There are still plenty of forums around the internet. I quite enjoy DCSS tavern, a forum focused on one of my favorite games. Forums have the advantage of usually having a topic they are focused on so they are less politics-focused.
Chatrooms, mainly hidden in Discord and Telegram but also present in Matrix, XMPP and IRC (although the latter are mostly about FOSS), are going strong and will always be there for us. I don't like the format so can't really recommend anything but it's trivially easy to find a Discord room and some Matrix rooms are spread around Fedi.
Blogs are an interesting case. They can have comment sections although the most active ones are actually Bluesky/Mastodon replies in disguise. The one blog that has a very active comment section without any social media integrations is CRPG addict. But blogs can be social without comments - by responding to or be inspired by each other. bearblog.dev has some features to help with content discovery.
There are some smaller, more experimental social websites like cozy.talk and midnight.city. The former is actually pretty active but it also has features I don't really like. Most of these sites are rather slow and inactive.
Then there's also Tumblr. I never was on this website myself but, from what I've heard about it, it's kind of a bridge between enshittified big socials and more classic experience like what Fedi has. Obviously, it will not be this way forever and one day it will be as bad as Xitter and Reddit. But it's something.
It's interesting how your software includes my (outdated) display name as a link to signify a reply while the more common way of doing so on Fedi is by using the username, like @catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone
I find it so funny how the general attitude to growth here changed from hopeful "reddit, fear us for we are coming after you!" right after the API disaster to the current coping that "we are at the best point of Lemmy's existence - if we gain any more people we will literally turn into reddit at its worst because reasons".
Like yeah, it was sad seeing all the people departure back to Reddit after a few weeks of trying Lemmy. But the coping strategy you developed isn't very productive, you see? Not every one who laments the lack of people is driven by corporate values. Sometimes it's about diversity: more women, more people of color, more people in their 20s, more people outside the anglosphere and EU, more religious people. More people who are still able to HAVE FUN!
But yeah, dismiss me as a spez's alt or whatever. Enjoy your exclusionary leftist infighting club.
Another option is to create new communities where this kind of behaviour is explicitly forbidden and enforce it without making any apologies to other people or yourself.
Unfortunately, if there's already an active community out there then most people won't bother to visit your new community, let alone posting on there. After all, most lemmings are okay with overwhelming political topics on here - otherwise we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Yep, Fediverse is made and maintained by and for political activists and technology nerds. Mastodon is the same, Peertube is the same. I wouldn't be surprised if Pixelfed and Loops were also like that. That's just how Fedi is - if you want to talk to another demographic you go somewhere else.
Despite this, it is possible to make a consistently politics-free experience, at least on Lemmy/Piefed. But you need to carefully curate your subscription feed and do some blocking (domain blocking on Piefed is very powerful) on your behalf. You will end up with a small feed but it's better than the doomscrolling hell of /all.
For example, most gaming communities on Lemmy are actually corpodrama about Sony, Rockstar and all the other AAA gaming companies - stuff I genuinely don't give a damn about. Then I found !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works and realized just how much more I enjoy posting there than on other comms I tried. People there are very chatty and aren't too keen on derailing the conversation to some BS.
So, seek out communities that better fit your needs, block domains and annoying people (maybe keywords too) and do not feel like you must only participate on here - if your needs are better met by another platform, consider going on there instead.
I really hate hashtags. People who make every second word are obviously annoying but even just having several #s at the end of the post is irritating. ESPECIALLY when I write my post and have to taint it with these stupid tags for visibility.
I'm glad that Piefed lets us add hashtags without actually displaying them.
Don't PT channels appear as communities on Lemmy? I feel like I heard it years ago but never got to actually use it as I've never found anything interesting on PeerTube.
I can contribute posts to Mastodon by adding hashtags to my posts, and I can already follow users from there to see their posts (ahhh toots?) even if they aren't bound to any community. So, at least on Piefed, the situation is improving bit by bit.
If you ever consider choosing a non-Mastodon Fediverse software, I'd recommend Wafrn as it implements Bluesky's protocol alongside ActivityPub meaning that it can interact with Bsky without a need for a bridge. A nice way to keep your follows without fully succumbing to the shitty moderators of Bsky.
The problem with nostr is that it quickly turned into a nazi bar at its worst so most people (including me) simply dismiss it whenever they hear about it.
Mastodon developers forgot that their social media may end up generating discussions. They were too focused on 'screaming into the void' aspect of Twitter!
There are still plenty of forums around the internet. I quite enjoy DCSS tavern, a forum focused on one of my favorite games. Forums have the advantage of usually having a topic they are focused on so they are less politics-focused.
Chatrooms, mainly hidden in Discord and Telegram but also present in Matrix, XMPP and IRC (although the latter are mostly about FOSS), are going strong and will always be there for us. I don't like the format so can't really recommend anything but it's trivially easy to find a Discord room and some Matrix rooms are spread around Fedi.
Blogs are an interesting case. They can have comment sections although the most active ones are actually Bluesky/Mastodon replies in disguise. The one blog that has a very active comment section without any social media integrations is CRPG addict. But blogs can be social without comments - by responding to or be inspired by each other. bearblog.dev has some features to help with content discovery.
There are some smaller, more experimental social websites like cozy.talk and midnight.city. The former is actually pretty active but it also has features I don't really like. Most of these sites are rather slow and inactive.
Then there's also Tumblr. I never was on this website myself but, from what I've heard about it, it's kind of a bridge between enshittified big socials and more classic experience like what Fedi has. Obviously, it will not be this way forever and one day it will be as bad as Xitter and Reddit. But it's something.
RIP Cohost.
It's interesting how your software includes my (outdated) display name as a link to signify a reply while the more common way of doing so on Fedi is by using the username, like @catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone
That's hopeful
I find it so funny how the general attitude to growth here changed from hopeful "reddit, fear us for we are coming after you!" right after the API disaster to the current coping that "we are at the best point of Lemmy's existence - if we gain any more people we will literally turn into reddit at its worst because reasons".
Like yeah, it was sad seeing all the people departure back to Reddit after a few weeks of trying Lemmy. But the coping strategy you developed isn't very productive, you see? Not every one who laments the lack of people is driven by corporate values. Sometimes it's about diversity: more women, more people of color, more people in their 20s, more people outside the anglosphere and EU, more religious people. More people who are still able to HAVE FUN!
But yeah, dismiss me as a spez's alt or whatever. Enjoy your exclusionary leftist infighting club.
Unfortunately, if there's already an active community out there then most people won't bother to visit your new community, let alone posting on there. After all, most lemmings are okay with overwhelming political topics on here - otherwise we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Yep, Fediverse is made and maintained by and for political activists and technology nerds. Mastodon is the same, Peertube is the same. I wouldn't be surprised if Pixelfed and Loops were also like that. That's just how Fedi is - if you want to talk to another demographic you go somewhere else.
Despite this, it is possible to make a consistently politics-free experience, at least on Lemmy/Piefed. But you need to carefully curate your subscription feed and do some blocking (domain blocking on Piefed is very powerful) on your behalf. You will end up with a small feed but it's better than the doomscrolling hell of /all.
For example, most gaming communities on Lemmy are actually corpodrama about Sony, Rockstar and all the other AAA gaming companies - stuff I genuinely don't give a damn about. Then I found !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works and realized just how much more I enjoy posting there than on other comms I tried. People there are very chatty and aren't too keen on derailing the conversation to some BS.
So, seek out communities that better fit your needs, block domains and annoying people (maybe keywords too) and do not feel like you must only participate on here - if your needs are better met by another platform, consider going on there instead.
wrong
It's a gesture from Dark Souls 3 that lets you point down. Immature players use it to say "haha owned you" to their opponents during PvP encounters.
I really hate hashtags. People who make every second word are obviously annoying but even just having several #s at the end of the post is irritating. ESPECIALLY when I write my post and have to taint it with these stupid tags for visibility.
I'm glad that Piefed lets us add hashtags without actually displaying them.
Weirdly enough, I have a similar experience with Dark Souls. I love DS1 and 2 but I have basically no interest in most other Souls-likes.
I can see plenty of your posts from my test .social account. You probably just need to follow your account to fetch the posts.
Don't PT channels appear as communities on Lemmy? I feel like I heard it years ago but never got to actually use it as I've never found anything interesting on PeerTube.
I can contribute posts to Mastodon by adding hashtags to my posts, and I can already follow users from there to see their posts (ahhh toots?) even if they aren't bound to any community. So, at least on Piefed, the situation is improving bit by bit.
But you can do that! I can see my posts from .social account and they appear in my home timeline just fine after following.
I tried to use mbin but couldn't find a setting to hide voting counts so I left. I prefer my social networks number-less.
If you ever consider choosing a non-Mastodon Fediverse software, I'd recommend Wafrn as it implements Bluesky's protocol alongside ActivityPub meaning that it can interact with Bsky without a need for a bridge. A nice way to keep your follows without fully succumbing to the shitty moderators of Bsky.
The problem with nostr is that it quickly turned into a nazi bar at its worst so most people (including me) simply dismiss it whenever they hear about it.
Like this??
So I would just have to return to the way I've been posting before August hehe
Mastodon developers forgot that their social media may end up generating discussions. They were too focused on 'screaming into the void' aspect of Twitter!