I have fully transitioned to using Lemmy and Mastodon right when third party apps weren’t allowed on Spez’s place anymore, so I don’t know how it is over there anymore.
What do you use? Are you still switching between the two, essentially dualbooting?
What other social media do you use? How do you feel about Fediverse social media platforms in general?
(I’m sorry if I’m the 100th person to ask this on here…)
It is, I don’t go on Reddit anymore, it’s insanely toxic. I’ve gotten all I could’ve gotten from there anyway. I only use Lemmy nowadays.
Lemmy and Mastodon as well for me. With a little bit of discord and matrix for my projects’ realtime chat
lemmy is my first and only social account (unless you consider software forums or gitlab lol)
Matrix too but not using that in a social media way, only as a direct messenger.
I only use Lemmy. Never had accounts on any of the other social media platforms apart from Facebook more than a decade ago. I’ve been checking reddit, reluctantly, here and there recently to have something to post to my communities. Apart from that, it’s been Lemmy only since the exodus
Very interesting. I do still see many posts originating from Reddit around here, presumably exactly because of that reason.
But I must tell you, making your own funis and ideas and putting them onto Lemmy feels really great.
It feels like an invitation to discuss the topic with others and come up with new ideas, instead of feeding other peoples algorithms and keep them hooked on the site.It feels much more like interacting with real actual people, even if there are less on here.
I hear you. The thing is, the communities I mod are quite niche (in relation to Lemmy’s population, that is) and apart from the corresponding subreddits I used to lurk on for years, I’m not really exposed to anything new that would prompt me to make new discussion posts and memes. I’ve watched all video essays there are about the games, I played through all of them repeatedly, new content is not on the horizon for any one of them. The best thing about them is the discussion in the community which has been missing ever since I created the communities in the first place.
Believe me: I’ve tried. But keeping three separate communities alive all on your own without community members ever feeling the need to contribute gets exhausting and doesn’t feel worthwhile. So making my own content, which I do when I have a cool idea, feels like more of a loss when the engagement is just as high, sometimes lower, as with content off reddit.
Lurkers will be lurking, I guess
Same for me. Mostly using Lemmy and Mastodon since they’re filling two different roles. I also reluctantly still use Instagram since all my friends are on it.
Some people seem to see it as a negative that Mastodon with its linear feed doesn’t get them nearly as addicted as corporate social media but for me that’s a huge plus.
Same! The “lack of content” is really refreshing somehow.
Not having some proprietary algorithm spoon-feed you content is very nice. It literally only shows you exactly what you tell it to.
I have been Lemmy only since the 3rd party app thing also. I also stopped using Twitter when Musk bought it, and have Mastadon on my to-do list but I’m not sure if I want to spin up my own instance or make an account elsewhere. Other than that I have no other social media accounts and never have.
As for other Fediverse platforms, I’m strongly opposed to the for profit ones, but happy to see all the open source ones.
I see it very similarly, it feels good having the users of the platforms actually create the platforms themselves.
The way how Facebook is trying to get into this with their Threads or whatever it’s called feels very unnatural. Thankfully I haven’t seen any people from there over here.The way how people can create their own instances is super fun. It feels like what people call the Reddit hivemind, but actually realized by the people from within it.
I feel like Threads was dead on arrival. I never hear about it anymore since it’s launch. Never tried it though so I can’t really say first hand how active it is.
Lemmy is the only one I’ll log onto and the only one I have as an app.
Sometimes though, I’ll miss a super specific community from the place spez ruined, and scroll through it in DuckDuckGo browser.
Anything that has an intransparent, engagement driving, ad laden algorithm that determines what you do and don’t see is thoroughly unappealing to me. At least now that I’m a little more tech savvy and anti-corporate.
I guess I do technically have a Facebook account still because I don’t remember the password of either that account or the associated email address. I used that for local flea market and food sharing groups up until maybe 6 years ago.
Anything that has an intransparent, engagement driving, ad laden algorithm that determines what you do and don’t see is thoroughly unappealing to me. At least now that I’m a little more tech savvy and anti-corporate.
Hear hear. Under the guise of Engagement, corporations have weaponized algorithms to maximize the time you spend on their platforms, and it’s absolutely been a race to the bottom, prioritizing Outrage above all else. Hard pass, thanks.
Corporate goals don’t align with that of users like they used to.
Ironically, I like when I eventually scroll to the end of the Lemmy posts and my app tells me “you have reached the bottom”.
It feels super weird having used Lemmy for a while, and to then come back to something like Youtube, which does have it’s proprietary algorithm thingy. So weird seeing content I didn’t explicitely agree to seeing.
Facebook appears to be a common ground for many replies on this post, which I find very interesting.
Ikr? I have to use YouTube a specific way. I’ll go to a channel and go to the tab that just lists the videos chronologically. I’ll go back there if I want a second video. The only way I find new creators I enjoy watching is through recommendation/someone sending a link to a group chat. Shame really, I bet there’s plenty of content out there that I’d enjoy, but I can’t handle the algorithm.
I think the Facebook thing is because it was more or less the first social media that pretty much everyone was on. Everything before was a little more niche. But back in, like, 2010, it felt like you were missing out if you weren’t on FB. At least that’s my experience/guess (I’m 27 and in middle Europe).
I think Facebook had an advantage in originally being targeted at college kids (I think you even needed a school ID to make an account originally) before becoming open to everyone. This meant that the userbase was a little older than that of most social media at the time and it worked as a way to stay in touch with people after you graduated. Then, when they opened it up, it became a way to stay in touch with family as well, which got the parents onboard with something that they had just considered a fad before, like MySpace.
My only use for Reddit now is reading r/hfy stories, though I’m doing that through a local Redlib instance, hoping that those glitter sniffers don’t lock website content behind accounts like almost every other social medium does (but we all know that if something can get worse to make more money, it WILL get worse to make more money).
It’s very sad to see general social media platforms go that route. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are unusable without an account.
It wins by default but only because I never liked the Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky-like infinitely scrolling threads and only use Discord to follow some artists.
Have a very similar experience with Mastodon-like platforms. These feel more like announcement-sites rather than actual social media platforms.
Lemmy is my main one, yes. I browse Pinterest every now and then, though I’m not sure how many would consider it social media in the traditional sense.
I feel like that would compare two very different types of social media:
- Consumption oriented: Platforms which mainly tailor to consumers, like Tiktok, Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube.
- Collaboration oriented: Platforms where engagement with the content and discussions are encouraged, like Lemmy and Mostodon and their proprietary equivalents.
It is for me, I use an account on Lemmy.ml for general browsing (and correcting misconceptions about Marxism, if I’m being honest), and a Hexbear.net account I pretty much only browse locally if I just want to relax and not have to worry about getting into an argument.
Mastodon doesn’t do it for me, most of what I find interesting isn’t really… there yet.
So my mains are Instagram > Discord > Lemmy > Reddit
In that order I’d say.
Instagram is just the most “personal” social network. I watch my friends’ stories, share some of my own here and there… It’s close to how we used facebook back when it wasn’t a cesspit of ads and “pages”.
Discord is where I keep in direct contact with most of my friends, besides like messengers. Reddit is for specific problem solving and random hobby content.
Lemmy is filling the same niche but I just scroll it more than I do reddit for news, articles, hobby stuff…I don’t have a “main social media app”. I use Lemmy and Mastodon on mobile; Reddit and Facebook only on desktop.
I use Lemmy almost exclusively. Mastodon and Twitter never appealed to me, as I simply don’t see the point. Unless you use it for receiving info from local authorities and such.
I do still use Facebook for all the local and niche communities, which you can’t find anywhere else. I wish Mobilizon was more equal to Facebook Groups and had an actual mobile app.
Definitely Instagram.
While Lemmy is slowly making a dent in my reddit participation, it doesn’t do much for other things. I’m involved in IRL politics, food, and the clubbing scene, all stuff that is almost completely absent on the fediverse, especially the American-dominated side of it.
