I’m fairly new to the Fediverse, and I’d like to share my onboarding experience. Personally, I appreciate the concept of decentralization and the community-driven aspect of Fediverse. I’ve used Mastodon and Lemmy, based on ActivityPub, for a while:
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I find it difficult to get all the updates I need on a particular instance, and except for a few very large instances, most others appear quite quiet and like the Internet ten years ago.
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The content and style of each instance tend to be quite diverse. To find someone to follow, I must switch between different instances with lengthy domains.
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Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please.
These reasons prompted me to explore more decentralized networks, I mean truly decentralized networks, such as Nostr.
However, creating a Nostr account and saving the Recovery Phrases is challenging (I lost my first Nostr account due to the loss of Recovery Phrases). And generally speaking, the user experience on Nostr is much worse than Mastodon, full of scam and ads.
I believe people should leave Twitter due to shadowbans and robots and Facebook due to privacy concerns, but I’m struggling to choose a platform to migrate to. Each has its drawbacks, making it difficult to decide.
I’d love to hear your opinions on this.
People complain about the algorithms on other social media but you can see here exactly why they have them.
Without them it becomes hard to get connected to things that interest you.
For Lemmy I’ve managed to build a decent feed by browsing all and subscribing to communities I like.
You just have to do the algorithms job now.
As for the big communities it’s exactly what happened to the old internet. It used to be a large collection of individual sites but discovery was hard. So the front pages of the internet started popping up.
I expect the same thing will happen to the fediverse eventually. It’s just a better user experience sadly.
Right, but the algorithms that other social media sites use are designed to drive engagement, NOT to help you find things you like.
They want you angry and/or scared and/or jealous so you post, rage argue.
I know it may feel worse, but less content, less clickbait is better for us and our mental health.
I didn’t even realise how much raging I was doing on reddit. And for what? To argue with right wing dipshits or bots or trolls, so reddit’s numbers can go up and they can sell more ads.
Fuck algorithms and fuck rage bait.
100 percent. I still use reddit but comment very infrequently. If I open a thread and see vile comments I leave, most times I don’t open the comments at all. I am glad reddit bo longer has a strong hold over me.
Lemmy still uses algorithms, but they do not use personal information. When you sort by “Hot”, “Active” etc. you are using an algorithm.
Hot, Active, Time Sort, are open algorithms that we can see exactly how they work. Unlike closed social media algorithms which I think is the point that he is making.
Exactly. Everyone can see how and why an algorithm on Lemmy shows what it show.
All computer code is algorithms.
The point is without that personalisation it’s much less likely to show things you are interested in.
Algorithm in this case refers to a personalization algorithm, something that Lemmy does not offer.
What we actually need is topics/tags per community, so we can individually subscribe to anything “knitting” but block everything “sports” or whatever your interests are.
the user experience on Nostr is much worse than Mastodon, full of scam and ads.
It will be like that in all places that have no effective moderation (i.e. “server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please”).
I came here to find this comment. Moderation and censorship are so profoundly confused with each other so often. And without any moderation, bots and scam will take over every kind of content eventually.
Like the Internet ten years ago???
You realize that ten years ago was 2013, not 2001 or something? The Internet was not quiet in 2013, in fact I found it a lot more engaging then.
Kind of agree actually. It hadn’t fully turned to shit yet but it was going on that direction. Now today, it’s like cable TV.
Everything has positives and negatives. It’s up to you to evalute what you want and what you’re willing to put up with.
On one end, traditional social media is totally centralized, controlled solely by the corpo. On the opposite, you have total decentralization like P2P networks for torrenting.
You pointed out the problems on one end, very little regulation of spam, scams, total decentralization is often very much isolationist.
To me, federation is the best of both worlds, and I’m willing to deal with some of the frustrations of that structure.
I personally enjoy some regional centralization like you get in the Fediverse, if you really don’t like any instance’s policies, you can spin up your own personal instance and federate with the instances you want.
For me, the unifying nature of the All-feed allows me to enjoy the specific content I am seeking while still being stationed in a specific instance that generally caters to my preferences.
I am not sure what isthc issue with (1) I agree that you follow people or community, it’s a bit more complicated to follow the global which is too fast and the local might be to slow but how is it different from main social media ? If you follow no person/community you won’t find much content (well indeed tik tok has an amazeng algorithm)
The fediverse especiallà Mastodon/Firefish has a community large enough to be usable. May be not for a kid who want to spend 7h a day browsing tiktok but if you just want to see some post and comment there is already more than enough.
No idea about how crypto based platform fare. I tried lbry a while ago and never tried nostr
- like the Internet ten years ago
I would like that. I liked the internet ten years ago. I think today it’s filled with yet more noise and lots of low-effort posts. But I don’t know where Lemmy is headed. In August/September I was pretty active here and had lots of nice conversations and in the last few weeks I struggled a bit getting meaningful discussions going. And there seem to be a lot of posts where OP doesn’t engage and just dumps a question. And people only reply to comments in order to point out mistakes.
I don’t know your exactly problem. Maybe you’re using Lemmy/Mastodon wrong?! If you mean there’s not enough activity in niche interest communities, I agree…
- each instance tend to be quite diverse. To find someone to follow, I must switch between different instances
I really like diversity, that’s great. But why do you have to switch instances? The fediverse is supposed to be a connected network of instances. You should be able to do everything from everywhere, subscribe across instances and not needing to switch.
- Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners
I think you confuse decentralized with anonymous / free speech / unmoderated platforms. Federated means it consists of several independent servers that get interconnected. Each server has it’s own autonomy, rules and people who make decisions. (Distributed is yet another term for something slightly different.) If you mean something where nothing gets moderated and no-one banned, I suppose there are platforms like it. But I haven’t yet seen an unmoderated place I like. They are fun for trolls and shitposters for like 3 days, then they become a place for hate and scams, ads and crypto schemes. Mostly posted by bots. And everyone normal will leave the platform so it’s just toxic people mixed with lots of bots. You can post something but the only thing you get as a response is someone writing 25-times the n-word and some crypto-scam bots posting unrelated ads. So here, the will of server owners and moderators is what keeps this place running. Of course they don’t always do the right thing. But still, we need them unless you have something different in mind. Maybe a better way to distribute power?
I think there’s an issue with coupling on the fediverse. For instance, if I run a community, but I’m not happy with the current instance policies, I can’t easily move it to a new insurance (while keeping the memberships). It’s also tricky to migrate my account - and it will lose me posting and vote history, edit/delete rights, etc. Finally, if I want to participate in two servers that have defederated each other, I have to maintain two accounts, which is a terrible user experience.
True. That are some Lemmy specifics and I’d like Lemmy to improve. But Lemmy has so many other issues. Moderation tools, UI bugs, missing error messages, you often can’t write ampersands because the markdown interpreter is a bit stupid, you can’t mute instances… There are currently some 500 issues open for the frontend and 200 more for the backend. There are lots of things to do.
I think moving communities is a bit low priority. Yes, it would be an awesome feature, but rarely needed. Migrating accounts is something I’d definitely like to see implemented. Other federated platforms have this or at least a way to export your account and import it somewhere else. With varying degrees of how well subscriptions are migrated in the process.
The defederation is another issue specific to Lemmy. In my eyes, Lemmy wasn’t quite ready for the inrush of people once the Reddit API thing happened. Some moderation features are still missing to this day. People created communities everywhere without intending to use them but just to claim the name and have moderator rights. Admins did some rushed decisions and were a bit trigger-happy with the ‘defederation’-button. Security issues surfaced. And the lack of a feature that allows users to block instances or defend themselves against things like brigading, makes it necessary for the admins to step in. And the way Lemmy works, defederation is unnecessarily complicated and has lots of unwanted side-effects like posts and comments being visible to some people but not for others, depending on the triangle of your instance, the instance of the other user and the instance that is home to that community.
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I don’t know, I don’t feel that I have updates I need to get… I just scroll Lemmy and discuss things for a while, then do other things. I’m happy it doesn’t have tons of activity because social media is not supposed to take over our lives.
I see people on the bus sitting on tiktok and I feel sorry for them.
And as for switching instances, you are doing it wrong. You can subscribe to any community in the fediverse right from your instance.
I agree, when I first came over from Reddit I was a bit disappointed because I could get through this feed so quickly. However, tallying up how many hours I spend here. It’s still two or three a day which is honestly too much. So I think now I can say if I can still feel like I spend too much time here but also get more hours back in my life. I’d say I won
Indeed. This is the way out of big tech algorithmic hell and into actual social media.
Exactly. The initial bite of “oh that’s it” is really the addiction to Reddit I had that I needed to be weined off of. Really Lemmy is still a ton of content, especially once you get subbed everywhere. We just don’t have that corpo added addictive element of “You need to be here or you’ll miss something”
quiet and like the Internet ten years ago.
That’s what I’m looking for.
Same. “Today’s” internet sucks so bad it makes me want to get lost in the woods.
Your brain is healing, give it some time.
been on lemmy.world, accessing via voyager on ios. its basically identical to reddit from an end-user perspective. sure its janky sometimes and content doesn’t get refreshed as frequently as a website that has millions of daily active users but the content is generally more enjoyable and im getting just as much of a dopamine hit of infinite scrolling as i was back in the day, with significantly less annoyance on top.
I find Lemmy works pretty well for a decentralised network.
It is possible to see what everyone has been subscribed to when sorting by all, and so subscribe myself to it to get it in my subscription feed.
There are nice apps like Liftoff which can manage multiple accounts at the same time, and even view instances all feed without an account on them.
Mastodon on the other hand is a bit lackluster in comparison I’d say. The subscription model is pretty had to start using as I need to either find # or people to subscribe to, and even subscribing to them. And even after doing that the posts aren’t that interesting or feel empty due to no comments/likes/boost.
Maybe I subscribed to the wrong #, but I find Lemmy much more enticing than mastodon.
I find it difficult to get all the updates I need on a particular instance, and except for a few very large instances, most others appear quite quiet and like the Internet ten years ago.
About this particular problem, I see no reason to not join the largest instance in any case. Sheer discoverability of content is massively improved from sitting in the biggest pool, as I still have to subscribe to the communities I want to see.
Fediverse isn’t truly decentralized; instances operate under the will of server owners, who can ban and remove content as they please.
It’s the Fediverse, not the Decentriverse.
If everyone joined the largest instance, then the decentralized aspect would become kinda moot. That would give lots of power to the owner of that instance, almost like on centralized social media.
Of course, but for the user, there’s signifcant upsides to doing that unless the underlying system can essentially make the barriers between instances invisible.
Now of course this is a Lemmy-specific thing. Reddit benefitted massively from stumbling into amazing commuities and discussions, and hence sitting in the largest pool is quite useful.
I’d agree. Having one large instance isn’t necessarily bad. Yes, it gives the admins quite some power, but they’re obviously doing something right there. And the federated aspect is still baked into the software and present. Once they act out, all the content is replicated everywhere else and people can just switch to another instance. This isn’t the same like a centralized platform. Even if people mainly use one instance.
My advice is to join a cental hub in the network if you’re interested in a very broad range of content, and a specialized hub if you have more particular interests. The relationship between for example lemmy.world and startrek.website is a great example.
I think a lot of the perceived complexity of the fediverse is that it’s not just a social network, but a network of social networks. You’d want to start out on a node that reflects your interests; if that interest is merely “more content”, make it a central one.
If you want to be on a tiny or self hosted Mastodon instance it might even make sense to build the base of your network on a central network hub first, and then migrate when you already have rooted yourself in the network.
Give yourself time. Anything less than 3 months to get used to a platform is unrealistic. Humans don’t like change, if after 3 months you still have issues, then fair shout
I’ve been on Mastodon for a year now and have no problem finding people to follow. Mostly through boosts by people I already know or by following hashtags. I don’t ever go to local or federated timelines. But my goal is not to have a constant stream of new content, so I’m not actively looking for people anymore. I want to open it 2-3 times a day for a few minutes and be able to see most of what happened.
Hashtags should be your main focus though. That’s how you find people and content of your interest.
I made accounts all over the place and settled on kbin. It federates with Mastodon as well as lemmy, you can follow hashtags and block instances or websites yourself, and I just find the interface way more intuitive.
I’ve been here for a few months and my feed is finally at the point where my needs are being met and I never run out of internet.
I was rooting for Kbin but their lack of official API at the beginning gave them a very late start. And now Artemis App is stale development when it was so promising. At this point I’ve worked on my Lemmy account and plan on staying here on the long run. Hoping some QOL updates come to Lemmy and the apps (community grouping, better hot algorithm…) to make it a perfect platform. In the end it all depends on critical mass of users. The more users on a platform the better it will be. It’s still light on niche communities and themed communities feel spread thin across instances (where groups would really help) and big communities like Technology news and meme group overpower the small ones on the home page.
better hot algorithm
Next lemmy version adds a “scaled” sort which will factor in the size of communities so less active ones get exposure too.
That’s awesome news!
@LazaroFilm I know what you mean about overpowering. I actually block all the big meme communities. That way, viewing all and sorting by new is still inreresting and helps me discover communities.
