The idea behind federation is great but in practice it’s splintered communities far too much to serve its purpose at a large scale.
Comment on Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day agoAs a tool for forming communities, Lemmy works just fine.
But the process of federation - combined with the prickly nature of certain administrators - means you can have a lively and robust community in (hypothetically) the far-left transgender tankie community that pioneered the application. But then that gets abruptly cut off and squelched by some later adopters who hate their politics more than they enjoy their technical savvy.
Lemmy.world has a bunch of memes and political screeching because that’s the kind of user its admins choose to encourage. Other communities have more practical interests. But they don’t draw the same kind of crowd, so you won’t see them on the front page of this site, particularly if you only browse Local.
Sl00k@programming.dev 1 day ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They’re an idea that big forums are actually awful and you’re better off in smaller communities.
Mostly, it’s a pain because it can be hard to find some escoteric bit of knowledge or expertise when you don’t have a Reddit sized forum to troll through.
But that’s where spaces like Discord excel. Nice, tight communities of hobbyists and specialists who are routinely online and regularly churning out useful content.
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Looking for information on Discord can be quite tedious
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Finding the right Discord can be hard. But when you’re in a community where people are pinning things to channels and wiki-ing / linking them out, its a fantastic source for info.
AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world 1 day ago
How are the admins encouraging these users specifically? I have not noticed this, but I have been blocking most politics and meme communities for a while.
davi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
tldr: they prove in real time that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter
longer: the biggest three reasons to me are:
they look the other way when their users are clearly using automated means to down vote & brigade leftist viewpoints.
they block entire instances with viewpoints they disagree with through defederation like a nanny state instead of letting you make the decision for yourself as a adult.
they ignore comments personally attacking leftists users even though it’s against their own instance’s rules, but are hyper vigilant on known leftist commenters.