I often get bored of the Fediverse, but I'm doing my best to stay here.
I often get bored of the Fediverse, but I'm doing my best to stay here.
I've been off and on with the Fediverse for sometime now. It's a relatively friendly place full of fellow nerds, but with a few caveats....
My feeds seem very focused on hard information be it Gaza, tech companies doing bad things, or people pitchforking about the lastest big bad in digital privacy. This is all well and good, but it does get a bit tired after a while. Seeing the samey stuff post after post by academic types makes me more informed but also mentally draining.
Where's the fun? On Facebook and Instagram I see light fluffy popcorn type posts of people reminiscing over Nintendo games or reels of cockatiels being cockatiels. It's fun to scroll and interact. Here it feels like I'm in a classroom, and people, while friendly, do get quite hostile if you don't like Linux or Star Trek.
As a leftist I like it here because it's my bubble of people, but I'd like to see the fedi let its hair down a bit. It's okay to talk about stuff other than infosec, privacy guides, distros, and Gaza.
Reddit began in a similar way - being very tech focused until it started to become much more mainstream.
Block instances which have nothing you want (foreign languages, for me)
Block communities spamming gaza / war / techbro
I like to browse new across all instances, and block rather than only view subscriptions
Block communities spamming gaza / war / techbro
I would agree with you if those communities were/are created to post content about gaza / war / techbro. But in most cases, those communities are generic, about news and technology, so when you block them, you also block other content that is not about gaza / war / techbro.
I have the same approach of browsing all and blocking what I don't want as I come across it. Which in my case, happens to be mostly anime and shitposting communities.
Reddit began in a similar way - being very tech focused until it started to become much more mainstream.
I wasn't at the beginning of Reddit, but I have been a user since 2013 and I always was confined in my little bubble of interests (I used it as a replacement of Feedly, so I pretty much created my curated content) it was not until the APIcalypse that it was mentioned over and over that r/all wasn't even that good nowadays, and I was like, bruh, I should go there often, I did, and still do, but I still browse my curated content, whether is here or Reddit.
Dont forget engagement. IMO best part of fediverse.
Personally, I feel like you can have fun on fedi, but it all depends on the accounts/communities you follow. My Sharkey feed AND my Lemmy feed are both full of memes, fandom nonsense, and shitposts. If you only follow serious communities and people that talk about serious news, you'll have a serious time.
That said, one thing that I thought was unpleasant about the fediverse, and then realised was a feature rather than a bug is... The fact that you can run out of fediverse content. After 2 hours on Lemmy, I have functionally read all of Lemmy (or, well, all the communities I care to read), and maybe 1 more hour to join conversations I'd like to join.
Compared to the seemingly infinite content stream of The Other Sites (tm), this initially struck me as bad and weird, but then I realised... I actually prefer it this way. Doomscrolling a fedi site/app is actually not possible, and that has done wonders for my mental health.
The fact that you can run out of fediverse content. After 2 hours on Lemmy, I have functionally read all of Lemmy
I'll add that if you are running out of things to read you can instead post content you want to discuss. I've found that much of the time there are people waiting to jump in and comment, they just aren't in the habit of making posts. Which you didn't need to do on other sites because there were always enough people posting content. And it's less likely to leave you doom scrolling since it's a good opportunity to stop since comments won't come in immediately.
For the moment, a lot of the fun on some of the federated platforms is behind several steps of effort that many of the corporate platforms have streamlined people out of being accustomed to taking, which is part of why they've kept their larger audiences. If a single click/tap is too much, that's enough to keep some people away from here.
It's not a matter of laziness either, it's more of, how much effort do I want to put into something that I'm using for casual entertainment? For many people it's minimal, but many federated platforms currently don't really work like that. They've arguably thrown the baby out with the bathwater in an overcorrection away from commercial algorithmic feeds since existing platforms have conditioned people to not have to put effort into finding silly/fun content.
The types of people to post won't be as inclined to post if they find their posts aren't reaching people because people mostly have to actively seek them out to engage with them at all. The types of people to more passively engage won't be able to as easily as those posts they might engage with may never reach them because they mostly have to actively seek them out. The end result of a lack of feedback and content for both types of people, despite there being a possibility and existence of both for them, results in this recurring sense of dissatisfaction.
Note that this is written largely with Mastodon in mind, and to a lesser degree Lemmy. In Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/PieFed/Sublinks's cases I think they're potentially better off in terms of structure and offering different ways to sort one's feeds, but it's a matter of more people joining to round out communities and discussion more.
Incredibly well thought out reply. Thank you!
People on here and on mastodon are really pessimistic overall I've found. I still need to go to Twitter despite all the bots and engagement farming going on these days if I want to learn about new product releases or the newest possibilities of the newest technology that was released just yesterday.
I feel like the only news that get shared here and that actually get engagement are the bad ones about the war in Ukraine or in Palestine, or about anti-minority laws but we never see the good news like the fact that France added abortion as a constitutional right.
A big factor is Lemmy was setup by tankies for tankies. So the constant spam of negative news about _______ western nation is on brand.
The issue is that the majority of people on the Fediverse are "techies" with specific interests, which skews the spectrum of content quite a bit.
The Fediverse is in an awkward spot. It needs more people like you to keep technology communities from becoming Linux circlejerks, but at the same time those circlejerks are driving people like you out.
I don’t think there is really a conflict here though if we are all just nice to each other.
I think techy nerds are an absolutely fine foundation for a community so long as said techy nerds understand the inherent politics to being a techy nerd, having access to powerful computers and having the privilege of being in a highly skilled industry that pays fairly well (I know big generalization).
It is going to be awkward trying to expand the horizons to include a more diverse user base, but there is nothing wrong with awkwardness, just toxic behavior and gatekeeping.
Techy nerds just need to be willing to listen and evolve their understandings of community spaces. It seems like computer nerds are obsessed with visions of the internet before the masses of people and big corporations came onto it, but while that feeling is understandable it risks building a conceptual wall between people who are passionate about the capacity of computers to help people and the very people they want computers to help.
We can have a better more positive federation of communities than the internet has ever had if we decide right now to be more inclusive and radical in our solidarity with each other.
I see this as a positive. Instead of being fed content to keep me engaged by an algorithm until I suddenly realize the day is almost over and I didn't really enjoy myself, I reach a point where I feel like I'm done for the day then I make plans, play a game, read, etc.
Now I read the news, fuck around on lemmy a bit, then actually get on with a "real" day.
Yeah I don't really relate to the complaint because why does all your fun have to come from a single website? Does your online content have to be a one-stop shop? I just hop around Lemmy, Tildes, read sports news, maybe watch some cool videos on Youtube, etc etc. And when I'm bored with internet, I have other stuff IRL to do. Yeah I'm just not treating Lemmy like an endless scroll feed like Reddit or Instagram. I just check out what's new (I might pop in a few times a day), participate if I want, and move on.
I recommend some keyword filters. I use them to reduce certain topics from my feed, specifically about certain wars or politicians or celebrities. I did the same thing on reddit to filter out some of the "awareness" campaigns where everyone posted about the FCC chair to every single sub.
I also just browse local communities instead of the entire fediverse. This defeats the purpose of the fediverse, but it drastically reduces the number of duplicate and NSFW communities. I then mute the communities I don't want to see. I'll also mute the hyper specific communities that usually have complete overlap with the more general community, i.e. dogs and dogpictures.
It takes some work to get your feed to your liking, but it's worth it in the end. There's still far less content available than on reddit, but the amount of quality content feels similar.
You're our hero!
How do you stay in a community, but filter content you don't want through keywords?
Honestly I don't even bother subscribing to comminuted. Communities for me are opt-out via muting rather than opt-in via subscriptions. I still see posts from the news community even though I have several Gaza keywords filtered out.
Yeah Lemmy, besides news and technology, is very quiet and I think it suffers from having communities fractured between instances, so niche interests get even less traffic than they would on Reddit. But my Mastodon feed is always busy and interesting. If it isn't you're not following the right people yet. I recommend some hashtag searches for things you're interested in.
Lemmy really needs a concept of a "super-community", some way to group different communities together and have that grouping be subscribeable. Maybe creating a post within a super-community will give the user the ability to automatically cross-post to all the individual communities, although this could be abuseable.
/kbin has got Collections, and PieFed has got topics. You may check either out.
Big agree with this. One of the clients I messed with had a feature like this and it's really nice. But we need something server-side to allow federated communities to pull from each other to create a river from separate streams as it were.
I follow lots of the the same communities across instances and that means often I'm seeing repeated posts, sometimes from different authors just to get the aggregate of things. This would be a huge boon to the usability too.
The Fedi is what you make of it. Since there's no algorithm telling you who to follow or pushing posts to your feed, it's up to you to curate who you follow.
My feed is a mixture of shit posts, memes, cats and dogs, flowers, a little politics and a little tech. Chaos is why I'm here and who I follow reflects that. If your feed is full of info you don't care about, then you're following the wrong people.
You’re a consumer. If you see something interesting post it to Fediverse so you can also be a contributor.
It sort of sounds like you want people to entertain you for free.
If you look at my profile you'll see that's not the case. I've been contributing quite a bit.
I’m not falling for that trick again…
Give it time. The porn on lemmy is growing exponentially, so the more varied content will start trickling in. My guess is roughly 3 more months before the memes really start to pick up
Fedi is the worst social media, except for all the others.
The only thing I’m missing from the fediverse is a platform where animations and animators can connect and share their work with the possibility of having it discovered. Pixelfed still isnt in the app stores, peertube is not user friendly and has no official apps, mastodon doesnt have amy kind of upvoting or algorithm or ability to browse lemmy communities, lemmy doesnt have native video support or user follows.
I had to leave a Mastodon instance because it was about activism, gaza and politics the whole fucking day. So I perfectly understand what you feel. But I think there are ways and/or servers where everybody can feel comfortable. The mastodon server where I'm on right now, people talks about US stuff the whole day, and I'm very annoyed because of that because I don't give a damn shit about US. But the admin is cool, people support Ukraine, and I follow funny stuff too.
I have multiple accounts for seperate feeds. One seriouse one just communities of fun shit. Helps filter out the mindless doomerism.
Lemmy is a little slow sometimes, but I've started to have the opposite problem on Mastodon. I need to weed out some hashtags or something because I can't keep up anymore.
Even back on twitter days I never got used to it because there's just so much content everywhere that I feel that I can't follow any topic properly and I lose all interest. In my case the concept of microblogging is not a right fit for me.
No kidding! I was just thinking this morning that my Mastodon feed has gone bonkers lately and it is getting harder to keep up! I suppose that is a good problem to have but I only follow a few tags. I am, however, enjoying Mastodon way more than I ever did twitter.
Not a perfect solution by any means, but you can block communities you have no interest in.
Fool. There is no escape from FOSS.
Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds are already on their way to your home to use it as a duel stage for GNU GPL v3 vs Linux GPL v2
After i scroll my subscribed communities, if i have extra time i scroll all. I often find something new to follow - art, cats, or that new music lyrics/AI art one that i still can't figure out.
You have to block instances that are almost purely political, and then use an app that lets you block keywords. Make liberal use of the community block feature too. I do all these things and it still gets overwhelming.
I am not interested in leftist discussions, or politics much at all, and I don't want to see pictures of war crimes. And while I love FOSS, I also enjoy Apple products.
Despite all that I feel like new communities are popping up that fit my interests somewhat frequently. My home feed is at least pretty well curated to games, film, tv, food, local places, AI art, and some pets/cats/hopeful posting communities.
It seems to be enough content to get me through the day and then some so I'm happy on that.
I do think lemmy could add features to make it easier to find content regardless of community, though. Because it doesn't USUALLY matter which instance the community is on when it's organized around a more hobbyist or chill subject. But content is currently duplicated across instances in different communities so I do see a lot of repeated links and the like. Plus it would be interesting to know when a conversation comes up on a subject I care about in communities I haven't found yet. But that is a departure from the reddit structure that is more my wishful thinking.
Well you just inspired me to post something silly that I wouldn’t have otherwise
Youtube Shorts give me Brainrot but I can't stop watching them. I don't know what they did to the algorithm, but it perfectly captures my attention.
They're the absolute best along with Insta reels.
Find the art communities & cat ones! There's some car ones but they're less active.
jUsT mAkE coNtEnT
Reddit was similar in the beginning.
So was Digg.
So was Prodigy.
So were School BBSes.
Just so I don't sound like some jackass saying "stick with it, it'll all work out":
This is the way the internet used to work. It used to work a lot closer to the fediverse, where you just had "token rings", or networks of sites that banded together and shared links and promoted content from each other.
They were all hosted by random people who cared about the topics the communities were involved in, be it agriculture, painting, technology, politics, hunting, fishing, hiking, racing, swimming, etc. etc.
Central social networking services like Facebook/Twitter/Reddit are a relatively new invention, and is not how the internet used to work.
i too dislike the lack of content i got from reddit & facebook and i also believe they started out the same way you describe; but i find myself wishing i could remember how i filled in the missing content void almost 20 years ago so i could do that again until the fediverse catches up.
scaled sort is kinda more fun than regular sorting. Less seriousness
Yeah, where's the fun? There's no posts about owls/bats/invertebrates/cats/dogs, no cooking or food posts, no pictures of people knitting socks, nobody asking general questions, no articles and pictures about space, no discussion around movies/tv/books, nobody ever posts about gaming of any kind, there's no memes to be found anywhere, no poems or short stories, no digital/traditional/AI art.
For some reason browsing news/politics/technology always seems to revolve around depressing and infuriating topics which is different from every other platform.
That's why I only view subscribed communities, completely free of news/politics.
Thank you for the insightful post. My experience is similar and I have not found the place where I fit in best. And the area of operation is a lot smaller with a lot less opportunity. I will stick around and figure it out while the number of users increases. It will happen. Eventually. I think. Hopefully.
go out and plant a shrub