Let me know if this is appropriate for this community.

I’ve been collecting links to post, blog, article, comment, etc that criticize the fediverse, whether it’s about the specific apps or fediverse in general, whether it’s about the technical aspect or about the social aspect.

If you also found one, feel free to share it here.

(date format is YYYY-MM-DD)

2024

2023

  • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
    19·
    6 days ago

    Hello,

    I mostly had a look at the Lemmy posts, seems like most of them are 10 months - 1 year old. Lemmy has evolved a lot since then, user-level instance muting was a big change for instance.

    The most active communities being on other instances than .ml is also a notable change.

    • RandomVideos@programming.devEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      From my experience, some of the things got way worse

      There is american politics on completely unrelated posts and “memes” that are just statements about how capitalism is bad on meme communities

      • hono4kami@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
        6·
        6 days ago

        Those people who spams posts like that annoys me very much. It ruined my experience of using Lemmy

      • Elevator7009@ani.socialEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        Annoys me, as an American with political opinions that often agree with the posted ones.

        I don’t look at any meme communities because of this.

      • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
        42·
        6 days ago

        There is american politics on completely unrelated posts and “memes” that are just statements about how capitalism is bad on meme communities

        If that’s a shared feeling, at some point someone will create “actual memes” community and it will take over

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      Though, I think a lot has stayed the same. I regularly read the same complaints that have been brought up over and over again for a long time now. I’m not sure if the UI, or moderation woes, or the atmosphere, or the size, or amount of argumentative people have changed substantially.

      That’s a minority opinion. I’ve brought that up before and been pointed at the Changelog and told lots of things have changed. It just doesn’t feel that way for me.

        • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
          7·
          6 days ago

          Yeah, I (or we) have solved those issues for us. Or found workarounds. I’m not sure if that translates to the regular user, though. I guess most people are using some mobile apps anyways. So UI issues are an entirely different story.

          And posting to the drama communities mostly adds drama here. It doesn’t make it any better.

          I agree, all of this is very community and instance dependant. I didn’t address OP’s links directly. But that’s the reason why I’d dismiss a lot of them. For example if you’re reading the “All” feed, and then go ahead to complain it’s too much Linux news… That’s just stupid. Or if you’re on lemmy.world and complain about their moderation policies. We all know how the dynamics are. Or if you’re on lemmy.ml doing anything…

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          Which one? With the variety of front ends and mobile apps, experiences can be very different

          Unfortunately, this basically translates to “if you know the secret handshake, you can make it better”. New users don’t know the handshake, and more casual users aren’t going to bother looking for instructions on how to do it. They already struggle with the idea of there being different URLs.

          Which is a significant UI issue, as well. The most popular web servers leveraging ActivityPub continue to ape the visual form of centralized social media, which communicates to users that they work like centralized social media. But they don’t. Form follows function, and therefore form implies function. This is a significant source of the friction new users experience.

          Remember, most new users are neither broken glass rejectors of some other website, nor are they ideologues. They’re just trying something new out, to see if it’s better than what they already have.

          And the fediverse, point blank, is not. Mastodon is not better at being Twitter than Xitter or Bluesky. Lemmy is not better at being Reddit than Reddit. But they both look like they’re trying to be Twitters or Reddits. The result is that this place looks like the wish-dot-com version of the big players.

          Power tripper get regularly called out on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com for a few months

          Power tripping occurs everywhere. The bigger issue is that because the fediverse is trying to pretend it’s just like centralized social media, moderation issues can appear a lot different here. For one, they tend to play out much more publicly, because a lot of them occur at the site admin level. For another, the idea of defederation is alien to centralized social media users, and the idea that they could be cut off from the people or communities they follow due to no fault of their own feels incredibly unjust. Even if the reason for defederation is totally understandable, the admins have followed a robust procedure, and alternatives have been tried, it still feels arbitrary to someone who’s not involved.

          But that’s again a concern of significance because everyone wants to make believe this space is just like centralized social media. That the differences are superficial, and not backed into the very core of the experience. It’s also, in part, due to the limited range of moderation features currently explored. We mostly still have moderation suites that make the most sense in… wait for it… centralized settings.

          • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            Unfortunately, this basically translates to “if you know the secret handshake, you can make it better”. New users don’t know the handshake, and more casual users aren’t going to bother looking for instructions on how to do it.

            No, I’ve seen quite a few people saying they only use Lemmy through Voyager or Boost, they never see the Web UI.

            Both are quite good UI wise, hence my question.

            They already struggle with the idea of there being different URLs.

            Hopefully this will be solved in version 0.20: https://feddit.org/post/5390705

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    This comes across as highly biased - perhaps you could make another post like this, where people sing the praises of the Fediverse? Not in terms of promises but the reality of actual experiences? And then link it here and vice versa, to give people a more accurate take of both Pros and Cons.

    Overall some things do seem to be getting better. Not quickly, or even sufficiently, but inexorably it does seem to be happening. Although it also gets worse too in other ways so… I’m not sure what to say about the overall situation.

    Personally, I’m going to start blocking more communities, which I find very sad bc I used to greatly enjoy those very same ones.:-(

  • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    Regarding UI/UX, that’s definitely a major issue. UI will improve, but the nature of instances/federation will always be a stumbling block. The only thing I can think of is recommending people join lemmy.world (because lemm.ee doesn’t block hexbear/lemmygrad by default, lemmy.cafe could also be an option if it gets bigger more/mature). There is also a need for on-boarding and something akin to starter packs with active communities. Lemmy community search return a community with most subs, but that’s not always the one that’s most active.

    The presence of tankies is a major turn off for me personally. Even if you block hexbear/lemmygrad, you still get ML users and even lemmy.world users who spout things like “the USSR’s invasion of Europe in collaboration with nazi Germany was a good thing!” Major instances really need to adopt a “no tankie” rule and some of the active software communities need to migrate off ML.

    Many admins are unprofessional. I personally got into a debate with a (US-based?) admin of major instance that started with him calling posters in that thread “shit eating lemmings who don’t understand anything” for being skeptical of the US judicial system. I am not from the US, but I have lived there. I made a snarky remark (while clearly stating that I am from a different country) referencing some of my own experiences living in the US. We got into a debate, I did not find his arguments convincing. We were going in circles I asked him what exactly does he want me to admit or say. He replied that I need to say that “I am stupid, I am wrong and that he is right”. I told him to fuck off and that he is a shit eating lemming. This not how an admin should act (even if he thinks I am wrong/ignorant).

    I’ve also seen examples of admins of major instances being unprofessional and tolerating and encouraging mods acting in a very biased manner.

    I can see how the capitalism stuff can be off-putting for many people. Personally I don’t see it that often (more than on reddit of course). I would say there are certain advantages to this tendency as well. I moderate a technology hardware community. I really like how people appreciate technology, but still take a critical look at all tech companies. Even the Apple community on lemmy is level-headed. Reddit is rife with corporate shills doing volunteer PR work. Any criticism of Apple (even legitimate criticism like saying they cannot be trusted because they censored content critical of China and AI on Apple+) gets instant downvotes (not even on the Apple subs).

    The issue that I see is that people don’t distinguish between “big C Capitalism” - American-style PR-focused oligarchy, corruption and criminality and “small c capitalism” - commerce, trade, competition. “Small c capitalism” has existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist after american-style corruption runs its course.

    All people need to do is replace the word “capitalism” with “oligarchy”; I think this would go a long way to making their discourse more acceptable to least some percentage of the wider community of social media users (not all, or even most). Easier said than done of course.

    I do agree there are massive problems with the Threadiverse/Fediverse. Some of them, like the lack of professionalism, software immaturity, lack of growth/on-boarding strategy can only be addressed with a serious budget. Others (like the abrasive, counterproductive, anti-capitalist sentiment) are arguably out of scope for a mere social network/forum.

    That being said, what other alternatives are there? Threads/Zuckerberg is no go. He is downright evil; just another tech oligarch. I wish BlueSky all the best, but I do think they will eventually speedrun into a Twitter/X. I hope I am wrong. So even with all of the Fediverse’s problems, what is a viable next step if you don’t want to deal with FB/Reddit/Twitter and are skeptical about the long-term viability of BlueSky as a user-focused platform?

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      PieFed has some interesting ideas.

      It’s not yet a full-featured Lemmy alternative (more’s the pity), yet it already has so many features that Lemmy lacks and so I’ve made PieFed.social my daily driver for the Fediverse (although most moderation activities don’t seem to be implemented yet so atm it survives by piggybacking off of made on Lemmy; and the search function isn’t that great - really I still need a Lemmy account for some activities).

      e.g. you can block all users from any instances you care to without needing admin approval (the Sync and Connect Lemmy apps also do that but the traditional Lemmy “instance block” is horribly misnamed and acts rather like a community mute, though the users can still invade other threads and reply to you, triggering your notifications, etc.), and onboarding is greatly facilitated by offering Categories of Communities. And there’s so much more - hashtags, YouTube embedding, the ability to either enable or disable notifications for anything (post, comment, user, entire community - that one I really love 💕!), etc.

      I love how the link explains how we can move more towards a democratization of moderation, where instead of offering simply the binary Allow vs. Deny action by a moderator, a community could place 'labels" onto its content, thereby leaving the decision whether to read it or not up to the end user. An account created in the last week asking questions? They are new and may need help. Someone who has more moderator-removed posts than ones allowed to stay up? Probably a troll. A comment with >20 downvotes (hey, it has happened to me - multiple times, especially a post linking to an article examining the merits of Biden stepping down prior to the election, right or wrong that content was among the most heavily downvoted that the recipient community has ever seen before…), someone who wants to see it can, while someone who desires a less controversial experience can filter it out.

      Ofc the approach would need heavy tuning to make it work best - e.g. could a bunch of bot accounts merely be spun up to heavily promote content? What about people who see the content having arrived there by browsing All - perhaps only votes by community members should count? Perhaps even restricting the latter to “established” or even only “trusted” ones? And then what would be needed to gain such “citizenship” - a certain number of posts, comments, time, approval, perhaps moderator-granted status? The possibilities are endless and each instance spun up could do it differently, but the framework is there to take advantage.

      Despite me as an early adopter making it my daily driver, it’s not really ready for the masses yet - there is so much that is still too frustrating. But damn is it impressive! Check it out even just to have a hint of what will be coming in the future. Oh yeah, the codebase is in Python rather than Rust, so I expect a much more rapid development cycle - despite lacking the funding that Lemmy has, although PieFed does have a ways yet to catch up in terms of the fundamentals, and yet it’s still just that impressive!

      • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Thanks for sharing the link, will need to have a read.

        I’ve been meaning to try out Piefed, but honestly I am waiting for it to become a bit more mature.

        Can’t hurt to make an alt just to test it out though.

        The ability to not only have different UIs, but even different approach is a critical strength of the fediverse, although I feel it needs a critical number of DAUs (and donations) to really take off.

        In terms of overall platform, I don’t really see any alternatives to the fediverse.

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          You can see it without an account, although ofc better with one:-). Here is an example showcasing both Categories of Communities (top line) and hashtags (bottom one of the header area). Below all the comments (here’s one with none to have to scroll through), you can see the full community side-bar, attached to every post in the community, so that you know exactly what you are getting into even while making just so much as a comment reply rather than a full post.

          I agree it’s not mature though - e.g. a good fraction of the time when I click on a Notification, it refuses to take me to the content that it is trying to tell me about, for many different reasons (I’ve blocked the user, it’s been removed, or hidden, or the comment string is too deep and I have to click a continuation link to go further, except it doesn’t even take me to that, etc.) - I really have to jump around ENORMOUS gaps to make it halfway work.

          And even so, it’s still damn impressive, after all is said and done. It’s exciting to think what improvements will come.:-)

          People won’t move off Reddit until something is already ready for them to jump ship to. Lemmy has such enormous structural issues. PieFed has even more, but different ones.:-) Both Lemmy and PieFed are so impressive, but I am more excited about the latter for a variety of reasons, particularly that I hope it will be able to move forward more quickly.

          • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 day ago

            I would honestly rather just try it with an account to get a more in-depth perspective.

            I’ve been meaning to check it out, just haven’t bothered yet. A little bit ironic considering I took the time to switch from reddit to lemmy. Just goes to show the enormous power of switching costs when it comes to user acquisition. :)

  • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    imho (50+ years old dude that is not much of a geek and understand not much either), the main issue and one that is shared by most if not all social media but is more annoying on Lemmy, is the fact that by default a new or a potential user is supposed to be reading the full flow of content. And then we’re surprised most run away screaming in disgust?

    It’s a bit like entering a restaurant and being expected by the owner to take a bite or two of every single plate on the menu, and dessert, before being asked what it is we wanted to order.

    Be it Reddit, or Twitter, or Lemmy if the default content is of extremely low value and often extremely low effort, qnd when it’s not it’s still content most people just won’t be interested in. So, why force it under everyone’s eyes?

    The default/new user access to content could have been made opt-in, instead of op-out. Instantly muting most of the noise, trash, and low value content.

    Imagine the home page empty of any content by default, save a selection of the most ‘popular’ tags or community names, say with a description, that the user is still expected to select from before the timeline starts showing them any related content, and then an option to search for more (more specific) communities.

    I know a few people my age that have tried Lemmy but could not stand being asked to swallow the constant flow of politics, or memes, or anger, or whatever. Those are legit content to anyone interested in them, just having them the default experience for everybody may not the best idea?

    Once again, it’s the same on reddit. But reddit had two advantages for people like me: we already had an account and we knew how it worked, so it was obvious how to escape the numerous type of content we did not want to see. It’s much less obvious on Lemmy, and even less so if one has not yet created an account… which is the most likely.

  • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Ain’t this the truth. Great work pulling the actual conversations on this.

    Predicably if you say this in comments you are then sent 10 messages calling you a bootlicking schil asking you why you are even here.

    Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.

      I see Bluesky’s appeal, I’ve been there for a few weeks, it’s quite nice. Not sure about Threads though, I’ve heard the people are mostly Instagram’s influencers, is this correct?

      • Elevator7009@ani.socialEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Ehh, I follow zero influencers, only people I know in real life and Instagram spammed me with “[Elevator7009’s friend] and 23 others want you to join them on Threads!” or whatever the notif is for awhile. I never bothered getting one myself because ew Meta and I already use the Fediverse. And because I was pretty sure it was just marketing—if my friend actually personally wanted me on Threads they’d private message me or tell me in real life.

        Although it still could be mostly influencers! I am a fun sample size of one with a single anecdote.

      • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        I found that most my content folks I follow have a presence as well as sports. YMMV but personally it strikes a balance between pop culture and news.

        I do think bluesky has the advantage though and will “win” me over long term.

      • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        They do, but the fact that users are separated across hundreds of instances means that all Lemmy-related websites won’t appear high in the search.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          If SEO index is based on user count, can’t websites just create thousands of fake users to boost their index?

          • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
            4·
            6 days ago

            search engines are giant algorithms that I don’t think anybody truly gets, but it does rule out bots. The popularity of the website and how often people click on it are taken into account, and the problem is that the fediverse is split into hundreds of domains. It doesn’t help that the content is the exact same across instances so fedi websites could just be marked as spam.

            • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
              3·
              6 days ago

              hundreds of domains

              https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

              Filter by monthly active users, when you reach the 31st most active instance you are already at 187 users. 41st is 102 users. 51st is 34 users.

              Most of the 44k monthly active users are on the top 20, so it’s more around 20-50 domains than hundreds.

              fedi websites could just be marked as spam.

              That could definitely be

      • hono4kami@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Lemmy.world definitely shows up a lot. But I wonder what could still be improved. The amount of content, I wonder? Not an expert on SEO, but SEO-wise lemmy is doing great, no?

        • 🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          Not an seo expert but.

          Lemmy and fediverse should theoreticly be doing very well according to the traditional metrics of site value (backlinks etc). I suspect some engines like google have marked it as seo gaming/abuse and thus deranked it. Unfortunatly lemmy gets each instance ranked individually instead of a ranking for fediverse as a whole. Ultimately its an issue cos dns is outdated.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Not an expert on SEO, but SEO-wise lemmy is doing great, no?

          Not a SEO expert, but nowadays it seems to be quite different between one search engine and the other

  • N3M@reddthat.comEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    I’ve got an interest in the decentralized protocols and have written about them before, so I’ve got a bit of a disorganized treasure trove of articles, opinions, and blog posts I’ve gone through at some point. As a side note, shutout to the single file plugin for Gecko & Chromium based browsers, it’s a great way to grab an archive of anything you might want to reference later.

    I went through my list of archives plus a few things that came to mind that I’ve read/watched, below are things that (at least in part) take a more critical look at Activity Pub as a protocol or community.

    Blog Posts & Articles:

    Lemmy Threads:

    Vids, Social Media Posts, & Misc: