this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Asklemmy
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I have mixed feelings. On one hand, Lemmy seems to be finding its groove, and I genuinely feel like I'm part of a growing community. But there's definitely something missing, and it's difficult to put into words.
On Reddit, I tended to frequent specific subs, and rarely doomscrolled the front page. But that's all I find myself doing on Lemmy. Most of my feed is either politics or memes, and nuanced discussion seems rare. New communities apparently have a hard time getting off the ground, and I think it's mostly because decentralization makes discovery a hastle.
Reddit's whole purpose is to aggregate content from other websites, whilst providing a central access point. This is antithetical to the very concept of the Fediverse, which is all about decentralization. I find myself wishing for an easy way to aggregate Fediverse content, so that I could access Lemmy, Beehaw, Kbin, etc. all in one place, regardless of whether they're federated. Really, all the drama surrounding instances federating/defederating is obnoxious as an end user.
The apps are certainly better, though, and in general I'm enjoying myself.
Lemmy lacks niche interest communities, beyond stuff like Linux.
I try to do an "end-run" around federation drama by using my own instance, especially since I prefer to be as openly federated as possible. This is not without drawbacks, but it's really not bad.
My fear is that one day the biggest instances will switch from using block lists to instead only federate with an allow-list. That would basically make this use non-viable.
On the other hand, subreddit dramas where a good portion of the userbase got alienated usually ended up with the users getting beaten into submission, and either shutting up or getting banned. It's a bit annoying, but it's still better than the other alternative we know.