I have come over a few Reddit communities who moved to Discord of all things. I don’t get why. That isn’t even remotely the same type of discussion platform.
If your main social network is on fire, you’re probably just going to put the phone down and do something else, especially if you’re not on another social network.
The learning curve with getting used to a new one might be a more than what most people really want to do with their time and energy, so they might just be curbing their Twitter use.
Mastodon would be my personal preference, but Bluesky seems pretty noisy to me, which seems like what people want from microblogging sites (I’m more of a reddit/lemmy/kbin style person, myself.) The question is whether Bluesky pulls a Google+ and stays invite-only for so long that they miss their own hype train.
I have tried all the things! And I recently saw that article you’re referencing.
In my own experience, I haven’t seen one single person being rude or mean or blowing off newcomers. I suspect the bar to entry is slightly higher because you have to get your head around how the fediverse works, so the types of people coming here trend more patient. It’s also a slower pace here, which can be good or bad depending on what you like.
The nicest feature for my use is that you can follow just about anyone anywhere. On kbin especially. There you can follow users from any Lemmy instance, or an entire instance, as well as users at Mastodon. The downside is that it can be a little tricky at first to figure out how to follow someone who’s on another instance. It’s not hard, but it’s something new if you’re coming from a single entity site like Twitter.
It’s also no big deal to make an account on multiple instances if you’re not sure where to go. My approach with all of them was to browse the local server (e.g., lemmy.world, mastodon.social) rather than the federated feed. The local feed gives you an idea of who’s on that instance, what topics come up a lot, how the users act, etc. I’d also check out the “about” section. That will show you who the moderators are and what their focus and approach is. Some are laissez-faire and others are much more curated, so there’s something for everyone.
The neat thing about this system is that you can find more niche instances if you have a particular interest – gaming, software development, climate, science, memes, etc. You can make that your main instance and still see everything going on across all instances. That helps eliminate a lot of FOMO.
I was never on Twitter and not on most social media except Reddit, which I thought I’d miss. But I’ve enjoyed using Mastodon, Firefish, and Lemmy/kbin a lot. It’s a smaller group but still plenty to see and lots of interesting people and topics. Everyone has been very nice, but it’s easy to mute or block people or subs that you’re not interested in. After that you won’t see them in your feed at all.
Keep in mind that I barely use it and only follow a few people I followed from TwiX.
People seemed friendly enough but there is a lot of self-serving navel gazing, and it seems like the “Discover” feed is full of inside jokes/references that I don’t use the app enough to get.
My first day the big thing was complaining about how terrible and bigoted the devs of bluesky were, for something they said that I never did figure out, and the subsequent complaining about people complaining about the devs. Very dramatic.
To be fair, I’m sure if you just followed the people you cared about, and avoided the discover feed, it would be pretty Twitter-like.
Also, there’s a character limit and you can’t edit. These aren’t technical limitations anymore, like they were for Twitter at the beginning, so they must be design decisions.
A big chunk of those would be bots/fake/spam accounts, ie not real users. Marketing companies have already started selling fake followers for Thread influencers.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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I have come over a few Reddit communities who moved to Discord of all things. I don’t get why. That isn’t even remotely the same type of discussion platform.
Discord has its uses but it’s very much not the same. I often can’t even find my question I asked an hour later.
Offline?
If your main social network is on fire, you’re probably just going to put the phone down and do something else, especially if you’re not on another social network.
The learning curve with getting used to a new one might be a more than what most people really want to do with their time and energy, so they might just be curbing their Twitter use.
Mastodon would be my personal preference, but Bluesky seems pretty noisy to me, which seems like what people want from microblogging sites (I’m more of a reddit/lemmy/kbin style person, myself.) The question is whether Bluesky pulls a Google+ and stays invite-only for so long that they miss their own hype train.
Looking at who’s involved with blue sky, though, I can’t help wondering how many times the users need to be taught the same lesson.
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I have tried all the things! And I recently saw that article you’re referencing.
In my own experience, I haven’t seen one single person being rude or mean or blowing off newcomers. I suspect the bar to entry is slightly higher because you have to get your head around how the fediverse works, so the types of people coming here trend more patient. It’s also a slower pace here, which can be good or bad depending on what you like.
The nicest feature for my use is that you can follow just about anyone anywhere. On kbin especially. There you can follow users from any Lemmy instance, or an entire instance, as well as users at Mastodon. The downside is that it can be a little tricky at first to figure out how to follow someone who’s on another instance. It’s not hard, but it’s something new if you’re coming from a single entity site like Twitter.
It’s also no big deal to make an account on multiple instances if you’re not sure where to go. My approach with all of them was to browse the local server (e.g., lemmy.world, mastodon.social) rather than the federated feed. The local feed gives you an idea of who’s on that instance, what topics come up a lot, how the users act, etc. I’d also check out the “about” section. That will show you who the moderators are and what their focus and approach is. Some are laissez-faire and others are much more curated, so there’s something for everyone.
The neat thing about this system is that you can find more niche instances if you have a particular interest – gaming, software development, climate, science, memes, etc. You can make that your main instance and still see everything going on across all instances. That helps eliminate a lot of FOMO.
I was never on Twitter and not on most social media except Reddit, which I thought I’d miss. But I’ve enjoyed using Mastodon, Firefish, and Lemmy/kbin a lot. It’s a smaller group but still plenty to see and lots of interesting people and topics. Everyone has been very nice, but it’s easy to mute or block people or subs that you’re not interested in. After that you won’t see them in your feed at all.
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Ha, sorry! I guess being on them hasn’t improved my reading skills. :-D
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Keep in mind that I barely use it and only follow a few people I followed from TwiX.
People seemed friendly enough but there is a lot of self-serving navel gazing, and it seems like the “Discover” feed is full of inside jokes/references that I don’t use the app enough to get.
My first day the big thing was complaining about how terrible and bigoted the devs of bluesky were, for something they said that I never did figure out, and the subsequent complaining about people complaining about the devs. Very dramatic.
To be fair, I’m sure if you just followed the people you cared about, and avoided the discover feed, it would be pretty Twitter-like.
Also, there’s a character limit and you can’t edit. These aren’t technical limitations anymore, like they were for Twitter at the beginning, so they must be design decisions.
If I had an invite left I’d give you one.
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Most folks I follow went to Mastodon. I even met some new folks, including some that are local!
Some are still on twitter even though a small number of us begged/pleaded with them.
One went to blue sky.
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Don’t forget Threads.
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It’s fun to snark on threads but yes, it had 100 million signups in a week and 50 million people still using it.
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I don’t support Meta and they’re not a good company. I was merely answering the question about where people went.
Meta is a public company though so they could get in legal trouble for false reports, and there’s also a bunch of ways advertisers can check metrics.
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A big chunk of those would be bots/fake/spam accounts, ie not real users. Marketing companies have already started selling fake followers for Thread influencers.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/yes-already-buy-fake-followers-145053836.html
How many people do you think are on lemmy compared to threads lol
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At least for me, Mastodon replaced Twitter and Lemmy replaced Reddit. But then, I’m not “normal” and find the Fediverse to be endlessly fascinating.