Fediverse

I've been using Lemmy less because it's so depressing. It feels like a majority of the engagement is with depressing US politics and a strong left bias (to be clear, I also hate the current government). Unlike most, I really like most of the nerdy tech content.

Which is why I've been lurking more on Hacker News lately, it's tech minded forums with an appropriate level of politics and more nuanced takes. And as a bonus the interface even less bloated (in terms of resource usage) than any Lemmy frontend I've tried.

Today is my first day here and I've mostly just been wandering hobby/interest groups!

I think the biggest barrier for new users is that the whole system here is pretty complicated with the "decentralized"/"federated" model. I don't really understand what it means or how it works, and what the difference between the different servers are or what to join or even which app to use to access lemmy. There are a lot of options and complicated tech terms (like "fediverse") that you have to research just to even sign up. And I'm sure the fact that you have to write all of these long posts to explain it to people doesn't help. A platform like reddit (which I migrated from) is clean, easy to understand, and makes sense to the casual user.

As for the political stuff, I think people here should engage more with positive content. We should make the wholesome, fun stuff popular because it appeals to the mainstream. Post about the cool/funny/awesome/interesting stuff you encounter every day; talk about the arts, your hobbies, your funny life fuck ups, your pets, etc.! In my exploration today I noticed those kinds of communities barely get any interaction whereas the news/political ones are always active.

From my own experience with Lemmy, I can absolutely see why it's declining.

Lemmy is packed full of miserable people constantly calling for violence. 90% of the feed is packed full of US politics, it doesn't matter how many filters I use I still see that greasy orange cunt's face every time I open Lemmy.

The amount of hostility towards outsiders just getting into Lemmy is astounding, and I've absolutely seen the whole "quality over quantity" crap that only drives people away from the platform. The IT tech snobbery is also incredibly offputting to people who aren't tech enthusiests.

In short, Lemmy has a toxic shithead problem that a platform this small can't afford if it wants to survive long term.

Can I ask a different, more difficult question?

Where are people going?

Lemmy Isn't Quite It? Mastodon is too formal. Blusky is too political.

Lemmy was a clone of Reddit. Not an improvement on it.

I came here looking for something different than Reddit but I’m actually pretty done. I try to post, start threads and conversations but the ones that don’t get deleted because of some vague rule get questioned to hell as to why it exists that it makes me wish I hadn’t posted at all.