Most people, it would seem, are children. Or at least act like it, unable (or unwilling) to see past the nose on their own face.

Something like half of my posts have more downvotes than upvotes, and I have earned a distinction of having some of the most heavily-downvoted posts in some communities histories (oops, that’s no longer true, um… yay?). Then I’ll frequently have the highest-upvoted comment (or even more often 2nd or maybe 3rd, among very large posts even) within very many posts. Go figure. Either way I’m just being me, seeing what I see and liking what I like, and sharing it occasionally if I have an inkling of a thought that others might enjoy it (often I’m wrong:-).

So people are fickle, especially en mass. I can’t say to ignore them bc you do as you please, but I can say do your art for YOU. People a decade from now may enjoy it, but that too will be irrelevant, if you are finding fulfillment in the doing.:-)

If it helps to share my perspective: I almost left the Fediverse entirely after Kbin.social fell apart and my only options were to either move to Lemmy, return to Reddit, or go literally nowhere (online I mean, so I would e.g. read books and play games irl, basically touch grass, but avoid social media entirely - it’s not nearly as difficult as people say, I’ve done it a good fraction of my life actually, bc I know I have an addictive personality and especially a corporate run one would feed into that).

So I decided to give Lemmy a try, despite knowing it was run by tankies. And while I suck at posting content that people enjoy, I tried in my own way to make people feel more welcomed by commenting on existing posts, to make them more lively.

Though when I commented in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net that at least Biden had lowered gasoline prices, and while that was not everything it also was not nothing, and did help the poorest people who need that, I got replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. And then again for a similar comment made in lemmygrad.ml (my instances apparently at the time had defederated from neither). It was very toxic, and I don’t need that shit in my life. Literally nothing - as in no social media - would have been preferable.

But then I noticed that nearly all of the toxicity that I saw at the time was coming from the big 3 tankie instances. Since leaning that, my experiences on the Fediverse have greatly improved!

Note this has nothing to do with “politics” and everything to do with CONSENT to receive their bullshit, alternative-fact takes shoved down my throat (continuing for WEEKS and WEEKS at a time - who does that!? outside of those instances I mean). And to be fair, if that’s how they want to be then okay then, you do you, except: it would have been nice to have been warned?

A LARGE part of what is turning people away from the Fediverse is its toxicity. And the lack of features such as proper labeling of communities isn’t helping any. The desktop web UI shows the sidebar, which would have explained to me that ChapoTrapHouse is all about dunking onto liberals - OOOOHHHH, so maybe I don’t want to make a comment there that isn’t 100% trashing Biden? Good to know, thanks! - but the mobile web UI does not do that, e.g. for posts found via All, and neither does a good many apps such as Voyager.

It’s not ready for a mainstream audience yet, technologically speaking. Hence most hobbiests remain on Reddit, or else literally eschew social media altogether. That’s better than the alternative - apparently - i.e. coming here and getting “dunked on”, like the above commentor talking about being so heavily downvoted. We are not very welcoming here, hence people don’t want to come here. I know that 100% of the people I’ve recommended to try it have not liked it. It’s going to take some work to clean ourselves up if we want hobbiests to feel like Lemmy is worthwhile for them. (And frankly I expect it will never happen, but I am putting my hopes into PieFed, or Sublinks if it revives, bc PieFed already has features that make it welcoming, like showing the sidebar text below every single post - mind you its Notifications feature is barely functional so it is not ready for a mainstream audience either, but the fact that such welcoming features are already present is heartwarming! ❤️💕:-)

I dunno. It’s missing:

• guns
• cheeseburgers
• donuts
• guns
• bacon
• dinosaurs, grizzlies, etc.

.

So here’s another version:

Oh wait no, it has a vegetable in it, gotta throw that out then and we’ll stick with the OP!:-)

Or here’s a version with tanks and french fries?

We do :-)

It does get all manner of interconnected doesn’t it?:-)

Your account is on Lemmy.World, this community is on Lemmy.World, and pawb.social is a Lemmy instance, so I thought we were talking Lemmy.

I don’t know much about Mastodon specifically, although I do know that Mbin servers - primarily fedia.io - can connect to both Lemmy and Mastodon instances.

Changing the software in the drop-down to Mbin shows similar stats for instances running that: https://mbin.fediverse.observer/list shows those, and sorting by Active Users reveals that fedia.io contains ~82% of all users on instances running Mbin.

In contrast, virtually nobody is still running Kbin: https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list - just one instance with 48 active users.

Btw the newer Lemmy alternative “PieFed” is growing: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list, though fewer than 200 users total world-wide, so more something that we keep eagerly anticipating than something currently and fully “here”:-).

Anyway, perhaps the app just needs some time to be able to connect to that new instance? Rather than wait though, you may want to contact the developers - they could potentially add it right away and rather than resent the contact even appreciate your feedback and interest, maybe? :-)

Oh I hear you. Back on Reddit, I was not liking the idea of joining a place made for and run by supporters of Russa, China, and North Korea (I mean, software is just code, but still…), so I was ALL ABOUT Kbin!:-) Ernst let himself down - and with good reason, due to his job and his family and his overall life - and thereby all of us, by not sharing his instance admin duties with anyone else who could take over. Especially when he announced that he was going to the hospital (and then did not respond to anyone for weeks afterwards), THAT is when the spam started, I noticed, from communities where the mods had abandonded them. The big waves did not happen until later, but I noticed earlier waves even then. That much at least might not the fault of Ernst, but it became his duty at that point to shut those communities down, and yet he refused (or was unable to, either way), and so the spammers had a field day with his negligence. (Also, to be honest, the mods abandoning it really was his fault as well - I myself could not log into the server for multiple WEEKS at a time, and when we did get in it was so slow as to be practically even if not wholly non-functional. Mods only abandoned an already sinking ship at that point. And yes it did rally back a bit, and then sunk again, repeating a few more times before it finally went down and just never came back up again.)

It actually serves as quite the lesson for us all. Too bad it is at Ernst’s feet, but it is what it is - the guy was somewhat heroic I thought, for taking on the project of starting up an entire alternative codebase to Lemmy, and Mbin today is somewhat fantastic still! And yet… he was not perfect, nobody is:-|.

I am aware of quite a few examples of defederation - just go to any instance and search for that word and you’ll see many:-). But I’ve never seen one that did not cite a very specific reason, that without researching further I thought at least naively sounded reasonable to me. Also I’ve actually caused an example of defederation: see my Petition to defederate from hexbear.net, which also offers several links to other petitions from instances that did the same quite awhile ago. Here’s an interesting one from Beehaw to Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works: https://beehaw.org/post/567170 (and then their response in return: https://sh.itjust.works/post/129725).

But yeah, Mastodon has been going stronger than Lemmy for longer iirc, and I’ve heard that it it plagued by defederations, so I definitely need to preemptively agree with you that defederations for no reason are bad. It might be like talking about divorce: always bad, yet other things are worse sometimes, so sometimes the least worst choice, while other times perhaps done too readily, and either way a very very serious issue that should be given the most serious of thought. I’m with you there.

I also agree that Kbin.social was not right-wing: on the other hand I can kinda understand that one better, having heard similar thoughts before. The USA as a whole is more right-oriented than e.g. the EU that is more left-oriented, so e.g. for myself inside the USA, Bernie Sanders seems quite the leftist compared to every other politician I’ve even heard of here, and yet compared to those in the EU he would be considered centrist or even right-wing. i.e., much like introvert vs. extrovert, the standard of comparison is relative to where someone is located at, currently.

Even so, why should one instance defederate from another instance purely due to personal preferences like that? (precisely as you said) Reasons to defederate that are fully valid, imho, are when one side is not engaging in good faith argumentation. Which I don’t recall ever happening on Kbin.social. Therefore, the side defederating from it was likely to have been engaging not in good faith? So perhaps good for you to have gotten away from it then? (Though to be clear: conversely, the fact that Kbin.social later was sending out spam all across the fediverse is a perfect reason to defederate from it.)

The UX of the Fediverse is really quite poor, which is part of why so many are flocking to the likes of BlueSky even as they leave Reddit + X + Facebook, rather than Lemmy/Mbin/PieFed(/Sublinks?) + Mastodon + Friendica. A major part of the reason where Lemmy at least is concerned is the lack of cross-instance moderation ability, which severely hinders people who are not all lumped together onto one single giant instance (one Lemmy dev, Nutomic, put this onto the roadmap, but not until software version ~0.20, whereas the most recent version is currently only 0.19.7, so this won’t be for perhaps another half to full year before that eventually gets added? especially considering delay also from after the sourcecode is released until it is installed, e.g. Lemmy.World that has literally ~80% of all Lemmings on it is still on 0.19.3, and they were outright EAGERLY awaiting 0.19.6)

A bit of a tangent: I wonder if the more Threaded conversation style, where you follow “topics” rather than “users”, gives Lemmy the edge in terms of UX? Like, even if you cannot follow one person - although defederations seem more rare here in the first place - you will still get access to so much great content of a similar theme.

About your tangent regarding politics: I hear you, and I sympathize. If it helps, remember that (1) America is going through a REALLY rought time right now, like repeal of the 50-year-old protection to have abortions is literally a matter of life or death for a good half the population, and also (2) we are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns being waged against us from foreign powers as well as internally, and people are just like sheep, wanting to be lead, so the problem comes when someone arises who offers to do that but has a nefarious motive:-(. And yes, there are very many internet trolls who lack nuance entirely or in part - with those you cannot converse, you are right about that, and THOSE are good targets for defederation imho, not b/c of “politics” but b/c of “trolling”, the former being a mere difference of opinion but the latter being the most important criteria there is on the internet: lack of good faith in discussions. :-)

You are very welcome, and thank you for helping it grow!:-)

Lemmy.World (LW) is a nice place: ~80% of the entire Fediverse is there, and it has some of the best communities and least trouble connecting with those communities of all instances.

On the other hand, using LW goes against the entire spirit of decentralization that is one of the primary hallmarks of the Fediverse. So I definitely agree that you may want to explore some additional options. If you are adamant about being defederated from nothing, some instances to look at include Lemm.ee (the #3 largest instance after LW and lemmynsfw.com, see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list for more, and for best results sort by Active Users) or lemmy.today. The #4 instance sh.itjust.works is also quite nice I hear. #6 Hexbear.net is a troll instance and while #5 lemmy.ml pretends to be leftist it is actually tankie (I hate that term as it is pejorative, but they really truly do deny that the Tiananmen Square massacre actually happened, as in that anyone actually died in it, so it does fit). You may want to find a regional instance, like Discuss.Online is in the USA, or a language one like feddit.org is a German/English mix, or a themed one like Lemmy.zip is for “tech, PCs, and gaming”. Pay attention to the uptime stats, that’s an important one for me. Maybe for an app that can grab content in a manner that doesn’t always have to be live it could be less so?

Btw in the future, while I have never heard of that app name, in the webpage UI you can go to Settings -> Import/Export Settings “Import and export your account settings as JSON”. Choose Export, and then wherever you want to set up a new (perhaps an Alt?) account choose Import and give it that file. Messages sent to your old account will not follow you, i.e. there is no way to set up forwarding yet, but at least your community subscriptions and block lists will be transferred. Even if you have to do this once from the web UI, this will definitely affect whatever app you use after that.:-)

Oh wow this is a lot. I should have just made a post about this - maybe I will!?:-P

On the off chance that you are not joking (or worse, trolling), that is very much the fault of Ernst, the Kbin.social instance admin, for having abandoned the instance that he created for months at a time and allowing spam to flood the entire Fediverse through that server. He had multiple extenuating circumstances, which he profusely apologized for, but aside from that I don’t blame other instances from defederating with it in the slightest. I also still have an account there, and I too have not been able to access the website in about a year, and I too have blocked the entire instance, bc it was virtually the sole source of all of the spam that I was getting across all of Lemmy.

You can read more about it here: https://pawb.social/post/2658114 (original).

I did not downvote your comment here, but I will say please don’t be so eager to spread misinformation on the Fediverse. I found the above link simply by clicking the circle button and searching for the phrase “Kbin.social”, and I even confirmed that you are able to do so on your instance. Leaving the default sorting options in place, this was the 4th hit and the 1st one that immediately jumps out upon human inspection of the titles as being the most highly relevant.

You will do as you please ofc, and people will learn to ignore / block you as a result if necessary, and only very very rarely someone may attempt to correct you (at least in a gentle manner:-) as I’m trying to do here, and as I would have wanted done for me. But if you correct yourself before speaking, then others don’t have to go to that trouble, and your words will carry more weight. I offer this as food for thought anyway.:-)

Oh wow thank you. I have definitely tried that before and it failed, but probably there are certain conditions that needed to have been met first, like perhaps the post must already be there and/or the community already have started federating. So this feature definitely would have fallen between the cracks of knowledge for me if you hadn’t said so.:-)

You are just that speedy:-) ⏩

Ah, even the older ones? Nice!:-)

Except it looks like it won’t ever retrieve the comments for them, boo:-(. e.g. I was going to respond to a comment by egrets@lemmy.world with how “no man can defeat me” for their #1 list item, but I cannot (with a DO account) b/c there are no comments federated from https://discuss.online/post/14197685.

Though at least posts are coming in, now that I’ve subscribed to it.

I thought we were looking at it as a potential USA-based instance, though perhaps I simply misremembered it as actually being within the USA rather than merely being a general-purpose one that could be used. Sorry. Either way if the admin is not fixing the server issues after this long… then I am going to stop worrying (as much) about communities being properly federated with it.

Yes:-). BTW have you had any further issues after all that weirdness with the images awhile ago? Also, wtf I just noticed that Fediverse Explorer is now reporting it as being from the UK?! “Server looks to be located in Slough Slough United Kingdom”

I subscribed so that should start federating content from Discuss.Online.

Lemmy.cafe seems to often get left behind though, and I checked and see that none of the posts there have any comments or votes on them - can someone with a lemmy.cafe alt subscribe to it?

Noice! I can’t see any of the posts except one from today, though now that I’ve subscribed at Discuss.Online others should be able to see it there too.

A…nd now there’s 5 posts and 8 subscribers there from DO, wow it’s growing quickly, keep up the excellent work!:-D

Also this older one too - https://lemmy.world/post/18414833 - i.e. this is a repeated pattern of behavior, not just a series of isolated incidents.

No. People never listen:-P.

You are right of course. On the other hand, the developers are working slowly on other issues and do not seem to have made this one a priority. And Rust is reputedly an exceedingly difficult language to learn to program in, even for someone who already knows C++. I expect PieFed (Python) and Sublinks (if still active, Java) to quickly surpass it with features, though Lemmy definitely has the edge in terms of most effort put into it so far.

On the other hand, we are still at version 0.19.7 - so definitely still a beta software rather than a fully functional one? Plus it’s not meant for profit, so we make do with fewer features, and have only a very tiny set of developers working - those that can be supported by grants and donations.

Plus the entire thinking about how things should work seems to keep changing? Like, the original federation model was not built around the idea that Lemmy.World would have ~80% of all Lemmy users on it - and yet on the other hand, moderation tools, especially across instances, suck absolute ass (reportedly), so the entire Fediverse is kinda really struggling right now, and niceties such as this simply don’t get worked on until the more major foundational issues get laid down. Fortunately new communities don’t get created every day:-).

It’s a common thing when new communities are made and propagated.

First, it is there - at least I am able to see it at https://lemmy.cafe/c/askusa@discuss.online. Are you not able to access it with the following link: !askusa@discuss.online? If not that would be more troubling.

Second, all posts have just 1 upvote (the default) and most have no comments (except the one I made half an hour ago) - that seems due to a delay that ended sometime after the 1st subscriber joined it. As time goes on, new posts and new comments should appear there, though unless there is also a backlog issue on top of the initial delay, those old ones are likely a lost cause and will never ever reflect the full complement of comments & votes. But new ones will, like https://lemmy.cafe/post/10565961 with 3 comments in it.

Let me know about the above link, and either way, thanks for raising the issue to make sure that it works on your instance. :-)