I’ve been on Beehaw and Lemmy.world for the past two weeks now and while people seem to be posting content that isn’t about Reddit or Twitter or how great federated platforms are, such content does not receive as many comments/discussion as topics about the Reddit API controversy, or the current Twitter controversy, etc.
I prefer to sort by “new” when on the main page of either Beehaw or Lemmy.world. Most posts scarcely get a few upvotes and almost no comments. Without comments, I feel far less inclined to leave a comment unless there’s a discussion already going on.
It feels like the gravity of discussion is still mostly centered on complaints and discussion about Reddit (or Big Tech in general), despite this platform being billed as a Reddit replacement. Hopefully that changes with time but there’s a reason I haven’t left Reddit yet.
It might seem that way (especially if you subscribe to the Reddit-discussing communities here; I did that at first, but got tired of seeing the same five convos happening a gazillion times, so I unsubscribed them, and that mainly solved the problem).
I went out into the community search, found a bunch of stuff I’m interested in, joined those places, and have been having some good interactions so far. So that’s what I’d recommend.
If you want discussion about something else, you gotta post. The Reddit thing is maybe the number one common interest among basically all Lemmy users right now, so of course it’s going to be the most upvoted thing. But making a post complaining about that fact just exacerbates the problem. If you post about literally anything else then you will be helping the ratio of reddit-related to non-reddit-related posts.
Nope, I’m seeing discussions unrelated to Reddit every time I’m on here. And there’s often more comments than I care to read! The main hurdle for me is the long load times and the inconsistency of the buttons.
But remember!
There’s never going to be a perfect alternative. No Reddit alternative is going to function the same as a massive 18 year old site from Day 1. It takes some time, some stress tests, some development, and some dedication. Just remember the shit they pulled to bring us here.
Can you recommend some communities? I used the community browser to join the most active ones but I only see a few new posts every couple hours and most of them are reddit-related 😔 I feel like I’m not looking in the right places
Check out !newcommunities@lemmy.world and maybe sort by top past week to see what’s gaining traction over there.
Why wouldn’t people talk about the thing that is going on? What do you want them to talk about, how terrible the name beehaw is? The world isn’t ready for that discussion.
Reddit is the big news right now, so that makes sense. It’s news even outside of our own circle of technophiles and ex-redditors.
It’s up to us to spread things out. A whole bunch of us are just waiting for someone else to take a step. If we take the step ourselves, people will join in, AND new users checking out the platform for the first time will see familiar things that make them feel like they’ve come to the right place.
I do wonder how new communities will reach critical mass. I don’t understand how fediverse searches and tags work yet. How do people discover a new community about cute seals or Toledo or Fortnite?
Do the creators of these communities need to be using tags in a certain way?
Lemmy Explorer filters also through the descriptions: https://lemmyverse.net/communities
and there’s also still Lemmy Community Browser: https://browse.feddit.de/
community promo: https://lemmy.ca/c/communitypromo
wow this Lemmy exists! https://lemmy.ca/c/wowthislemmyexists
a few more search-sites turn up with this filter: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=find+communities
afaik Lemmy does not have a tag recognition yet.
@rimlogger@lemmy.world
I started !workreform@lemmy.world about 2 weeks ago, and now it has an estimated 3.4-4k subscribers (depending on how the subscriber statistics work) and people are posting stuff.
It takes time, and it takes some effort on the part of the creator.
But you’re right, some communities will grow faster than others. I think there’s a balance between creating communities that are too broad vs super-specific communities for now!
