I think it’s partially attributable to Lemmy phone apps haven’t taken off yet. Phone posting is a different medium than desktop posting with regards to McLuhans “the medium is the message” principle. Phone usage appeals to the lowest common denominator. People use it as a time waste to mindlessly scroll. The cognitive load is much lower. Thus shitty content bubbles to the top because that’s all the brain power people are giving it. Phone usage is not conducive to consuming depth of content nor contributing it.
Additionally I think the lower cognitive engagement tends to lead people into greater fuckwad behavior. You aren’t on a board with human beings on the other side of a keyboard. It’s just a stupid app on your phone.
I think if I’m right then in time Lemmy with death spiral not unlike reddit if phone apps mature and Lemmy apps become a mainstream daily use type of affair. I doubt that will happen without the capitalist engine driving it though.
You're also forgetting that with a centralized platform everyone is stuck under the same roof. If we do reach that level of saturation then the communities can always splinter into a different instance or group of federated instances.
The problem with reddit was once we reached the point of everyone being there and the overall quality lowering, there was no refuge for the more engaged users to congregate and reform the communities that focus on quality over quantity. You could try and flee to more niche subreddits but it's really not the same, as demonstrated by OP making this post.
And then as you pointed out, the financial incentives are very different here, which will change how users engage with the platform and how the platform evolves as a result. Centralized platforms do everything to drive engagement to increase ad impressions and potential value to ad distributors. We have an opportunity to build communities with entirely different business models where growth is not an imperative.
I don't actually think it's got much to do with having a phone app or not. I see what you are saying with the medium being the message, but I don't think the "medium" is phones or computers.
You're right about the medium being the message though, it's just that the medium is a nerdy federated social media. Right now we are in the first or second big wave of new users. Not quite the nerdiest of the nerds who would have been using Lemmy since the beginning, but we are getting the "early adopters" and the people willing to go out on a limb to try something new. These are the kinds of people who are likely to interact with a community in a positive way, because they are already investing themselves into something before it is established.
I am using a phone app to write this message right now, it was really easy and accessible for me to login and get to grips with the UI. There are loads of people just like me, in fact I would be willing to bet Lenny is being used by 80% mobile users. It's just how we communicate with the world these days. Very few people browse social medias on a computer.
I think it would be awesome, but - my understanding is that AMA events tend to require quite a bit of moderation. Do we have good enough moderation on either platform yet - to be able to cope with an event like this?
It's worth a shot. If they decide to do something with it, you can guarantee it'll be a fair, impartial, and brutal look at the facts. And that it'll be fucking entertaining!
I think lemmy.ml restarting the server helped the ‘pending’ subscribe problem, it started to come back for me once the server had been running an hour or more post-upgrade. It’s better, but I still am having some get stuck.
Missing comments and postings are also not as glaring in the user interface as a ‘pending’ subscribe.
I am a new user. To me it felt a bit like signing up with an ISP. There's a list you can choose from, rather than there just being a single reddit.
Once you sign up with an ISP, you can go anywhere on the Internet. Similarly, once you sign up with an instance, you can go anywhere in the fediverse.
Unlike an ISP, there are no costs or fees involved in signing up, though you are more than welcome to help fund the upkeep of an instance through donations. Unlike reddit, lemmy is not a profit-driven operation trying to serve you ads all the time.
In terms of choosing an instance, bigger is not necessarily better. Personally, I went with the medium-sized lemmy.ca as I am Canadian and it seemed to make sense, and have since learned that some of the bigger instances are struggling to keep up with surging demand as people seek alternatives to reddit.
Once you have an account, you can go into Communities, click on the All tab (which lets you see the whole fediverse), and start searching for and subscribing to whatever interests you. Communities are similar to subreddits, and there's a good chance you will even find one with the same name.
Other than Countries, size and content (I've seen general purpose, or NSFW) what are some other reasons to choose a certain instance? I don't want to make it a heavy point in the script but I do want to mention it.
I don’t think there is much concrete, but here are some things that it effects.
Performance. You view almost everything via your instance. So picking one running with capable hardware and ideally close to you (network wise) will give you a better experience.
Reliability. If your instance goes down you are basically offline. This can be hard to predict for the future.
Trust. Your identity is “owned” by the instance. So if they wanted they can impersonate you. This can also be very hard to gauge.
Longevity. If your instance shuts down it will be quite inconvenient and your identity will be lost, so you may want to try to predict which instances are likely to last.
Moderation. If they block too many other instances you won’t be able to see content that you want to see. If they block to little then you may be seeing content that you would rather not. Or the instance may be blocked by other instances if it becomes known for spamming.
Content is actually not really on my list since you can subscribe to any communities from any instance. It is true that the instance can provide some content discovery purpose via the local and known communities page but I would argue that separate service which track communities across all instance are better for this purpose.
I would lean hard into the ux being work in progress. Also as instances / communities mature I would expect the specifics on what federation means and the technology behind it will be less relevant to the average user.
Yep. I told a friend of mine "the federation just works, its the user interface and apps that need work".
Mastodon is in a really good place nowadays where you don't even notice you're browsing across multiple instances. Lemmy is pretty close, too, as long as people know to use relative links and the instance you're on is pretty well federated already so you don't get too many 404 from trying to open places your instance doesn't know about yet.
Yeah, as it gets more and more interconnected, all the links and UI start working more and more. Hopefully soon, lemmy will get the feature of just automatically converting community names in the !name@instan.ce format into working links, the way writing r/subreddit or u/user did on reddit.
A Friendica user told me in a comment that they already have that.
it's not a bad idea. it does the following things that I can think of:
(as someone else mentioned) gives more content to another platform of the fediverse.
doesn't overwhelm lemmy/kbin instance runners with the needs of hosting video when they intend on hosting a software/platform that is mostly intended for text.
Maybe to a lesser extent, since not every instance federates everything. If clusters start to form, you'd expect some in-jokes to be limited to certain communities / instances.
My son was taught in school (UK) how to research on the web. You can never be sure how much they take in but he asked us one day why we were still watching the main stream news broadcasters - BBC, Sky, ITN. In a space of a couple of minutes he produced the original from the web for most of their stories, alternative views and pros and cons for most of the views. I learnt a lot that day and can honestly say I think his school did an excellent job. He does his own research and forms his own opinion - sometimes I don't agree but that's OK - the key is he can articulate his reasoning and provide evidence to support his view. I'm not sure as a parent if I'd have been as good a teacher or as impartial. I'm happy it's part of the syllabus in UK - I'm really not sure I'd be so happy if we lived in Florida for the school to teach it. Too much state intervention.
For some reason this feels really strange to hear from the uk. I was under the impression things where moving more authoritarian with face detection cameras, encryption forbidden and id for pornsites. Usually those kind of government hate informed citizens and push propaganda. But maybe its just me who has been propagandized about the uk ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The government is also made up of different groups. Whilst one hand (security) may get more authoritarian, another hand (education) may encourage more liberal(?*) concepts, like knowing your source.
What’s the difference between syncthing and just setting up a NAS? basically just not having to buy the hardware and using the computer you already have?
You will have a void, and you will need to fill it (with something positive or exciting or fulfilling) or it will turn into rumination. You have questions, and some of them will always remain unanswered - you won’t find comfort in an answer that isn’t coming, but you can always find comfort by letting go of the question. You will be at a loss as to who to be and what to do, but you will find it again once you start living again. You won’t know how to move on, until you have already moved on and this has all become a strange memory.
As long as you are moving forward, it is the right way forward. Try to stay busy. Consider joining a local activity group of some sort. If you find yourself orienting your mind or actions back toward them, understand that it is because you still have an emptiness and you are seeking comfort from it through old behaviors that will now only make it worse. No one knows what will fill it one day, but something or another will. You just have to keep walking until you reach that destination.
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