People need to realize you can use alternatives

  • Menachem@midwest.social
    14·
    2 years 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·
      2 years 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·
        2 years 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.

        • Manticore@beehaw.org
          0·
          2 years 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.

    • Sinnoh@feddit.deEnglish
      21·
      2 years 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·
        2 years 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·
          2 years 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.

    • Slashzero@hakbox.social
      1·
      2 years 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! 🎉

    • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

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

  • derek@lemmy.one
    2·
    2 years 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·
      2 years 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·
        2 years ago

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

        • underisk@lemmy.ml
          0·
          2 years 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·
            2 years 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.

    • PolDelta@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 years 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.

      • Korgen@lemmy.korgen.xyz
        1·
        2 years 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.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 years 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.

      • Gray@lemmy.ca
        0·
        2 years 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·
            2 years 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·
                2 years 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.

    • Marko 😆@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 years 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·
        2 years 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!

        • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          Unfortunately an account transfer feature is pretty complicated to develop so it might still be a while. Devs need to make sure it doesn’t cause issues with federation when content changes home instances and domains, and transferring live user content over while retaining points, interactions by other accounts, and while having the same timestamp but now being hosted on a different instance, while ensuring there is only one canonical location/URL of the content on the fediverse, is not easy.

  • WalterzarBoBalterzar@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    I tried to make an account on lemmy.ml and it looks like their servers are (understandably) overloaded

    I ended up choosing lemmy.world instead

    My understanding is I’m not missing out on anything by chosing a less-popular instance. Did I get that right?

      • NekoRogue@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        Oof, I can see why some of those instances are blocked, though. Since I’m on Beehaw, I checked their block list and…wow. Scrolled through each one for a few minutes and now I’m hoping I’m not on some kind FBI list for it. A few highlights from my research expedition:

        • A meme featuring various characters (MLP, Vaporeon, Peter Griffin, etc) unironically mourning Ted Kaczynski
        • NSFL gore
        • People calling for the execution of cops who stopped rioters on Jan 6
        • SO. MUCH. LOLICON.
        • “Hahaha look at this WOKE LIB 🤣🤣🤣”
        • QANON. QANON EVERYWHERE.

        I was only on each one for a minute or so. I don’t think I’m missing out on anything except maybe being put on some kind of list.

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
          2·
          2 years ago

          same, I’m on Sopuli and their Blocklist is pretty short but has the worst ones.

          they are really, really bad and some are straight up illegal in some countries.

          Mostly far-right ones, straight up terrorism (seriously there are people with RAF and other terrorist organization’s logos on their profile pics there), nsfl gore videos (like people dying and being tortured type of stuff), and nsfw ones full of underage anime girls in suggestive poses…

          lemmygrad is probably the worst one out of all of them, just because of it’s size (tankie terrorist group)

          • Skelectus@suppo.fi
            2·
            2 years ago

            I haven’t blocked anything on my instance yet since I haven’t encountered that but maybe I should copy sopuli’s blocklist.

          • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.ml
            1·
            2 years ago

            same, I’m on Sopuli and their Blocklist is pretty short but has the worst ones.

            they are really, really bad and some are straight up illegal in some countries.

            Mostly far-right ones, straight up terrorism (seriously there are people with RAF and other terrorist organization’s logos on their profile pics there), nsfl gore videos (like people dying and being tortured type of stuff), and nsfw ones full of underage anime girls in suggestive poses…

            lemmygrad is probably the worst one out of all of them, just because of it’s size (tankie terrorist group)

            Ah yes. There’s far-right terrorism, NSFL gore, CSAM, but it’s the commies that are “the worst one out of all of them.”

            • Drew Got No Clue@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 years ago

              I’ve just finally caved in and visited lemmygrad for the first time and oh, boy! I’ve heard the sound of my grey matter atrophy

        • amki@feddit.de
          2·
          2 years ago

          Even if you wouldn’t like it, the cool thing here is you can decide for yourself. If… you feel the need to do so.

  • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
    2·
    2 years 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·
      2 years 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

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 years 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.

      • Vlixz@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 years 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
          01·
          2 years ago

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

    • mangel@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 years 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.

    • nattekrant@feddit.nl
      0·
      2 years 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·
        2 years 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.