I know in my heart that it probably won’t last, but I have such an awesome feeling of a clean slate with Lemmy. It feels so much more like the old internet before it just became a shopping cart. I don’t know how long we can enjoy this brave new world, but I am here for it.
This may seem out of the blue. But am kinda curious, having this bookmarked this for a while, if you ended up sticking around on Lemmy or if not, what about this experience may have changed your mind from this initial post.
I am 100% still here and more active than I ever was on Reddit. Getting to know the positives and negatives of Lemmy has been a good experience. The only disadvantage to Lemmy over Reddit is the same as it has always been. It’s smaller and therefore harder to keep niche communities active. I haven’t been back to Reddit at all with the exception a link or two that a non converted friend sent over to check out. I still feel that the general vibe is a much friendlier and more collaborative one. I suspect that this somewhat due to being a smaller place with a large amount of its users fleeing the walls of Reddit. I am sure the dynamic here will change over time (and to some small degree it has already) but this place is still my last, best hope, for a piece of online community that isn’t feeding a megacorporate machine who sees it’s users as nothing more than cattle to consume their advertisements and like it.
Honestly, if Lemmy changes into something toxic, I believe it will be my opportunity to exit social media altogether. I have already gone scorched earth on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, and Reddit. It will serve as proof that what I have been jokingly saying all along is true, “The internet was a mistake”.
harder to keep niche communities active
Yeah, this is a core problem. I am trying to understand the main things that need to be built for niche communities/moderators/leaders to thrive.
isn’t feeding a megacorporate machine who sees it’s users as nothing more than cattle to consume their advertisements
Content consumption being re-prioritized is what I view as the main mantra of the federation movement.