Ask Lemmy

It's smaller and friendlier, no ads, no big tech, non-commercial, open source and I can host my own instance on a potato that connects me to people all around the globe.

There's no incentive to enshittify. Donations from myself and others cover at least the ongoing cost if not the labor. There is nothing here trying to compete for my attention and keep me here as long as it can. No bugging me with notifications that I'm missing out on conversations or posts. I just use it here and there and if I need a few days because I'm not in the right headspace to socialize I just take it without it trying to guilt me or FOMO me into coming back.

It feels like back in the early days of the internet. You can run out of new content: go do something else for a bit. I feel like people are kinder and more polite here, though it could be my aggressive blocking of people I don't enjoy interacting with combined with my own increased effort to extend people grace.

Because even if I have to read stupid opinions here, they are written by humans and not artificially inflated ads or bots

cause it's running at some dudes house and shit like that is fuckin 🅰️wesome

Centralised social media corrupts, but I do have a craving for social media in this form.

It's smaller, and so there is less temptation to scroll when most of the posts I see are the same posts I saw yesterday.

I like the niche linguistic rebels I meet here, and even though I fundamentally disagree with them ("politics" shouldn't refer to all human group decision, the oakframe is too cryptic for most people to adopt, and "th" is better than "þ"by a wide margin), I respect their willingness to step out of the language comfort zone. Not many people can do that.

Also, I like the idea of starting my own Reddit/Twitter/YouTube, so to speak :D

The ads are much better here

No ads, much less corporate influence, smaller, no spez, API access, and generally more chill

I really loved Reddit.

I got banned from Reddit, not sure why, but I am sure I deserved it.

This is the closest I have found to reddit.

all the comments are written by humans and no bots.

Intelligence is considerably higher

Because the vast majority of you fucking cunts are polite, witty, delightful, intelligent people!

Don't really do social media, and sometimes I question if being on here makes me happier. Anyway I Used to be on reddit but left when I could not use the 3rd party app without paying.

Nobody knows who I am and everyone else here is just as nerdy as me.

Functionally, I don't. Just because Mastodon is Fediverse won't make me "Tweet" more. Same thing here. In fact, I use Lemmy less than I used Reddit. Element does not measure up to what Discord does at the moment.

So outside of my beliefs of what the internet should be and the alignment of my choice of platforms with my beliefs, I'd rather be using the thing with the widest userbase and/or the best functionality. However, I no longer believe in Reddit, Discord, nor hardly any other big tech products; and so, here I am.

I do like the idea of federation, and I wish it were the norm for society when it comes to choice of product. But we're at a point where many people my age don't even know you can host your email outside of Google, and it's not really their fault. If I could wave a magic wand and snap every service to a federated nature, making everyone who uses the internet accustomed to using the federated web, I would do so in a heartbeat.

That said, does anyone know of a good chat service that actually has desktop audio on screen share? Preferably federated and similar to Discord, but obviously that's really specific.

Because Fediverse is non-judgmental, I don't know who any of you are or what you look like, and Fediverse hasnt reprimanded or banned me yet.

Not sure I prefer it. Just another in my list that I use.

The community feels much nicer here

It is MINE. My data, my privacy, my communities. I can have accounts for my family and no one can access it conversations. I selfhost and I can still interact with the broader world.

FREEDOM

Also I LOVE trying out the new software coming out. THIS is innovation. Big Tech doesn't want to allow you to watch you're content from anywhere. They have to harvest you, feed you ads, keep you addicted.

Everyone on reddit is so pedanticly confrontational, to make it worse, most people like that are just really confidently wrong and therefore it's an insufferable place. This also pretty much goes for all of mainstream media. Everyone has a shitty fucking opinion about basically everything now, and will fight you over everything no matter how big or small

Poisoned ass society and this seems to be a tad of an enclave

Y'all are weird, crunchy freaks. Angry. Hostile. Curmudgeonly. Picky.

My favorites.

All the sweaty nerds circle jerking about how great federation is. That, and all of the politics that goes on between different hosts and their moderation policies.

I don't dislike federation, but I think it introduced at least as many problems/nuisances as it fixes.

one. control. I did kbin over lemmy initially because its features were more robust and moved to piefed because it had and was adding many more options in general. two and actually this should be first. Non corpo. Im done with centralized control of my internet interactions.

It's not corporate owned. No profit motive to turn things to shit.

the green flash revealed it to me

I don’t follow individuals, no one person is worth that, I don’t do that kind of allegiance or need to interact with a crowd of sycophant followers. So that eliminates a lot of social media right away. Threads, substack, instagram, whatever. Not interested in individuals.

I was on reddit for over a decade. Towards the end the subs became…meaningless? Reposts, bots, hive mind, karma whoring, and generally if you weren’t first to post you got zero interaction at best, at worst someone just wanted to disagree with you and downvote. Ask a question and you were stupid for not knowing the answer. Not worth it, and them came all the API issues, forcing the app, getting rid of Victoria, quarantining some subs while letting shitholes like T_D carry on… death by little cuts.

I much prefer forum-like settings, where most everyone can participate with everything and the Fediverse offers that. So here I am. Yeah, it’s not perfect, defederating is a thing, some servers are ideologically heavyhanded, it has some similar issues with users and mods as the other place, but at least the stupid Karma whoring isn’t a compounding factor.

I still use some facebook groups for hobbies, they just don’t exist here or have zero activity. But that’s about it for my social media.

Reddit banned me and it genuinely felt like a much too toxic place in hindsight. It's less stressful on here as well. Plus I needed a similar alternative as most specialized forums nowadays are dead and I am fond of the easy community style.

Decentralisation.

Technically and practically much more open.

Slick, not burdened by ads and marketing.

I've always preferred threaded discussions over short messages or linear feed to read and take part in discussion and comments.

I like that they’re all connected — I can follow the portion of my friends who prefer a more Instagram type of social media, or a more TikTok style of social media, or a more Reddit style of social media, all from my mastodon account.

I'm here because I can't forgive reddit for what they did to Apollo. None of the communities I really want/need are actually even active on the fediverse but it's just the best I can get without participating in the shit show that reddit has become.

I miss the reach that reddit had and I continue to hope the fediverse will get there but.. after a few years I'm not as hopeful as I once was.

Basically, the good parts of free speech arguments.

I do think there are things that can just be banned from existence, and be made illegal, but it's significantly more tolerant than the current vibe.

Reality doesn't give a shit about our systems of morals. There is a certain "mainstream, harmony and political correctness" creep that sometimes happens. And what's bad about that, is that bubbles brain wash themselves into believing that the way they think the world works is really how the world works. And what they hold isn't just a perspective and an opinion, but a fundamental truth about the world and deviation needs to be purged. And that eventually collides with reality. This is both true for racists and for people who think racism can be "cured" or "educated away" or "people can just consider the facts and change their mind".

The fediverse allows a more gradual interaction than centralized social media sites. Because centralized social media must decide how to deal with... depiction of politics, religious subjects, NSFW topics, which btw, covers everything from violence over nudity to medical conditions.

If there was a medical community sharing discussions about medical topics, I can block that and be unburdened by it, but there is no central fediverse authority that needs to decide if that medical picture is not allowed because there is a boob in it.

In short, banning a social group on social media, like racists, doesn't convince anyone or remove that group of people from factually existing and factually organizing.

Open Source Software works the same way, you can't be sure that math library isn't being used to control a remove controlled ballistic missile, but pretending that you can "ban math" depending on the purpose is stupid, so there is no point in worrying about it.

Actual discussion is still possible in the Fediverse, at least for now.

Somewhat recently I was talking to a close friend about their brother and how he has been acting, particularly how he approaches discussions with those around him. My friend was telling me about a discussion they were having, and the only response his brother could give him was "you are uneducated and misinformed", but couldn't actually formulate an argument to back up his side. I physically laughed when he told me this and jokingly responded that he "sounds like a standard Reddit user", my friend paused for a second, chuckled, then replied "he basically lives on that site".

I'm yet to have this kind of online interaction on the Fediverse, and that is nice ☺️

There's other social media?

I guess there's also IRC, matrix, and individual forums here and there but it seems like fedi is an easier habit to get into.