Unpopular Opinion

It’s mostly the technically adept people here, we’re naturally more aware of security/privacy issues present in tech spaces and are angry that the masses are so oblivious or uncaring of the problem. Especially when that problem keeps ruining our online spaces or putting us at real world risk by letting apps use their cameras/mics/locations all the god damn time

The whole purpose of Lemmy and the feddiverse is to be anticorpate.

I have been a foss fanboy most of my life so it's a welcoming community and concept. But I get how weird it would be to suddenly join a community that basically says the mainstream way of thinking is wrong when it comes to the Internet.

That said I think Twitter Reddit and Facebook have all proven that it is. Centralized homogeneous platforms are just bad. Once you're passed the fomo effect it becomes clear that they are not necessary. They are just tools and should be thrown away when they are no longer useful. Reddit could of maintained its status quo and we would all be there. Instead they felt they were "essential" to our lives so they could do what they wanted. It's just not and this instance of Lemmy is just as disposable.

Lemmy will become more mainstream and more like old reddit with the addition of ppl like you. Variety is the spice of life so I think that's a good thing. As someone who has lurked on Lemmy for years I can tell you it's changed dramatically in just a couple weeks. Mostly for the better.

I will reply as someone who in 2015 had 340,000 followers overall in the big social media of the time (tumblr, insta, fb, flickr etc). I was the world's most popular collage artist at the time (not an exaggeration). I even got selected by NYTimes for having among the "best book covers of the year" in 2016, among other works for many magazines etc.

Long story short, for an artist to make it without a gallery (I despise the whole idea of galleries because they force you to make the same kind of art all the time), they must base their business via social media. There's no other way. And so I did, and did well. Well, come 2017, the enshitification of these platforms started happening. Nothing was chronological anymore. And since I'm not a person who shows what they ate today, or making it all about myself (I was only posting art, not personal stuff), their new recommendation algorithms destroyed my business. I used to make thousands per year to sustain my life, because each time I'd have a sale, people would SEE my post about it and if they liked my art, they'd buy. Now, my posts are served to about 1/10th of my followers, and no new users find me, because hashtags aren't embraced for finding new users anymore, everything's just recommendations. Within 5 short years since the big algorithmic, I was now making only about $100/month via my art. And that was not just for me, but 95% of other artists and photographers out there too. The recommendation system of all social media (including youtube now) only promotes a few superstars in any given field, not everyone is getting their share fair of exposure based on chronology. Many online small businesses don't work anymore because everything is not a fair field anymore. Even buying ads doesn't make a difference.

So, I have no interest in using things like Threads, where you are literally bombarded with celebrity and brands content, but almost none of the people you follow.

Reddit has followed the same line, it's just that we see it less, because it's more discussion-driven. But similar changes have happened to it -- in spirit. I still use reddit only for 3 sub-reddits that are too specific and don't have enough people for here yet. I don't use the rest of reddit.

On top of that, I'm not interested in trackers, ads, and everything that eventually lead to enshitification of these platforms. So now, I only use federated services. I have accounts with lemmy, mastodon, pixelfed, peertube, nostr, matrix, etc.

No, none of my friends are there (my husband has a mastodon account, and that's it). And I don't care if they aren't. When I'm with my mom next time I'll install a matrix client for her too, so she can call me for free (so we don't have to use fb messenger, the only big app I still use, so I can talk to her in Greece for free). Then, I won't need of these big social media apps.

As for my business, it will never come back (especially now with AI art). But at least, I have MORE eyes here on the fediverse than I have on the big social media. I posted a new painting on my pixelfed yesterday, and it got 17 likes, out of just 27 followers. On instagram I usually get 70 likes out of 3600 followers (that's on my illustration account, my other, collage account, had nearly 170,000 followers in its hey day). And consider that Pixelfed only has 160,000 users (plus federated via mastodon by some instances). Given that amount of likes on the fediverse, if Instagram was still chronological and hashtags were still bearing importance as they did in the past, my posts there could have about 5,000 likes -- given their 2+ bn users. Instead, with their recommendation engine, I get only 70 likes, and no new followers. So proportionally, I get more eyes on the fediverse, than I do on the big social media. So why would I want to go back to big social media? Just to be served Kim Kardashian content that I never asked for it? I won't.

not to be a dick, but good riddance to anyone implying meta isn't an unethical, monster of a corporation that is defined by it's opportunism, serves only it's own interests, and has forfeited any and all good faith it may once have had. trust them at your own peril, and go back to reddit.

I'm sorry, but to me, it's not normal to be transparent to the bones for big tech. It's not normal to be pushed around by big tech just like Spez, Elon and Zuck do it with their userbase. It's not normal to be the product and to be followed around, often even without consent.

It's the opposite of normal to think that this is normal. To me, people who think this is normal nave been successfully brainwashed by big tech. Think I'm wearing a tinfoil hat? Okay, go ahead.

But if we don't finally step up against shit like that, it'll only get worse.

Asshole about open source anti big tech here. Point taken. You can choose your communities you see on your home feed. Seriously, use the block user feature too. Block me if you want. It is not personal. I have a half dozen people blocked just because they have been negative and I don't want to see it any more. With around 150k people here rn the total communities are still developing. There are several I miss but don't want to mod or churn content by myself to get started. This is still mostly unsettled early adopters. Everyone here is going through the same series of breakup withdraw emotions, and everyone is a weird asshole user to someone. Most of us mean well. You are able to steer the conversation too. Post, and help making the conversation you want to participate in.

trailblazers are always ‘weird’. Open source and privacy people BUILD all this software for everyone. As soon as millions of people rush in, you won’t even notice the weirdos anymore

This is a fair take.

Due the circumstances right now, we've got more tech and privacy minded people, as well as more "principaled" folk, so we definitely skew a certain way.

I'd say give it time. Imo, things will sort of water down if more people keep joining. (For lack of a better term)

But I will respectfully disagree, I'm kinda enjoying it, and I'm not half as smart as some of the people on here, but I do totally understand your perspective.

Obviously also new here. What you are seeing, honestly, is that the communities that have the most activity. This is what the majority of the users here want. Can you really blame them? You came to a preexisting community that had one thing in common. The federated social networks are explicitly anti-faang, that's their reason for being. We're just here because Reddit took away our stuff. It's on us to make the content and the community we want. They welcomed us.

Yeah I'm hoping this place continues to grow. It's only been a week and things have drastically improved from when the protest first started.

I think the culture is different here for a few reasons. I checked out lemmy a few years ago when I saw a hacker news post about it, back then it was almost entirely technical people who were entirely opposed to corporate social media, and a lot of tin foil hat type privacy discussions. On top of that, if you look at a lot of the older instances like lemmy.ml and hexbear.net you'll find a lot of tanky communities that were displaced by corporate social media. These older and more established subcultures are probably shaping the culture to this day. I think their influence will fade as the fediverse becomes more popular.

Second, the threads thing is the Big Event on the fediverse right now, and everyone is talking about it. I addition to the groups I mentioned earlier, a ton of the lemmy user base just came from reddit, and I can't even count how many "fuck meta because privacy etc." conversations I've seen there. This is the same way everyone was talking about the reddit migration to lemmy constantly a few weeks ago and filling up the front page. This will probably blow over in a week or two. Reddit has stuff like this happening all the time as well.

Third, I I'd say lemmy and the broader fediverse is self selecting for the more tin foil hat privacy obsessed types due to the barrier for account creation being higher. Why wouldn't someone choose the more popular, more reliable, easier to on-board app if they don't care about privacy? The API changes were definitely handled really poorly, but a drop in content quality from poor moderation still remains to be seen. The subs I was frequenting definitely became less active as the protest dragged on, but a lot of them were open source focused communities. I don't think everyone has noticed the same change I have. Most people on reddit don't really care about it's drama.

I really don't mean to be offensive but if you miss it why don't you go back? No one is forcing you to be here. If you don't care about the concerns we have on this side then just go back, reddit is still there for you.

If you're uncomfortable with the content you're seeing, you should be more active in moderating that. Block users, block communities, stick to your subscription feed, etc. People in these spaces so often seem to resign themselves to having to deal with content they don't like when they can absolutely change it on their own.

Take more autonomy in curating your experience here and you'll have a much better time.

Lemmy right now feels like reddit from the early 2010s. The community is still quite small, it's mostly still early adopters and folks looking for an alternative to big social medias, which attracts a different crowd than the mainstream.

It's actually a hit of nostalgia for me, I'm kind of into the weirdness and intimacy of a smaller community, but I certainly understand where you're coming from.

One of my favorite niche subreddits has over 600k members, the biggest equivalent community has about 350ish users here, there's a certain quality that comes with that quantity of users.

But if we stick with it more folks will join and we can make this place into what we want it to be, and that's pretty cool imo. Lemmy is still in it's infancy compared to reddit, and it's not perfect, but I think we can build it into something even better, and missing the good parts of reddit can inspire us to make sure that we incorporate them into lemmy in the future.

Is you are looking for a Reddit alternative and are not liking the Fediverse I suggest you try Squabbles

only thing i really miss from reddit is how large it was, it was way easier to find a decent sized community for more niche interests, it feels like here there is only equivalents to the popular subreddits, which is fine, but those were the last places i ever used or visited on reddit.

He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail

Are you sure you spent time on reddit? This was all I saw there

Catch-22. If you have an issue and you don't speak up then nothing changes. I don't think there's any way to have these conversations that isn't uncomfortable because it's understandably asking people to make radical changes. Especially because those people feel they have to be "louder" since they're going against the grain.

I don't know what the solution is TBH.

"I personally would like to see what Meta does in the fediverse.. maybe it will make it more normalized.idk." Meta won't normalize the fediverse, people educating themselves and understanding why we need the fediverse will normalize it. Meta/Threads will kill the fediverse, this is a known playbook companies use to kill things they can't buy.

I disagree. Upvoted.

This is a worthwhile rant. I believe as the masses divest themselves of centralized services the types of dialogue that take place on the fediverse will even out. Currently how the federated world stands is similar to the early days of reddit, which was a home for the tech crowd.

I miss it too - the curated experience after years of filtering out the crap and muting the nonsense, the sleek UX in Apollo, and the many friendly and familiar voices left behind who didn’t make the switch.

My advice would be - don’t give up on the Fediverse just yet. It will take a bit of time for the dust to settle and these multiple federated communities to find their voice. Like on Reddit, don’t ever browse /all - it’s just a litany of low-effort memes. Be deliberate about which communities you sub to, and browse by /sub. There’s enough quality content here to fill a feed, though perhaps not in any single community where the critical mass has not yet been reached to offer fresh content throughout the day.

I miss how big reddit was. There were so many niche subreddits that were active. A lot of them are still active now, but I also don't want to support spez.

Lemmy will get there one day.

You can't trust corporations to not ruin a product eventually. The reason federation and FOSS is so important is that it strips the power dynamics that typically corrupt online spaces. Is it perfect? No. But reddit didn't become shitty because of individuals making bad choices, it became shitty because it had to.

I miss it too, but I'm not going on the Reddit app. I was happy without ads on baconreader for a decade. Some motherfuckers always trying to ice skate uphill.

I agree a fair amount - I've been aggressively blocking communities far more than I expected. Seems like many are focused on being anti-something rather than pro something.

I will say, that's one thing I miss about the default subs reddit had. A few were annoying and I unsubscribed, but most were inoffensive and mildly entertaining.

So my reddit experience was "scroll default subs, rarely subscribe to a niche sub, go to niche sub directly sometimes".

Whereas here I'm scrolling all, and more and more edgy anti-capitalism or angry atheist or anti whatever communities that I'm not interested in keep popping up every day, and I keep blocking them.

Don't get me wrong, it's still entertaining and informative. But I'm hoping to eventually craft a subscribed list of communities that's both a) not just an echo chamber for what I believe, but also b) isn't likely to have randos go off on rants against fairly normal things that just barely tangentially related to the topic at hand.

Hope I get time soonish. But until then, I feel you.

Be the change you want to see. If you have something to say about a post that isn't a meme, pop in and leave a comment on it. If you don't want to talk about Meta and Open Source Software and privacy, then don't interact with those comments.

Or at least that's the way I see it.

I like this as I think it actually is pretty unpopular. A lot of people are here on the merits of the fediverse and decentralization but I will be honest, I’m here because Apollo doesn’t work any more. I probably would have stayed at Reddit had they just worked out reasonable API pricing.

I enjoy the benefits of the fediverse now that I’m here but I’m not here for ideological reasons either

I'm with you, I miss it too. Lemmy and it's instances confuse me, but I'm doing my part by doing my best at avoiding Reddit since I'm strictly a 3rd party app mobile user.

We will wait it out together and hope it gets better (I'm so tired of seeing crap about Meta and Threads).