People need to realize you can use alternatives

  • Menachem@midwest.social
    201·
    1 year ago

    tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year

    • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.

      I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.

      Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it’s subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.

      • thegiddystitcher@beehaw.org
        4·
        1 year ago

        I’ve seen people literally signing up here just to make like 50 empty communities and not post or comment on anything at all. Definitely a lot of folks just trying to stake some territory that they think will be valuable in the future.

          • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
            1·
            1 year ago

            I’m pretty confident we’ll eventually see some form of voluntary synchronization between identical communities added to either the codebase or a popular client app. “Owning” an individual instance’s community will be worthless.

            (Wish I had the !remindme bot right now)

        • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          Im sure some of it is staking out territory, but I think a good chunk of it is just that modern reddit mindset. The mindset is that of course you cant have good gaming discussion on gaming you need to have truegaming, and games, and linux_gaming, and patientgamers, and etc. The thing is you can and things are small enough on all instances even lemmy.ml and beehaw that you can talk about it in one place.

          • Manticore@beehaw.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            The reason reddit had so many is that it would rapidly homogenise into giant echo chambers with minimal community. Minority perspectives were supressed or drowned out by lurker voting.

            New subs were being made to recapture giant subs’ original intentions, or specialise, yo put minority perspectives of the Hot page and curate a community as a result.

            Lemmy isn’t big enough to homogenise like that, at least not yet.

        • Manticore@beehaw.org
          01·
          1 year ago

          I also like the beehaw has a mission for community in mind, supported by having an application process; and their having prepared umbrella communities that will prevent echo chambers.

          Beehaw is definitely getting hammered too though; it’s probably the second- or third-largest instance atm.

    • slashzero@hakbox.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      Very true. It would be sad to build up a persona on a smaller instance to then have it go dark and take your user with it. Other than losing your collection of “upvotes,” you can just recreate a new user with the same display name on another instance and keep going. 👍

      Holy crap, you can do Slack style emoticons? Huzzah! 🎉

    • Sinnoh@feddit.deEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      Let me see if I underatand this correctly:

      If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the “all communities” feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are “federated”. But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)

      So, as a normal user. Who’s just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn’t joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it’s the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?

      • Yozul@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It’s true that they won’t show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it’s on at least once, but you don’t need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.

        • MBM@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          This. There’s no need to join the biggest instance, as long as you’re not among an instance’s first users you won’t notice much difference.

    • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is the way. If you don’t like the moderators, don’t play on their servers. It’s that simple.

  • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
    4·
    1 year ago

    As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.

    • YoTcA@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.

    • Menachem@midwest.social
      11·
      1 year ago

      assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least

      wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance’s version of the post

      • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)

      • YoTcA@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.

        I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes@lemmy.ml . Maybe this is the intended behavior.

        The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.

        Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…

    • slashzero@hakbox.social
      11·
      1 year ago

      Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can’t say I have had any issues as you’ve described. If something doesn’t look right, or isn’t working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.

  • Gloomy@mander.xyz
    3·
    1 year ago

    I joined mander.xyz because it has a lot of science oriented communities and that’s why I’m here. Super happy to have found it.

  • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
    3·
    1 year ago

    Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.

    Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.

    • goat@burggit.moe
      1·
      1 year ago

      How’s it work if I get banned from one instance? Yet I can still comment in that instance I got banned from? No clue how that works

      • Vlixz@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        Just joining in, and what will happen if the instance you created your account on decides to stop running. Does your account just dissapear?

        • RoosterBoy@lemm.ee
          11·
          1 year ago

          Yes. But it is easy as hell to set up on another instance or even throw up your own.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        If you get banned from your home instance, you’re banned everywhere.

        If you get banned on a different instance, you can no longer post/comment/vote in communities there but otherwise you’re fine.

    • nattekrant@feddit.nl
      1·
      1 year ago

      If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.

      • _cnt0@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        That isn’t guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn’t a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer …

        Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.

    • mangel@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.

  • derek@lemmy.one
    3·
    1 year ago

    First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml’s admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.

    I know that’s silly but that’s why I’m not there anymore.

    • underisk@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Profit motive ruined Reddit so you’ve come to a place created by communist then get upset that the people who made and operate it are communists. Yeah that’s more than a little silly.

      • that_one_guy@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        There’s a difference between being a communist and blindly supporting authoritarian dictatorships wearing communist masks.

        • underisk@lemmy.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’ve not really looked into it too deeply because every single mile-long screed about this “controversy” starts off by clutching pearls about communists. Can you link me to where this is happening without paragraphs of dissembling preamble?

          • lemdoeswhatreddont@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            1·
            1 year ago

            This is the lead dev on Russia’s invasion, total support here and other comments:

            https://old.reddit.com/r/TheGangGoesLeft/comments/tcu04j/whats_with_all_these_totenkopf_symbols_on_your/i0g1itl/

            A few months later, they’ve apparently flipped on the issue entirely and now support US aid:

            https://old.reddit.com/r/SocialistRA/comments/y2rzhg/interview_with_anarchocommunist_combat/is5yno0/?context=1000

            I’m not very concerned with the “communist” or tankie part fwiw. And while I do have strong opinions on Russia’s invasion, I’m far more concerned with the 180 shift in position displayed here, and I have yet to find an explanation. I don’t think he wants to talk about it, but a quick “I changed my mind because xyz” could alleviate my concerns. Clear communication is important if you’re gonna have such strong opinions imo.

            I’m not trying to villainize him or cancel lemmy, he seems like a decent person and we’ve even had a brief interaction here… But I hope you can see why I’m cautious about things. The whiplash is my main issue, not which side he picks.

            And I’m not here to stir the pot, it’s just that you specifically asked and I had already personally looked into things.

            Mods: I won’t be spamming this, just wanted to put it out there once.

            However… if the platform prospers and attracts enough other devs, none of this even remotely matters, and that’s why I’m still here, I want to believe this can be set aside.

      • Gray@lemmy.ca
        0·
        1 year ago

        All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of “Orientalism”. Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.

          • Gray@lemmy.ca
            0·
            1 year ago

            China and Russia. Thus censoring legitimate western media articles about China. There’s also a lot of anti-NATO bullshit. Here’s the Axios article they banned a user for posting.

              • Gray@lemmy.ca
                1·
                1 year ago

                I generally align with the left most of the time, but I hate making one label the basis for your entire political opinion. I am very against censorship. My greatest pet issues have to do with censorship and democratic principles. In terms of American politics, I will never vote Republican. If I feel a Democrat has let me down in a big way, I would consider voting third party, but 99% of the time I would vote Democratic. Centrist Democrats piss me off more than leftist ones. My foreign policy stances are probably the least in line with the further left. I am generally pro-NATO with the understanding that NATO isn’t perfect. I just worry way more about a world with China/Russia at the helm given their propensity for censoring opinions that oppose their majority parties.

                • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  I am generally pro-NATO with the understanding that NATO isn’t perfect.

                  I’m terminally-online enough that I am used to the paths of most arguments that have appeared on this website about politics, but – and I say this to be transparent – this one baffles me and I don’t know how to respond to it. I’ve seen people say it but, well, it gets hard to explain within rule 1.

                  Maybe if we agree that “NATO is an extension of US foreign policy” we can sidestep the issue for now.

                  I just worry way more about a world with China/Russia at the helm given their propensity for censoring opinions that oppose their majority parties.

                  This one I am much more used to. Remembering that NATO is a military organization and not, you know, “who controls the internet,” I’d like to just present you with a simple pair of questions:

                  1. How many of the past thirty years has the US been at war?

                  2. How many of the past thirty years has China been at war?

                  Beyond that, for all the fearmongering people do, China is remarkably less interested in unilaterally dictating relations than you might think, so explaining things in terms of “which country is the master of the unipolar world order” is not justified. Unipolarity has only been the state of things for a little over 30 years (and only obvious for a little over 40) and was unheard of before that. There is no reason to suppose that the future can only be unipolar, especially if the country that ushered in unipolarity and viciously guards it with world-historic levels of violence (the US) is no longer the strongest force.

                  China has shown every indication of seeking bilateral development and cooperation. An example in severe microcosm is the US banning China from the International Space Station and China responding by making its own space station which the US isn’t banned from, nor most other countries (though I think it is still a finite list and not totally open, owing in part to being a new program). Stories like “debt traps” from China are grotesque projection, as China doesn’t do things like forced restructuring or asset seizure, unlike the IMF.

                  I truly think this sort of “US is the least of the available evils” ideology has a hard time existing except in a subcultural bubble where it meets no challenge at all, because it is an astoundingly flimsy position.

    • Marko 😆@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      Is it possible to move instances once I’m registered or do I have to create totally new account on other instance?

      • thegiddystitcher@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        You’d need to sign up for a totally new account. There is talk of adding a migration feature but obviously that’ll require a bit of patience, they’ve got a long list of feature requests!

    • PolDelta@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 year ago

      It’s not silly at all. I also made an account there before realizing the admins are tankies. It honestly sketches me out about Lemmy in general considering they’re the two lead (and currently only?) devs. Casts a big shadow over all of Lemmy when the devs are posting Xinjiang genocide denialism and their instance is at the top of the recommendations on join-lemmy.org. With lemmy.grad pretty high up there too.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 year ago

        At least with the way Lemmy is designed it doesn’t seem like even the main devs can have much of an impact.

        They even write themselves that if they made changes to the Lemmy codebase that some instance admins didn’t like, then those admins can decide not to upgrade their instance. The code is also open sourced so anyone with some tech know-how can fork the codebase and remove whatever they don’t like.

      • Korgen@lemmy.korgen.xyz
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah that’s what Lemmy started out as. The thing is with all the Reddit refugees flooding in it is diluting out the tankies. Besides, lemmygrad.ml is blocked by many instances. As for the values of the devs the great thing is that Lemmy is FOSS so if they go rouge someone will just make a fork of Lemmy.