People’s situations can be different, OP is asking how they can join while minimizing the harms
We don’t have to not join something because the trend is people leaving. Worst case scenario they meet the immediate need and leave alongside whoever they need to connect with
OP understands the risks, and they’re asking for tips on how to mitigate them if they have to make an account.
A lot of the comments here either missed or intentionally ignored the post body… Or the downvotes on the comment with a personal account saying how single women can feel safer if they can learn about a new person before meeting them.
People have different circumstances and perspectives :)
My advice for the original post:
Joining: You don’t have to join everything at once, figure out what you might need. This also depends on where you are because different platforms are popular in different places. LinkedIn is one of the few that are helpful in my area.
You can also start with Fediverse platforms if you prefer, but if you’re trying to connect with specific people that might not help
An alternative getting your name published on articles or blogs to fill up the search results
Usage: Do spring cleaning constantly. It’s a big task if you try to clean your feed all at once, and it’ll be easier for you to do it from the start. When you don’t like something/someone, unfollow or mute. You can do it in a way that the other person won’t know, if that’s important. A lot of the problems of social media can be avoided if you maintain your feed.
I’ll add more if I can think of them, good luck!
I think it can help to have some presence, even if it is to control what information comes up when someone looks you up.
I think there’s also a learned component of being kinder and more respectful to people. Even with the best of intentions, it takes time to learn how to do it effectively and learn how people might want to be treated.
Afterwards the positive feedback can encourage more good actions
I dropped 95% of my activity on Reddit about when everyone else left earlier this summer.
This is not censorship but it’s similar, it’s the problems with Reddit’s automated moderation system. It’s not something unique to Reddit since lots of platforms have this issue, and it is a risk on Lemmy as well if we can’t figure out other ways to combat spam effectively once userbase grows
On Reddit, our university sub’s moderation team had nearly all of their accounts banned (including all the alts), because we shared a mod account to do basic mod actions (before Reddit had some of that functionality built-in). The mod account wasn’t the reason, but we assume that’s what the automated system used to decide we were all one person. It took a while to resolve, and our initial attempts to point out the issue resulted in automated messages saying we were wrong and that we couldn’t appeal anymore. Eventually we posted on mod-support and the only solution was to self-dox our alts to each other in order to get some of them reverted (the ones we didn’t feel comfortable sharing we never got back). It was a mess.
I think we also need to consider the flip side of this issue. Yes, some people are banned wrongfully from these platforms. However, sometimes people are banned for sharing content that also isn’t welcome here, and over time we WILL get more users like that showing up here because Lemmy will look like the next best thing for them. I’m not sure how that will work out and maybe the Fediverse will let those users find their place away from the rest of us, but it’s important to know that not all bans from other platforms are unjustified.