People need to realize you can use alternatives

  • Menachem@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year

    • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.

      I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.

      Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it’s subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.

      • thegiddystitcher@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’ve seen people literally signing up here just to make like 50 empty communities and not post or comment on anything at all. Definitely a lot of folks just trying to stake some territory that they think will be valuable in the future.

        • Manticore@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I also like the beehaw has a mission for community in mind, supported by having an application process; and their having prepared umbrella communities that will prevent echo chambers.

          Beehaw is definitely getting hammered too though; it’s probably the second- or third-largest instance atm.

    • Slashzero@hakbox.social
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      1 year ago

      Very true. It would be sad to build up a persona on a smaller instance to then have it go dark and take your user with it. Other than losing your collection of “upvotes,” you can just recreate a new user with the same display name on another instance and keep going. 👍

      Holy crap, you can do Slack style emoticons? Huzzah! 🎉

    • Sinnoh@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Let me see if I underatand this correctly:

      If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the “all communities” feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are “federated”. But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)

      So, as a normal user. Who’s just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn’t joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it’s the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?

    • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This is the way. If you don’t like the moderators, don’t play on their servers. It’s that simple.

  • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.

    • YoTcA@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.

    • Menachem@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least

      wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance’s version of the post

      • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)

      • YoTcA@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.

        I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes@lemmy.ml . Maybe this is the intended behavior.

        The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.

        Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…

    • Slashzero@hakbox.social
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      1 year ago

      Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can’t say I have had any issues as you’ve described. If something doesn’t look right, or isn’t working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.

  • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.

    Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.

    • goat@burggit.moe
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      1 year ago

      How’s it work if I get banned from one instance? Yet I can still comment in that instance I got banned from? No clue how that works

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        If you get banned from your home instance, you’re banned everywhere.

        If you get banned on a different instance, you can no longer post/comment/vote in communities there but otherwise you’re fine.

      • Vlixz@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Just joining in, and what will happen if the instance you created your account on decides to stop running. Does your account just dissapear?

        • RoosterBoy@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes. But it is easy as hell to set up on another instance or even throw up your own.

    • mangel@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.

    • nattekrant@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.

      • _cnt0@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        That isn’t guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn’t a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer …

        Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.

  • WalterzarBoBalterzar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I tried to make an account on lemmy.ml and it looks like their servers are (understandably) overloaded

    I ended up choosing lemmy.world instead

    My understanding is I’m not missing out on anything by chosing a less-popular instance. Did I get that right?

      • NekoRogue@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Oof, I can see why some of those instances are blocked, though. Since I’m on Beehaw, I checked their block list and…wow. Scrolled through each one for a few minutes and now I’m hoping I’m not on some kind FBI list for it. A few highlights from my research expedition:

        • A meme featuring various characters (MLP, Vaporeon, Peter Griffin, etc) unironically mourning Ted Kaczynski
        • NSFL gore
        • People calling for the execution of cops who stopped rioters on Jan 6
        • SO. MUCH. LOLICON.
        • “Hahaha look at this WOKE LIB 🤣🤣🤣”
        • QANON. QANON EVERYWHERE.

        I was only on each one for a minute or so. I don’t think I’m missing out on anything except maybe being put on some kind of list.

        • amki@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Even if you wouldn’t like it, the cool thing here is you can decide for yourself. If… you feel the need to do so.

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          same, I’m on Sopuli and their Blocklist is pretty short but has the worst ones.

          they are really, really bad and some are straight up illegal in some countries.

          Mostly far-right ones, straight up terrorism (seriously there are people with RAF and other terrorist organization’s logos on their profile pics there), nsfl gore videos (like people dying and being tortured type of stuff), and nsfw ones full of underage anime girls in suggestive poses…

          lemmygrad is probably the worst one out of all of them, just because of it’s size (tankie terrorist group)

  • JustyToo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    After reading the “we are full” notices and doing some research I was able to easily create an account on lemmy.ca increasing the represention for BC.

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        The people who run lemmy.ml also run lemmygrad.ml and that second one has a fair amount of communist propaganda. I’m not talking about stuff like “workers unite!” I’m taking about stuff like “actually no one was killed at tiananmen square and if anyone was it was soldiers who were killed by those unruly students and not the other way around.”

        This wouldn’t be so bad, except that they federate Lemmygrad so the main instance will occasionally get to see literal propaganda that the admins won’t take down.

        Edit: So as not to get into a dumb argument, I’ll spell it out here in the edit for anyone who missed the point. The problem is not viewing the world through a different lense, the problem is an outright denial of reality. Denial of basic facts. You’re free to interpret facts however you want. You’re not allowed to just deny reality. This is a problem all over the world, and it’s bad no matter who is doing it.

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Blocked lemmygrad the main reason why I picked Sopuli instead of the “main” instance

        • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          I dont understand why it bothers you so much. Why do you need to have the same political views as people who run an instance?

          It doesnt even bother me that people have those opinions. You know how much stuff from the US that is complete lies and propaganda? You probably dont even notice if you are used to it. :)

          Its just the world we live in. There are no good countries. The US shot down hundreds or thousands of middle east civilians using drones from kilometers away, just routinely, like its nothing. Not seeing them as humans. Its like a computer game.

          I think its best to just focus on our lives and not try to act as forum soldiers for the countries we happen to live in. They are all bad.

          • Drew Got No Clue@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No one is saying that the US is good though.

            Exactly because of what you said in your last paragraph, some don’t want to use an instance run by people with a certain political agenda.

            • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              I think its a mistake.

              We already divided the earth into countries, and now we are supposed to divide ourselves in the fediverse also because we cant stand eachothers opinins?

              • Drew Got No Clue@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                We are not supposed to do anything.

                Everyone is free to join any instance they think it’s good. We can communicate freely (bar a few exceptions) throughout the fediverse, so it’s not dividing users. Furthermore, lemmy.ml is overloaded, so that’s a good reason to choose another instance. The admins themselves don’t expect the majority to join that server as the primary one (they run it as the ‘flagship instance’).

              • Wigglet@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                Personally I don’t think tolerating intolerance is just a differing opinion. I feel like excusing genocide puts them in a group of people i don’t want to associate and I don’t think an “opinion” like denying genocide should be sat at the same table as reality.

                Don’t mince my words, I hate all imperialistic governments who commit genocide and if there were posts about the US never having intentionally killed all the buffalo, trail of tears, those culture stripping schools etc or our own version of those schools here in Aotearoa I would be just as disgusted.

              • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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                1 year ago

                Are you seriously pretending things such as

                “actually no one was killed at tiananmen square and if anyone was it was soldiers who were killed by those unruly students and not the other way around.”

                are mere opinion?

                • dingus@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I see this often in debate topics. Some people seem to think that every opinion is valid and worth listening to when no, I’m sorry, that really isn’t the case. There is no need to casually try to debate people who don’t believe the existence of the literal sun, or holocaust deniers, or those who think all gay people should be euthanized.

                  It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine tbh, and I’ve always run into issues like this on discussion boards, especially of the past. Those with blatantly offensive and wrong viewpoints get bitchy when others don’t want their debate topics present because every opinion can be respectfully debated. No. Yes…often two opposing viewpoints can be valid. But other times, they most certainly are not. If you’re of the opinion that child porn should be accepted for example, it doesn’t matter how “respectfully” you try to present it and yourself. Your view is wrong and you do NOT deserve a platform to speak about it.

                • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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                  1 year ago

                  My point is, we shouldnt act like little fighters here on the fediverse, not when there are so much positive things to focus on.