Post by @dawidl@lemmy.world

I’m new to the Fediverse, and so far I’m loving it

It reminds me a little of the old internet. I like how relatively small it feels, and that people post content for the sake of the content, not to promote themselves. I haven’t found my usual corners yet, the ones I used to hang out in on older platforms, but I figure that’s just a matter of time. I’m not super nostalgic for the old internet or anything, but it’s nice to find at least a hint of something human-centered somewhere.

I hope it doesn’t fall apart and that it keeps growing.

I was skeptical when I switched to Linux, but then I ditched Windows on my dual boot for good. It was a hugely positive experience, and it really felt like freedom. I’m hoping this will be the same.

And don’t be mad at me if I act totally clueless here sometimes 'cause all that is new to me.

#fediverse

1 Boost

419 Likes

MinnesotaGoddam

@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 14 hr. ago

Welcome!

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 17 hr. ago

Welcome!

Also, tbh if you make a new community for something you want to see, and post to it maybe once every couple days, your people will eventually find it.

It takes a bit of upfront work to prime the pump, but eventually you’ll find a steady little stream of posts just start to appear.

It almost feels like it’s addressed to you when it happens, like oh! Someone posted in my community! And it’s something new to me! It’s a real treat.

stembolts@programming.dev

@stembolts@programming.dev 17 hr. ago

I disagree with everything you said and I poop on your enjoyment. Just kidding, howdy.

Toga77@lemmy.world

@Toga77@lemmy.world 18 hr. ago

Welcome!

Just like reddit, there can be a ton of downers and doomers.

Just ignore them.

Lemmy’s been great for the couple years I’ve been using it.

dawidl@lemmy.world

@dawidl@lemmy.world 11 hr. ago

Thanks, I’ll be alright. Mentally, I think I’m solid enough, so it’s no big deal. Plus, my hobby corners rarely get into emotions or politics

eggpl4nt@lemmy.world

@eggpl4nt@lemmy.world 21 hr. ago

Welcome!

captainlezbian@lemmy.world

@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 21 hr. ago

Your corners may not exist here, that’s ok, you just gotta make them. Some folks round here have done a great job of it already with their corners

anewfox@lemmy.zip

@anewfox@lemmy.zip 22 hr. ago

protip: if you want to feel like an absolute genius here, all you have to do is read the actual articles before going to the comments.

dawidl@lemmy.world

@dawidl@lemmy.world 11 hr. ago

I’m a “get my hands on it first, figure it out later” kind of person (like most people)

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 17 hr. ago

Same as it ever was. u_u

OpenStars@discuss.online

@OpenStars@discuss.online 21 hr. ago

Wait… people actually, like do that⁉️

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world

@AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 17 hr. ago

You dropped this: ‽

OpenStars@discuss.online

@OpenStars@discuss.online 16 hr. ago

Usually whenever I do that some angry commie helps me out.

Our interrobang, comrade. :-D

rustydrd@sh.itjust.works

@rustydrd@sh.itjust.works yesterday

Hello, person.

Snoopy

@Snoopy@piefed.social yesterday

Welcome 😊

Most of us were clueless when we arrived here :)

MinnesotaGoddam

@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 13 hr. ago

Yes… When we arrived… 👉👈

mrmaplebar

@mrmaplebar@fedia.io yesterday

Welcome! Glad you're liking it.

The big complaints that people tend to have are that federation is a bit confusing, and that it's no where near as big as Reddit. They're both valid, and probably won't change any time soon.

But I think sometimes people overlook the positive aspects of federation and smaller communities. Reddit is damn near unusable these days, and it's full of bots, slop, reposters, ads, and power tripping admins/mods. The Fediverse has been around for quite a few years now and still feels like a place for actual human beings with a lot of freedom to take things in different directions.

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 17 hr. ago

I kind of wish I could remember what it was like to find federation confusing so I could explain it better to newbies.

Kichae

@Kichae@lemmy.ca 4 hr. ago

It’s usually just confusion at the idea that things live on other websites. The most common mental model people seem to have for decentralized systems is… centralization. Just, centralized somewhere else.

I remember when the Twitter users flooded Mastodon. Everyone seemed to have this sense that “Mastodon” was a place “over there”, and that the website they were using – if they even recognized that they were using a website, thanks to the appification of everything – was just a dumb terminal. Like, instead of using Twitter, they were using a secondary website that itself ws using Twitter. So, people got really confused about why content was missing, why they couldn’t see the post history of some users, etc. They felt like they were being arbitrarily blocked from seeing parts of “Mastodon”, rather than understanding that they’d just signed up for the equivalent of a magazine subscription and would not be getting the back catalogue for free.

I’ve tried to explain it as being able to request content from Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky from an account on MySpace. Only there’s 500 Facebooks, 2000 Reddits, 10,000 Twitters, 300 Instagrams, and 1500 Blueskies. And also, 1000 other MySpaces. You can request content from those other websites, but because you are not viewing those websites, just requesting that they send some of their content to you you only get the small parts that you specifically asked for. Otherwise, your MySpace would get overwhelmed and burn down around you.

I’m still workshopping this, though. It has not been as effective as I hoped for.

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 2 hr. ago

I’m still workshopping this, though. It has not been as effective as I hoped for.

I am still interested in explaining it too just because I think it’s cool. The best luck I’ve had was to to point out a username belonging to a different server and then opening up that server in a browser and explaining that “so when they go on lemmy they visit lemmy.world, and here’s their home feed, but I visit lemmy.ca, with this home feed. though we can still see [mostly] the same posts in the all feed, and talk to eachother like {insert email example}.”

Something about pointing out the server’s url helps. Like if there was only lemmy.world in the whole world it would still function, but the all feed would be the same as the home feed.

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 3 hr. ago

Yeah I feel like it’s not going to get through to people until it’s more common.

Also tbh people don’t really need to know all the details to make full use of the fediverse. Like most people probably have vastly simplified or wrong ideas about how email works, or how websites themselves work, but they know enough for their purposes.

~1 more replies

Kichae

@Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 hr. ago

They don’t need to know the details, no, but the new user experience – especially on Mastodon-based websites – can be very confusing without at least a basic understanding of the syndication-based nature of the place. Lemmy and Piefed aren’t quite so bad about it, you can see the Local or All feed by default when going to your website of choice, but also because users coming from Reddit have been used to having an empty main feed if they haven’t subscribed to anything yet, while Twitter has been providing an algorithmic feed of “for you” content for a while now.

And because the Mastodon developers seem to very badly want to obfuscticate the nature of the network, and want “Mastodon” itself to be the title character, and not any particular masto-based website, the default that users get is their subscription feed, and not the Local feed.

People think Mastodon is dead, because it doesn’t work the way they expect.

This was especially bad during the Twitter exmigration, because people just joined whatever random Mastodon-based website they came across, and were trying to find each other again, and didn’t understand how searching for users on other websites worked. They seemed to think it was dumb that their website wasn’t aware of users on a completely different website, where the only thing they had in common was that they were running the same website engine.

People coming from highly curated environments need to know at least a little bit about how the whole system works in order to embrace the system. Otherwise, they interpret the limitations are arbitrary.

Napster153@lemmy.world

@Napster153@lemmy.world 18 hr. ago

I actually worry for when Reddit fully implodes, because the ensuing migration wave to Lemmy will bring the same problems and solutions with them.

Yes, i miss some aspects of Reddit, but I’m aware of the hypocrisy that comes with that statement as well

mad_lentil@lemmy.ca

@mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 17 hr. ago

Probably what’ll happen is lemmy.world will become the new reddit and we’ll all have to decide if we want to stay federated with them.

I welcome the schism if it ever occurs. I think it would be really interesting to see how a fully “scaled up” but non-corporate social media handles a challenge like that.

Even if we have almost exactly all the same problems reddit has, but without being a monolithic corporate platform, I think it would be an improvement.

StarChip

@StarChip@fedia.io yesterday

Welcome! I love it here too

Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com

@Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com yesterday

I had to laugh when you mentioned Linux as if it’s a requirement to use the Fediverse. It’s funny how everyone here loves Linux (including me).

Cethin

@Cethin@lemmy.zip 20 hr. ago

It’s not a requirement, but whatever leads you to Lemmy will also lead you to Linux. Whether that’s anti-corporatism, anti-capitalism, pro-open-source, just counter-culture, or whatever else. They’re the same side of different coins. (I don’t think this is a real phrase, but it works. They aren’t actually related, but they’re equivalent.)