent software upgrade?) but I suspect will be back up in a few days. You might take a look at this, tho, plus other resources.

Someone has to be the first on the dance floor, and you don't want to be it.

Reading the comments here made me realize something.

It’s nice to have good content for niche communities that you enjoy but that’s always been a tall order. As in, a lot of things have to go right to get that organic community feeling and I’ve honestly always thought of it as a privilege and not a right.

I’ve seen plenty of communities die for various reasons or just been in a position where I didn’t have passion to go and talk about my niche interests.

So what’s my point? Niche communities are the icing on the cake of a good platform. When we mostly have for profit platforms and little main stream interest in standardized alternatives, you got to be more realistic.

Well Lemmy is a possible replacement for Reddit but, putting aside my strong biais for Lemmy, it doesn't have to be a Reddit replacement for everyone and it is still building itself up. Here is a few tips to improve your time in hope you'll find on the fediverse the space you look for :

• Try write post on dead looking community. Follower counts have a hard time synchronizing btw instances. A lot of people may be waiting for some activity to happened.
• Try opening niche community in their original instance. The posts wrote on a distance community before the first lemming of your instance opens it are invisible and must be added one by one (by entering it URL in your instance search function). You might found interesting content you missed.
• Try reposting content you see on Reddit on Lemmy. Copy-Paste it and add something like "R*eddit content - OP : @XXX@reddit.com" somewhere in the post. You might not have as much response as OP but it can stir up interesting conversation.
• Try to make an account on the twittoverse (Mastodon, *key...). The community on the microblogging side of the fediverse is much bigger and diverse. You will be able to boost your lemmy content and link it to hashtag so more people may see it. Answer to the original post will even show up on Lemmy. But second level comments will not fediverse well.
• Try to post articles, general question or to do anything to bring some animation to your niche community. Regularity in low engagement content will still bring people that will sooner or later start to engage.
• Don't hesitate to crosspost any related post to your favorite community. Community are silos, instances are silos and the lemming populating is very fragmented. By linking communities together, you'll bring people with the same hobbies than you to the community they did not find out yet. -Don't hesitate to answer at old post. Us lemmings don't have enough activity to complain about people writing back months later, especially in niche community.

Cheers!

Whatever the social media ability to "create" your own algorithm is important. One way being a subscription and sticking to it.

Second being keyword filtering. I use Connect for Android which let's me filter out posts and communities containing keywords.

Same thing I do on reddit with reddit enhancement suite.

It's just the nature social media where anone can sign up.

It’s not the size that matters. Just play with it for a while, maybe you’ll learn to like it.

I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community.

Please note: you only ever had something like that with Reddit when it had already several years of operation. Even today, you can't jump instantly and find there a community for any niche hobby.

As with all these things: be the change you want to see. Add content, or else it won't be there when you or someone else comes in.

(There's also a feel that Lemmy is "small" becaue it's not only one place and all that)

It may not be for everyone. Lemmys growth has stalled out and barring musk buying reddit and turning it to shit i don't see another influx coming. So we're kinda stuck with the community that exists now. Its a pretty good and sustainable community which can provide a lot of general interest posts like news, memes and cats lately. But for other more specific topics if if it's not already a large community here it probably won't be. It's not even just niche interests, professional sports for example has very little presence on here as a whole much less individual sports or teams, and I don't see, for example, a baseball community taking off here no matter how much effort you put in since the current lemmy community isn't much interested in it and your average baseball fan probably won't be coming to lemmy to discuss things.

My recommendation would be to use lemmy for some of those general interest topics, and maybe some of the more popular niche communities if your into them, And go to other places, preferably independent forums or rss feeds, for other things. We don't need one unified scrolling app, it may be a bit more convenient, but the internet is better off if you spread your traffic around.

Lemmy is amazing. I am so glad I found my way here. I was doom scrolling as well. I had to unsubscribe from all my political communities I had joined and just keep one of my news committees. I then expanded the groups for my other interests. This really helped. You are in control of your time line here.