Lemmy isn’t just full of political content, but it’s also full of assholes too that take advantage of the small sized community of Lemmy and other instances. So this gives the impression that it’s simply a clique that runs around ‘running things’ and by that, just kissing ass to mods and making you out to be the problem when it was started by them.

With politically charged content and just random pricks mixed in, it’s going to be a hard sell for anybody to stick around here on Lemmy. Moreso, the lack of niche communities, will not give anyone a sense of belonging.

That’s what Reddit will always have in spades against Lemmy. Lemmy just seems to be populated with political people, nerds into programming, jackasses and aimless wanderers.

Here’s something I learned, don’t be afraid to block. Political sub you don’t want? blocked. Person shouting about China in a cat sub? blocked.

Also add blacklisted keywords, it cuts down on politics a ton

We have to be the thing we want to see out in the world. If we want open source communities and an internet free of corporate influence then we have to do the work required to build them. It’s not going to happen by magic.

Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It’s a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.

Well you should come hang out with us at Out of Context Comics! Not a lot of politics but a lot of gay innuendo. A lot.

https://lemmy.world/c/outofcontextcomics

I like it as a platform but the userbase just isn’t there.

It’s still a tiny echo chamber like it was a couple months ago when I cut back on Lemmy use. It can get pretty repetitive and boring to read. I came back to Reddit because the user base was larger and there were more perspectives I could hear from.

Lurk on Reddit. Post on Lemmy.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way around it. Fediverse is small, and while we should always encourage people’s migration, it will probably remain small for the time being.

And freedom to express everything combined with people learning their behavior on algorithmic content will be an issue until a strong Fediverse culture is established. The times of pioneers are over, the times of “truly a place for everyone” are not yet there, and in between, we have a very weird mixture, sometimes bringing out the worst of many people.

I hope Fediverse will survive through this phase, and if yes, bright times will be ahead. But it will take a lot of work. Many non-political communities have already started blocking political content, and for the time being, I believe that’s for the better. People need a place to chill and have a corner of their own, not face what they ran away from in the first place.

Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.

Well Lemmy is a possible replacement for Reddit but, putting aside my strong biais for Lemmy, it doesn’t have to be a Reddit replacement for everyone and it is still building itself up. Here is a few tips to improve your time in hope you’ll find on the fediverse the space you look for :

• Try write post on dead looking community. Follower counts have a hard time synchronizing btw instances. A lot of people may be waiting for some activity to happened.
• Try opening niche community in their original instance. The posts wrote on a distance community before the first lemming of your instance opens it are invisible and must be added one by one (by entering it URL in your instance search function). You might found interesting content you missed.
• Try reposting content you see on Reddit on Lemmy. Copy-Paste it and add something like “R*eddit content - OP : @XXX@reddit.com” somewhere in the post. You might not have as much response as OP but it can stir up interesting conversation.
• Try to make an account on the twittoverse (Mastodon, *key…). The community on the microblogging side of the fediverse is much bigger and diverse. You will be able to boost your lemmy content and link it to hashtag so more people may see it. Answer to the original post will even show up on Lemmy. But second level comments will not fediverse well.
• Try to post articles, general question or to do anything to bring some animation to your niche community. Regularity in low engagement content will still bring people that will sooner or later start to engage.
• Don’t hesitate to crosspost any related post to your favorite community. Community are silos, instances are silos and the lemming populating is very fragmented. By linking communities together, you’ll bring people with the same hobbies than you to the community they did not find out yet. -Don’t hesitate to answer at old post. Us lemmings don’t have enough activity to complain about people writing back months later, especially in niche community.

Cheers!

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

It doesn’t look like you mentioned subscriptions, which gets you out of the ‘all’ / ‘filtering’ side of things entirely. But just as with Reddit, you’ll need to spend time building your personal feed over time and tweaking it.

The good news is that there’s no limit to your subscriptions (unlike Reddit’s cap of 50 displayed at any one time), but that you’ll need to use the right tools to search the Fediverse to find those communities you want to subscribe to.

The main tool I typically use seems to have a bug right now (based on the recent software upgrade?) but I suspect will be back up in a few days. You might take a look at this, tho, plus other resources.

Use one of the apps so you can filter out content. “Trump, Trump’s, Republicans, Musk” seems to take care of the problem so far.I think I have some communities blocked and maybe a user or two aswell.

Reading the comments here made me realize something.

It’s nice to have good content for niche communities that you enjoy but that’s always been a tall order. As in, a lot of things have to go right to get that organic community feeling and I’ve honestly always thought of it as a privilege and not a right.

I’ve seen plenty of communities die for various reasons or just been in a position where I didn’t have passion to go and talk about my niche interests.

So what’s my point? Niche communities are the icing on the cake of a good platform. When we mostly have for profit platforms and little main stream interest in standardized alternatives, you got to be more realistic.

You have fallen for the ultimate trick: wanting a “big” community.

You only get that from big, centralized social networks that want to maximize the amount of content you are fed, because it maximizes your ad views, and their profits.

Embrace the smallness. Lemmy still has room to grow, and having lot of different options for communication that aren’t all owned by billionaires is a good thing. The fact that it isn’t constantly trying to earn your attention is a feature, not a bug.