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…)
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.
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.
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.
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”.
hey, I know this funi! I’ve seen this guy on 196 before!
yeah i basically only use lemmy and watch youtube videos, or i pirate media, play games with friends, or do stupid stuff with my computer that i shouldnt be allowed to do
Ok that is fair. I commented on someone elses comment here that they should try out PeerTube, as that is a decentralized option with all the benefits of the fediverse.
it does have the deficit of not having anybody i regularly watch on there, although i would love that to change
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.
Lemmy and Mastodon
I have deleted my accounts on Reddit, Twittet and Facebook.
How do you use Mastodon?
I have tried to engage with it more multiple times, but I tend to not get anywhere. Is it like instagram, where you gotta subscribe to some hashtags?
Yeah, you subscribe to hashtags to start, find people you agree with/find interesting, follow them, and then as they boost stuff you’ll find more and more people to follow.
Is there an app? I use Voyager and Sync for Lemmy.
You can start with the official Mastodon app, but there are numerous alternatives.
I use an app called Moshidon, it’s a fork of (a fork of) the official app, it’s quite nice
Almost the same way I used to use Twitter innthe early days:
- Find a client that I’m comfortable with (IceCubes for me)
- follow people that post interesting stuff
- engage in conversations
Works really well for me and even though I only have half the amount of followers I had on Twitter, I have more high quality conversations and less trolls.
Started on lemmy today after reddit perma banned my 14 year old account for breaking the first rule of reddit. I may have told some to kill themselves. I’m definitely in the wrong but I don’t care I’m taking the ban personally and never using it again.
They banned me for giving my opinion on how child molesters should be punished and then permabanned me for doing it again when I got back. Funny thing is people say the exact same kind of shit about all kinds of other people and those comments are fine… weird how they only care to protect people who molest children.
I lost my 10+ yr old account because I got auto banned from a mess of subs for leaving a comment on an anti vax sub CRITICAL of them. You have to love lazy mods who ban without any consideration of context. Now I just glance at the posts and comments and avoid the urge to participate.
Had a Facebook account I completely ignored (set it up for my first girlfriend and we exclusively used Yahoo Messenger) then turned into a music dump, then deleted. I honestly never saw the point of Facebook, not with apps like WhatsApp or even standard SMS evolving as they have, even back then (talking about the 2010s).
Had an Instagram account for about 3 months - surprisingly decent source of grotesque/morbid art! Again, saw no point in this, and Reddit felt superior in all ways.
Mainlined Reddit for a good couple of years, mostly during the Pandemic. By the time I got into it, one could feel its bulk, so to speak. Sure 99.7% of Reddit were the users, but even so, it felt as though subreddit quirks and in-jokes had ossiffied into tennets by that point. Loved it, but it felt constraining here and there.
Switched to Lemmy a couple of months after deleting my Reddit account when shit went down, and it’s all I’ve been using and plan on using. Unless one counts news aggregators as social platforms.
I love this scroungy, spit-and-duct tape feel of the fediverse, to be very honest. Feels like the days when we used to group chat on local network sharing apps, like it’s just the neighbourhood kids around. And it seems to not be dissipating even with the huge increase in users, which is a good sign. Plus the obvious lack of curation other than baseline moderation and/or personal grudges is always nice!
I see it the exact same way!
The way that the fediverse is split up like this, with many instance working with different rulesets really does make it feel like some neighbourhood people coming together to chat.
I especially like the way how, why you chose an instance, you can either stay within the bounds of your own local group, or interact with all the people by switching over to the “subscribed” tab (at least this is the case here on blahaj zone).
Yes, that’s my favourite aspect about it, the interactivity between the various instances and how distinctly unique each instance seems to have become in terms of ethos. It’s wonderful to see so many different ‘tribes’ and be able to interact with all of them!
Yeah, pretty much. This and Discord really. Signal for P2P messaging.
I went full Lemmy for a while but have to admit I’m reading reddit again, but without their dumb app. Just the web browser.
Looking through a few subreddits, see what’s new for five minutes. I don’t post anymore, don’t have an account.
I don’t post anymore, don’t have an account.
Yap, I nuked it too
Lemmy has replaced reddit for me.
It’s my only social media. I have Voyager, and it’s all I need. I never used FB or Twitter, or anything other than Reddit. And I’m done with that cesspool.
For an entire 8 days.
I made a new account recently, I used to be on Lemmy.world, but as I start to learned more about how the fediverse works, I wanted to get away from the giant main instance, help spread the users out.
Perhaps there is a way to transfer some account history? I didn’t find any, so now I’m a Fediverse baby again.
Idk this is my first account, ha.
It is. Both lemmy and Mastodon.
I cannot use Reddit or Twitter anymore.
Lemmy is my main social media account. I also switched from Reddit when Spez killed third party apps, and I won’t go back. I use Sync for Lemmy on my phone and tablet. I paid for the lifetime Ultra account, because that’s how much of a “fuck you” I wanted to give Spez. I’ll gladly pay the $100 for an alternative ad-free app than use Reddit’s free app.
I also use Imgur, although it’s been suffering from enshittification ever since Sarah and the team sold it. I can’t even save a post without getting a pop-up asking to subscribe to the user or follow similar content tags. Or downvote without being asked if I want to block the user or related tags. Just let me do the thing and move on! Stop trying to customize my experience! I’m still able to block their ads, thanks to my VPN service, but they built a dedicated ad space at the bottom of the app that I can’t make go away. So a section of the bottom of my Imgur screen is unusable black space. I miss being able to use my full screen to browse images.
I still have Facebook, but only because everyone I know from my childhood until now is there and it’s my main way of staying in touch with people. If I dump Facebook, I’ll have practically no one left in my life, except for my sister, wife, and maybe two friends. If I need social engagement concerning something going on in my life, I’ll post it there. But I don’t use it much.
I have LinkedIn and spent years keeping my profile up to date and super detailed, expecting to need some good references and a solid history of experience and accomplishments. But then I retired at 38 years old and found out I don’t need to work anymore, so it’s just been collecting dust for the last 2 years now. I still get the occasional request to connect from someone offering to help me find a job (I’m a veteran), but I don’t need their assistance. I’m quite happy being retired young.
I have a Discord server I built for my closest friends to stay in touch, but only 2 people regularly interact on it. I subscribed to maybe 30+ other random servers, but I mute pretty much all of them so I’m not inundated with Discord notifications all the time.
I have Twitch, but mostly used it to stream the games I’m playing when I’m bored. I’m happy if I get 1 or 2 views. I do it just for the fun of it, not to build a following or anything.
I have NextDoor, but there are thousands of people in my town who use it regularly, so it’s hard to stay in touch with my “neighbors.” I mostly ignore it unless I’m trying to find suggestions for something local.
I made a Bluesky account last year; got an invite from a friend before it opened up to everyone. But I hardly ever used Twitter in the past. I always felt like it was pointless unless you were a celebrity with tons of followers. So I’m having trouble thinking of ways to use Bluesky now.
I have Instagram, but only because Facebook merged my account with Instagram when they bought it. I’ve never used it, not even to browse others’ content there.
I made a Snapchat account in high school, but never used it. That was over 20 years ago. Back then, Snapchat was just used to share selfies, and I didn’t like taking selfies so I had no use for it. Is Snapchat still a thing?
I had a MySpace account when I was a teenager, but I guess the site got sold sometime in the past decade or two. I kinda forgot about it, and the last time I went to check it out, it was a totally different site and didn’t recognize my login anymore.
I made an account on Pixelfed last year to share pictures, but I don’t really have anything to share right now. I only remembered I had the account because I just now found their app in my phone.
I use Patreon, mostly just to follow a few people I know and support them.
I worked as an IT guy in the military, and we were explicitly banned from using TikTok when it became popular, because it was a Chinese spyware program and they didn’t want it stealing data on US military members. When you installed it, we found that it embedded itself in your phone in a way that was extremely difficult to fully remove, then granted itself full access to your phone and started trickling your data to Chinese servers. It was a massive security vulnerability, which is why President Biden pushed to block TikTok from the US. But the app was so popular, he got a lot of pushback and it never got blocked. It’s still wildly popular, but I’ll never touch that program.
the tiktok part was really interesting. thank you for sharing!
Bluesky at this point. It has most of the people I used to follow on twitter already.
