On big commercial social media, people think the websites they are on are a big deal: opinions you share there, people you interact with, engagement you receive. It must matter SO MUCH to them - especially to influencers who earn some money from it.

Well, commercial Web is an obvious fodder to the Fedi but what about other alternative social spaces? These small, timy websites with barely any activity on them... there's no place for such delusions. They aren't changing the world and they know it.

Fediverse, in comparison... oof. You see, it is the Future. If We succeed, the Evil will be defeated. The whole world depends on the few people who ended up on here. It is a quiet place now but it will inevitably become the most popular thing. The Year of Linux Fediverse is any day now!

This feel of self-importance and superiority leads to the level of drama almost on-par with the corporate socials which is highly unusual in such small online spaces, at least in my experience.

But do people actually reason like that or is this your own perception, and you're arguing against what you think people think?

It is my best guess as to why Fediverse is such a drama-filled space despite it's size. I might be wrong of course.

Where there are people, drama always appear. No matter size or target audience

An interesting thought. IMO it's essentially just a variant of the observation that left-wing politics tends to be more fratricidal than right-wing politics. Changing things (rather than stopping them changing) tends to require a degree of fervor and single-mindedness which in history has often been a slippery slope to purity tests, quasi-religious ostracism of apostates, etc.

Ever lived in a small town? Drama and gossip is fun. This is the most entertaining thing that's happened on here for a while.

Also FOSS just kinda attracts big arrogant personalities, we're taking about people who are so confident and passionate about being to make better software than the corps that they did it for free.

These small, timy websites with barely any activity on them

It's heaven for me.

This feel of self-importance and superiority

I haven't seen that. We only make fun of reddit but they deserve it for all the crap they did.

It might be it. The contrasting alternative spaces I have in my mind are mainly focused around hobbies rather than politics leading to less heated atmosphere.

Ever lived in a small town? Drama and gossip is fun

Yes, I have, and no it's not. It's just all there is except for high school football, making more kids, and the same drama and gossip but on Facebook. IMO that's why small towns are so toxic once you get past the thin veneer of "small town charm". Couldn't wait to leave the one I grew up in.

And after re-reading OP's opinion, I starting to see the parallels.

Drama and gossip is fun.

Drama is fun until admins start defederating each other or mods start splitting communities...

Also FOSS just kinda attracts big arrogant personalities

That was my thought also. Communities (in general, not Lemmy-specific meaning) focused on Linux are also often drama-filled. Maybe that's just how FOSS communities are.

I haven’t seen that.

It usually comes up when someone brings up Bluesky. I've seen it a lot on the microblogging side of Fedi.

Huh? I don't know where you get almost any of these ideas from…

As for myself, I thought of the Internet as a much bigger deal when I was mainly on small independent forums. I've never participated very much on any corporate social media except maybe reddit, but even on reddit I know I am one of millions.

There's a lot of bullshit on lemmy but I don't think I've seen what you're talking about.

Unless maybe it's that people don't get censored here like reddit, but that's just the sharing of thoughts theories and ideas... And that used to be normal everywhere in life, online and offline before the Almighty algorithm changed the course of freedoms.

Bluesky is on a totally different protocol. There are bridges to it from the fedi, but it's a completely different platform from the threadiverse

IDK I'm just over here posting about video games and anime lol

What communities are you seeing this in? This Fediverse community is focused on change, so yeah people are going to want other people to get away from the big billionaire social media platforms. Maybe just subscribe to different communities if you don't like it. You can also block this community.

Yes, the only difference is that on bigger places that the drama has bigger chances of getting diluted and not hearing about it.

So you came to the fediverse to shit on the fediverse because you’re… not an influencer?

Idk, gb2meta

Or the drama becomes so large that it ruins someone’s life.

Um, okay... thanks for telling me I guess.

Your complaint is with an entirely different platform run by a corporation, is the point

Should I only ever talk good things about this place?

I usually blame that on bullies being safely more anonymous than their victims, but yeah you're right, that's one of the nastiest possibilities.

Not at all. Say whatever you feel, just as I did.

It was primarily from my time on the microblogging side of the Fedi tbh. Although here on Lemmy drama happens a lot too but I avoid getting invested into it. The latest drama I interacted with on here was the whole "defederating from Threads" thing. It made me leave all social media for months lol. Since then I focused on talking about games and stuff on here and never touch any drama again.

It's not. Reread the comment you replied to. I'm not talking about what happens on bsky at all.

Are you talking about mastodon?

Yeah if you don't like drama then just ignore it and don't engage with it

lol. I like that it has nerdy people on it and it gives me lots of control and options. I don't care and might prefer it if it stays under the radar.

It mostly happens on Mastodon and its' sisters but I did see some of it on Lemmy too.

Okay.

Did you know that, if you don’t like this free service with no ads, you can just quietly leave?

I avoid it of course. Unfortunately, whenever Fedi drama leads to a defederation, a split of a community or an active user being bullied away from the platform, it comes to my attention when I try to learn why did it happen.

I do prefer Lemmy to commercial socials even if I don't vibe with most people on here.

you can just quietly leave?

And who said I want to leave huh?

Hehe. I think we inherited a lot of that from social media. I always like to believe we could be an old-school Linux forum, or one of the places where we discussed hobbies like bicycles, knitting... whatever. For some reason, those used to be way more constructive and positive. And while we had drama, it used to be way more toned down. I don't really know why it's sometimes different here. We have elements of that. But maybe we lack a clear goal? Other than negative goals and growth or non-growth? Maybe it's in part the userbase. The platform layout, psychology... Or we're just doing way too much politics and memes here. Back in ye "good old days"(?) politics used to contained in specific corners. And since social media that's 80% of what everything is about...

But it kinda all depends on what people expect the network to be like.

I follow very few groups or profiles for memes, news and politics, and I find the experience with what's left pretty enriching overall.

The fediverse seems rather active though, specially if comparing to similarly niche communities on Reddit, Facebook, Discord, etc.

Besides, the fediverse becoming the main platform would both mean the problems of other platforms are attracted here, and that we'd be making a new standard.

Alas, the saving grace of the fediverse is that any group of instances and/or actors can either interact or not with each other if they so desire without compromising the whole network. Though that is bound to create feuds, it's still far better than the addiction-oriented walled gardens that are the major platforms of today, while this bilateralism allowing for instances to choose who they interact ensures a healthier growth.

You infer it when you complain, down talk other people's hard work that they are doing for free, and don't offer any solutions. You know. On a public forum.

Bluesky is harmless to Threadiverse. ATmosphere nas got no Reddit alternative.

Yeah, we kinda all still share this space... So I get to put up with things. But I'd agree, there's lots of positive stuff here. It just needs a good dose of subscribing and unsubscribing from other stuff. And I sometimes wish we had more of the good stuff. Like we definitely got conversation going about mainstream stuff (and politics). I mentioned Linux as well and there's about enough people here to talk about that, get someone's questions answered and computer fixed... But with my more niche hobbies, there's like 3 other people who are into that. So I regularly struggle to get a conversation going. I think we need more of that. On Reddit or Discord, there's a lot going on, even for the most absurd hobby or interest, people post their original content... And I think we still need way more of that.

For Threadiverse specifically, I blame the laser focus on negativity on here. So often do I come across a comment that makes me think "holy shit, this guy really shouldn't doomscroll right now". It doesn't need to be a political sub either, I find them everywhere. Sometimes I feel like the whole platform was tailor made for doomscrolling. It's wild, I don't see it anywhere else where I've been.

What do you mean by "I don’t see it anywhere else where I’ve been."? The Lemmyverse in contrast to other Fediverse platforms? Or the Fediverse versus other social platforms? Commercial (with algorithms) or free? I mean I sometimes see some destructive tendencies on Mastodon as well. And there's a lot of shenanigans going on in YouTube comments, on Reddit or underneath half the newspaper articles. But I'd also say a lot of platforms come with a unique atmosphere. Either due to the userbase or because of how they're set up and what kind of behaviour gets reinforced due to platform design.

I've been trying to help on that for a while. Boosting, commenting, posting/crossposting... At worse, I just like/dislike since I can use that to make Ublock Origin auto-hiding posts on instances whose software doesn't have native hiding. And I'd incentivize others to do so too, to ensure the network doesn't whither.

But still, patiently being around for some 3 years now, my impression is that it's growing quite nicely and quite fast too. Even more so if compared to the competition which's been around for much longer. Iirc Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, for example, are some 20 y.o. already. Discord I find suspicious how fast it grew, but even then it's older than most fediverse softwares too afaik, the oldest ones to my knowledge (not counting retrofitting ActivityPub) being Mastodon and Lemmy circa 2016~2017.

Still, having learned not to take things for granted, even if I don't find it barren, I'd again incentivize others that see potential in this network to keep helping it stay relevant.

I wonder how many people realize the importance of independent platforms. Especially with what's going on in politics, big tech, shaping discourse in a top-down way... All not really healthy for society. And we got an uptake in surveillance, manufactured truths, all the age-verification already cost us some internet forums in the UK... I think the Fediverse is more important than ever.

Did we grow, though? You say it like it's accepted truth. But every time I have a look at the numbers (for example on Fediverse Observer), it seems to me like we're doing the opposite. We peaked 3 years ago and we've been shrinking since. It's even worse for platforms like Mastodon. Seems they've lost several hundreds of thousands of users. I'd say we here on Lemmy/PieFed/MBin kinda stabilized(?). I also think there's been a slight uptake in content and discussion. Feels to me we've become more active over the years. But judging by the numbers, I'd say it's because we lost the new users and lurkers. And these days our average userbase shifted to people who (on average) post more. But we didn't grow as in: there's more people around than it used to be.

Like I said, it's a perception of mine. But if total numbers are stagnated, it may be worth for people to try to bring others in, like by direct invite (do keep explanation when inviting simple though!), or by simply attaching your fediverse profile/profiles to your other social medias where possible.

Lemmy in comparison to all other online social media including the rest of Fediverse. I mean, the times are tough and people are angry for a reason, there's rage and despair everywhere but no other place is so entrenched in negativity as Lemmy.

Big socials also have lots of negativity but they are BIG: you can find so much stuff that you can completely ignore what is probably 50+% of the content on the platform.

Small socials, on the other hand, manage it surprisingly well. I don't know why Lemmy can't manage the negativity under control, to be honest. No other small social media I visit has a problem with not drowning in doom. My one theory is that the other small socials have a focus: creativity, technology, some kind of media, etc. Maybe having a common interest in such a tight knit community is a remedy to doomscrolling?

It would also explain why pre-APIcalypse Lemmy wasn't nearly as toxic - the flagship instance was focused on technology.

Thanks for explaining. I'd agree with the reasoning. And it's a mix of several factors, I think. Basically our history. We grew and that means you can get away with more (bad) things in a large group of people than in a smaller, more tightly coupled group. We attracted a wider audience, so now it's not just a few privacy nerds, Linux users and a buch of tankies coexisting, but all ideological factions of society. We also got a few Reddit refugees who got banned over there for good reasons.

But in my opinion it's an entire thing: The political landscape got way more extremist in recent years in general. And we do lots of talking about politics here. So with being a link aggregator and sharing news articles we get all the polarizing stuff and due to psychology, people share negative news articles because that gets you riled up and want to talk. Or fight. We also copied some social media design elements which reinforce some specific kinds of negative behaviour. Subscribing to groups does compartmentalization. And the entire philosophy of the Fediverse adds yet another layer of compartmentalization, which doesn't always work in our favor. I think it also awakens some tribal instincts in some people. Which might not even be bad(?) unless they start to disunite and fight each other. Which some do. I don't think that's an issue on Reddit for example, because that's just one central place, plus they keep a tighter leash on their mods. And Mastodon would be yet different because you can't split up into groups/communities, there's just people to be followed and global hashtags. And once there's any level of normalization of drama and negativity, the internet will add more on top 😅

I get the sentiment. Recently when opening Lemmy, I get really depressed from seeing the content posted. I really hope it wasn't like that.

I never thought about Lemmy's communities as one of the reasons for the combative attitude that's so common here. Although, I disagree that Mastodon and Reddit are less affected by it: Reddit definitely had serious fights between subreddits and they stopped being so prominent primarily because of Reddit's heavy-handed moderation. Mastodon, on the other hand, is defined by defederations (which are worse than on Lemmy) and since visibility depends almost entirely on the amount of followers (tags are rather unpopular on Masto), groups form naturally around popular users whose boosts are the main way to be seen.

I can totally confirm that Lemmy users are susceptible to tribalism - just for the amount of times I heard that someone being called a fascist/tankie/lib because they are from a certain Lemmy instance. And I know I think this way too sometimes.

You're probably right. I don't spend a lot of time on Mastodon. I likely missed drama and defederation. Other than the occasional shitstorms. But I think that's just "a thing" on microblogging platforms. And the German privacy nerds I follow on Mastodon do way less of it anyway.

And regarding language... That seems to be a factor as well. The German speaking community here on Lemmy established a different atmosphere. From my perspective, there's way less yelling at each other amongst the Germans than in the broad English speaking Threadiverse. There's trolls and a lot of memelords, but seems to me some people still remember the "Netiquette". And those ideology- or identity wars aren't as loud. I heard from other people, it's similar (also a noticeably different atmosphere) in the French speaking corner.

I wish my experience with Masto&Co could be as peaceful. Back when I joined it there was a devastating drama between multiple trans instances that led to a mass defederation from one particular instance. One of my mutuals was on it, they didn't know about the drama and I was too busy with IRL stuff to warn them about incoming defederation. Being cut-off like this wasn't pleasant at all.

From my perspective, there’s way less yelling at each other amongst the Germans than in the broad English speaking Threadiverse.

That's interesting. My only experiences are with English internet as well as my native language with the latter being so awful that I learned English just to escape that circus. I suppose English internet is in hell right now because of the US primarily. Maybe I should consider learning a new language :D