Fediverse

I get it. I basically have to browse on the everything tab to get enough content, and just block the politics communities because I get enough of that from everywhere else in life. I've been using the lack of content to just ween myself off social media though, rather than go back to Reddit. This is the only "social media app" I have installed on my phone unless you count Discord and YouTube

Yes Lemmy is smaller and doesn't have instantly fully formed communities. Reddit has been around for almost 2 decades. Lemmy is newer, smaller, and actively fights the sorts of shenanigans that Reddit initially used to get big.

If you want more niche activity, make posts and interact with posts. Lemmy is user driven- that means you. It isn't a giant megasite where you can just expect to be a passive receiver of endless content.

Post what you want, comment on everything, make your own community, etc etc etc

I see this all the time like some kind of catch-all for complaints about how effectively dead this platform is.

Not everyone is cutout to pioneer any kind of community, let's just assume that OP takes this advice to heart, if their interest/hobby is niche enough, what's even the likelihood of someone else tumbling upon it? Let alone contributing. Maybe this hypothetical other person wants to contribute but they see that it's only one other person posting anything and they figure, "what's the point?" Maybe they don't agree with OP's opinions and would rather find another "community" where their opinions won't be contested even if it doesn't exist. There are a myriad of reasons why, this is going to happen with every channel, fandom, interest group, etc. it's a natural part of the process. The problem lies in the simple fact that there's fucking no one here, there are enough bodies to come and stay and go and continue the cycle until a community is established.

Yes, there are plenty of channels or w/e they're called here, but most of them are effectively islands in a sea of shit you don't care about (or bots.) They're not managed, and there's nothing going on in them. Why is it up to you the user to stop what you're doing and make something out of nothing? When there are already communities that do exist on other platforms, even if said platforms are trash like Reddit or Xitter are. The majority of users in large communities are lurkers, they might not actively contribute, but they do share content with their own friends or interest groups and that is what's more likely to bring people in, those people might be people that do end up contributing, or they might be more lurkers. But it feeds into the growth of the community either way.

Most of Lemmy doesn't have any of that though, because there's no one here.

you gotta realize reddit didn't just "appear" one day with those obscure niche topics built out. There is a network effect large communities have. We need hundreds of thousands more members before that is possible.

I think you probably weren't there for early reddit, but most of the active posters here on Lemmy were. It was tiny. Like Lemmy.

You can't force those niche communities to exist here. It doesn't work. But what you can do is post and create valuable content. and eventually we may get there.

It may not be for everyone. Lemmys growth has stalled out and barring musk buying reddit and turning it to shit i don't see another influx coming. So we're kinda stuck with the community that exists now. Its a pretty good and sustainable community which can provide a lot of general interest posts like news, memes and cats lately. But for other more specific topics if if it's not already a large community here it probably won't be. It's not even just niche interests, professional sports for example has very little presence on here as a whole much less individual sports or teams, and I don't see, for example, a baseball community taking off here no matter how much effort you put in since the current lemmy community isn't much interested in it and your average baseball fan probably won't be coming to lemmy to discuss things.

My recommendation would be to use lemmy for some of those general interest topics, and maybe some of the more popular niche communities if your into them, And go to other places, preferably independent forums or rss feeds, for other things. We don't need one unified scrolling app, it may be a bit more convenient, but the internet is better off if you spread your traffic around.

Lately I tend to prefer lemmy over Reddit and mastodon too. It’s all about content I agree.

The internet has been mostly enshittified. The corporations are guaranteed to continue sucking in predictable ways. It'll never get better or good enough.

The fediverse is something new. It is, at the very least, immune to being reddited and twittered. If the internet has a future, it's on the fediverse, or on something like it that doesn't exist yet. Going back to shitty corporate stuff just delays the future.

Your real issue is that spez, musk, etc all suck. That's what you hate. This is the place where we are free of them, and it can only get better.

All I’m getting lately in my feed are cats!

Unpopular opinion: it's okay to like Reddit, if that's how you feel. I don't - it's far too toxic overall, and that was affecting me to the point where I made the decision to leave it, regardless of the outcome of the protests (based in large measure on having read this article that further developed the thoughts that I was already starting to think: https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb ). And I don't like where it's going in the future - you may use it for awhile then be surprised when yet another horrendous decision by Huffman or the people behind him sends content creators fleeing to other platforms, again.

But if you have found a particular niche group there, and they are not willing to leave Reddit, then you go to where they are, right? Perhaps you can also help make moving here more welcoming by starting a similar community of your own here, even if you are the only one posting there for awhile. That said, we simply don't have the userbase here to handle e.g. most individual games (some fairly major exceptions such as Minecraft aside:-) or sports teams or some such, and you may want to enjoy interacting with more generalized content, possibly in addition to rather than fully replacing Reddit.

Conversations here tend to be better than there. Deeper, richer, and fuller. But to each their own - if Reddit meets your needs while Lemmy does not, then it sounds like you have your answer. But perhaps read my link above and think about what it means: Reddit is predatory, and you'd be willfully walking back into that, hoping against hope that the leopard would not eat your face off (spoiler alert: it will:-D).

Feel free to block communities with political content.

You can also use an app or alternative frontend to filter keywords. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has a post about that.

For communities, !newcommunities@lemmy.world can help

For home kit, the Apple communities are probably more active, and you should be able to post about it there too

I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community.

Please note: you only ever had something like that with Reddit when it had already several years of operation. Even today, you can't jump instantly and find there a community for any niche hobby.

As with all these things: be the change you want to see. Add content, or else it won't be there when you or someone else comes in.

(There's also a feel that Lemmy is "small" becaue it's not only one place and all that)

On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately.

Unfollow communities with political content, and all that goes away.

One suggestion I saw a while ago was to use more general communities for things you're interested in and as it grows then the more niche communities can be made. Ex: post about a specific game you like in gaming up until enough people like it to make a sub for that game. Or post about a song you don't know in asklemmy until enough people do that to make whatsthissong

I totally get wanting the niche communities and, personally, I just lurk reddit completely not voting, posting, or commenting unless as a last resort if I really need to find info that Lemmy isn't able to provide.

It's a slow process and I don't think there'll be another boost of users in Lemmy until reddit does another thing that enshittifies it to annoy people to leave.

I don't want to simply repeat what others have said, but on a personal level, I'm actually enjoying the smaller overall community - it makes it a bit more personal, I feel. I enjoy that. Yeah, fair enough, it's not great for niches, but you don't have to be tethered down to one place for your content.

Back in my day, you had to go to completely different websites for your niche content! Forums were the mainstream!