I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.

I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.

On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).

  • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.

  • mintiefresh@lemmy.ca
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    3 hours ago

    I believe in Lemmy and the fediverse. But the subreddits with content I like aren’t here yet. So I still have to go back for that stuff.

    But I always check here first.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    You have fallen for the ultimate trick: wanting a “big” community.

    You only get that from big, centralized social networks that want to maximize the amount of content you are fed, because it maximizes your ad views, and their profits.

    Embrace the smallness. Lemmy still has room to grow, and having lot of different options for communication that aren’t all owned by billionaires is a good thing. The fact that it isn’t constantly trying to earn your attention is a feature, not a bug.

    • Chozo@fedia.io
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      3 hours ago

      I don’t think it’s that we want “big” communities, necessarily, as much as we want active communities. For instance, if there’s a niche game I want to talk about, it’s currently a roll of the dice whether or not there’s a Lemmy community for it, and then if it does exist already then it’s pretty much guaranteed to see 2, maybe 3 posts per week, tops.

      That’s really the only thing I miss about Reddit, being able to pretty much always have a discussion on any topic you’d want, at any given time.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 hours ago

        For niche things, you kinds have to go to reddit.

        I mean the worst of reddit is on mainstream topics like politics anyways. You’re less likely to see toxicity in like a gaming subreddit. (Less likely than politics anyways)

    • Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online
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      3 hours ago

      People wanting more activity than the small exclusive private club Fediverse has become isn’t a trick or capitalist fallacy, they just want other people to see their fucking posts. Is that so strange and wrong? Why post things if no one is going to see them? You’re seriously missing the point of a social media, if you really think having small nearly dead spaces is a good thing.

  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    I know I can post and be the change I seek.

    Imo, this is your answer. I’m not sure exactly other solution you want. Content will not appear on Lemmy without someone first posting it. Advertising the platform to help draw people in is also important.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Jokes on you the political content here is from the redditors who pretended to quit their award fueled addiction by also joining lemmy.

    Seriously though, compare c/Politics to c/Worldnews or c/News. There is a very large dissonance between the comments shared despite both communities posting the same news info…

  • ZK686@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    The thing I like about Lemmy is that they’re not banning you over stupid shit.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours ago

    Politics is the one thing we all have in common.

    The good old days where everyone watched the same five TV shows and discussed them are over.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours ago

    The Fediverse is virgin territory. The trails aren’t blazed for you here; it’s your job as an early adopter to make it the way you want it to be. You want a community? Start it and participate in it.

    • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Enjoy being the only one posting.

      Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable; the fewer users it has, the less useful it is. Reddit has more users than Lemmy. It’s that simple. People won’t start switching until everybody else switches.

      Bluesky is only barely starting to compete with Twitter, and that’s after Twitter drastically worsened. Lemmy is a long, long way from competing with Reddit.

      To me, it’s a matter of time. The structural advantages of the fediverse mean that it’s more stable on the long run; what i mean by that is, for-profit Reddit will get worse while Lemmy remains good, leading users to migrate here, so Lemmy will eventually outlive Reddit. And then along the way there will be a few big moments where Reddit really fucks up and a wave of people washes up on Lemmy. This is already happening, i’m pretty sure all of us here made our accounts after the Reddit API changes.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        11 minutes ago

        Enjoy being the only one posting.

        Pack it in now then. This platform isn’t going to see huge influxes. Normies are too stupid to pick a server. I don’t really mind it being somewhat of a niche space, maybe the advertisers will continue to mostly ignore us.

      • Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online
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        3 hours ago

        Yeah and Lemmy and Mastodon at the moment but more so Lemmy seem to be working against that goal by opting for onboarding methods that are unintuitive and frustrating to normies. Opting to make people apply like this is a fucking club, and deny people if they are too boring.

        Great job guys, you’re really gonna get lots of engagement that way. You don’t want engagement? What are you even doing wasting money on an almost empty site barely anyone is joining?

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        Mass adoption is fundamental to make any social media viable;

        Forums used to be lively and self-sustaining with memberships in the low hundreds. You only need “mass adoption” if you want and unending stream of novelty bullshit that you don’t actially want to engage with to entertain yourself with while on the toilet.

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        9 hours ago

        Joining an existing community is usually easier than starting a new one.

        There’s also the problem of management. Lots of Lemmy comms are abandoned and, while there are some I would like to exist, I just do not visit regularly enough to be responsible for moderating more and more and more communities across the fedi. So I don’t create new comms.

  • stardust@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    Whatever the social media ability to “create” your own algorithm is important. One way being a subscription and sticking to it.

    Second being keyword filtering. I use Connect for Android which let’s me filter out posts and communities containing keywords.

    Same thing I do on reddit with reddit enhancement suite.

    It’s just the nature social media where anone can sign up.

  • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 hours ago

    I hate reddit as a platform but I still have to use it every once in a while because people won’t move to Lemmy/mbin/piefed.

    I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.

    It’s aggravating how dumb people can be but hey, that’s the world we’re living in. I’ll continue to use Lemmy and visit reddit if I have to.

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      8 hours ago

      Yeah. It’s the same with Mastodon. “There are a bunch of toxic people making me feel unwelcome” can be met with “so I left” or “so we flooded the place and took over, because there were only lile 800 people there”

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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      9 hours ago

      I honestly don’t understand it. People complain that they don’t use the fediverse because it’s small but somehow they don’t realize if they just migrate over then it won’t be.

      Network effect in full blast

  • Gointhefridge@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.

  • xapr@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 hours ago

    I would suggest blocking the communities that post all the content you don’t like. After I did that, it’s been smooth sailing, and I read the All feed. There’s not that many large news and politics communities that you would need to block to get rid of that stuff on your timeline.

    • P4ulin_Kbana
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      10 hours ago

      This comment makes me want to both up and downvote it, because while it may be true, I don’t think I have the skill to post.