I thought this was an interesting post and discussion on selfhosted. Thoughts?
Some great points, but it’s nonsense to say r/selfhosted isnt about selfhosting. I’ve learned so much there.
I see more engagement across my Lemmy feeds every week. It’s definitely smaller and slower here but there are real relationships and communities forming. I think the fediverse is strongly positioned to outlive and maybe even outgrow closed social ecosystems. If you’re frustrated with a lack of a certain kind of content on Lemmy make it your responsibility to go create or share some of that content.
Geocities, Myspace, Digg, Reddit all started somewhere. I think any good underlying framework (federated social networks) that enables strong communities will always stand a chance. I really do get early reddit vibes on here.
I wonder if anybody here has tried some of the other failed reddit alternatives like Voat for a long enough time to be able to speak on how lemmy has fared relative to them.
I tried a few during other reddit exoduses, and they all felt… bad. Lemmy is the first one I’ve managed to actually stay on comfortably without being tempted back to reddit.
I’m contemplating moving my blog to write freely but they don’t seem like they will last. I don’t want to host it as I keep my servers unexposed.
I’m thinking about this also. I felt the same about WF. I don’t want to invest energy in medium or another commercial enterprise that will just wipe my content someday.
I’m starting to think the answer is to throw away the idea of a blog as its own entity. Post your content in the appropriate community in the fediverse, and self host communities you can’t find or trust. Decentralize your blog content as much as possible.
Lemmy is the first reddit alternative that wasn’t setup by neonazis after they were banned on reddit and therefore Lemmy had the chance to get a userbase that is not made of neonazis. And that gives Lemmy the ability to grow, as most people really don’t want to use a forum full of neonazis
Voats problem wasn’t engagement. It was literal nazis.
They tried to prop up a thin veneer of legitimacy but at some point they just stopped caring. The front page became blatant “kill all [whatever]” type posts. That’s when engagement completely collapsed.
Lemmy has some clearly in bad faith instances which are probably run by nazis. Federation seems to be doing its job of resilience.
Yea, no disagreement. I more am curious if the federated nature is what helps mitigate that risk, or if there is some other systemic distinction that has helped.
I also just don’t know what the others were like long-term - did they peeter out? Would I realize it if lemmy was in the same decline?
