Fwiw there is !nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social, though with at best one post per week (or almost per month lately), and on the instance that has decided to shadow-censor votes even from other users of the Threadiverse like Lemmy and Mbin without disclosure of that fact. Announcement of the latter might have had a really chilling effect upon the community since this past month the number of posts has really dropped off a cliff.

It’s been really hard for people to be the change they want to see in the world, and to share the same spaces despite such major differences in outlook on life. And for all the criticism of their moderation policies (note I am not questioning the validity of that, especially since I don’t post or typically even comment in the political communities so have no direct experience there), each time a MAJOR Threadiverse user leaves, they take all of their posting efforts with them - I’m talking about the likes of FlyingSquid, PugJesus, and I almost hesitate to mention AdmiralPatrick since I’ve already been accused of being an alt of his:-).

I tend to not post often myself unless I really have something I want to share, as people either can respond negatively or else not at all, even for like a nonpolitical comic, and that can make it somewhat un-fun. (So instead I try to make the Threadiverse more lively by contributing comments:-)

Eternal September… except it’s fucking Groundhog Day now!!

Especially when they label themselves like “memes” and “comics” etc.

Somehow on the backend the wires must have got crossed and sent c/Lemmyshitpost content over to c/news instead 🤪

(/s …?)

PieFed categories of communities do this, with user-customizable and shareable Feeds. Perhaps check out PieFed.ca - it has the same set of admins that you have now, and even without an account you can view these and then subscribe to those communities in your Lemmy one, see full list at https://piefed.ca/topics.

PieFed allows for this already, though iirc the flagship instance PieFed.social chooses to put nothing for Lemmy.ml.

I always enjoy content on Beehaw. This is the note that appears on every single post in a community on that instance:

This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places. Be nice.

Notice how the link goes to Beehaw itself for additional details, to explain their policies in their own words.

I always found Lemmy.ml’s own choice of words to describe themselves quite disingenuous though - as if it were merely FOSS or something being discussed, and as if nothing whatsoever related to politics exists, certainly nothing that might, oh I dunno, differ from their very narrow, highly specific viewpoint (which distinctly clashes with actual facts, e.g. video evidence of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which tankies declare variously that it did not happen, or if it did happen then that there were no fatalities).

Hexbear at least is extremely open about how they exist for nothing more than the sake of arguments - that’s arguably fine even, so long as it remains constrained inside the communities designated for such - where the members actually want it, i.e. consent should matter - rather than spilling out into every single other fucking community all across the Fediverse.

Oh the Threadiverse will definitely continue, and arguably it being smaller is even a good thing, helping to avoid attracting bot spam on the same level as corporate enshittified platforms. But I don’t think very many additional people will use it than this - in fact all prior trends since the Rexodus have shown quite a dramatic decrease instead - and therefore the topics covered, especially apolitical ones, are going to have to be “carried” by an ever-smaller and smaller subset of people who are willing to put in the work to add content. Which itself is daunting bc then whenever you post or comment you expose yourself to downvotes and toxic insane dumbshit replies, or more commonly merely silence in return.

People are only willing to put up with such for so long, before reaching for other alternatives (like going to a local library and reading a physical book?). And btw this is not unique to the Threadiverse with tankies, it’s an extremely prevalent effect across all Fediverse platforms - e.g. here is a very interesting article talking about the identical effect (maybe less on the side of outright trolling) on Mastodon as well: https://wingolog.org/archives/2024/09/24/fedi-is-for-losers. Fwiw I kinda like that terminology, except it can be so easily misunderstood: like we aren’t merely “losers” here as in opposition to “winners” as the article claims, but rather in opposition to “gainers” as in greedily trying to always grow, especially at any cost. Sometimes it’s okay to just sit there and be who you are, without trying to grow or expand further.

So no I don’t think that we will grow. But maybe that’s okay? Either way it is what it is - we can’t force people to come here against their will, only try to be as welcoming as possible so that they can feel at home here if they do decide to visit.

PieFed is not entirely negligible but is fairly minor, with ~7k monthly active users (https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats), more than half of which are on the porn one fedinsfw.app.

The flagship PieFed.social has 1.6k users - which isn’t nothing, and if it were a Lemmy instance would make it #5, right after Lemmy.ml with 1.8k users. However the rest (besides those two) all have <0.3k each. So Lemmy.World alone is twice the size of the entire PieFed-verse. And all the more so if discounting the porn one that iirc from those recent federation graphs is the #1 instance most often defederated from, even more so than the troll hexbear and extremist Lemmygrad instances (there has been some issues with csam on it, and it seems hard to find moderators willing to work there, making federation with it somewhat dicey - importantly here as it pertains to our discussion, for reasons entirely unrelated to the software being PieFed).

Though PieFed growth may have hit upon a major snag when its main dev quite recently forced an update against everyone’s advice that now shadow-censors user contributions, even those on other platforms like Lemmy or Mbin, crucially without telling them. The software is quite opinionated (meh, though so is Lemmy too, we just don’t talk about it as much), and while it is far too early to see any effects of that in the activity numbers, according to people’s comments is definitely causing them to halt their future plans to migrate to PieFed from Lemmy (example discussion about the topic).

Mbin is barely a blip in comparison, with <1k active users total (https://mbin.fediverse.observer/stats). Lemmy.world is >13-fold larger than all instances that use Mbin combined. Mbin is really niche not only in terms of users but of functionality: most people seem to want a client that is optimized for the type of content that they consume, rather than one that tries to combine both user-centric microblogging Fediverse/Mastodon style (with e.g. long titles, perhaps even wrapping for more than an entire line, as in news articles) with the topic-based threaded conversional style of the Threadiverse (which e.g. sometimes has titles as short as a single word, causing much wasted space, plus requiring additional clicks to see the images rather than showing in a sufficient size to facilitate quicker scrolling through larger masses of content). Back when Ernst built Kbin (from which Mbin was forked when he had health issues) the major attraction was it being an alternative to the tankie-lead development of Lemmy, but now PieFed mainly fills that roll (even while introducing issues on its own, so perhaps we could see a revival of interest in Mbin after all?).

Several high-profile instance opt out of that, including Lemmy.ml and PieFed.social.

I would not trust the self-reported “suicide” rates of a communist nation. They notoriously skew data and facts “for the common good”, so I would expect that people would be recorded as having died of so-called “other causes” much more often. Like a 80-year-old who shot themselves in the head with a gun might be reported as having died “of old age”, which is likely at least partially true - their age being one of many factors in their decision to end their life prematurely, tying in as it would to their quality of life and hope for their remaining future, etc.

So any comparison of self-reported stats like this image is fraught with issues like that, apples to oranges as they say. I cannot for sure say the intention of either the poster or the creator, but at the very least this looks like misinformation, and I will add that there is a well-known pattern of disinformation that this graphic exactly matches, so a claim that it is part of a psyop cannot immediately be debunked.

This is why I no longer tell people irl that I visit the Threadiverse: every single one or them has checked out Lemmy.ml (which notably shows a LOCAL rather than GLOBAL feed to users without an account), and actively chided me about it. I cannot blame them actually.

To anyone who wants to do a test - easily reversed in mere seconds - try blocking the Lemmy.ml instance, then visiting this exact OP and see if the comment section looks any different as a result. Heck, open it up in a second browser window (no need to log in even) showing the before and after, and as a challenge, try to count the number of differences.

I will give them a hint: it is zero. Users thus “blocked” in that manner can still post, reply, vote (brigade), and even send you DMs, which trigger notifications, which btw can last for WEEKS and WEEKS without ever stopping. Their own admins refuse to do anything about it, thus the situation will continue, unless counteracted by an equal opposing force.

Blocking an entire instance at once is literally impossible using standard Lemmy software (without getting into higher level complexities such as custom uBlock Origin filter settings), despite how it seems to be the #1 thing that people on Lemmy.ml tell others to do, it is impossible to actually enact.

PieFed can do it though. Which only helps so much since many people on lemmy.ml have alts on other instances, which I’ve seen many people proudly announce that it was done specifically to get around such blocks and recommending that others do likewise.

Welcome!

That’s the thing, many of these people self-report that they have tried. These are the ones who got over the hurdle of “it’s too complicated” and bravely dived right in. We here who use Linux btw aren’t afraid of such, but ofc to many people that is still daunting. But anyway, there are MANY who did come here… only to nope right back out, some of them retuning to Reddit.

And at least some of those - at least it definitely does not seem rare or even uncommon (it may even be fully common if not quite average) - remained here for years. They did not simply pop in for a day, not like what they saw, and popped right back out: they stuck with us, if not visiting daily then at least off and on for multiple years.

And then they abandoned the Threadiverse, going around trashing our reputation to anyone who will listen. And, given the several posts related to this topic just within the last week alone, not without good reasons. Even we who remain here (for however much longer) don’t like what we see.

Perhaps part of the problem is how we talk about it: I don’t care about discussions with “tankies” in relation to whatever political beliefs someone may have, I care about discussions with “trolls” and “incels” for whom no means push forward harder, who do not respect any boundaries and so turn people away from this platform, sometimes the moment they set foot here while other times in the longer term sense. We don’t so much have a “tankie problem” (that is in reference to a famous title of an old post here several years ago), we have a… what exactly? Though if we go down that route, it’s not a simple, single explanation but rather multiple - like trolls (hexbear) and doomerism posts and incels (meh, all social media has those though, it’s just that our overall lack of moderation tools allows them to thrive more here than elsewhere). The word “tankie” has come to symbolize all of those, in part bc it fits, if not extremely well then at least better than any other singular word?

But I want to stress that we do not merely have an image problem, so much as major structural ones. For the people coming here, having to choose between man vs. bear (our often unmoderated spaces that in many ways resemble 4chan, vs. the overly moderated fascist partners like Reddit and X that heavily limit what you are allowed to say), despite how we might think that their choice is “stupid”, even so they have chosen the bear.

Which makes it the only instance on the entire Threadiverse that does that, afaik.

Tankies act a heck of a lot like Alt-Right MAGA, both outright calling for genocide so long as it is done against their enemies rather than allies. In short, tankies claim to be leftist, but aren’t.

That said, Hexbear isn’t even that much really, so much as pure trolling for its own sake. Both are examples of what happens when echo chambers are allowed to exist for a long time - the people inside become radicalized and immune to factual information from the outside that may run counter to their allowed list of interpretations of matters.

You pretty much have to, yeah. Each platform has its own optimizations for its type of content, like Loops specializes in videos and the Threadiverse in link aggregation or text and pics.

That said, you can check out Mbin to at least lessen the number of accounts somewhat: it looks to me too focused on the needs of microblogging (e.g. longer titles that even span multiple lines), and last I checked had an enormous amount of wasted space for more Threadiverse style content (with tiny titles, perhaps a single word even). Although even noticing that could make you feel better about creating a new account for each service:-). It just goes with the territory.

Likewise, PieFed allows integration with Friendica and is expanding upon tighter integration with Mastodon… but it is primarily optimized for integration with Lemmy-style content more than anything else.

Yes but mostly labeled and primarily contained within certain boundaries - some users, whole entire instances (lemmit), and communities. And arguably, a bot that is properly labeled as such is not a problem, especially when you can automatically filter or otherwise distinguish such content (e.g. PieFed provides numerous tools for this).

Meanwhile, Reddit is a lost cause in this regard.

Fwiw, PieFed has mostly solved the discoverability issue. Here’s a neat trick: make a new account on PieFed.social (note that PieFed.World won’t work, since they haven’t bothered to flesh out their categories of communities) and go through the sign-up wizard. Browse for a week, and every time you see a community that you like, subscribe to it also in your Lemmy account.

Make sure to also check out not only your Subscribed feed, but also the categories of communities too. It opens up a whole new method of browsing content. I get literal and actual poetry posts (despite ~10 upvotes + 0 comments) occasionally crossing my Subscribed feed this way, and if I feel in the mood it’s fairly easy (even for you now without an account login needed) to see it at https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft.

Lemmy has nothing remotely like this, even though I like its UI.

However, neither are going to happen, without enormous efforts to buck the existing trends. See e.g. these recent comments from a community that was considering whether to switch from Reddit to the Threadiverse (https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/):

I tried switching to Lemmy a long time ago, but that place is toxic and full of weird people.

There are big pockets of radical tankie communities on Lemmy that like trolling and being toxic

There are a lot more reasons than this but having spent the last 3 years on the fediverse alternatives, and just seen the shit that happens over there, I feel very confident in saying it will not ever serve as a serious Reddit alternative. It will serve as something, but not Reddit

Lemmy is shit. So is reddit but Lemmy is shittier

Sadly, these seem representative of how people think of us here. You can see it for yourself too: simply browse most instances from an account without your existing blocks, in order to see what it is like from the eyes of a Redditor. Worse, they are primarily Christian centrists, and not only do they not FEEL welcomed here, but… in truth… they AREN’T ⁉️

There was a brief moment when Lemmy had ~65k active users, immediately during the Rexodus. That quickly fell to ~55k, which then fell to a more stable ~45k, and nowadays we are down to ~35k. And this is despite how Reddit is even in a process of killing off old-reddit, which is what we all said was going to be the signal for the end of Reddit and the great migration here. Tbf it is still early in that process, but it’s already started, it’s not some future date it’s happening now. And the people there say that there is no way in hell that they will come here. Maybe Bluesky, but not Lemmy.

Perhaps that’s fine - perhaps we are collectively okay with remaining niche, and most content (even some of the morenhighly technical stuff) staying on Reddit, but since your comment expressed the opposite desire, I thought I would try to point out that it is simply not going to happen - not unless there is a major change (bc otherwise simply doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result tends to not work out so well).

Perhaps the upcoming release of Lemmy v1.0, when moderator reports will finally begin federating out to other instances, can help create spaces that are more free of the types of behaviors that are currently causing people to avoid us here like the plague. I somewhat doubt it but… it’s possible? Lemmy will always remain tiny, so it is perhaps best that we make our peace with that. Sorry, it is what it is.

The answer is extraordinarily simple, notwithstanding the fact that people refuse to hear it. It is called the Intolerance Paradox.

By allowing bullying and other toxic behaviors, we condone them and even amplify them further. Hey look, come join the Threadiverse, we have pics of cats here! Never mind the fact that for every such picture there are twenty pics saying how Western civilization must fall, so that Russia, China, and North Korea may rise!!

Just learn to block people bro! And then also learn to block instances! Except don’t do that! Also, you literally can’t bc the software merely claims that you can, but actually haha you cannot really! Then learn to use keywords, never mind that the software does not let you do that either!!

If people go someplace and constantly get punched in the face then… I for one do not blame them when they stop going there? Which leads to less content, and making this space even more of an echo chamber than it already is.

Paradox of Intolerance