I really want to like Lemmy

Yes Lemmy is smaller and doesn't have instantly fully formed communities. Reddit has been around for almost 2 decades. Lemmy is newer, smaller, and actively fights the sorts of shenanigans that Reddit initially used to get big.

If you want more niche activity, make posts and interact with posts. Lemmy is user driven- that means you. It isn't a giant megasite where you can just expect to be a passive receiver of endless content.

you gotta realize reddit didn't just "appear" one day with those obscure niche topics built out. There is a network effect large communities have. We need hundreds of thousands more members before that is possible.

I think you probably weren't there for early reddit, but most of the active posters here on Lemmy were. It was tiny. Like Lemmy.

You can't force those niche communities to exist here. It doesn't work. But what you can do is post and create valuable content. and eventually we may get there.

Feel free to block communities with political content.

You can also use an app or alternative frontend to filter keywords. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has a post about that.

For communities, !newcommunities@lemmy.world can help

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

A lot of focus is put onto posting, but I like to encourage commenters. I'll post and respond all day, but if nobody is interacting, it's going to stay quiet. Put the quiet to your advantage by doing things like:

If you like an image, say what you like about it. Lately, I've been having people talk about how they really have been enjoying dawn/dusk pictures, so I've been collecting more of that so I can post what people are in the mood for. It gives me good feedback, it gives people a chance to agree or disagree with you, and you got to participate.

Do you ask anyone any question? Take advantage of the relative quiet. With not having a million comments on every post, I have plenty of time to give you really detailed answers. I got asked how to differentiate between 2 animals yesterday, and I had time to make a nice visual guide, highlighting key differences and giving multiple visual examples of potential variations while still simplifying the process of identification. If there's a million people talking like on Reddit, it's hard to give people that much attention, but here it's easy. I pretty much take time to respond to every comment.

Don't be afraid to go off topic. Rules seem to be looser in many communities because of the low post count. This week, I posted something from a country with a different language, and I ended up having 3 days of conversation with a native speaker who filled me in on tons of subtleties of the language pertaining to our niche topic. I got to learn so much, and they got to learn a few things about English.

I feel you have to do something to have a good time here, but it needn't be to post multiple things every day, but it's more than just up or downvoting something like you can get away with on Reddit. We're too small for you to have a free ride. But make someone laugh. Let them know that you liked their post with a short comment. If you don't like it, say hey, do you have any content on such and such instead. Make a post saying, hey, what's your thoughts on this? It doesn't need to be something groundbreaking or insightful, you just need to give a sign of life so we know you're here, and one of us will probably talk back to you.

Interact enough like that, and you may find what you enjoy doing, if that turns out to be posting, or you become the resident expert on a topic even if you're not an expert, being a serial commenter, or whatever it may be. It's a great opportunity if you make it one because it is so easy to get attention here if you try.

I'm not typically a social person, but being here has let me talk about what I want, when I want, and somebody will listen to it, and I can ask about things I want to know and get answers. There's much less shouting into the void like at Reddit. Play Lemmy to its strengths and you will find enjoyment. And if you don't like it, go to where you're happy. Nobody's going to hate you if you split time between here and Reddit.

Seeing all the cats made me realize that we need to all participate to make the community what we want it to be. It’s clear to me there are a lot of lurkers based on the influx of cat pictures. The more we start posting in ANY instance the more visibility there will be for active users.

One suggestion I saw a while ago was to use more general communities for things you're interested in and as it grows then the more niche communities can be made. Ex: post about a specific game you like in gaming up until enough people like it to make a sub for that game. Or post about a song you don't know in asklemmy until enough people do that to make whatsthissong

I totally get wanting the niche communities and, personally, I just lurk reddit completely not voting, posting, or commenting unless as a last resort if I really need to find info that Lemmy isn't able to provide.

It's a slow process and I don't think there'll be another boost of users in Lemmy until reddit does another thing that enshittifies it to annoy people to leave.

All I’m getting lately in my feed are cats!

reddit was once smaller than it is now too

The Fediverse is virgin territory. The trails aren't blazed for you here; it's your job as an early adopter to make it the way you want it to be. You want a community? Start it and participate in it.

I hate reddit as a platform but I still have to use it every once in a while because people won't move to Lemmy/mbin/piefed.

I honestly don't understand it. People complain that they don't use the fediverse because it's small but somehow they don't realize if they just migrate over then it won't be.

It's aggravating how dumb people can be but hey, that's the world we're living in. I'll continue to use Lemmy and visit reddit if I have to.

Politics is the one thing we all have in common.

The good old days where everyone watched the same five TV shows and discussed them are over.

I know I can post and be the change I seek.

Imo, this is your answer. I'm not sure exactly what other solution you want. Content will not appear on Lemmy without someone first posting it. Advertising the platform to help draw people in is also important.

I like it as a platform but the userbase just isn't there.

Don't let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn't exist, didn't stop you from not caring.

Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It's a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.

Unfortunately, community building is work, and it's work that users actually do on the bigger, corporate sites. Those community builders helped get those spaces going, helped make them appealing, and help trap users there. In smaller spaces like this, we need to be the community builders, not just the content consumers.

One thing I find really helps is to use something that doesn't look like the space you left. Lemmy looks an awful lot like Reddit, but it has themes, and even alternative web clients that can change the experience and make it feel like something new.

Lemmy also isn't the content and communities, it's just the website's server software. You can access... ugh... the "threadiverse"... from websites using other ActivityPub enabled servers. There's an ActivityPub Discourse plugin. nodeBB is adding ActivityPub support in its next version. Friendica and Hubzilla have group support, and work with Lemmy-hosted communities.

Find a new window on social media, and it might help you engage with it differently.

The other thing you can do is just niche down a bit here. Find a few active communities that you're interested in, and focus your attention on them. Lemmy is actually much, much more like classic forums, where communities or spheres of interest have their own website. The difference here is that you can actually look outside of those communities to interact with other forums, too. It works a a lot better if you treat it that way. Find your home, as it were, and branch out from there.

Unfortunately, the modern mental model of social media is the fire hose, not the node-and-spoke that is actually best supported by the technology.

I don't want to simply repeat what others have said, but on a personal level, I'm actually enjoying the smaller overall community - it makes it a bit more personal, I feel. I enjoy that. Yeah, fair enough, it's not great for niches, but you don't have to be tethered down to one place for your content.

Back in my day, you had to go to completely different websites for your niche content! Forums were the mainstream!

Unfortunately, there's no easy way around it. Fediverse is small, and while we should always encourage people's migration, it will probably remain small for the time being.

And freedom to express everything combined with people learning their behavior on algorithmic content will be an issue until a strong Fediverse culture is established. The times of pioneers are over, the times of "truly a place for everyone" are not yet there, and in between, we have a very weird mixture, sometimes bringing out the worst of many people.

I hope Fediverse will survive through this phase, and if yes, bright times will be ahead. But it will take a lot of work. Many non-political communities have already started blocking political content, and for the time being, I believe that's for the better. People need a place to chill and have a corner of their own, not face what they ran away from in the first place.

It's still a tiny echo chamber like it was a couple months ago when I cut back on Lemmy use. It can get pretty repetitive and boring to read. I came back to Reddit because the user base was larger and there were more perspectives I could hear from.

We have to be the thing we want to see out in the world. If we want open source communities and an internet free of corporate influence then we have to do the work required to build them. It's not going to happen by magic.

Jokes on you the political content here is from the redditors who pretended to quit their award fueled addiction by also joining lemmy.

Seriously though, compare c/Politics to c/Worldnews or c/News. There is a very large dissonance between the comments shared despite both communities posting the same news info..

On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately.

Unfollow communities with political content, and all that goes away.

I only used Reddit for two years, but I’m now really happy I made the jump to Lemmy.

Sadly, I can only agree that some niche content is difficult to find.

But I can’t complain because I’m not creating any of that content and moderating some community.

Well you should come hang out with us at Out of Context Comics! Not a lot of politics but a lot of gay innuendo. A lot.

https://lemmy.world/c/outofcontextcomics

Browse by "subscribed", and subscribe to a lot of communities. Only do it by "all" when you can't find good stuff in the subscribed view.

I do this and, while I do see a few intrusive US politics posts, it's far less than when browsing by "all".

The thing I like about Lemmy is that they're not banning you over stupid shit.

Growth is a process, not an immediate switch. Every social media started small and then grew. If immediatism, or however it is called, was the predominant factor for any struggle to become an achievement, nothing would be achieved.

And on lack of contents, I, for one, block everything that is not of my interest, quite a lot to be honest, specially with certain niches spamming the federated platforms, but even then, I get a feeling I should trim even some of the communities/magazines I follow/subscribe to as I can barely catch up to those already.

Unpopular opinion: it's okay to like Reddit, if that's how you feel. I don't - it's far too toxic overall, and that was affecting me to the point where I made the decision to leave it, regardless of the outcome of the protests (based in large measure on having read this article that further developed the thoughts that I was already starting to think: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb ). And I don't like where it's going in the future - you may use it for awhile then be surprised when yet another horrendous decision by Huffman or the people behind him sends content creators fleeing to other platforms, again.

But if you have found a particular niche group there, and they are not willing to leave Reddit, then you go to where they are, right? Perhaps you can also help make moving here more welcoming by starting a similar community of your own here, even if you are the only one posting there for awhile. That said, we simply don't have the userbase here to handle e.g. most individual games (some fairly major exceptions such as Minecraft aside:-) or sports teams or some such, and you may want to enjoy interacting with more generalized content, possibly in addition to rather than fully replacing Reddit.

Conversations here tend to be better than there. Deeper, richer, and fuller. But to each their own - if Reddit meets your needs while Lemmy does not, then it sounds like you have your answer. But perhaps read my link above and think about what it means: Reddit is predatory, and you'd be willfully walking back into that, hoping against hope that the leopard would not eat your face off (spoiler alert: it will:-D).

Here's something I learned, don't be afraid to block. Political sub you don't want? blocked. Person shouting about China in a cat sub? blocked.

Also add blacklisted keywords, it cuts down on politics a ton

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

It doesn't look like you mentioned subscriptions, which gets you out of the 'all' / 'filtering' side of things entirely. But just as with Reddit, you'll need to spend time building your personal feed over time and tweaking it.

The good news is that there's no limit to your subscriptions (unlike Reddit's cap of 50 displayed at any one time), but that you'll need to use the right tools to search the Fediverse to find those communities you want to subscribe to.

The main tool I typically use seems to have a bug right now (based on the recent software upgrade?) but I suspect will be back up in a few days. You might take a look at this, tho, plus other resources.

Lurk on Reddit. Post on Lemmy.

Post the kind of content you’d like to see.

The internet has been mostly enshittified. The corporations are guaranteed to continue sucking in predictable ways. It'll never get better or good enough.

The fediverse is something new. It is, at the very least, immune to being reddited and twittered. If the internet has a future, it's on the fediverse, or on something like it that doesn't exist yet. Going back to shitty corporate stuff just delays the future.

Your real issue is that spez, musk, etc all suck. That's what you hate. This is the place where we are free of them, and it can only get better.

Someone has to be the first on the dance floor, and you don't want to be it.

It’s not the size that matters. Just play with it for a while, maybe you’ll learn to like it.

Well Lemmy is a possible replacement for Reddit but, putting aside my strong biais for Lemmy, it doesn't have to be a Reddit replacement for everyone and it is still building itself up. Here is a few tips to improve your time in hope you'll find on the fediverse the space you look for :

• Try write post on dead looking community. Follower counts have a hard time synchronizing btw instances. A lot of people may be waiting for some activity to happened.
• Try opening niche community in their original instance. The posts wrote on a distance community before the first lemming of your instance opens it are invisible and must be added one by one (by entering it URL in your instance search function). You might found interesting content you missed.
• Try reposting content you see on Reddit on Lemmy. Copy-Paste it and add something like "R*eddit content - OP : @XXX@reddit.com" somewhere in the post. You might not have as much response as OP but it can stir up interesting conversation.
• Try to make an account on the twittoverse (Mastodon, *key...). The community on the microblogging side of the fediverse is much bigger and diverse. You will be able to boost your lemmy content and link it to hashtag so more people may see it. Answer to the original post will even show up on Lemmy. But second level comments will not fediverse well.
• Try to post articles, general question or to do anything to bring some animation to your niche community. Regularity in low engagement content will still bring people that will sooner or later start to engage.
• Don't hesitate to crosspost any related post to your favorite community. Community are silos, instances are silos and the lemming populating is very fragmented. By linking communities together, you'll bring people with the same hobbies than you to the community they did not find out yet. -Don't hesitate to answer at old post. Us lemmings don't have enough activity to complain about people writing back months later, especially in niche community.

Cheers!

I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community.

Please note: you only ever had something like that with Reddit when it had already several years of operation. Even today, you can't jump instantly and find there a community for any niche hobby.

As with all these things: be the change you want to see. Add content, or else it won't be there when you or someone else comes in.

(There's also a feel that Lemmy is "small" becaue it's not only one place and all that)

Whatever the social media ability to "create" your own algorithm is important. One way being a subscription and sticking to it.

Second being keyword filtering. I use Connect for Android which let's me filter out posts and communities containing keywords.

Same thing I do on reddit with reddit enhancement suite.

It's just the nature social media where anone can sign up.

Reading the comments here made me realize something.

It’s nice to have good content for niche communities that you enjoy but that’s always been a tall order. As in, a lot of things have to go right to get that organic community feeling and I’ve honestly always thought of it as a privilege and not a right.

I’ve seen plenty of communities die for various reasons or just been in a position where I didn’t have passion to go and talk about my niche interests.

So what’s my point? Niche communities are the icing on the cake of a good platform. When we mostly have for profit platforms and little main stream interest in standardized alternatives, you got to be more realistic.

It may not be for everyone. Lemmys growth has stalled out and barring musk buying reddit and turning it to shit i don't see another influx coming. So we're kinda stuck with the community that exists now. Its a pretty good and sustainable community which can provide a lot of general interest posts like news, memes and cats lately. But for other more specific topics if if it's not already a large community here it probably won't be. It's not even just niche interests, professional sports for example has very little presence on here as a whole much less individual sports or teams, and I don't see, for example, a baseball community taking off here no matter how much effort you put in since the current lemmy community isn't much interested in it and your average baseball fan probably won't be coming to lemmy to discuss things.

My recommendation would be to use lemmy for some of those general interest topics, and maybe some of the more popular niche communities if your into them, And go to other places, preferably independent forums or rss feeds, for other things. We don't need one unified scrolling app, it may be a bit more convenient, but the internet is better off if you spread your traffic around.

Lemmy is amazing. I am so glad I found my way here. I was doom scrolling as well. I had to unsubscribe from all my political communities I had joined and just keep one of my news committees. I then expanded the groups for my other interests. This really helped. You are in control of your time line here.

I believe in Lemmy and the fediverse. But the subreddits with content I like aren't here yet. So I still have to go back for that stuff.

But I always check here first.

You're right in one sense; the community is small and can have an echo chamber effect like any "small village." But you can also try other instances, or other Fediverse things or start your own. It goes like this; Reddit had success because they served you interesting things on a silver platter, using extensive venture capital to make it as slick and addictive and popular as possible. Lemmy is not built on capital, at least not on the same scale as Reddit; it is built on labor. You gotta decide what your ideal is.

As somebody mentioned below, subscribe to communities you find to be of interest and then set your default mode to subscribed so that you only see those that you've actually subscribed to and that goes away a lot. Only browse all if you absolutely run out of content and are still looking to read.

I like lemmy because I can't doomscroll

I would suggest blocking the communities that post all the content you don't like. After I did that, it's been smooth sailing, and I read the All feed. There's not that many large news and politics communities that you would need to block to get rid of that stuff on your timeline.

I have really been enjoying Comic Strips. There can be some political content, but there's plenty of other interesting and funny stuff too.

Rather than trying to replace something else, it's a good idea to look for what's new to you.

Lately I tend to prefer lemmy over Reddit and mastodon too. It’s all about content I agree.

i think that your experience is the most common experience that moonlighting & ex-redditors have with lemmy and is the biggest "sore spot" that most lemmings have.

like you, i hate how big tech enshitifies social media and that's been making me move from one social media platform to the next since the 1990's (since before it was called social media). i'm convinced that the enshitification is pushed by big tech's investors in an effort to squeeze out as much profits from the platform as possible; resulting in the types of enshitification that you see on reddit, or facebook, or bluesky or etc. i think that this fact gives lemmy the best chance out of NOT enshitifying, or at least not as fast as reddit or bluesky did.

i used to be on reddit too, but lemmy works better for me and i think it's because of what it was designed to do; it's as if all the left leaning political subreddits (eg r/communism, r/socialism, r/anarchy, r/politics, etc.) got together to create their own social media safe space on the fediverse away from reddit's toxicity. so they did in lemmy and; when the investors pushed u/spez to enshitify reddit; a whole bunch of people left reddit and filled the ranks of lemmy.

when that happened this tankie safe space did the same thing that its real-world counterpart safe-spaces-for-the-ostracized spaces do. like gay neighborhoods, they got gentrified by a MUCH LARGER group of people with better finances and social connections and, during the transition, there's lots of things that the gentrifiers don't like, like late night loud music; or lack of schools; or the "politics" (in this specific situation).

the gentrifiers usually succeed eventually and those pesky life-altering politics will be pushed aside like the high rents & $10 coffee shops push away the artists and agitators that originally made the neighborhood an attractive place to inhabit and they'll go do it all over again in some other neighborhood somewhere else once they're successfully pushed out where the cycle of humanity repeats itself all over again.