main @midwest.social Inevitable Waffles [Ohio] @midwest.social 1y ago

It is getting wild out there.

So, I got curious and set my feed to all. Wow, there a lot of arguments about defederation due to the Beehaw decision. Many Many people positing on "the death of Reddit" and the refugee crisis. I get some of the concerns about moderation and ideology but the amount of navelgazing is unreal. Ill just stick to local for a bit until things settle down.

So, how are you finding the big, wide fediverse outside of our pleasant little pocket? With all of the thinkpieces being posted about how Lemmy is never going to work, I wanted to see some fresh takes from the good folk at midwest.social.

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Every time I sort by subscribed it's just beehaw posts for days. I get it, they're a big instance, but it's still annoying. I disagree with the people saying Lemmy won't work. It's already working as far as I'm concerned, just some growing pains is all. I think once instances have more concrete ideas about what they will/won't tolerate things will settle down. Everyone is just kind of figuring this out on the fly at the moment.
- I think Lemmy is working as intended, indeed. People are coming in with all these preconceived notions. I know I'm new here but they could at least try to get to speed on how this place works rather than crushing it into deformed Reddit. Back in the early EARLY days of 4chan (before all the reasonable people left) we knew to start by lurking and jump in once you understand the zeitgeist of the space.
- When I get tired of this, I really like filtering to Local and seeing what the people of Minnesota are up to, for instance.
- i subscribed to almost nothing on beehaw.
  
  Almost all I see are posts on the StarTrek lemmy. I suspect the sorting algos are highly broken, though.
- This ☝️👏👊
The stuff about Reddit dying and Lemmy not working is hopefully just popping off because it's at the front of our minds. Most of us are brand new here, most of us came from Reddit, and every new bit of drama (landed gentry, etc.) has a weird personal element associated. Fingers crossed that the dust settles.

And I don't really even understand what people mean when they say Lemmy "won't work." What is that even supposed to mean? I'm typing to you lot right now. I've been making [kinda] friends since I arrived. I'm learning a new way to engage with online communities. Feels like it's working to me.

I'm sure what they really mean is that Lemmy won't replace Reddit. So? The intense desire to brute force Lemmy, Kbin, Tildes, Squabbles, etc. into Reddit #2 makes me feel tired.

The internet is big, and it can have more than one website on it. What is the urgency to replicate Reddit here or anywhere else? Folks are talking about this whole thing like it's some competition that somebody needs to win, which I cannot relate to at all.
- Yeah, I hear you! I joined because I left reddit. This is different. That's OK! Yes people may miss what they had. They may enjoy what they can create here too.
  
  Thinking back... talking to friends on AOL IM, blogging on Diaryland, discussing music on last.fm (still do this one!), shitposting on forums, and reading news on BoingBoing all at the same time was never really a thing that needed to be consolidated into one place and I feel like we lost something by trying to do that.
It's pretty crazy we're kind of just over here like Switzerland. And that's exactly why I picked this instance because who wants to defederate from the great lakes?
- "who wants to defederate from the great lakes?"
  
  The SEC has entered the chat.
- @llama @InevitableWaffles freshwater is apparently pretty important. Never going to be a Mad Max scenario over here.
  
  Nestle has entered the chat
All that drama is why I wanted a smaller home instance. Didn't want or need tankies telling me I'm not leftist enough and didn't want or need 4chan wannabes trolling me for the lulz. This whole thing is going to have growing pains. If beehive or lemmyworld get too annoying, I can surf local and chill.
- Absolutely, I'm here to chat with people who don't suck; not have to pass purity tests from the left.
  
  You own a gun your not a liberal lol
There is a size that becomes a tipping point making participation feel pointless, and that's when you start looking like what reddit became. IMO I prefer the small instances for participation, and the larger ones just for lurking.
- That's not a bad way to look at it. I'm already treating Beehaw like the front page of Reddit and I just chat with ya'll.
I'm just starting to figure it out, but I think it'll work out to be its own thing, even if it won't replace Reddit. Just as I enjoy both Mastodon and Twitter (though Twitter is becoming less and less enjoyable) I see something similar happening with Lemmy.

I'm also not opposed to a bit of fracturing. I grew up in the era of online message boards, and I still enjoy those and honestly think there's some that are better than anything on Reddit. Having small areas where people can talk about one of their niche interests is cool.
Lemmy isn't going anywhere. Reddit will survive. This isn't a Reddit replacement, this is a whole new thing. I can't completely abandon some of the subs. But I like this instance.

Grab the popcorn. Enjoy the drama. I actually forgot you could sort by all.
My experience with Mastodon was that it's generally realy nice exxcept

It's a little quiet, and

Of the conversation that is there, too much of it is about Twitter.

It's kind of like hanging out with your friend who just had a bad breakup and doesn't want to talk about anything but their ex.

The Lemmyverse feels kind of like that.

The subreddits I spent most of my time in aren't here or get about a post a week. If I wanted to read about how spez is a bastard, however, I'd have reading material for months.

I'm generally happy with it, though, and plan to stick around. I just moved from lemmy.ml over to midwest.social, and it seems like a great little community here.
- That's one of the reasons that I was able to join a Mastodon instance that didn't revolve around people leaving Twitter. Sure, I became more active on it when I wanted to reduce my Twitter usage, but there was already a good community of people that I knew and I could interact with about everyday things, rather than just complaining about Twitter. Hopefully this instance becomes a bit like that, where it's a separate community that's kind of like Reddit but also its own thing.
The cool thing about Fediverse is that it doesn't have to be the same thing everywhere. If people on lemmy.ml want it to be replacement reddit, more power to them. Personally I like the smaller feel of midwest.social.
I'm not local to midwest.social but I was just thinking of unsubscribing beehaw for a while because of this! It's very reminiscent of the big surge of folks onto Mastodon last year - lots of "Fediverse can't work because it isn't the large corporate entity presently having a meltdown" and every other post is about whatever's going on at Reddit.
- I'll never fail to marvel at people who believe the only way you can provide a service is via a massive corporation. The myopic nature of people assuming that just because we are doing now means that it is superior to other ways of operating. What they always fail to notice is that the massive corpo entity usually smothers things like this for market share (i.e facebook)
  
  I was wondering about what would happen if you started a nonprofit and ran a Lemmy/Mastodon instance and charge like 1 or 2 bucks a month. So if it gets flooded with users you have money to scale it up. And hire admins and such. You get the stability and centralization of a corporation but no profit motive
I got invited to this instance without really knowing what the whole deal was. I've since started to subscribe to communities in other instances, and I think it's really cool. The big subs usually weren't my favorite anyway, so I'm happy with the communities here. I do think this won't be a direct replacement for reddit, and I think that's fine.
Reddit refugee. Pretty new to the federated life.

What I like: the friction. I found on Reddit I could browse for days on end and never find the bottom. at the height of my reddit addiction, I did just that. Last thing I looked at when I fell asleep, first thing I looked at when I woke up. So, federation is working for me. I have to deliberately choose a destination and really give it a looking over, think about what's happening and respond when I truly have something to contribute. Also, the overall mood is like night and day. So much more positive. There are bits and pieces here and there that are not so upbeat, and that is normal and ok. but the kind of relentless negativity, the battles for attention, the downvote brigading- I couldn't be happier to get away from that.

What I don't like is just due to my own ineptitide: for instance I would like to chat with people about plant-based diets and vegetarian cooking, but haven't found a strong community for it yet.

I am very pleased with midwest.social. I tried Nextdoor to get a local feel, but was overwhelmed by religious proselytizing, useless whining and dark political clickbait. Plus we roadtrip the midwest a lot and feel at home in most if not all of the states. so it feels like home here.
- Great point about finding the community for a thing. I'm actually dealing with a bit of imposter syndrome when I want to respond about something I have personal experience but worry I'm not knowledgeable enough and will get dunked after posting.
  
  Finding community is something I think most want as part of a "reddit-esque" experience. The problem is the initial person who wants the thing is expected to setup and run the thing. It's a hurdle, for sure. I know some mods ask for suggestions for that such issue.
As someone new to the whole fediverse thing... what is Beehaw, what's going on, and why should I be concerned?
- Beehaw is the third largest instance (midwest.social is an instance). Beehaw decided to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjustworks, after some users from those instances were brigading beehaw posts, since they don't have good enough mod tools to address it the way they'd like.
  
  It should be a temporary measure until better mod tools are developed, and at that point they will consider refederating with those instances
  
  In the meantime, that means users from those instances can't interact with Beehaw users, and vice versa
- From what I see, it is about their recent decision to defederate from two other big Lemmy instances (sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world), because these instances (where the registration is open, contrary to beehaw) bring a lot of trolls and moderation burden for Beehaw admins. They had a chat with sh.itjust.works admin staff and both are in agreement that until there are better mod tools, there's not much more that can be done for now.
  
  The difference language between the sh.itjust.works admin and their user's comments is kinda crazy. There were so many bad takes saying "this will destroy the lemmy-verse". Like, no it won't. The community will survive.

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