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.
Your brain is healing, give it some time.
oh yeah man. the internet was just dead in 2013 ???
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.
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.
People should leave Twitter, Facebook, etc. because they are Nazi bars. If you hang out at a Nazi bar, you’re a Nazi. Case closed.
However, not migrating to any platform is a valid option. You don’t have to do the Fediverse. You don’t have to do Nostr. You don’t have to do forums. You can just make a website for yourself with a blog, and communicating with others by email, XMPP instant messaging, or IRC.
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.
@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.
