It’s rough right now politically in the US. A lot of people around me seem like they’re ready to give up hope. It makes me incredibly angry seeing Zuck up there with all the other billionaires, and Elon is a parasite that has infected the government.

I often find myself wondering how I can make a difference. How can we regain control of our world?

Idk if I’m being dramatic, but the Fediverse really seems like it could be our response to these fuckers controlling the narrative on social media. It could be more than just an interesting decentralized social media platform. I really think this could be a key step in reclaiming our democracy.

Am I being dramatic lol? Do you all feel the same way? I was kinda getting emotional even. Like we could bring real change. That gives me hope, which is something we are desperately lacking right now.

It’s not just Lemmy. It makes me happy to see all the Fediverse platforms (specifically activity pub based) blowing up.

Friendly reminder if you have the financial means, donate to your instance, donate to the Lemmy devs, donate to Pixelfed or any other social media app fighting big social media. And better than a one-time donation, set up a monthly contribution even if it’s just $2/month. It really helps open-source developers when they have a steady income.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Not particularly. History is long. And history tells us people don't have any self-respect. Even when doing something as simple as NOT doing something, like using an abusive platform.

Numbers are going up, yet I don't know a single person who has made the switch. I made an appeal on Facebook and several dozen people liked and commented and agreed and expressed interest, but not one of them switched.

I have, however, seen dozens of people firing up accounts on the VC-backed centralized platform that is BlueSky, and hundreds of millions of people switching to Meta-owned Threads, proving that they've learned absolutely nothing.

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I get what you’re saying, but that train of thought isn’t very productive IMO. First, I agree with you on BlueSky, and I even tell that to all my friends switching to BlueSky, but I also believe it’s better than Twitter.

I think we should stop and ask ourselves why people are choosing BlueSky over Mastodon. How do we learn lessons from this switch to BlueSky and use what we learn to draw more people into the Fediverse?

I know I’m probably being idealistic, but I also think being pessimistic won’t increase our chances of winning in the end.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

that train of thought isn’t very productive

It's not supposed to be productive, it's just an observation of reality and an answer to OP's question.

ask ourselves why people are choosing BlueSky over Mastodon

Because they're once again choosing convenience over user-centric platforms.

That and custom user-generated algorithms.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I have never visited either Mastodon or Bluesky before this week, but I finally did a test yesterday. I wanted to see how easy it was to find mention of that Reddit group fedinews that "everyone" seems to be talking about lately. Note, I'm not trying to promote Reddit here, it's a legitimate trend and I wanted to see if there were meta-discussions about such.

First, on Lemmy there are zero mentions of this term that I could find with a search from the past six months.

Second, Mastodon.social had like 1-2 items tops.

Third, Bluesky had the topic plastered all over the front page, without me needing an account, making it darn near impossible for someone to miss even if they tried.

TLDR: the content is either on Reddit or Bluesky, unless we are talking about using Arch btw, or promoting violent overthrow of the entire Western philosophy and way of life (having a bank account = being a landlord btw). Yes there are tiny niches on Lemmy, and I love them, but if our goal was somehow to replace Reddit or X for a source of discussions as to what is going on in the world... then we would have failed.

Bluesky seems to offer people what they want. I suggest that Mastodon copy that, if it is capable of doing so.

Edit: also, getting back to the original point, read this essay on features in PieFed, a Lemmy alternative, that will help offer democratization of moderation, putting the power back into the hands of The People to choose what they want to see or not rather than relying solely on a mod to make those choices for someone. e.g. there are icons that can go next to a username ("account is <2 weeks old", "posts >50x more often than comment, could be an unregistered bot?", "uaer offers controversial content, receiving >20x more downvotes than upvotes", etc.), and people can choose to auto collapse comments with lots of downvotes (easily opened with but a single click though!) or even automatically hidden entirely. Different users can share the same community and each get the experience that they want out of it. PieFed is still not fully developed, but all of these features that I've described here already exist, along with many other highly-requested ones like Categories of Communities, hashtags, YouTube embedding, the ability to block all users from an instance of the users choice without requiring admin approval, and more. I have lost most hope for "Lemmy", but PieFed gives me the hope again that I once placed into Kbin, only reluctantly transferring that to Lemmy.