Feedbacks for the fediverse (from all over the internet)
Let me know if this is appropriate for this community.
I've been collecting links to post, blog, article, comment, etc that criticize the fediverse, whether it's about the specific apps or fediverse in general, whether it's about the technical aspect or about the social aspect.
If you also found one, feel free to share it here.
https://lemmy.world/post/12352000 - Lemmy is not immune to trolls, bad fait actors or propaganda - in fact, despite how bad reddit is, a lot of Lemmy instances are worse, 2024-02-24
I mostly had a look at the Lemmy posts, seems like most of them are 10 months - 1 year old. Lemmy has evolved a lot since then, user-level instance muting was a big change for instance.
The most active communities being on other instances than .ml is also a notable change.
Though, I think a lot has stayed the same. I regularly read the same complaints that have been brought up over and over again for a long time now. I'm not sure if the UI, or moderation woes, or the atmosphere, or the size, or amount of argumentative people have changed substantially.
That's a minority opinion. I've brought that up before and been pointed at the Changelog and told lots of things have changed. It just doesn't feel that way for me.
This comes across as highly biased - perhaps you could make another post like this, where people sing the praises of the Fediverse? Not in terms of promises but the reality of actual experiences? And then link it here and vice versa, to give people a more accurate take of both Pros and Cons.
Overall some things do seem to be getting better. Not quickly, or even sufficiently, but inexorably it does seem to be happening. Although it also gets worse too in other ways so... I'm not sure what to say about the overall situation.
Personally, I'm going to start blocking more communities, which I find very sad bc I used to greatly enjoy those very same ones.:-(
Lemmy.world definitely shows up a lot. But I wonder what could still be improved. The amount of content, I wonder? Not an expert on SEO, but SEO-wise lemmy is doing great, no?
I've got an interest in the decentralized protocols and have written about them before, so I've got a bit of a disorganized treasure trove of articles, opinions, and blog posts I've gone through at some point. As a side note, shutout to the single file plugin for Gecko & Chromium based browsers, it's a great way to grab an archive of anything you might want to reference later.
I went through my list of archives plus a few things that came to mind that I've read/watched, below are things that (at least in part) take a more critical look at Activity Pub as a protocol or community.
Microblogging Protocols Compared v2 - My own post comparing the big three protocols. Be warned, it was supposed to be a smaller updated & corrected version of an older post, but it ballooned in size.
Something About The SWF Makes Me Feel Icky - The Social Web Foundation has taken on some big corporate donors and it's leader has a very protectionist/anti-other-protocols position.
Fringe Mastodev - A collection of thoughts regarding what Mastodon developed into
Nostr is Identity for the Internet - A post discussing the values of Nostr's identities (and decentralized identities in general) as beneficial over other alternatives (such as Activity Pub's server controlled identities)
Off-topic flamewar about US domestic politics - There were a bunch of low effort political bots discovered on Lemmy (key word: discovered; meaning high effort bots are probably flying under the radar). I was unable to find the original thread, it may have been nuked but most likely I just couldn't find it.
imho (50+ years old dude that is not much of a geek and understand not much either), the main issue and one that is shared by most if not all social media but is more annoying on Lemmy, is the fact that by default a new or a potential user is supposed to be reading the full flow of content. And then we're surprised most run away screaming in disgust?
It's a bit like entering a restaurant and being expected by the owner to take a bite or two of every single plate on the menu, and dessert, before being asked what it is we wanted to order.
Be it Reddit, or Twitter, or Lemmy if the default content is of extremely low value and often extremely low effort, qnd when it's not it's still content most people just won't be interested in. So, why force it under everyone's eyes?
The default/new user access to content could have been made opt-in, instead of op-out. Instantly muting most of the noise, trash, and low value content.
Imagine the home page empty of any content by default, save a selection of the most 'popular' tags or community names, say with a description, that the user is still expected to select from before the timeline starts showing them any related content, and then an option to search for more (more specific) communities.
I know a few people my age that have tried Lemmy but could not stand being asked to swallow the constant flow of politics, or memes, or anger, or whatever. Those are legit content to anyone interested in them, just having them the default experience for everybody may not the best idea?
Once again, it's the same on reddit. But reddit had two advantages for people like me: we already had an account and we knew how it worked, so it was obvious how to escape the numerous type of content we did not want to see. It's much less obvious on Lemmy, and even less so if one has not yet created an account... which is the most likely.
I solved this on PieFed by allowing admins to designate which communities can show up on the home page for logged-out users. See https://piefed.social for an example of how it turned out.
Ain't this the truth. Great work pulling the actual conversations on this.
Predicably if you say this in comments you are then sent 10 messages calling you a bootlicking schil asking you why you are even here.
Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.
Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.
I see Bluesky's appeal, I've been there for a few weeks, it's quite nice. Not sure about Threads though, I've heard the people are mostly Instagram's influencers, is this correct?
Ehh, I follow zero influencers, only people I know in real life and Instagram spammed me with "[Elevator7009's friend] and 23 others want you to join them on Threads!" or whatever the notif is for awhile. I never bothered getting one myself because ew Meta and I already use the Fediverse. And because I was pretty sure it was just marketing—if my friend actually personally wanted me on Threads they'd private message me or tell me in real life.
Although it still could be mostly influencers! I am a fun sample size of one with a single anecdote.