OK, let's try this again. My post got auto-filtered. Maybe the image triggered something? Anyways, apologies if this isn't the right sub for this. I wanted to get an outsider's perspective on my experience on Lemmy.

Every. Single. Thread. has the word “capitalism” or “Trump” in it somewhere. I’m sick to death of it. Even though I agree with a lot of the sentiment, the erosion of the middle class, the concentration of wealth, the consolidation of media, the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality permeating the consumer space. In many ways that’s why I joined Lemmy, but dang it that doesn’t mean I want to talk about absolutely nothing else. Someone once defined a fanatic as "Someone who won't change their mind and won't change the subject" and that fits the average Lemming to a T.

And the only communities devoid of politics are also devoid of content. I do a lot of worldbuilding stuff, and I’ve tried to make the worldbuilding community there more active, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only poster. Then I look at r/worldbuilding, and there’s a glut of really interesting posts showcasing people’s imagination and creativity, and nary a mention of Musk or Epstein in sight.

I understand that people's political opinions are bound to show up obliquely in even unrelated communities, but I can't overstate how monomaniacal Lemmings are about it. The pic I originally tried to post was a screenshot of a completely non sequitur post in an unrelated community (sorry for the vagueness I think the specifics may have also tripped the auto filter). And Lemmings are always "on". If you go to mildlyinteresting on lemmy.world right now, you'll see maybe one or two posts about things like yellow stop signs or three-chambered peanuts, you know, stuff that's actually mildly interesting, and every other post is stuff like "French president explains the political consequences of AI". Is that important and worth discussing? Absolutely. What it isn't is mildly interesting.

When I bring this up on Lemmy, the response is always "Politics is everything and we should never shut up ever!" But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.

And then there’s the tech side of things. Hope you like Linux, cuz that’s all you’re going to see. And if you dare suggest that Linux may not be the right choice for your blind grandmother, you get eviscerated in the comments.

Granted, Reddit itself used to have a similar problem. It attracted a very specific type of user (neckbeards) and the experience wasn’t great if you weren’t one, but ironically the same popularization of Reddit that lead to its platform decay also solved this homogeneity problem. Similarly, Tankies and their ilk seem to flock to Lemmy, explaining the tone of the discourse.

Others have pointed out that Reddit alternatives tend to attract people who were banned from Reddit (remember Voat?) and I think that explains a lot.

In summary, Lemmy seems great if you're a Marxist who uses Linux, but pretty much nobody else. Am I crazy? Should I try to stick with it in the hope it gets better?

so how do we get this guy on Linux? lol

No, there’s other stuff here, you just have to look for it a bit

Valid criticism, some valid observations. But also you need to make sure you're looking at the majority of federated sites, not just one server for activity.

The majority of my posts and interests are not covered by my home instance yet. I still have a great time on this platform.

Well I am a Marxist who uses linux...

But even Anne Frank wrote about other stuff in her diary sometimes.

Such a banger line lmao. Honestly decent criticisms throughout, I'd love to see more active niche communities that aren't politics related but unfortunately I only know how to shitpost

This is just low population problems, with ten times the pop, we would have different challenges. I agree with you mostly, but even still memes here are just better. Whenever I take a dangerous peek back at reddit is like they opened the 9gag gates, wtf.

They are far from the first person who has bailed on Lemmy because of the culture, and their characterization of it isn't far off. I keep saying that Lemmy needs normies for longevity, because most people find constantly on politics incredibly exhausting and won't want to join if they think it's the lefty version of Truth Social.

I'm not saying people should avoid talking about stuff they care about, just that the platform could benefit from everyone being less hostile to wider perspectives and maybe also working on building up more content without a heavy political focus.

You have to start out with the whole feed and then just block things until it becomes your home feed.

were banned from Reddit

I was banned off reddit plenty of times - never stopped me from going back. What finally drove me off is the post-Oct 7th liberal counter-insurgency campaign that made serious political discussion on reddit next-to impossible.

Finding them shouldn’t be so hard though. Surely we can make the search function better. If I search for a community I’d at least like to be greeted by the most active versions at the top. I’ve no idea how it ranks them right now.

Skill issue. To be less flippant, you have to do some work up front and there is no algorithm to do it for you. I have an account on a few instances and between them I have plenty of variety and activity in spaces that are not just politically focused. Try other strategies if the one you're using doesn't yield the results you want.

yes but we need to make this stuff require 0 skill

yea https://lemmyverse.net/communities is better for that

also we should probably have starter packs of communities for users to subscribe to, I know Lemmy v1.0 will allow us to do this, and PieFed already can do this (but I think it's underutilized for this purpose)

Hard disagree. That's how "brain rot" has become an actual thing and not just a meme phrase. Putting effort into something is good for your brain.

I opened reddit for the first time in like 6 months and the site takes 5 minutes to load, random ai trash, half the screen is "click on this you'll find it more interesting!!" made it nearly unusable. Also the huge concentration of bots on reddit, lemmy feels like I'm talking to real people.

This sounds like a technical problem to solve, rather than "it is what it is"

Its also how you consistently turn people off your platform until it becomes irrelivant.

I think that this is accurate, but it doesnt make it not a problem right now. After all, you get more posts by getting more people by having enjoyable-to-consume content.

I think most people on reddit (ie, the 90% who don't have an account) are simply happy to look at 9gag shit. "Bored. Look at reddit. Guy fall down funny. Giggle."

Of people who make an account, 90% simply look at the default feed. They are the internet troglodytes who have no interest in having any actual discussion, but who simply feel a desperate need to say literally anything in a public space. "FIRST!!!"

And then there are the 1% of redditors like OOP, who have been on the site for years and who have found niche communities they like to hang out in. These communities have far less bot penetration, and tend to have higher quality posts in general.

OOP is the sort of person Lemmy could use more of, but is running into a bootstrapping problem with.

Pitch in, however you can! 🤘🏼

I was trying to present my subjective experience in good faith and I hope it came out that way

It didn't, it just sounds like astroturfing and/or being lazy.

If a completely new person went to reddit for the first time (before all the corporate sanitization that has happened in the last couple of years) they were going to see shit they didn't want to see. They were going to have to put in some effort telling "the system" what they like and what they don't. After you've done that, it was an interesting way to spend your downtime. Without it, it was just the void yelling back. Same is pretty true for Lemmy. If you don't put in any effort to block the stuff you don't like and/or subscribe to the stuff you do, you aren't going to see any value. Yes, it is smaller than reddit - that's how social media starts. There isn't going to be 21 years of content chilling out on a platform that is 6 years old.

Also, bitching about hearing about Linux is just lazy. You're on FOSS social media and get surprised when people there mostly don't use corporate slop closed source OS's on their personal machines? Okie Dokie.

I don't think it really takes significant "skill" to tell the systems in place what you want to see and what you don't. Blocking the bad and subscribing to the good. It is basically how all of "the algorithms" worked 15-ish years ago.

Now they buy/sell/trade your data so much they know what your first significant other's crotch smells like even though you forgot and they use that to tease your subconscious into remembering what it was like to feel loved so long as you keep scrolling the platform.

I don't think it is definitely a bad thing to not do exactly the thing that is getting world governments to start considering legislating access to social media because of how toxic it is.

The magnifier valve developed for the steamdeck probably works ok? I am not sure if that can be ripped out though.

Screenreader you're on your own unless you want to run everything through emacs (you should, it's cool and can do everything they needed to get to the moon and also play tetris)

This person is 100% about the relentless usaian political whinging. It's so hard to find anything cool and fun on here.

Slrpnk had more but got blown up and unrelenting drama seeking "power users" (lmao) drove off most of the interesting people.

Same thing happened to masto

A lot of the issues you have with Lemmy is in large part because there’s less people here than Reddit. You really have to curate your subscriptions page to get that kind of algorithm treatment you’re used to from Reddit. There’s a lot of communities here that don’t hit the top posts in all but are still active.

You also kinda have to be the change you want to see and be stubborn about it. Keep posting things you find interesting, throw out those comments on posts even if there’s no other comments or motion. A new community isn’t going to get built up overnight.

Absolutely correct, no notes

Skill isnt the issue. The issue is the boring, never ending grind of unsubbing from all communities and users that are communist, socialist, assholes, doomers, gaming-related, or in a language I don't speak

The person who typed this out has definitely been putting in the effort in worldbuilding.

Whenever I recommend Lemmy/Piefed to a friend, I point them to a feed with low/no politics and low/no tech:

• memes/humor: https://piefed.social/f/highmemecontent
• fewer memes: https://piefed.social/f/highsignal

Being less hostile overall would be a huge plus.

And I don't mean that people can't criticize or provide constructive feedback. But it can be disheartening to see an interesting thread, sometimes a "normie" thread, and every comment is just negative.

It's fun to talk about stuff you like. It keeps people coming back.

They muted and permabanned me from the sub.

In my response to this post earlier, I mentioned that one of the problems (which unfortunately reddit shares too) is hostility to other viewpoints, and this is a good example of how that is perpetuated. When a culture on a platform is too homogeneous, disagreement becomes so shocking that it's seen as "trolling", "bad faith", "offensive", etc. I think it's partially a symptom of the reddit-like structure of voting + active moderation, but it's also very much the culture.

You presented your points well and fairly, and even if you hadn't, I think we all need to get comfortable with the fact that normal humans sometimes interact in a manner that doesn't sound like an HR mediation session, and that's ok too.

I mean... it also sounds like someone browsing ALL or similar, without having taken the time to curate their personal feed. I don't see that as a Fediverse-issue really, but a characteristic of most social media platforms, including Reddit.

Do zero work to set your account up (or don't even have one), and you'll pretty much get the shittiest browsing experience out of all possibilities.

You lost me at "Redditor" lol

Fuck Spez

Yes it is a "technical problem" solved by the user. The user gets to pick what they want to see. That is the beauty of the fediverse - a higher degree of control. That is what all of us here signed up for. The user does have to click buttons from time to time.

The only "solution" on the platform side would be it trying to figure out what you would like to see, through statistics and guesswork on ingestion of our personal data. We've already seen how that turns out. Those kinds of machines are never satiated and cause orders of magnitude more harm than good. We don't like it, and that's why we're here.

Or you could just have publicly curated blocklists that new users could enable.

True, a sports, AI, and porn blocker would have saved me a lot of time

Sure! Crowdsource the button clicking! Make it meta!

The people who expect a fediverse site to deliver everything they like, none of what they don't like, and with zero effort on their end are.. frustrating. Big social media really did a number on the internet.

The funny thing is, the beginning of the web was also a bunch of nerds talking mostly about politics and free software.

Thank god and thank you, I dunno why the spam of politics is there. I go to protests every time, vote every election, etc. but it’s mentally exhausting I just want to chill.

I dunno why the spam of politics is there

I think it's a combination of:

• people on Lemmy/Piefed tend to be more politically engaged, so political posts tend to be more active
• corporate platforms push inoffensive lowest-common-denominator mush in their default feed. But on Lemmy/Piefed it's the user's job to curate their feed.

If you want technical niche comms, it's dead. Or it's overrun with people performatively whinging about AI.

In the last month I've just about had enough of it. I'm 3 years into the fediverse and I'm done with the drama.

Alas, you're responding to something they didn't say. You quoted something they said, then switched the topic to why you can't use Linux instead of what was quoted.

Your complaint is totally valid, but the quote you uses add the springboard for it was not a good choice.

Erosion of the middle class is a bad thing? What's the class in the middle of 🤔

Slrpnk had more but got blown up and unrelenting drama seeking "power users" (lmao) drove off most of the interesting people.

Could you elaborate what you mean? I've been a slrpnk admin for near 3 years, and I haven't seen any power user drama addicts on the instance. I'm also not sure what you mean by blown up (too popular? We're still a smallish instance with 380 monthly users).

Personally I think we still have quite a lot of interesting posts and discussions in our communities.

Bad phrasing, me ahh culp ah :p

-loads of downtime and unreliable access caused pop to drop (only unique problem)

• slrpnk suffers from the same problem as the rest of lemmy with posts being drowned out by like 5 people posting 20 things a day to low effort communities.

• The harrassing coms on lemmy (I don't think there are any on slrpnk to your credit) like shitXssay and stuff drove off users that didn't want to get recruited into useless conflict.

as a long time lemming i will respond with the standard lemmy response:

go back to reddit you fascist, child murdering, genocide supporter

i wonder why people get put off. when your active population might be up to 20% of rabid radicalized leftists how do you expect anything to do with current affairs to go

Ah, I see.

Slrpnk went down only twice for an extended period in the 4 years its been up, each time only for about a week before it was fixed and back online. Both times were due to unforeseen hardware issues (since it's self-hosted and running on solar power, in-line with our ideals). Without trying to offend, I think you may have an exaggerated view of how unreliable our server has been. Our uptime over 4 years is 98.91%.

We also didn't see any lengthy drop of our active monthly users. Once they discovered we were back up, our numbers returned to normal, and we've continued to see steady growth, with a consistent active monthly userbase, per our fediverse observer stats:

To your second point, I believe it is relatively easy for a user to block those more active communities if they dislike them.

I'm not the person you have to convince lol. Also around half of every day I try I can't hit slrpnk.

Reacting to criticism of lemmy by getting defensive is part of why lemmy continues to suck.

Just look at the instance's front page atm. When a user logs in they see a lot of reposted news and posts by like 5 different people.

One discussion about foraging, nothing creative or original. These are hard problems to address but they're why people bounce.

its mostly AI/ or bots posting the same thing multiple time over the months, sprinkle a little current news in between.

lemmy lacks the niche content that reddit has, and people on reddit are unlikely to subscribe to here anytime soon, since most dont even known lemmy exist. often time when they get banned they look for ways to evade those bans instead.

Also around half of every day I try I can’t hit slrpnk.

I obviously visit Slrpnk very often each day, and I do not have that problem despite being halfway around the globe from where the server is located, and none of our users have reported issues accessing the site. If you cannot access slrpnk, I do not believe the issue is on our end. Do you get any sort of error when you can't access it?

I am not trying to be defensive, but I am going to push back slightly on your framing of our instance if it contains misleading or incorrect information of our server that could unintentionally harm our reputation.

One discussion about foraging, nothing creative or original.

I also see a post from our zine, self-hosting, vegan, BIFL, Green energy, and Nolawns communities, as well as a fantastic post with imaginative original content in our Solarpunk Art community.