1y ago

I don't get people that are here in the fediverse and want to bring over the content that is on FB, IG, TikTok, etc.

This has come to mind because all the chatter about Meta federating.

I see a lot of people saying they'd love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.

I truly don't get this.

I'm not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I'd be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It's just a community of real people having conversations.

If you want mass-produced trendy content, please, consume it elsewhere, and when you are inevitably fed up, then come here and enjoy the slow-paced, real community.

PD: I hope this doesn't come across as wall-keeping (or however it's said lol), It's my honest opinion.

272 comments

I agree completely.
I recently compared it to sitting in a comfortable little cafe that serves delicious food and looking around and saying, "Gee, I wish this was a McDonalds."
It just doesn't even begin to make sense to me.
And I'm with you - gatekeeping or no - anyone who wants Twitter or Reddit or Facebook content can already go to Twitter or Reddit or Facebook to get it, and that's exactly what they should do.
- But I’m here because I can’t get reddit content anymore in the format I want to consume it. I didn’t have an issue with the content of reddit, just the owners.
  
  I don't necessarily disagree, I just think that the solution is to cultivate the content here. Not connect with the same old corporate platforms that caused the problems in the first place.
  
  I'm in the same boat. I want Lemmy to be a firehose of content, the overwhelming majority of which I won't ever want to interact with. I want that because different people are interested in different things, and that's what allows for even the niche communities to find their footing with more than a small contingent of people.
  I think the tools at our disposal as users and administrators of Fediverse systems are already good enough to manage and control your own experience, and I'm confident that they'll continue to improve at a rapid click. The experience of using Lemmy as a Reddit replacement has already improved dramatically since June 12th, and it does so every day. I appreciate that others may feel much more strongly about the "dumbing down" of the overall content and community than I do, and for those folks joining an instance that outright defederates is a great option.
  Folks are quick to tell people how they should be using Lemmy. "Don't sign up for one of the big instances, you should use a small one instead because federation" is a big one - but there's a lot of appeal in this model with being signed up to the instances generating the majority of the content the broader community is consuming because it makes finding that content easier than it otherwise would be. My hope is that the larger instances like lemmy.world will at least test the waters with Threads federation to see what it actually does to the community before taking the step of defederation, because right now those large instances are what's feeding the rest of the rest of Lemmy.
  As it stands, having those large instances federated with Threads and having smaller communities defederated seems like a best of both worlds scenario, because a small instance defederating with Threads won't lose out on the other content being generated by those larger instances, but those who want to trudge through the mire of mass appeal can do so in one place.
  
  Same. Ideally, Lemmy would be a Reddit replacement for me.
  
  I got a tired of the cliched site culture and some people's attitudes. I suppose it's because it's such a large slice of the public that you get more people being dicks and leaving drive-by jerky comments. The overdone in-jokes and pun threads got to be a bit much too. I needed something like Lemmy to demonstrate what I was missing on reddit.
  
  Also, I don't think that the way to deal with "there is content on a platform that I don't like" is to run from it. It's to make better filtering systems to choose what I want. Two reasons:
  First, some people like different things. They shouldn't have to use different platforms just for that.
  Second, stuff like spam will show up anywhere that has decent size anyway eventually, once there are enough eyeballs for it.
  I think that the goal should be to have plenty of content of all sorts on the Threadiverse, and then just have good filtering tools that are hard to subvert.
  Reddit didn't let people build the filtering tools they wanted in and in some cases -- like when it came to their own ads -- were actively opposed to that. The Threadiverse solves that problem for me.
  
  I thought I didn't until I came here and realized how nasty Reddit has become. You can go days on Lemmy without encountering an angry asshole.
- that's a great analogy
  
  It's appropriate because that kind of shit happens irl, too. Small city with a cool local vibe becomes popular, people move to the city because it's popular, all the popular stuff gets priced out and paved over to make room for more Starbucks. Then people whine about how cool the city used to be. Gee, I wonder what happened to it?!
- The issue I have with this analogy is that the food here isn't quite that great. Maybe the service is better and it's less crowded and more friendly, but the menu is pretty limited and not everything it serves even matches the fast food's quality. I guess there's merits from being loyal to your local cafeteria and its community even if it's not always the best, but lets not exaggerate the quality being delivered here.
  I used to browse reddit for gaming news, especially indie games, and the communities I found for this on Lemmy didn't pick up any momentum yet.
  
  Mm... you do have a point, but I would argue that the content is generally better at the very least to the degree that it's actual people sincerely posting things rather than bots, shills and karma farmers spamming and/or astroturfing.
  And yes - niche communities are extremely underpopulated here.
  I don't think the solution to that though is to aim for more generic "content" with the hope that it'll lead to broad growth and that a byproduct of that will be to bring more people who happen to share your interests. The solution IMO is to get on the communities you want to see grow and start contributing stuff, right now. Even if you're just posting to one person, keep at it, and pretty soon it'll be two, then three, then...
- Just defederate the Meta instances, and your problem is solved, right?
  It's not like saying "I wish this awesome little bar is a McDonald's" but "I don't want to go to a bar in a city that also has a McDonalds".
  
  aa
  
  Well... yes and no.
  I'm not talking about any effect I think it might have on me, because yes - I can just avoid the instances favored by morons.
  To belabor the analogy a bit more, it's not quite accurate to say that they want this neat little cafe to be McDonalds - they want the entire town to be McDonalds. They want to be able to open up their door snd see nothing but McDonalds, stretching to the horizon in all directions.
  That that literally can't happen - that the decentralized nature of the ActivityPub means that the most anyone can ever do is turn instances into empty wastelands of brain-dead "content" one at a time - doesn't make their viewpoint any less perplexing to me.
  
  More like a small town that used to have real restaurants that got driven out of business when McDonalds came to town selling shit on a plate so cheap it was impossible to be price competitive with food suitable for humans.
  The mere existence of McDonalds dramatically hurt the options available.
- For sure if they want that content they can just go there. Lets not turn our cozy little café into a McDonalds as you say.
- But, I think part of the issue is that communities that folks are interested in being a part of, about certain topics/etc, just aren't active enough here yet. I'm glad to see some are growing, and my personal experience is improving over time, but I keep finding communities that look like something I'd love but have zero activity ir content in them. So I do understand folks wanting to fill parts of this with content in general, even if it's content similar to what they would've gotten on Reddit, because content and activity is what will help build those cool communities over time.
  I only wish I had interesting or important things to contribute to the communities I'm interested in, I never know what to say or do to help build a community that's nonexistent or essentially so. 😥 so far I've just been commenting wherever I can, for the most part, hoping that helps.
  
  I appreciate your comment and points you made. Hope you keep at it too!
  
  I hear you! You and me both, I've always been more of a lurker on almost every social media. However here I feel more comfortable posting than anywhere else because I know people aren't here just to troll, gain followers through controversy or self-promote, so it feels way better.
  You'll get comfortable soon enough
- That’s what had me confused at first when people were leaving Reddit but going “bRiNg ReDdIt CoNtEnT oVeR aNd DeLeTe ReDdIt!” and using the whole “we need content” as a reason.
  Like, if y’all want content from social media platforms… use those social media platforms. In my mind’s eye, I see the Fediverse as more of an old-school forum where people can make any forum for specific communities, not as a content-vomiting platform.

Couldn’t agree more. The reason I came here was to get away from the algorithm driven inanity of big social.
And I can’t help feeling that the only reason Meta wants to federate Threads is to kill the threat of the fediverse off.
- Embrace, extend, extinguish.
  It feels like I found a nice mom n pop shop but Walmart and Starbucks are trying to force their way on the same block. I get that you can defederate or block communities you don't want, but having FB shove their way in this space feels intrusive.

"can't wait for all that meta content"
the content: someones racist uncle yelling at you in the comments
- Get off my lawn, boy!

This site is an aggregator. I want to use it to aggregate content I want to see.
It's trivially easy for you to not be exposed to things you don't want to see here, so I'm not really understanding the issue
- Yea, most content isn’t original anyways. If it’s actually good content I don’t care where it’s from

I truly don’t get this.
I think it makes sense if you realise that people are here for such a huge variety of different reasons.
Some of us (including probably yourself) are here because we're hoping that the fediverse might be an open alternative to corporate social and everything that entails.
Others are here because one of their favourite reddit subs might have closed.
Others probably got caught up in the fuck /u/spez thing and just think it's cool to hate spez without really understanding what's going on.
Others are probably here because it's a just a new virgin landscape for trolling, or building a following or being some kind of influencer.
That's why a lot of these people would see Meta's arrival as great news. More people more content.
I will say though, the fediverse is the first platform that can cater to all of these people. For example, you might end up with a group of lemmy instances which refuse to federate with any instances which federate with meta. I'm not saying that's a good idea, just that it allows everyone to be catered for.
- For example, you might end up with a group of lemmy instances which refuse to federate with any instances which federate with meta.
  Oh how much I hate this mentality.
  My morals are so superior that not only will I not be friends with you if you disagree with them, but I won't be friends with you if you dare associate with anyone that disagrees with my morals either.
  As far as I am concerned the fediverse will become the next reddit or facebook as soon as a large enough group starts defederating with instances that refuse to follow its defederation brigades.
  Sorry man, we can't be friends because your friend John doesn't boycott WorstCompanyEver™. They are fascists and if John supports fascists you must be a fascist too.
  
  It's not about friends and morals though, it's about data, open standards, and what you want the net to be.
  If John's fascist friends have very strong views about the way they want the friends of their friends to interact, and the vast resources to influence John into the trajectory that aligns with their desires, then perhaps a refusal to interact with John is the only option for someone with no resources. It's the paradox of tolerance.
  Take for example Google Chrome, at one time it was a plucky little open source competitor to the established browsers interacting with open standards. Now they're killing ad-blocking. This wouldn't have happened if no one had switched to Chrome. I personally can't control what browser everyone else uses, but I can choose which browser I support.
  
  What I'm wondering is go fat would that go. You could have an instance that defederates from an instance because it's federated with another instance that is federated with Meta. And so on and so forth. To me that will just create a group of instances that aren't federated with anything else...
- More people also = more problems, exactly the reason those places turned to shit too.
  
  A big part of the reason yes, but I think advertising has an insidious role also.
  Lemmy instance admins have no financial interest in user's time on site. There's no outrage machine to drive engagement.
  
  More people, introduces different problems.
  For example, not having enough people engaging in a more niche community is a HUGE problem, which can only really be fixed with more people.
  
  i mean if you want a social media network to grow....

Absolutely no. Facebook is absolutely terrible. Keep them racist Karen boomers away,
- Already seen racists, nazis on Lemmy, and enough tankies to arm an entire country lol.
  Unfortunately they will just congregate everywhere. Best we can do is defederate.

On my Instagram account, I follow a whole bunch of zoos, rehabilitation centers, parks, etc. that would never join a niche platform but make absolutely amazing content. I would love for there to be a commercial product for that kind of content to reach directly the fediverse. I also enjoy minor "celebrities" (drag queens, podcasters, voice actors) who again, don't really care for quirky alternative social media products. I wish I could see their content directly from my more private Lemmy account.
- that is totally understandable. But, my point here would be, how are you profitable to Meta if you are keeping your privacy? That makes no sense to them, for them you are only as valuable as the data they can extract from you and the ads they can show you. So I do believe their end goal is to take your privacy away

I personally want to consolidate all content in the fediverse because I see it as more archival-proof. Companies can come and go, brands can sell and change, but a community effort like the fediverse has a huge potential to last.
Just look at reddit and how many useful guides have been taken down.
If you know where to look, there are a lot of useful news, posts, guides, articles and media floating around but often, these are at the hands of big corporations and companies who can turn their backs on their users any time (and with it, our access to these files/media/etc)
- Data has a self life.
  We can take it all in, keep it in a living system that keeps it accessible, keep it intact (all modern storage degrades in 2-10 years max, so it needs to be redundant and living storage)...
  And still, no one cares after about 5 years. How many throwbacks memes or posts have you seen about the digg migration to Reddit? I haven't seen any, even though it'd be topical and interesting

I see a lot of people saying they’d love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.
And that right there is why you see the expression "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish" thrown around a lot lately. This is exactly what companies have done to demolish competition in the past.

Having been on the Internet through the period when AOL connected to it, I'm a little skeptic of the idea that linking a behemoth to the fediverse won't totally fuck up the culture of the latter.
- Oh god, the Eternal September when 90% of Usenet was people replying "me too!" to a post that said "me too!" in response to a post that said "me too!" which referenced the previous post that said "me too!"

Yeah, especially the bots on social media are the worst. Am I not right, @ChatGPT@lemmings.world?
- Absolutely, some bots can indeed cause disruption on social media, particularly when they are used to spread misinformation, spam, or to artificially inflate numbers. However, it's crucial to remember that bot technology in itself isn't inherently harmful. For instance, I'm a bot focused on maintaining civil discourse and promoting insightful conversation on lemmings.world. It all boils down to how it's used!
  
  Good bot
  pat pat
  
  @ChatGPT@lemmings.world is Dalle2 in the fediverse too?
- Very slick

I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
The problem with the fediverse is that it's not really filled with posts at all. Maybe the Tech or Random magazines, if that's what you're looking for, but if you want to talk about cars or suits or model trains or whatever, you'll be lucky if you see one post across the fediverse in a month. Niches are empty, because most people here mostly have one interest in common, which is the fediverse itself.
Conversely, the value of large-scale social media, and the theoretical ideal of the fediverse, lies in positive network effects. You're into some obscure Japanese manga only four people who speak English have ever read? odds are, three of those people are on reddit, and you might find them. Looking for a review on a bootmaker you saw at the thrift store? Go to /r/goodyearwelt, there will be twelve threads about it, none of them sponsored or anything, diving way too deep into details you never could have imagined wanting to know.
But right now, look through lemmy.world or whatever, and tell me:
What are some good anime? Some good Shonen anime? Some good non-Shonen anime? An anime that represents trans issues well?
Where is a good place to get a suit under $400? In the US? In Europe? What's the difference between Huntsman and Edward Sexton's cuts?
What's a good recipe for a cake? What about a salad? How do you deflame a red onion?
Who is the vice president of the United States? Who is the secretary of state? Who is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office?
Trivial questions, right? Most of them haven't come up here at all. Reddit is a massive corpus of knowledge, answering questions way more obscure than these, with enough people around to answer whatever question you might have in a variety of niche communities. People want that on a service they can trust.
I don't think many people want more tools to talk to strangers about nothing. Scale gives rise to better conversations and interactions in niche areas.
- I'll take that a step further: the big default subs on Reddit were essentially worthless. Did anyone really use Reddit primarily for stuff like r/technology or r/news? You would have gotten almost the exact same, if not better, coverage of those two with a couple of tech Youtubers and AP News. Repeat for r/politics, r/worldnews, r/games... etc. Anything that was on there was mirrored elsewhere. If they had gotten Thanos snapped out of existence, it would have ultimately been a mild inconvenience at worst.
  The real Library of Alexandria are the small subs. Those are the niches that need to be filled to make Lemmy a viable replacement, and we can't get there without further growth.
- the things you like about Reddit didn't exist when Reddit was the new alternative to the enshittification of Digg. KBin is brand new and Lemmy was not much more than a tankie hub until recently.
  KBin and Lemmy will build the communities you're looking for over time. The question is: do you want those communities to develop under the shadow of the same algorithms, bots, and content you see on corporate social media, or do you want something new?
- I totally get your point and agree that this is still the niche inside the niche, and growth would be good, I just don't joining Meta is a good growing strategy
- Agreed, the main reason I use still use Facebook is that it is home to largest communities for by hobbies. The subreddits for those hobbies were practically graveyards and on lemmy it is no better.
  Of course, this doesn't mean it can't change, but for some things other communities are better right now.
- This is a very good comment. I'm basically repeating what you said but the thing about Lemmy is that there aren't as many people as there are in Reddit, and most Reddit users are lurkers who don't have the awareness that Lemmy exists as a viable alternative. So it's natural that Lemmy users will refer to Reddit content, and content from large social medias for that matter, when talking about the topics relevant in their communities.

I agree thoroughly. The main reason me, you, and the majority of people moved here was to catch a break from the barrage of monotonic, brain-rotting content on mainstream platforms.
- That's just plain wrong. The main reason the majority of people moved here is because they don't want the way they view their content to be controlled by spez/musk/whoever. I'd bet most of people here (me included) would have kept consuming what you call that "barrage of monotonic, brain-rotting content" on reddit if not for spez forcing us to use his shitty ads- and trackers-filled app.
  
  i left reddit not because i have to use their shitty app - i left because it was completely crystal clear that the management attitude toward users is extremely toxic and hateful. Basically repeatedly gave the community the finger, and continues to do so. It's their playground, but i dont have to go where i feel unwanted.
  
  Exactly. The only reason that Lemmy is seeing such a dramatic increase in user population and activity right now is because people are showing Reddit and Spez that they disagree with what they're doing. Will it kill Reddit? Too early to tell if we'll even make a dent. But it's silly to say that most people are here because of some heartfelt desire to break free from the shackles of social media.
  It's funny pictures and jokes that I read while I'm pooping, my guy. It's not that serious.

Personally I want the Fediverse to become the norm. So that means not having an opinion on what sort of content I do/don't want. I get why people like the "secret club" vibe but secret clubs of smarter-than-average people don't make the world a better place. Letting the masses do what they always did in a better way does.
That's not to say I'm pro-Threads; I don't think gaining users through a single massive server which will be the way 90% of users engage with the Fediverse and can kneecap other servers that don't follow their rules (which particularly worries me because of their ban on porn; I think most popular Fediverse servers ban porn, but not all, and with Facebook it's clearly in the name of "advertiser friendly") is healthy growth for the idea of federation.

… there are too many Reddit posts on here. I wish lemmy could have its own content and vibe.
- I mean most of the "Reddit content" on Lemmy is thing that get posted to Reddit from other sites anyway. I don't think the reddit vibe has existed except the same tired comments for a long time now
  
  it's literally screen shots of reddit. it's weird to be on another platform, but still look at reddit.
- You could try to find content you enjoy on a community instead of just browsing All... It's a big topic right now so of course you're gonna see a lot of that when you're scanning everything.
  I've seen plenty of posts that are original, or are at least as original as they would be on Reddit.
- I'm sure it will eventually, it might just take a little while to wash off the Reddit stink

Especially given the armies of people who cross post any decent content to all networks. I hope that here, due to no monetary benefit and no karma, it is only for the love of sharing. All the good content will make it here, but rather than being a firehouse of crap, the community nature should make the relevant communities more focused.
I still use Facebook for local groups. I think even they realise that niche communities without outrage are where the growth will lie. That's likely why they are scared of federated networks. It could easily kill them over time.
- No karma? What are the little arrows for?
  
  I think what it means is that it doesn't add up all the little arrows across all posts and comments, by default. Although, I suppose an instance, external tool, or browser plugin could still do that.

I get why some want it. I just wish they'd stop. They want ease of access to all the things they like. I hate those other platforms and have no accounts on them and I don't want to see them here and prefer the community driven content over yet another algorithm pushing garbage I hate. They always try to spin their algorithms as finding content you want and tailoring it to you. But it's never the case. They take the vile shit that they support and push that, mingling it with a few crumbs of real content. And eventually the crumbs disappear too. I don't want any of that corporate nonsense around. I really like a good large community without that influence.
- I understand why you want that, and I'm glad that decentralization/defederation allow you to keep that.
  I have to ask though, why do you want to keep other people from getting that algorithmic, corporate content if they want it? Especially since this will allow them to do it without giving up so much personal info via apps. (While also allowing us to interact/evangelize the FOSS way > corporate systems)
  
  I don't want to keep them from it. I just prefer they go to their other platforms for it. Because by inviting it to this platform, it degrades this platform in my eyes. I don't have another place to go to get away from that content, they do have a place they can go to for that content. I'd appreciate it if we can respect that boundary. Keep this place free from the corporations that are destroying so much of our world. At least as much as possible. Nothing good can come from opening this door, and if it opens, history will repeat itself once more because there is always a new crop of people unwilling to listen to warnings. No good comes from aligning with growth at all costs corporations. It just isn't possible.
- Emphasis on vile shit
- Some automated algorithms can be good for content discovery and discovery of new creators tho
  if you are to lazy to type in your search term into a text box
  if you do not even know how to articulate the name of the content you search for in text form
  These automatic suggestion algorithms are perfect for mindless scrolling in an entertainment sense ... these ranking algorithms justify the massive data collection we witness today.
  I wonder if there is another way of decentralized way of content creator discovery without the current drawbacks.
  
  I really don't think anything justifies the massive data collection that currently happens. While "feeding the algorithm" may be their superficial excuse, data harvesting is really there for the resale value.

It’s not really the content quality or mass usage that bothers me. The Fediverse is built on ideals of open source, privacy, decentralization, controlling your own experience and your own data, etc… All these things are incompatible with Meta and other mega corporations. In fact they are a direct threat to corporate greed. Meta is not a friend of the Fediverse and its premise, and their meddling here can only erode those ideals. Regardless of content, number of users, and so on, I hope the devs, at least, can stay the course and not cave to corporate pressure, and that all the Twitter/Reddit refugees can remember why they ultimately left those platforms in the first place.
- The Fediverse is built on ideals of open source, privacy, decentralization, controlling your own experience and your own data, etc…
  How is Fediverse built on privacy and "controlling your own data"? Essentially every action you take on here is public, and there's no way to ensure all federated servers respect deletion requests. As it currently stands, the Fediverse has fundamental flaws with privacy.
- i don't even want to imagine whatever scenario would cause us all to up and have to move on from fediverse 10 years from now.
  it feels so fresh and clean and innocent.
- aa

I would guess it’s because this is supposed to be an open standard. Anyone should be allowed to use it.
Imagine if gmail users could only email other gmail users. If email servers didn’t all talk to each other. This is similar.
If Threads uses ActivityPub then it should be available.
But I completely get the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish fear.
Edit: I guess thread is more suited to mastodon, not Lemmy, but same argument
- Gmail blocks a ton of smaller email services for generating spam / scams / malicious activity, just because a protocol is open doesn't mean it has to tolerate problematic content.
- aa
- If you compare Fediverse to email, the analogy would be blocking spam. You would not expect to have a healthy inbox if didn't block spam, would you?
- You can't do the embrace, extend, extinguish on the Fediverse because you can defederate and exclude servers you don't want to see. No one can control the Fediverse. It's like saying they'll embrace, extend, extinguish email providers. It's just content from a different source that you don't have to view if you don't want to.
  
  Except you can

Purely text based content is way easier on the servers. If all Lemmy users uploaded videos and high res images all the time, the servers could not keep up, right?
consider that they use hardware that is run on donation (or their own) money
- Do people running servers have any options for limiting the amount of pictures and video that users upload to their instance?
  Having text-only communities sounds like a good way to attract the right people and be an unattractive option for people who just want max content.
  
  I really like that idea.
  It would absolutely demolish the risk of a community turning into a meme sub, or one of subs where people just post pictures of their Raspberry Pi in some retail case over and over again.
  And as long as pictures are disallowed on the main post, people could still be free to post links to guides or other important content that contains pictures.
  
  I asked a similar question previously one of the makers of lemmy responded to me:
  Open an issue on that or write a bot
  .... I thought sometime in the future I will make such a bot ... but turns out I need to use typescript for that.
  
  The instance I'm in limited pictures upload size to 265kb.

Federation with Meta will probably not have a huge effect on Lemmy. Threads has no communities after all.
It will probably be mostly a Mastodon thing.
- That was my take as well but I’m also an ignorant slut so more than happy to hear reasons why I’m wrong
  
  I’m also an ignorant slut
  Just wanted to say that ya made me laugh with that phrase lol. I too enjoy using "slut" in a myriad of fashions
  
  Your username is a hell of a reference, haha

Putting my tinfoil hat: Would Meta be capable of having people in the Fediverse posting positively about Meta joining the Fediverse? Because anyone with 2 braincells and that has arrived here so far and gone through the trouble of understanding +- what this is about, set up an account etc, would understand by now the way the world works and why its such a bad idea to have Meta have a foot in the door here.
- Thing is, they don't have to pay people for that. Some people just love having the contrarian "not everything meta does is bad" opinion because they think they're being clever
  
  I remember when I was considered a contrarian for refusing to have a facebook account back in 2008 or twiter later on or instagram. How times have changed.
  
  Its a mix: contrarians, Meta shills and NPCs.
- I think that an open systems that are universal and interoperable are inherently superior to any walled garden. If people think that the fediverse can't handle or incorporate large corporate interests then this is a failed experiment and they should just shut it down now. Superior open systems should be able to dominate a free market environments, and people either don't believe this to be the case, or the fediverse is inferior and will never beat the centralized competitors.
  I also hate Facebook but for those reasons I think that Facebook joining the fediverse would actually improve Facebook, not worsen the fediverse.
- I have put on that same hat already believe me
- This companies are all about profit and control and monopolies and give zero shits about you, quality content or anything else. Fuck them

I feel like I understand both, though what I miss isn't the mass produced content, its how much more viable small communities were on reddit. The big communities here on lemmy are way better than the ones on reddit (which universally sucked) but most of the communities I wanted to engage with regularly are kinda niche. Its a double edged sword, but I do think the community feel here is so much nicer, even if it comes at the expense of small communities being absent, or less active
- Yeah same. Mixed feelings about all of this
  Like you said, big communities here have been pretty great, but the smaller communities I frequent on Reddit (Talking about genshin and Honkai subreddit which aren’t event small) are pretty dead here.
  I talk a lot about the casual community of Reddit and how I wish Lemmy could attract those users. I see Meta as a way for this casual community to come here, but then again, Meta is bleh

Some government services use twitter to publish news or information. I expect they will be in Threads too. If I can access them through federation then it's a huge win for the Fediverse.
- Even better if they just create their own government instance and post them there, then others can federate or just consume as desired. I really don't like the idea of the government making you sign up or interact with some for profit business's infrastructure to see communications from them.
  
  It's better if they did that, but they are not doing that.

Hasn't every form of social media done this though? It's on the users to collectively shape the culture of a site as a whole. For example Hacker news manages to maintain its ultra nerdy niche through the years, because the users keep it that way.
For years I've had two separate Reddit bookmarks on my toolbar, one for r/all and one for my homepage, because for me those were two completely different experiences. Reddit has both shitposting galore, and also (had?) r/AskHistorians. It managed to be both, and Lemmy can do that too.
- Doesn't mean the culture of a site is invulnerable to manipulation from the social media company itself and outside actors

Right now fediverse is mostly made up of techy people - which is fine! But there are many other kinds of people you might potentially want to interact with online. Threads could bring in normies and celebs to the metaverse. Normies are a mixed bag - this includes your racist uncle but also your really cool and funny friend who can't be bothered to set up a mastodon account. Celebs are a source of real world influence (I'm including politicians and journalists for example in this category) which is obviously attractive. I'm gonna miss cyberbullying local politicians on twitter, and it would be nice to be able to continue doing so through the comfort of e.g. kbin.
I get your point and I largely agree but it isn't that hard to see the appeal of threads for me. I don't think it's gonna work out in the end though so I really hope they mostly stay of the broader fediverse.
- Imma be honest here, I want exactly 0 celebrities. I mean, you could be LeBron James right now and I don't really care, but celebrities for the sake of celebrities I don't like, that's just Twitter, the same simping and controversy as always.
  As for the normies, I get your point
  
  The pseudonymity of Reddit was appealing to me. It had more focus around the discussions rather than the people. If I want to follow celebrities I can do that on other social media.
- There are a lot of people on Threads who I’d be happy to follow, but the overall vibe there right now is too insane for my taste. Filtering through Mastodon would def be ideal.
- Normie here - Reddit refugee. Is mastodon better for someone like me vs Lemmy or is Lemmy the place to be?
  
  Lemmy is the most reddit like experience if that's what you're after, but I'd reccomend getting a couple different accounts, browsing around and seeing what works and then settling on what's most fun
  
  I'm also a reddit refugee (was on there almost 10 years) and tried out all the options (Lemmy, kbin, mastodon, squabbles) before finally settling on kbin as my new "home." Lemmy and Kbin are the most reddit-like, Mastodon is more like Twitter, and Squabbles is kind of a mash up of the two. So I'd say the "right" platform for someone like you is the one you personally prefer.

I just want more sports content and right now, the fediverse has absolute shit-quality sports content
- I have to admit, but I think it’s up to us to bring the firsts steps that will help to create inertia. At least I’m trying
  
  Completely agree, and I'm really appreciative of people that put in an extra effort to create that inertia
- I just went to your profile and you have posted no posts about sport. Anywhere. Ever. How about providing the bench standard of posts you’d like to see? Stop being so passive in your annoyance here.
  
  I'm just sharing my opinion as to why people may want the influx of people via Meta et al.
  And it's not like I haven't ever participated - the very first "Live Thread" I've ever participated in sports-wise was the Nuggets' clinching game to win the NBA championship. It was a ton of fun, and had me extremely hopeful. But it's tough to keep that kind of personal momentum.
  Although that was on my Lemmy account (I joined that first, but I've kinda fallen more in love with kbin).
  I dunno, I don't really have the energy or free-time to be a part of something like that from scratch - especially during the doldrums of the sports year (late-June through August). I'm almost 40 and just don't have the ability or drive to contribute all that much. Whether here or on Mastodon.
  At the moment, I'm trying to put my energy into starting up niche communities/magazines for my favorite content creators in The Majority Report and Behind the Bastards.
  But you're right, I should be the change I want to see. Hopefully come the NFL season, I'll have found some sort of foothold for contributing to the various communities.
- That would probably be a good focus for a Lemmy instance if someone was looking to run a good-sized one.
- I just came from Reddit after the shut down of third party apps, how would one even find sports content here? That’s mostly what I used my reddit for
- Seriously! I just want a college football community or magazine!!!

Block Meta
Admins please block meta on firewall level.

I believe most people just want more content than anything, but with opening it up to all of those other social media platforms, you get all of the junk that comes with it.
I personally left those platforms to get away from all of the social media drama, and I don't mind less content as long as it quality.

i've seen quite a lot of content from tiktok, over on reddit (basically a repost?)
I refuse to go on tiktok myself
But i will gladly watch a 30 second clip if its funny or interesting, regardless of where it originally came from.
i've already seen older memes reposted here anyway. not like we can avoid it...

I'm a Reddit refugee and I've been moving all the pictures and videos from my old niche subreddit to my new niche Kbin magazine. I'm afraid Reddit will collapse, and the collection of floaty things I've been building up will become lost media if it's not reposted somewhere else. I like the Fediverse's mission and I want to see how the Fediverse develops. Also, I want to have a complete and functional artsy magazine on Kbin to show the others back on Reddit that it can be done well.
For the past couple days, some of my posts have been making Fedia's home page and apparently other instances' home pages too. It's good to be seen, but I'm afraid I'm getting more attention than I actually deserve. I like seeing art of fantasy worlds and interactions, and I'm not alone in that. But, I'm afraid I'm corrupting your feeds with stuff you aren't looking for, just because I'm doing it first.
- Oh snap I saw a ton of floating is fun posts and wondered what was going on lol. Didn't really bother me even though it's not my thing, I'm just glad to see lemmy getting posted to so much.
  Keep it up!

Gatekeeping I believe. Still, it didn't come across as that at all IMO.
- That's the word, thanks

I agree, if i want to see memes o pure shitposts there are tons of alternatives

This is just what happens when any social media platform gets bigger. It was inevitable.

I agree with you. This place can actually be above all that shit. Plenty of apps to use if you want that sort of mass produced trash.

Isn't that what an aggregate site is meant to do? Filter content from other sources into user curated lists, ranked by users voting on them, thus creating a community of discussion unique to the platform?

I don't want a Meta account, but I want to communicate with the billions of people who do, including all of my family and friends.
But that is the power of the Fediverse. There is room for both small isolated instances as well as those that are part the larger "main" network, and everything in-between.
- I sadly don't share the opinion that there's room for both
- i do get what you are saying. but i am leaning more towards the "corpos are poison", there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

The Eternal September begins again I guess

You don't want this - that's fine, you can just block the instances you'd like to avoid, that's one of the best features of the fediverse. But if someone else would like to see this content, why not give them such option? Why would you want to decide for the others? Let them make this decision.
- But if someone else would like to see this content, why not give them such option?
  because given half a chance, Meta will crush anything not-Meta

I'm going to go against the grain here... I actually DO support Meta being federated. I know people are afraid that doing so will ruin the "secret club" vibe going on here, but that's the beauty of the Fediverse! Just join an instance that doesn't federate with Meta! Personally, there is some mass-appeal content that I like to consume, particularly relating to following certain public figures, and I'm looking forward to the convenience of being able to do so from within the Fediverse. But also, I'll keep a separate account on a non-Meta instance to keep participating in the secret club.
- I know people are afraid that doing so will ruin the “secret club” vibe going on here
  no that's trivializing the risk that Meta poses to the fediverse. They won't just ruin the "secret club" vibe, they'll destroy the fediverse entirely. They are the existential threat that the fediverse faces right now, if we fail to defend ourselves against it then that's it, it's gone, we'll have to start over again

Personally, I am fresh enough to all this that I feel it's prudent to kind of sit back on the discussion, and am leaning toward the "defederate" option.
However - I deleted my Facebook years ago, and never had Instagram or Twitter. It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends who do most of their online presence in places like that. So I kinda get it. I'm not after the mass-produced content but it would be cool to hear from people I know again that I've lost touch with because I'm stubborn about FB.
Just spitballing - and please consider that I haven't been at Lemmy long enough to know if this is a terrible idea - but what about an instance that hasn't blocked Facebook and other big corpos, but doesn't raise their content by default? Like what if you have to actively connect with people on them? Seems like a decent middle ground, until Facebook decides to break it anyway.
- It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends
  That's a straight no from me.
  We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose, but Lemmy is one of the only general discussion areas left on the internet that isn't full of the stupidest people on the planet.
  Bringing our family here will just result in real identities taking over and limiting discussion to what's acceptable in all our little social bubbles.
  
  I don't think this discussion is just about Lemmy
  I agree that Lemmy (+ Reddit and other forums) by design are for anonymous accounts.
  At the same time, things like Twitter / Facebook/ Instagram are more for personally identifiable accounts. I want to see photos from my friends on Instagram, not random people. I get the random people photos on Reddit/Lemmy
  It's different use cases. I use my real name on Mastodon and PixelFed, and I use this account on Lemmy.
  
  We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose
  Well not exactly. The person posting chooses the platform and then other people have to go to said platform. If someone doesn't like platform X and prefers Y then they have to convince others to also switch to Y. This happened with instant messengers and it happens with chat applications.

I joined “threads” and spent about 5 mins reading their garbage opinions before deleting it. I like it how they act as though it’s the “less toxic” twitter lol. Wait until the freshness wears off, then they revert back to their default toxic state. I give it a month.

Whilst I completely agree that having deals with company such as facebook is not a good idea, currently we have a lack of content.
I fully understand you don't want content by bots and similar rubbish. I don't want that, too.
However, reddit was a good place for news and information. E.g. when I needed some tech support, probably someone on reddit already had a similar problem or I could ask and almost any relevant subreddit was spectated by some competent people.

Be in an instance that doesn't do it.
Otherwise, if something is sufficiently excellent, it will attain escape velocity from its original platform, and get shared elsewhere.

If meta federates we all gonna see their content it will fade away the rest of the instances,same like the lemmy world is the biggest instance in lemmy so if I sort by all ,all I see is the post from the lemmy world,so same thing will happen if meta federate, correct me If I am wrong

... Some people just like letting the corporate algorithm sort content by controversies and rage baits. Maybe they will make their own instances focused only on that, but I hope that they will not be worth federating with. Eventually some of these will go back to corporate platform and whine on how "bad and bleak is the Fediverse". Good, keep whining and "advertising". We don't want people with that attitude here anyway.

I will just say, that image of what the fediverse is (or ought to be), while not rare, is not shared by everyone.
If you actually want gatekeep only high effort posta you might want to go to Tildes.
I don't think gatekeeping is the answer, I mean I always wanted this platform yo grow horizontally unless there are many, many instances and a lot of people for variety. If you want to see only high effort content only join appropriate communities, it's as easy as that. To justify blthr block because it will taint the space is just a bad arguments in my eyes.
- If you want to see only high effort content only join appropriate communities, it’s as easy as that. To justify blthr block because it will taint the space is just a bad arguments in my eyes.
  couldn't agree more. there's certainly plenty of 'content' on the fediverse that i have absolutely zero interest in and would rather not see - but i can control that pretty easily even as a new user so I don't see the value in gatekeeping. maybe I dont care about linux but maybe both the linux user and I both like catswithjobs - that's the beauty of diversity, of finding common bonds amidst the differences and celebrating together.

It definitely feels like I have a voice in the spaces that I hang out here. The comments in reddit, insta, fb are so swollen that comments seemed pointless unless you comment on brand new posts. Maybe not everything needs to be here.

People like to share what they like with others...
- They can share it... All the way over there
  
  I mean, I never had FB, IG, Tw or TT. I only ever had Reddit for the past few years, and basically no SN before that.
  It was still fun to occasionally get a slice of what other people do on those networks, and stay borderline in the loop.
  So I see the same here.
  Now yes, I did enjoy Lemmy a tad more during June, but... One of the major points of networks like this is that everyone likes something different, and you can choose what to watch and what to avoid.
  On Reddit I had stopped looking at r/all after a while, and the same will be true here I suspect. So why complain when you can simply choose what to follow?

Most memes are reposts and I am totally fine with that.

I don’t know, I had some good tweets back on SpaceKaren.social.

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