I should edit my comment and add “post rage bait”.

You’re absolutely right. I’d describe myself similarly to you. I even created a local community here for my city. But it feels like I’m speaking quietly on top of a mountain while the nearest person is a time zone away. Perhaps a handful of people would stop by and subscribe to the content but this isn’t about subscribing - it’s about engaging. Communities are about exchanging ideas. Posting something that compels people to engage is one way to increase activity. As more people notice the community, they’ll be more likely to engage when there’s enough noise around that doesn’t single them out too much.

The major social platforms know this. This is why they promote trash over quality information. This is why I get frustrated on Instagram because it continues to show me posts from two or three days ago notifying me that I missed an exciting event.

You can post all the great informative content you want on your little corner of the fediverse but without engagement, is it really there?

By permitting advertising.

“Normies” are not “microbloggers”. Most people just want to follow what their friends and family and news organizations and “influencers” are posting.

My biggest gripe with the fediverse (indirectly) is that all the information I would get on Twitter about my city is not available to me - concert announcements, restaurant specials, road closures, major news, hobby meetups, etc. They’re posting on Facebook and Instagram (which is IMO the worst of all social platforms) and slowly adopting Threads. My issue with these platforms is mostly regarding the algorithm deciding what it thinks you want. This is driven by advertising.

Twitter didn’t really pick up steam until celebrities and news outlets were posting and engaging on the platform. Then they pushed hard for ads to increase revenue and expand features and stability (for better or worse). Then they just got greedy. Then they were sold for the dumbest amount of money in the history of sales.

Getting normies here means getting influencers here. Influencers want to make money for being assholes. If you don’t want influencers and ads here, don’t ask for the normies to come. Accept the beauty of this micro micro blogging platform. If you want to share outside the open fediverse, embrace cross posting to the closed platforms. That’s kind of the whole point of it. You can post in your tiny little corner while still engaging with the more popular platforms.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

I genuinely can not find a single thing to like about it. It feels like development was stopped shortly after they finished the wire framing. Plex and QuMagie are significantly better (and they suck).

I’m not blaming my hardware or Elestio for the archaic user interface. It looks like it was developed in the 90s and never made it out of alpha.

Thanks again! I just moved a publicly shared photo album from Google Drive to Ente and it’s great. Just the fact that you can sort images properly is a relief. I can’t believe how horrible photos sites are in the 2020s. Ente certainly has a lot of missing features but I’ll be using it for stuff like sharing (less than 5GB) photo albums with friends and family.

As I said, I already tried that. Immich is a hard no.
Frankly, it’s shocking so many people recommend such a really bad photo application.

Ente

Thanks!

Appreciate that. Archaic, no?

Fair enough. Plex may not have the bells and whistles but it’s simple and intuitive to use. I’ve also tried the QuMagie app on my QNAP which does have all those features but found it to be a bit more cumbersome than it was worth.

I tried Google Photos briefly as well and was very shocked at how bad it is, compared to Apple Photos. It took me several days just to figure out how to delete more than one picture at a time. I have to assume it’s much more robust on an Android than on an iPhone but even their web interface was horrible.

I don’t know why people recommend Immich. I found it to be the most bare-bone photo app I’ve ever used. It feels ten+ years old. I tried really hard to make it work but Plex photos is about 20% better and it still sucks.

I like Lemmy as a substitute for a general non-specific social forum to engage with others. It’s not as popular so it’s more intimate here.

What’s missing is the general popularity and existence of robust communities. I think this is a good thing because it drives me to find other more specific websites and forums related to my interests. Some of those communities are harder to find and have less content though.

There’s a middle ground between Lemmy and Reddit that doesn’t yet exist. The hope (I think) is that the infrastructure will mimic the best of Reddit while rejecting the worst of Reddit.

I was complaining about the Reddit echo chamber for probably close to ten years. The arrows have not been used as designed for a long time. They’re supposed to mark an item as relevant or not relevant, not as a like or dislike. Had they been used properly… well, let’s put it this way, AI is now being trained based on what people like, not based on what information is relevant or correct.

Incidentally, I was brought to Lemmy for a reason similar to you. I posted one innocuous question on one sub that got me banned from a totally unrelated sub where I wasn’t even a member (evidently, engaging with one sub, regardless of your reasons or opinions, is enough for another sub to ban you, even if you fully support the other sub).

Anecdotally, about three years ago is when I started to pick up on it.

That’s a good one. The photomarket on reddit was the main reason I was hesitant to shut down my account. And eBay is way too expensive and unfair for sellers.

Twitter.

I know this is the “wrong answer” but I had always used Twitter to keep tabs on local government agencies, newspapers, reporters, restaurants, bars, events, concerts, sports teams, etc. Not to mention all the accounts that pertain to my hobby’s and interests.

I’ve used bird.makeup but it’s not reliable if it works at all. Some agencies, like our transit system and streets department, will post on one thing on their website and something else on instagram or twitter (many have stopped using twitter after the api change). RSS is fine for some things but not everything. I haven’t been using instagram for years because of advertising and the algorithmic timeline. I at least need lists.

Really, the right answer here for my needs is that all these groups need to join the fediverse. I just don’t see that happening.

Or maybe I should say I wish the “existing platform” of my city government would start their own instance.

I watched five minutes. That, and the few minutes I’m taking to write this, is about all the time and mental capacity I can care to afford Reddit now.

I’m so glad to have places like Lemmy and Mastodon and the individual forums where I can exchange ideas with others. Reddit has become a pile of dung over the past five years. It’s just full on nonsense and lies and rage bait. I was tired of calling people out for their misrepresentation of the facts and their twisting of the truth to fit their narrative. Although, I realize this is certainly not a Reddit-centric problem. It’s just the place I hung out the most where I was most exposed to it.

The social media monster pointed to companies already trialing free-form ads, which include Just Eat Takeaway, Kraft Heinz, and Leica, all of which found the format capable of “driving upper funnel results.”

Actually, I’d really like to see a screenshot of these Leica ads if anyone comes across one.

The bill actually addresses any foreign adversary.

Sweden is not an adversary of the United States.

It’s an odd situation.

Reddit is a valuable resource of information. Any web search will often offer at least one result directing you to Reddit. The problem though is that sometimes that information is wrong or biased.

I just deleted all 16 years of my Reddit content this past week; and then my account. I learned a lot, discussed a lot, and shared a lot in those years. It’s a little sad to scrub that from history (also very liberating and satisfying).

On one hand, the Reddit website is hosting a magnitude of data I could never comprehend. That costs money. And as a tool that so many millions of people use and rely on, shouldn’t we financially contribute to the thing we use and rely on?

On the other hand, straight up selling our information, with so much of it being very personal and intimate, should be a crime.

And, on the bionic hand, shouldn’t we get a say as the content creators as to how our information is used to train an artificial intelligence? Not whether we permit it to use our content but, as a community, we should be afforded the input to decide how the future of AI uses our information. Ten, twenty, fifty years down the road, AI will have learned from our memes and biases and the stories we made up just for karma.

Reddit is like the Bible. Sure, there’s some valuable lessons in there but most of it is bullshit and unverifiable. Still, a mass intelligence will take it as fact and pick and choose how it wants to use what it learns to guide it for centuries.

That’s correct.

Although, the plan I purchased “forever” for $1.99/month was then called “Pro” and included unlimited applets. They’ve now changed the plans and Pro now has limits while Pro+ is the unlimited plan. So, I’m getting the $14.99/month plan for $1.99. And frankly, it’s far more than I need but that’s besides the point; they promised us something “forever” and that was the only reason I subscribed.

I could be wrong, but I believe the term comes from inheriting property due to family lineage. Because your grandfather owned something, it’s rightfully yours (for better or worse).