My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.

I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.

I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.

  • nimnim@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Yep, Same here! When things went south with Twitter, I tried switching to Mastodon, but after several months, I haven’t become fond of it. Its interface is so terrible and difficult to navigate. When I heard of Lemmy as an alternative to Reddit, the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Oh, please don’t be like Mastodon…’ and I’m glad that it is not! I like the fact that it is kinda’ similar to Reddit (interface-wise), but at the same time, it is decentralized, which means it is (hopefully) going in the right direction.

    • Cambionn@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      If your issue with Mastodon was mainly the interface, maybe you could try using a third party app like Tusky. Mastodon’s own app isn’t great, but when using Tusky it’s quite nice.

      I was never a fan of Twitter, but I use Mastodon quite a bit. Both for following news and projects as for just posting random crap. I never used Reddit much either, only read when it would come up on an online search. But Lemmy so far has been nice, if not a bit silent. I’ve got good hope for it.

      • scheissberg@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I think Mastodon’s community isn’t really up to par with what most Twitter ditchers were expecting.

        The Reddit-Lemmy exodus however, is far more exaggerated because of the tremendous number of users on third-party apps that were being killed.

        This probably led to a lot more content generation and activity which makes it a lot more welcoming than Mastodon was.

        • Cambionn@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          I guess the problem is mainly, as someone mentioned, Twitter is for following, Reddit for interacting.

          The fact that you have to look for people to follow or you’ll have an empty timeline together with the fact that many famous people aren’t on Mastodon makes the switch more difficult for Average Joe than Reddit to Lemmy, as this kind of SNS doesn’t require specific people, just people.

          I wasn’t using Twitter for anything but customer care, so as long as I could find some interesting instances and tags I’m fine there. I didn’t switch, just joined, so nothing to miss that I had before.

          I guess in that way, Meta has been smart to give their Mastodon-based SNS first to populair influencers before releasing it to the public. Altrough I can imagine Meta’s version possibly getting blocked everywhere due to privacy concerns tho.

        • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          I would also try fedilab. Though I never used Twitter and Mastodon seems to me like a slightly odd rss feed of pictures and news, and a bunch of stuff in languages I don’t speak.

          • nimnim@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Mastodon is so confusing to use, and almost none of the people I know use it. Even a few who joined after my recommendation have stopped using it. I’m not sure what type of user Mastodon is targeting, but they have certainly failed to attract long-time Twitter users like myself. On the other hand, Lemmy has the potential to become a refuge for ex-Redditors, especially after today’s AMAs by Reddit’s CEO.

            • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              Agree completely. I think people just like this format better also. Some link to discuss and gather around.

            • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Yea, I found Mastodon useful for news, albeit completely random non focused news. It gets updates (I assume by bots) way more than the news subreddit did in the last few years, and now I can just post one of those links into lemmy if I want to talk about it.

              I also see pictures on there a lot, but I’m not super interested in a lot of them. I have no idea what the commenting is useful for there - it’s seems like yelling into a void, though maybe that’s the fedilab problem? IDK.

    • DidacticDumbass@lemmy.oneOP
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      1 year ago

      I feel that. I thought it was just me, but it was so hard to just connect to any other instances outside of what flowed in the timeline. When I did it just took me to the website instead of integrating with the instance.

      Trying to keep up with the Federated timeline was nauseating, but it also fruitless adding every person with an interesting post.

      It sucks. I just don’t like the Twitter format.

      • nimnim@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        That’s absolutely true. I mean we can’t even search for a word on that platform. It’s so ridiculous that only hashtags, usernames, or URLs can be looked up!

        • DidacticDumbass@lemmy.oneOP
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, it is limited in surprising ways. It is just not fun to use. I do hope it keeps evolving and overcomes these annoyances. Still, I am grateful something that matches my speed exists.