this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Fedigrow

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Feedbacks for the fediverse (from all over the internet) (slrpnk.net)
submitted 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Let me know if this is appropriate for this community.

I've been collecting links to post, blog, article, comment, etc that criticize the fediverse, whether it's about the specific apps or fediverse in general, whether it's about the technical aspect or about the social aspect.

If you also found one, feel free to share it here.

(date format is YYYY-MM-DD)

2024

2023

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Ain't this the truth. Great work pulling the actual conversations on this.

Predicably if you say this in comments you are then sent 10 messages calling you a bootlicking schil asking you why you are even here.

Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.

I see Bluesky's appeal, I've been there for a few weeks, it's quite nice. Not sure about Threads though, I've heard the people are mostly Instagram's influencers, is this correct?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Ehh, I follow zero influencers, only people I know in real life and Instagram spammed me with "[Elevator7009's friend] and 23 others want you to join them on Threads!" or whatever the notif is for awhile. I never bothered getting one myself because ew Meta and I already use the Fediverse. And because I was pretty sure it was just marketing—if my friend actually personally wanted me on Threads they'd private message me or tell me in real life.

Although it still could be mostly influencers! I am a fun sample size of one with a single anecdote.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I found that most my content folks I follow have a presence as well as sports. YMMV but personally it strikes a balance between pop culture and news.

I do think bluesky has the advantage though and will "win" me over long term.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Hello,

I mostly had a look at the Lemmy posts, seems like most of them are 10 months - 1 year old. Lemmy has evolved a lot since then, user-level instance muting was a big change for instance.

The most active communities being on other instances than .ml is also a notable change.

[–] RandomVideos 3 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

From my experience, some of the things got way worse

There is american politics on completely unrelated posts and "memes" that are just statements about how capitalism is bad on meme communities

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

There is american politics on completely unrelated posts and “memes” that are just statements about how capitalism is bad on meme communities

If that's a shared feeling, at some point someone will create "actual memes" community and it will take over

[–] RandomVideos 2 points 54 minutes ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

c/nonpolitical_memes exists

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Annoys me, as an American with political opinions that often agree with the posted ones.

I don't look at any meme communities because of this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Those people who spams posts like that annoys me very much. It ruined my experience of using Lemmy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Though, I think a lot has stayed the same. I regularly read the same complaints that have been brought up over and over again for a long time now. I'm not sure if the UI, or moderation woes, or the atmosphere, or the size, or amount of argumentative people have changed substantially.

That's a minority opinion. I've brought that up before and been pointed at the Changelog and told lots of things have changed. It just doesn't feel that way for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

UI

Which one? With the variety of front ends and mobile apps, experiences can be very different

moderation woes

Power tripper get regularly called out on [email protected] for a few months

atmosphere argumentative people

Very community dependant

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 minutes ago

Which one? With the variety of front ends and mobile apps, experiences can be very different

Unfortunately, this basically translates to "if you know the secret handshake, you can make it better". New users don't know the handshake, and more casual users aren't going to bother looking for instructions on how to do it. They already struggle with the idea of there being different URLs.

Which is a significant UI issue, as well. The most popular web servers leveraging ActivityPub continue to ape the visual form of centralized social media, which communicates to users that they work like centralized social media. But they don't. Form follows function, and therefore form implies function. This is a significant source of the friction new users experience.

Remember, most new users are neither broken glass rejectors of some other website, nor are they ideologues. They're just trying something new out, to see if it's better than what they already have.

And the fediverse, point blank, is not. Mastodon is not better at being Twitter than Xitter or Bluesky. Lemmy is not better at being Reddit than Reddit. But they both look like they're trying to be Twitters or Reddits. The result is that this place looks like the wish-dot-com version of the big players.

Power tripper get regularly called out on [email protected] for a few months

Power tripping occurs everywhere. The bigger issue is that because the fediverse is trying to pretend it's just like centralized social media, moderation issues can appear a lot different here. For one, they tend to play out much more publicly, because a lot of them occur at the site admin level. For another, the idea of defederation is alien to centralized social media users, and the idea that they could be cut off from the people or communities they follow due to no fault of their own feels incredibly unjust. Even if the reason for defederation is totally understandable, the admins have followed a robust procedure, and alternatives have been tried, it still feels arbitrary to someone who's not involved.

But that's again a concern of significance because everyone wants to make believe this space is just like centralized social media. That the differences are superficial, and not backed into the very core of the experience. It's also, in part, due to the limited range of moderation features currently explored. We mostly still have moderation suites that make the most sense in... wait for it... centralized settings.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I (or we) have solved those issues for us. Or found workarounds. I'm not sure if that translates to the regular user, though. I guess most people are using some mobile apps anyways. So UI issues are an entirely different story.

And posting to the drama communities mostly adds drama here. It doesn't make it any better.

I agree, all of this is very community and instance dependant. I didn't address OP's links directly. But that's the reason why I'd dismiss a lot of them. For example if you're reading the "All" feed, and then go ahead to complain it's too much Linux news... That's just stupid. Or if you're on lemmy.world and complain about their moderation policies. We all know how the dynamics are. Or if you're on lemmy.ml doing anything...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

And posting to the drama communities mostly adds drama here. It doesn’t make it any better.

It allowed to switch from [email protected] to [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Sure, nothing against a bit of shameless self promotion for communities we like, or foster... What's the issue with the midwest.social version? I couldn't find any drama post you might be referring to.

Thanks for the links, btw.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

That's abysmal behaviour. I'd be happy if we had some more tools and technology to handle those kinds of things. I mean In my experience some people really get a big head from all the power they're wielding in their small world, moderating a community or even running a website... Plus we got some people who are just not suited for the job... It is how it is... 🙃

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Indeed, that's why the best we have now is that community.

Sure, there is drama, but that's the only tool we have

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Should I cross post this to [email protected]?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Feel free!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Would be nice if you could sort these by date.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That's a good idea. I'm still adding things to be clear

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Ye, but it's good to know that some are opinions that are 1 year+ old. I Would personally separate the articles in 1+ years old, and the rest.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Noted, moved posts made in 2024 to the top

I still think that most of the posts from 2023 is applicable now

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

https://lemmy.world/post/22316287 - I really want to like Lemmy, 2024-11-22

I still stand by my comment there

Feel free to block communities with political content.

You can also use an app or alternative frontend to filter keywords. [email protected] has a post about that.

For communities, [email protected] can help

For home kit, the Apple communities are probably more active, and you should be able to post about it there too

https://lemmy.world/comment/13596291

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Here’s one: https://lemmy.world/post/19004972

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Search engines definitely crawl Lemmy, I've seen Lemmy posts pop up on Duckduckgo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

They do, but the fact that users are separated across hundreds of instances means that all Lemmy-related websites won't appear high in the search.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

If SEO index is based on user count, can't websites just create thousands of fake users to boost their index?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

search engines are giant algorithms that I don't think anybody truly gets, but it does rule out bots. The popularity of the website and how often people click on it are taken into account, and the problem is that the fediverse is split into hundreds of domains. It doesn't help that the content is the exact same across instances so fedi websites could just be marked as spam.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

hundreds of domains

https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

Filter by monthly active users, when you reach the 31st most active instance you are already at 187 users. 41st is 102 users. 51st is 34 users.

Most of the 44k monthly active users are on the top 20, so it's more around 20-50 domains than hundreds.

fedi websites could just be marked as spam.

That could definitely be

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Lemmy.world definitely shows up a lot. But I wonder what could still be improved. The amount of content, I wonder? Not an expert on SEO, but SEO-wise lemmy is doing great, no?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

Not an seo expert but.

Lemmy and fediverse should theoreticly be doing very well according to the traditional metrics of site value (backlinks etc). I suspect some engines like google have marked it as seo gaming/abuse and thus deranked it. Unfortunatly lemmy gets each instance ranked individually instead of a ranking for fediverse as a whole. Ultimately its an issue cos dns is outdated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Not an expert on SEO, but SEO-wise lemmy is doing great, no?

Not a SEO expert, but nowadays it seems to be quite different between one search engine and the other

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Good one