Your journey with Lemmy: When and why did you join? When did you leave and come back? Are you finally settled?

Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 172 points –

My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.

Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.

After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren't active on lemmy.

What about you?

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I still don’t feel comfortable here. Lemmy feels too much like an echochamber of the same opinions. The lack of diversity makes me feel more comfortable on tumblr than Lemmy at the moment.

It’s frustrating when I do need to check Reddit for any niche things. I love forums, but find chatrooms like Discord anxiety inducing. Sometimes the only forum for a niche topic is a subreddit :/

What kinds of opinions do you think are lacking? And what niche topics you wish lemmy had communities for?

I'm not the original commenter, but I have a similar experience.

I come to places like Reddit/Lemmy/Mastodon/Twitter to see other views and ideas. Lemmy doesn't have that - at least for Canadian politics, commenters tend to voice opinions compatible with the current government. Lemmy has an extremely narrow Overton window.

A great example is discussion on Canadian party leaders - when links are posted about the leader of the opposition, commenters generally agree he's a jerk, totally regressive, and doesn't have much policy to offer. When links are posted about the prime minister, the consensus is that, as lousy as he is, the leader of the opposition is worse. I agree, but it's basically the same conversation each time.

The conversation goes roughly the same way when policy issues come up. Posts about the housing crisis inevitably have a comment saying we just need more density or better transit; that Conservative premiers are terrible; etc. These things are true (enough), but there's not much more than that. Posts about election interference are filled with comments saying US companies are at least as bad as state actors, etc. It's just a lot of the same.

Generally speaking, I agree with a lot of the points. But I'm not here for that. I want to read comments that I disagree with that forces me to think.

EDIT: wording.

tl;dr: the Canadian Lemmy consensus has a tinsy Overton window, and that's boring.

Find yourself an instance that doesn't defederate lemmygrad and hexbear and you'll find yourself some "diversity."