I’ve been on Reddit since 2015 and I actually had a blast on it, about a year before the inevitable one of many Reddit Meltdowns happened the following year because of the general elections.
And I really loved the communities of Nostalgia, TrueUnpopularOpinions (before it got radicalized), UnpopularOpinions (before that got very samey), Games (before they got ban happy), Gamers (before they got even more ban-happy), AskReddit, YSK, TrueOffMyChest, Rant and a dozen others.
So I was a real talker in those sub-reddits. But I think one of my first of many bans happened was because, it was now 2016 and we started seeing a flourish of bad actors and trolls run around. And they were proficient in gaslighting people, so I became one of them, said a few things, mods got pissy and banned me yet not the person who did the gaslighting.
This would be a trend for the next 8 years. Where I would try to stop engaging trolls, shit would hit the fan, some oversensitive user got uppity on me, trolls came around again and so on. I estimate that I got banned probably about 30 some odd times by now in a near 10 year span.
I would go through so many e-mails and user names that it started to seem like a profile was being made on me because of how many times I tried coming back just to partake in the old communities I could. Reddit was getting worse and worse every attempt.
I think the last true time I was able to talk freely on Reddit was probably some year and a half ago. I tried the whole workaround where you make a new account, build some cheap karma on AskReddit and you’ll be good. But that wasn’t enough anymore.
Now anytime I would join, I get shadow-banned. I would appeal, but I know better because mods/admins don’t give a fuck about appeals. They’re righteous in their own way. So while I do have an account on there now that’s active, good luck saying anything with it because it’s shadow-banned.
People mistake numbers with being heard. Yes, Reddit has many more users - but that doesn’t mean if you interact there, you’ll be more likely to get engagement. You’re just one voice out of thousands lost in /new/ in many cases. Moreover, it has a huge impulsive/bot downvoting problem due to private votes - meaning most new posts simply get buried.
And here on Lemmy, there isn’t just anyone to interact with. What’s better, to shout in the busy square where nobody cares or to whisper under the blanket in the empty room?
There are though. We’re interacting now. Obviously this depends on the topic (some things are non-existent on Lemmy) but for what is represented, there is engagement. People make the mistake of trying to build smaller, niche communities before the general community has been set up.
If that is enough for you, why bother with Lemmy? The Bible would be enough: open it on a random page and read the random shit from there. InTeRAcTiOn!
Yes, we have news and memes here. Not much, but enough. All other themes are dead.
What? What do /you/ want then from these types of sites?
I kick started the TV community. Movies is going. There’s video games and tech communities.
This is Fediverse’s problem though, is that there’s not enough variety to warrant interaction. Reddit has a subreddit for every state in the country, it has a subreddit for countries individually, it has a subreddit for one niche community after another.
The Fediverse only seems to care about having News, Tech, Games and Memes. Probably a couple of tech-related instances. To an outsider, they write it all off as a just a nerd’s paradise and not even bother with the entire community before wounding back to Reddit.
It just doesn’t have that reach.
News (Politics) is a massive part of Reddit too. But sure, it has the niche communities that can’t be supported by the current userbase. Let me look at the top 100 communities by activity currently for other topics outside of those things.
The only way this will change is if people come here and start building communtiies.
Who “them”? Are you asking what I am doing here if everything is so bad? I have my reasons. Actually, quite rational reasons. Surely not trying to express my precious and super-important thoughts or gather others’ crazy “wisdom”. It’s just Reddit’s abundance of rules and moderators makes it almost impossible to write anything there(according to my reasons).
Sorry. Then. Typo.
I was just wondering why you seem to bother if the Fediverse is going nowhere according to you.
It still suits my goals well enough. It isn’t good and I don’t see any perspective here, but it’s good enough. At least moderators bother me less here.