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.
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.
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.
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.
Is there a list or links somewhere of the defederated basic site replacements?
Like I know about Lemmy (replacement for reddit), Loops (replacement for ticktock/reels), and pixelfed (replacement for insta). Oh and I switched from Spotify to tidal. 🤷🏼♀️
Is there a YouTube replacement? Thats really the next big media channel I use daily..
I’ve started explaining this to non-techies. Hopefully starting to gain a little traction as the meta/ticktock machine becomes more and more egregious. Also this is speeding up the homelab I’m building.
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.
But can we still be scenical? Since social media doesn't fulfill a need perse, I was thinking maybe my scenical comments with misspelled words at wrongly advised times would help. It helps me relieve work related stress. Is that how you spell scenical? Scenical, when you cause a scene. No I mean Cynical! Yeah that one!
I did start a community for 3d (3dee), dropshipping (dropshipping lol), and chairs (deskchairs) since those were some communities I used on reddit that I didn't see here. Made a general one for 3d since its still small here and spreading the programs out means less visibility and posts on each community imo. Haven't posted yet and neither has anyone else tho.
What iphone apps do yall use? Rnow I'm using loops for the tiktokclond (hoping more creators join and post there) and mlem for lemmy (liking it more than voyager, arctic seems cleaner but I got used to this interface). Does anyone have a good mastadon app they reccomend? I'm using bluesky since getting an okay feed was easier there, not sure if thats the apps fault. I do like an algorithim just not one based on controversy.
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.
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 😊
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 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 :)
I go through a cycle for this. I leave Reddit because I hate it. And then I go here and well it's quite obvious it's a certain type of people who are willing to jump through hoops and use the fediverse. I find most of the opinions here to be a little bit too extreme for my taste. I just want to discuss football (soccer) and tech...
But I agree with you. It only feels empty because we all decide to not hit "post".
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.
Just wanted to pop in and say, I am so glad so many of you are taking this to heart! I am sitting here with a genuine smile on my face, which for reference NEVER happens. Thank you everyone!
Also, I find a nice way to fill my feed is to liberally subscribe to communities on Lemmy. I'm currently subscribed to 133. I set my feed to Subscribed+Scaled and that works incredibly well to show me what I care about. Then when I get bored, I flip to All+TopDay to get what I missed that day.