Tbh most of the fediverse still doesn’t seem to have reached a meaningful “critical mass” from my POV, mastodon is as close as it’s gonna get it seems, and even there it’s nowhere near as active as even the smallest of the mainstream social medias, also nobody on the fediverse seems to care about anything but politics and tech, that’s literally the most major con for me, those are the only 2 dominating topics on these platforms, can’t escape it, it’s everywhere, jesus lol, everything else is completely sidelined or straight up just not a topic because of how few people are around. Not “normie” or anything non-political/techy friendly at all it seems, nothing I’m interested in or need is active or cared about on any of these fediverse platforms, everything’s kinda dead and desolate outside of the main 2 topics, bummer. God I miss the old internet man, everything suuuuuucks now, wtf happened…

I’m really hoping things get better here because my god we badly need alternatives to the big platforms, there’s literally nothing outside of them anymore, I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t forced to, again sorta got forcefully plunged here whether this place was ready or not, but unless fediverse stuff starts really pushing advertising and actually catering to the normal person or something, anything, then I really can’t see this whole thing going anywhere beyond a niche secret geeky political club.

All the major problems I’m seeing here at a first glance that would prevent a normal person from ever trying these things out, simply stems from there being just not enough people, thus not many different people with different experiences and interests to talk to, thus not enough different public topics and communities, thus not enough engagement and activity, thus not enough speedy development or interest in developing more alternatives to stuff, thus not enough feedback, and thus: an echo chamber of just 2 things and not much else, and apparently everyone here takes pride in that and makes it their whole identity, lot of hostile politics obsessed people here on lemmy especially, not been a fun experience browsing around, so yeah, no clue if we’ll ever have any real competition to social media besides bluesky I guess, am probably gonna get dogpiled for saying all that but, just being honest here with my initial experiences: it’s not great, getting some cult vibes from some of the communities and people here, and those seem to be the majority, not the minority, so very difficult to get past them.

If It wasn’t clear, I don’t care whatsoever about politics, most normal people don’t and never will, i just wanna live man, already got enough issues on my plates as it is, 1 or 2 topics aren’t my whole identity, don’t need that shit shoved in my face 24/7 everywhere I go and guilt tripped/pressured into all that nonsense if I post in any vaguely populated community (posted a question about social media on a questions community and immediately got swarmed with exclusively political responses, just one single guy commented something that wasn’t political and that’s it, none of it even answered my question, it’s a complete echo chamber man, wtf am I supposed to engage with on here? 💀), it’s legitimately so annoying and frustrating, no wonder why there’s not that many people on here if the main content and audience are that. Definitely won’t post much on here if that’s what I should expect, even reddit as awful as it can be is much better in this regard then lemmy, never had that sort of experience on there even once, just wish they weren’t being assholes right now and banning a bunch of people for no reason or explanations, otherwise the people and content on reddit is just better then lemmy in every way possible, and feels way more welcoming then my initial experiences with lemmy (mastodon is a little friendlier, but waaaay harder to find and talk to anyone on it). There’s more to life then screaming at each other guys, don’t be shocked if this whole place stagnates because you keep scaring people away for not 100% being like you smh.

Again don’t get me wrong, you guys are almost onto something with this project, and if it succeeds then I legitimately think the internet will be a much better place, just need to remember that non technical and political people also exist and should not be treated as second class citizens on here, y’all kinda need those folks or your gonna be forever niche and unviable and nothings gonna change, I seriously hope things get better on here, cause everything sucks right now, online, irl, literally everywhere all at once with no serious alternatives to anything, I yearn for the past so badly 😔