And to those that have been here for a while, how has your experience changed over the year(s)?

What has worked for you?
What do you see needs improvement in your chosen platform?

  • DigitalDidgeridoo@kbin.earth
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    4 hours ago

    I’ve only been on the fediverse for a total of like 10 minutes, but it seems so far like a perfectly viable alternative to big tech’s data collection schemes disguised as websites.

  • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Lemmy really needs to get its shit together in the UI/UX dept for the default look of an instance. Mastodon does this much better.

    I can’t stand looking at Lemmy without Voyager.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 hours ago

    I used an apk called Relay when I was on reddit. Now I use an apk called Thunder on Lemmy.

    My experience is almost exactly the same (very similar gui). Only difference is all the missing more niche sub\instances.

  • disregardable@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    It gets better the more familiar you become with it. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in real life. There are parts that are just way too jarring.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      5 hours ago

      I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in real life. There are parts that are just way too jarring.

      Ugh, this. And I hate that it’s like that.

      Like, I used to have my instance open to whoever to sign up. My guiding principle was to have a place that wasn’t overrun with [parts that are just way too jarring]. Holy shit was that an impossible goal to do alone so I shuttered it up and now it’s just a private instance / testbed for Tesseract.

      My friends knew I was active on Reddit, and that was fine. But I wouldn’t tell them I spend any amount of time here because what they would see going to almost any random instance will probably definitely not look good on me by association despite that I’m nowhere near that.

      So if anyone shares this desire, I am open to un-mothballing my instance, rebranding, and taking on new admins and re-opening to users who also want a place like that.

  • compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    5 hours ago

    I’ve been on the Fediverse since mid-2023, and I’m sticking around!

    I bailed on Reddit, FB, and IG, and I’m only on Mastodon and Piefed now. I find that not being on algorithm-driven social media makes me less angry, and I have a much easier time avoiding getting caught up in a mindless scrolling marathon.

    I like the ability to filter out by keywords, it makes for a much more pleasant experience

    As far as improvements, my main complaint is that I wish there were more people and that the people who are here comment more. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but there are a lot of communities that just don’t have enough people posting and commenting to make things feel lively yet.

    • B0NK3RS@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I agree with everything you say here. I would say even some kind of consolidation for communities might be needed as a lot are defunct but I don’t know if that will work or is possible.

      I like the ability to filter out by keywords, it makes for a much more pleasant experience

      This is one if the most useful features and I think more people should customise Lemmy/Mastodon to their needs.

  • lizzy291@feddit.uk
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    5 hours ago

    For me, the biggest downside is there just isn’t the same amount of content/engagement as reddit. Also, it’s even more of a left wing echo chamber than reddit (and I say this as someone left of centre).

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 hours ago

      Yeah I’ve lost faith in this place and I say that as a staunch leftist. It’s an echo chamber so what’s the point, isn’t that just a circlejerk? I wanted to impact change but here you can’t do that you can either agree on everything or be downvoted.

      The positive in all this is I spend less than an hour on here a day on average, compared to previously or Reddit where it could be hours.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      5 hours ago

      I’ve been here for a little while now and I still find myself using Reddit to fill the gaps. But hopefully as more and more people join, then we get more content and engagement!

  • fizzle@quokk.au
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    4 hours ago

    I’ve been here since the before times.

    It was just weird back then. I had no idea what tankies were and the content just seemed bizarre without any content. I wasn’t here daily but kept checking in.

    Since the reddit 3rd party app fiasco there’s been more content so you could block .ml and have a somewhat satisfying experience.

    Piefed is very comparable to lemmy but without the ideological stink and better filters - I thoroughly recommend making the switch.

    Mods in the fediverse generally have better intentions than their counterparts on reddit. There have been a number of fumbles but for the most part they’re better community stewards, although they do still have the same inherent problem of being fieflords.

    The content on the fediverse lags behind reddit. For emerging stories there’s way more interesting and up to date content on reddit. I’ve been using redlib for the last few years so I browse reddit but can’t log in. It’s a reasonable compromise IMO.

    I do have some concerns about the fediverse.

    Firstly it’s an echo chamber. Quite often if a commenter points out some kind of nuance which doesn’t align with the approved opinion they just get piled on. One recent example was the “Trump shat himself” video. Someone said something like “I can’t really see it, you can hear a little squeak that could be anything and green lady is just looking around”, they got downvoted to oblivion and loads of responses basically saying “how dare you not make fun of the POTUS”.

    We can’t discuss things here. There’s like 6 types of posts and we all just make the approved responses to each of them.

    Secondly is the dwindling content. Things have deteriorated in the last few years with smaller communities drying up. Everyone’s aware of it but no one can or will do anything about it. I don’t have the stats but I suspect that 99% of posts are made by about 4 different users.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    3 hours ago

    Threads is a Facebook thing and I stay away. The tiny corner of Mastodon that I look at is pretty good. Lemmy, well I’m here and it’s not totally bad, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Too much duplication, too much clickbait, and believe it or not too much centralization. For example, your reading history is store on the server instead of the client.

  • electrotabby@piefed.social
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    5 hours ago

    I joined today! I tried to post some images, but could only have one image per post. Then someone was rude, and I wasn’t able to downvote him. I keep refreshing the front page, but nothing happens since there’s no algorithm, the latest posts just stay there.

    I think I’ll stick around here in parallel to Reddit. Maybe some day I’ll understand how instances and all of that works.

    • Vicinus@piefed.zip
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      5 hours ago

      Sorry you ran into those issues and the rude person.

      I think new accounts have some restrictions for the first 3(?) days. My understanding is that this was implemented to try to counter an annoying person who keeps making accounts doing shitty things and then deleting that account and making a new one.

      I’m pretty sure there’s a way to add multiple images to a post, but I’ve never done it.

      For the new content, you may want to try switching your view to “New” or if it’s your first time looking at piefed during the day “Top (x)” [x being how long since you last opened at Piefed]. Those methods usually bring me a bunch of new content.

      Hope your experience gets better :)

      Edit: It didn’t occur to me earlier, but are you on “Subscribed” feed or “All” feed? If you aren’t on all, I would suggest switching to that until you have enough subscribed communities.

    • gigachad@piefed.social
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      4 hours ago

      It takes little time until you have subscribed too enough communities so that your home feed feels natural. I use the “Hot” sorting in home, but there are some people who prefer “Scaled”, which is hot but favors smaller communities, so that you don’t only have memes and shit posts in there.

      For the All feed I Dan really recommend “Top of 6 hours”. But, yeah, the Threadiverse is not big enough to spend here hours a day, I usually come here twice a day. What I really like is that you have much more user engagement, where on Reddit your comment usually disappears in the void. Welcome and have fun here, hope you’ll stay a little longer ;)

  • unnamed1@feddit.org
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    5 hours ago

    I’m new here and it’s quite a relaxed experience. I think there are more friendly and reflected people. It’s like people here are able to criticise properly and take criticism and also encourage and praise a little. I thought this was lost since early internet. But also very political / activist. I feel like in a bubble of people who want to change things for the sake of people and not capital. As much as I like it we’re not enough. I don’t care there are not many comments. Less comments, less fomo.

  • OmegaPerseidTwitch@piefed.social
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    5 hours ago

    Personally, I came here because Reddit mods play king when they’re less than a pauper. It is also full of pedos and rapists. Simple questions when people actually need to know are met with mockery and ridicule.

    There is less to see here but the vibe is less fucky and I’m staying.

  • Skavau@piefed.social
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    5 hours ago

    I’m not new as such. I joined up on kbin initially and tried to establish my communities on there, but kbin kinda collapsed. Then I gave up for a while.

    When I came back, I moved to lemm.ee and set up television and obscuremusic and got them going (the former especially) and then unfortunately lemm.ee shut down and then I moved to Piefed and rebuilt it all over again.