im_fine_sandy

Maybe mastodon but the lemmy / piefed / mbin instances seem to be a much younger user base.

My comment isn’t asking how to improve my own personal experience, but an explanation of why users might be declining.

People are just generally leaving the threadiverse because… Sorry everyone but its so bleak here.

The world is going to shit and there’s nothing any of us can reasonably do about it.

I doubt there’s a day that goes by that I don’t think about how this place does not “fill my cup with joy”.

At the same time I kind of can’t look away because I do feel b that I’m better informed because I read about how shit everything is.

Even though most users don’t self host, the ability to still gives users more agency even if they choose not to.

Its a bit like using open source software even if you can’t understand the source code. The open source influences the behavior of the admins. That’s exactly what’s going on here really.

This drama wouldn’t exist on a closed source platform because we probably wouldn’t know about it.

The fediverse seems to have a real penchant for petty drama.

I’m not saying that’s what this is, just that when there’s a spat it tends to draw everyone in.

I’m not sure I really understand you.

One of the foundational concepts of opensource software, self hosting, and federated software, is that users have more equity and agency than they would if they were users or “consumers” on a corporate platform.

If you don’t want to support the behavior of a developer, you don’t have to.

That said, I’m aware that my instance is running piefed, which is at the centre of this drama.