Mastodon doesn't do it for me, most of what I find interesting isn't really... there yet.
So my mains are Instagram > Discord > Lemmy > Reddit
In that order I'd say.
Instagram is just the most "personal" social network. I watch my friends' stories, share some of my own here and there.. It's close to how we used facebook back when it wasn't a cesspit of ads and "pages".
Discord is where I keep in direct contact with most of my friends, besides like messengers. Reddit is for specific problem solving and random hobby content.
Lemmy is filling the same niche but I just scroll it more than I do reddit for news, articles, hobby stuff...
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I don't really have a main social media right now, I use lemmy masto and yt tho.
Lemmy and Mastodon
I have deleted my accounts on Reddit, Twittet and Facebook.
I'm pretty much using TikTok and Lemmy. Lemmy because of ability to have filters and accessibility options. TikTok for the same reason plus much more likely to get videos of creators who are not all about money grabbing and care about LGBTQIA and nerodivergent people genuinely. Haven't found any other app that does that.
Lemmy is the only one I'll log onto and the only one I have as an app.
Sometimes though, I'll miss a super specific community from the place spez ruined, and scroll through it in DuckDuckGo browser.
Anything that has an intransparent, engagement driving, ad laden algorithm that determines what you do and don't see is thoroughly unappealing to me. At least now that I'm a little more tech savvy and anti-corporate.
I guess I do technically have a Facebook account still because I don't remember the password of either that account or the associated email address. I used that for local flea market and food sharing groups up until maybe 6 years ago.
It feels super weird having used Lemmy for a while, and to then come back to something like Youtube, which does have it's proprietary algorithm thingy. So weird seeing content I didn't explicitely agree to seeing.
Facebook appears to be a common ground for many replies on this post, which I find very interesting.
I have been Lemmy only since the 3rd party app thing also. I also stopped using Twitter when Musk bought it, and have Mastadon on my to-do list but I'm not sure if I want to spin up my own instance or make an account elsewhere. Other than that I have no other social media accounts and never have.
As for other Fediverse platforms, I'm strongly opposed to the for profit ones, but happy to see all the open source ones.
I see it very similarly, it feels good having the users of the platforms actually create the platforms themselves.
The way how Facebook is trying to get into this with their Threads or whatever it's called feels very unnatural. Thankfully I haven't seen any people from there over here.
The way how people can create their own instances is super fun. It feels like what people call the Reddit hivemind, but actually realized by the people from within it.
"Dualbooting" is a nice analogy, haha. No, I switched completely over from the previous main ones: No Reddit and no Twitter. But I still use dedicated forums for specific topics/software, such as a Romhacking (retro game modding) community or RetroArch forum. Unfortunately not everyone is on Lemmy (or Mastodon, but I stopped using Mastodon too). So for me it is Lemmy/Beehaw and a few standalone forums.
Wait I also started using Discord from time to time, but dislike this as a main application. There is an alternative called "Matrix", which is similar to what Lemmy and Mastodon are respective to their technology. But its not that widespread, so stopped using it too. Maybe will comeback to it. I know there is BlueSky, which is a main competitor to Mastodon. Just didn't have enough interested into it yet, as there is Mastodon already.
- Reddit <> Lemmy and Kbin
- Twitter <> Mastodon
- Discord <> Matrix
(I’m sorry if I’m the 100th person to ask this on here…)
Fine with me, as I didn't saw any of the 99th person asking this before.
I feel that Matrix and Lemmy go really nicely together. There are already some integrations, which let you link from your Lemmy to your Matrix account.
It's nice that Lemmy directly tells you "These messages are not secure" and recommends Matrix.
If this were driven by a cooperation, they would say "blablabla it's so secure you can trust us with your data blablabla" but no! This is the fediverse, where people can do what they want to!
Over here, they are self-aware and link to Matrix, which is so refreshing. This kind of open collaboration between projects is beautiful I think.
Also yeah, Mastodon feels weirdly... empty? I use it sometimes and despite it's apparently larger userbase, I cannot seem to find a good starting point.
Then again, I also didn't quite understand Twitter, so maybe that's it.
Similar situation. I quickly glance between Lemmy and Mastodon and only use ~~old.reddit when I'm on my PC~~ (just realised I hadn't really used it since I've been making an effort to engage with the manga communities on lemmy) . All my friends and favourite artists seem to use Instagram so I only use it out of necessity for messaging and quick inspirations (I tried using Cara but I found the app somewhat slow and disliked that it wasn't federated, so I could see it having a very low lifespan. I saw it as a poor move for artists to move to it solely on the promise of being "anti-AI" without any redundancies that a de-federated option would have)
Had a Facebook account I completely ignored (set it up for my first girlfriend and we exclusively used Yahoo Messenger) then turned into a music dump, then deleted. I honestly never saw the point of Facebook, not with apps like WhatsApp or even standard SMS evolving as they have, even back then (talking about the 2010s).
Had an Instagram account for about 3 months - surprisingly decent source of grotesque/morbid art! Again, saw no point in this, and Reddit felt superior in all ways.
Mainlined Reddit for a good couple of years, mostly during the Pandemic. By the time I got into it, one could feel its bulk, so to speak. Sure 99.7% of Reddit were the users, but even so, it felt as though subreddit quirks and in-jokes had ossiffied into tennets by that point. Loved it, but it felt constraining here and there.
Switched to Lemmy a couple of months after deleting my Reddit account when shit went down, and it's all I've been using and plan on using. Unless one counts news aggregators as social platforms.
I love this scroungy, spit-and-duct tape feel of the fediverse, to be very honest. Feels like the days when we used to group chat on local network sharing apps, like it's just the neighbourhood kids around. And it seems to not be dissipating even with the huge increase in users, which is a good sign. Plus the obvious lack of curation other than baseline moderation and/or personal grudges is always nice!
I see it the exact same way!
The way that the fediverse is split up like this, with many instance working with different rulesets really does make it feel like some neighbourhood people coming together to chat.
I especially like the way how, why you chose an instance, you can either stay within the bounds of your own local group, or interact with all the people by switching over to the "subscribed" tab (at least this is the case here on blahaj zone).
I only use Lemmy. Never had accounts on any of the other social media platforms apart from Facebook more than a decade ago. I've been checking reddit, reluctantly, here and there recently to have something to post to my communities. Apart from that, it's been Lemmy only since the exodus
Very interesting. I do still see many posts originating from Reddit around here, presumably exactly because of that reason.
But I must tell you, making your own funis and ideas and putting them onto Lemmy feels really great.
It feels like an invitation to discuss the topic with others and come up with new ideas, instead of feeding other peoples algorithms and keep them hooked on the site.
It feels much more like interacting with real actual people, even if there are less on here.
I hear you. The thing is, the communities I mod are quite niche (in relation to Lemmy's population, that is) and apart from the corresponding subreddits I used to lurk on for years, I'm not really exposed to anything new that would prompt me to make new discussion posts and memes. I've watched all video essays there are about the games, I played through all of them repeatedly, new content is not on the horizon for any one of them. The best thing about them is the discussion in the community which has been missing ever since I created the communities in the first place.
Believe me: I've tried. But keeping three separate communities alive all on your own without community members ever feeling the need to contribute gets exhausting and doesn't feel worthwhile. So making my own content, which I do when I have a cool idea, feels like more of a loss when the engagement is just as high, sometimes lower, as with content off reddit.
Lurkers will be lurking, I guess
lemmy is my first and only social account (unless you consider software forums or gitlab lol)
Matrix too but not using that in a social media way, only as a direct messenger.
Same for me. Mostly using Lemmy and Mastodon since they’re filling two different roles. I also reluctantly still use Instagram since all my friends are on it.
Some people seem to see it as a negative that Mastodon with its linear feed doesn’t get them nearly as addicted as corporate social media but for me that’s a huge plus.
Same! The "lack of content" is really refreshing somehow.
Not having some proprietary algorithm spoon-feed you content is very nice. It literally only shows you exactly what you tell it to.