missingno

I’m here, not planning on leaving any time soon. But I’m also acknowledging that Lemmy can’t fully be everything Reddit was, not without a Reddit-size userbase.

I’m saying that when the problem is a low userbase, responding with “you’re spoiled for even wanting niche hobby spaces, and it’s your fault for not putting in an excessive amount of energy that isn’t even likely to pay off (because the userbase isn’t there)” isn’t productive.

I never said I don’t want to be on Lemmy. But when people talk about the downsides of this platform’s still niche userbase, it isn’t productive to jump in and admonish them for just not trying hard enough to manifest a critical mass of users through sheer willpower.

Okay, now you literally are saying I didn’t try hard enough.

This is not my first account (it’s also not anywhere close to a year old, not sure where you got that idea). I’d tried to start a few communities over on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.

I don’t have the energy to spend several hours a day flooding threads nobody will engage with, just in the hopes that if I keep it up forever eventually one of them might get a reply or two. It’s not that easy, and it’s patronizing to act like that’s such a simple solution I should’ve thought of.

Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong. !fgc@lemmy.world and !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social exist, but are pretty barren. I’d also previously tried to start communities for them on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.

Also arcade-style versus puzzle games, but those are so dead these days that even on Reddit they didn’t have an active sub.

Not overnight, that’s for sure. It’s going to take a long time to ever get that kind of critical mass.

I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried. Posting a bunch of threads out into the void doesn’t suddenly manifest a like-minded community to reply to and engage with those threads. It won’t truly be viable until there’s a much larger userbase to begin with.

And honestly, it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.

Pardon me for wanting to have a place where I can discuss my hobbies, I guess.

Normally these kind of announcements come with some kind of explanation. The lack of one reflects very poorly on Mozilla and leads me to assume the worst.

Yes.

I love everything that Fedi stands for, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t.

But it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m mostly posting out into the void. I’m not optimistic about Fedi’s future, I think at this rate Bluesky is going to win even though they’re clearly only paying lip service to federation. Maybe if they can demonstrate that their federation works I’d consider trying a third party server, but it’s clearly not ready yet, and leaves a sour taste in my mouth as yet another corporate thing pretending not to be.

Ever since I swore off Reddit after the API fiasco, and ever since I left the one Discord server where I used to feel like I fit in, it’s felt harder and harder to find alternative places where I can talk about my most niche interests, because nowhere else is big enough for it to be likely I’ll find anyone else who also wants to talk about those same things.

I don’t think Fedi will ever be that for me. The one thing I can say for Cohost is that at the rate it was going, I was able to find a lot more posts relating to my hobbies and fandoms, and I kinda regret that I didn’t post more and lurk less.

It just sucks to feel like there’s nowhere else on today’s dying internet to go that will suit my needs.

Damn. Hadn’t actually posted there much but I did lurk quite a bit.

Just feels like every attempt at alternative social media is dying as the internet shrinks to a few corporate websites that control everything.

In order to get more people on Fedi, we have to get more people on Fedi. People will go whereever everybody else already is. That’s the only thing keeping Twitter alive, even though almost everyone there will openly admit they hate it, no one will actually leave Twitter because everyone else is still on Twitter.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem that I don’t think Fedi can actively do anything to solve. Or rather, I think it’s too late to solve. If there’s any competitor that has a chance, BlueSky has established a much bigger userbase in far less time, and that’s enough momentum to potentially get there. Anyone who’s leaving Twitter will go to BlueSky before they ever look at Fedi.

Well put. Even if we assumed Facebook had the best of intentions - which they damn well don’t - it needs to be pointed out that other servers get defederated for far, far, far less than what they allow to happen on their platforms. Their moderation is abhorrent, which makes it outright unsafe to federate with them.

Well you should care, because Facebook is doing real harm to those people.

Even if we assumed Facebook had the best of intentions - but if you truly believe that I have a bridge to sell you - here’s another perspective to consider:

Poorly moderated servers regularly get defederated for far, far, far less than what goes on on Facebook’s platforms. Facebook not only platforms bigotry, they pretty much support and endorse it.