I’ve been off and on with the Fediverse for sometime now. It’s a relatively friendly place full of fellow nerds, but with a few caveats…
My feeds seem very focused on hard information be it Gaza, tech companies doing bad things, or people pitchforking about the lastest big bad in digital privacy. This is all well and good, but it does get a bit tired after a while. Seeing the samey stuff post after post by academic types makes me more informed but also mentally draining.
Where’s the fun? On Facebook and Instagram I see light fluffy popcorn type posts of people reminiscing over Nintendo games or reels of cockatiels being cockatiels. It’s fun to scroll and interact. Here it feels like I’m in a classroom, and people, while friendly, do get quite hostile if you don’t like Linux or Star Trek.
As a leftist I like it here because it’s my bubble of people, but I’d like to see the fedi let its hair down a bit. It’s okay to talk about stuff other than infosec, privacy guides, distros, and Gaza.
Personally, I feel like you can have fun on fedi, but it all depends on the accounts/communities you follow. My Sharkey feed AND my Lemmy feed are both full of memes, fandom nonsense, and shitposts. If you only follow serious communities and people that talk about serious news, you’ll have a serious time.
That said, one thing that I thought was unpleasant about the fediverse, and then realised was a feature rather than a bug is… The fact that you can run out of fediverse content. After 2 hours on Lemmy, I have functionally read all of Lemmy (or, well, all the communities I care to read), and maybe 1 more hour to join conversations I’d like to join.
Compared to the seemingly infinite content stream of The Other Sites ™, this initially struck me as bad and weird, but then I realised… I actually prefer it this way. Doomscrolling a fedi site/app is actually not possible, and that has done wonders for my mental health.
The fact that you can run out of fediverse content. After 2 hours on Lemmy, I have functionally read all of Lemmy
I’ll add that if you are running out of things to read you can instead post content you want to discuss. I’ve found that much of the time there are people waiting to jump in and comment, they just aren’t in the habit of making posts. Which you didn’t need to do on other sites because there were always enough people posting content. And it’s less likely to leave you doom scrolling since it’s a good opportunity to stop since comments won’t come in immediately.
I see this as a positive. Instead of being fed content to keep me engaged by an algorithm until I suddenly realize the day is almost over and I didn’t really enjoy myself, I reach a point where I feel like I’m done for the day then I make plans, play a game, read, etc.
Now I read the news, fuck around on lemmy a bit, then actually get on with a “real” day.
Yeah I don’t really relate to the complaint because why does all your fun have to come from a single website? Does your online content have to be a one-stop shop? I just hop around Lemmy, Tildes, read sports news, maybe watch some cool videos on Youtube, etc etc. And when I’m bored with internet, I have other stuff IRL to do. Yeah I’m just not treating Lemmy like an endless scroll feed like Reddit or Instagram. I just check out what’s new (I might pop in a few times a day), participate if I want, and move on.
People on here and on mastodon are really pessimistic overall I’ve found. I still need to go to Twitter despite all the bots and engagement farming going on these days if I want to learn about new product releases or the newest possibilities of the newest technology that was released just yesterday.
I feel like the only news that get shared here and that actually get engagement are the bad ones about the war in Ukraine or in Palestine, or about anti-minority laws but we never see the good news like the fact that France added abortion as a constitutional right.
A big factor is Lemmy was setup by tankies for tankies. So the constant spam of negative news about _______ western nation is on brand.
The Fedi is what you make of it. Since there’s no algorithm telling you who to follow or pushing posts to your feed, it’s up to you to curate who you follow.
My feed is a mixture of shit posts, memes, cats and dogs, flowers, a little politics and a little tech. Chaos is why I’m here and who I follow reflects that. If your feed is full of info you don’t care about, then you’re following the wrong people.
The issue is that the majority of people on the Fediverse are “techies” with specific interests, which skews the spectrum of content quite a bit.
The Fediverse is in an awkward spot. It needs more people like you to keep technology communities from becoming Linux circlejerks, but at the same time those circlejerks are driving people like you out.
I don’t think there is really a conflict here though if we are all just nice to each other.
I think techy nerds are an absolutely fine foundation for a community so long as said techy nerds understand the inherent politics to being a techy nerd, having access to powerful computers and having the privilege of being in a highly skilled industry that pays fairly well (I know big generalization).
It is going to be awkward trying to expand the horizons to include a more diverse user base, but there is nothing wrong with awkwardness, just toxic behavior and gatekeeping.
Techy nerds just need to be willing to listen and evolve their understandings of community spaces. It seems like computer nerds are obsessed with visions of the internet before the masses of people and big corporations came onto it, but while that feeling is understandable it risks building a conceptual wall between people who are passionate about the capacity of computers to help people and the very people they want computers to help.
We can have a better more positive federation of communities than the internet has ever had if we decide right now to be more inclusive and radical in our solidarity with each other.
Give it time. The porn on lemmy is growing exponentially, so the more varied content will start trickling in. My guess is roughly 3 more months before the memes really start to pick up
The only thing I’m missing from the fediverse is a platform where animations and animators can connect and share their work with the possibility of having it discovered. Pixelfed still isnt in the app stores, peertube is not user friendly and has no official apps, mastodon doesnt have amy kind of upvoting or algorithm or ability to browse lemmy communities, lemmy doesnt have native video support or user follows.
Fedi is the worst social media, except for all the others.
I have multiple accounts for seperate feeds. One seriouse one just communities of fun shit. Helps filter out the mindless doomerism.
I had to leave a Mastodon instance because it was about activism, gaza and politics the whole fucking day. So I perfectly understand what you feel. But I think there are ways and/or servers where everybody can feel comfortable. The mastodon server where I’m on right now, people talks about US stuff the whole day, and I’m very annoyed because of that because I don’t give a damn shit about US. But the admin is cool, people support Ukraine, and I follow funny stuff too.
Not a perfect solution by any means, but you can block communities you have no interest in.
Lemmy is a little slow sometimes, but I’ve started to have the opposite problem on Mastodon. I need to weed out some hashtags or something because I can’t keep up anymore.
Even back on twitter days I never got used to it because there’s just so much content everywhere that I feel that I can’t follow any topic properly and I lose all interest. In my case the concept of microblogging is not a right fit for me.
No kidding! I was just thinking this morning that my Mastodon feed has gone bonkers lately and it is getting harder to keep up! I suppose that is a good problem to have but I only follow a few tags. I am, however, enjoying Mastodon way more than I ever did twitter.
jUsT mAkE coNtEnT
The insights shared in this post challenge the status quo. I appreciate the courage it takes to question norms and offer alternative perspectives. Well done. Full Version Daemon Tools Pro
go out and plant a shrub
