I’ve never understood how or why this is an issue.
Shortly after Spez’s petulant AMA, I ran across a link for Lemmy. org. It looked interesting, so I followed it. I poked around a bit, and it still looked interesting, so I picked an instance and created an account. I played with it a bit, then I went back and found a different instance that looked interesting and created an account there too. And I just kept reading and posting, just like I’d done on Reddit (and half a dozen different sites before that). Some instances came and went and I lost some accounts and created others and eventually settled into a few that I like best, and just read and posted and didn’t leave. The end.
But it seems that every time I turn around, someone’s going on about the hardships of moving to a different site and all the difficulties to be overcome and yadda yadda yadda, and I just don’t get it. At all.
I think it depends on how you use those different sites
I transitioned from Reddit to Lemmy pretty seamlessly like you did. Around the time it became clear they weren’t backing down on the API thing and other bullshit, I looked up some reddit alternatives, chose Lemmy, and kept right on doing what I was doing on Reddit.
On the other hand, I’m having a bit of a hard time ditching Facebook.
The difference is I know the people I’m friends with on Facebook, I have actual relationships with them, I’m there to interact with those specific people. Leaving Facebook without finding a decent alternative and getting those people to switch with me (which probably means they’d also have to convince their other friends to switch too) means losing contact with those people.
On Reddit and now Lemmy, I’m basically here to read articles and have conversations with strangers about those articles. I don’t really form lasting relationships here, I don’t recognize usernames outside of maybe 2 or 3 big names. If they weren’t full of the worst kinds of idiots, trolls, bots, and scammers I could pretty much get what I’m looking for from the comment section on a news site.
Some people do build those kinds of relationships here though, they come to Reddit or Lemmy, at least in part, to interact with specific users and communities that they have some sort of connection to, and when you have connections like that, it gets pretty hard to leave that platform. Unless all of your friends leave at the same time and go to the same platform, you need to either lose some friends, split your time between the two platforms (neither of which may be as good as what you had because not everyone is there) or you have to find some other way of staying in touch and keeping the friendship going (which is often much easier said than done)
A lot of people don’t seem to get that social media services are almost entirely about their userbases, not their companies. Facebook and Meta are unbelievably terrible, but that is where most of the people you know can be found. Switching to something else is easy, but pointless, if your reason for being there is the people.
I have slowly convinced friends and family to begin using MeWe, but only a small number. And most of them still primarily use Facebook. At least recent events are pushing a few more away from it.
Most people’s relationship with any given corporate / algorithm driven social media platform is akin to a drug addict.
Start viewing people who can’t imagine quitting cold turkey as drug addicts, and it makes a lot more sense.
This is what happens when corpos have oodles and oodles from data on how to drive ‘engagement’… and then they do that, via algorithmic content feeds and dark patterns and other kinds of manipulation.
These people are addicted to convenience, to the dopamine hits, to the rage bait, to their validating echo chambers.
They don’t care that it makes them stupid, misinformed, angry, takes all their time, ruins their attention span, makes them feel like ugly failures amidst a sea of beautiful, rich influencers.
If you can’t stop ‘voluntarily’ doing something that’s bad for you without a giant fuss, without needing a guided intervention, you’re an addict.
Having experienced and overcome actual addiction, metaphorical quasi-addictions like social media have never been a challenge. Yeah, there’s a sort of stimulus/reward feedback look, and the sites are structured to encourage compulsive use, but I’ve never spent a week in bed feeling like I’m going to die when stopping. And some substances I was fortunate enough not to get hooked on, such as benzos and alcohol, are even more deadly: they can literally kill you if you try quitting without medical support and supervision. You won’t die of seizures when quitting Xitter. At worst, you might try finding something else to waste your time doing.
I was on reddit for several years. One day I started getting hit with bans for nothing because one of the mods had it in for me. There’s no way to win in such a situation. So I replaced the text of every post and comment in every alt with lorem ipsum, then walked away. Nothing of value was lost and I don’t miss it. Lenny is fine, and in the instance I’m in, the mods aren’t power-mad zero-tolerance assholes.
Quitting Facebook was similar. Again, I replaced all the content I’d ever posted on the site with gibberish before leaving. I’ve kept my account, but don’t use it. The elderly relatives I used to keep in touch with on FB have mostly died, and I told everyone else who mattered how they can find me. That part didn’t take long. It was, however, interesting how much dark-pattern bullshit Meta throws in your path when you attempt to disengage.
And if Lemmy and other less toxic social media weren’t there, I’d just do other things. Nobody needs social media, anymore than anyone needs cigarettes.
Most people simply don’t care or if they do they don’t need others to care. And then there are the people that want to change something and expect others to do the same, then being surprised they have their own opinions. The next step is of course to rant about it to other random people on the internet just so they can get a confirmation that they are not the problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been trying for weeks to get friends to move to Signal. They don’t have to delete WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to use Signal. Some of these people have got degrees in various computer disciplines and still won’t even give it a try. I don’t understand the reluctance to try new software either. If their job or uni asks them to use a piece of software they’ll try it no bother but if a friend asks it’s impossible. It’s so strange.
I’ve had some luck getting some of my people to switch over by asking them to switch as a favor to me specifically (if they want to of course… And they can always just not use it if they end up not liking it).
Asking them in a more direct way like this seems to work, even if there’s some reluctance at first. I tell them that it helps me out because I can also send stuff to them on my computer, which is true. Then there’s the fact that I just really like all of the extra features it has (it’s just a really good chat app in general), emoji replies, reply quotes, and read receipts to name a few.
If they need any other reasons, the last things I tend to get into are the privacy/security aspects.
Boom, all of a sudden they’re using something better, and even though they’re probably still using those other (shit) apps, at least I don’t have to. You have to start somewhere, right?
Same here. About 25% have picked up Signal, the others haven’t. Even though, like you say, they don’t have to drop WhatsApp to get Signal. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
And there’s no rhyme or reason for who starts using Signal. Some of my most tech-illiterate friends jumped on it, because they were sick of Facebook and Meta. As I’ve if them said: it’s not at all difficult to start using it. So it’s all about motivation.
It didn’t help that there are several other similar spots or there, like Viber. So some people who have multiple already installed don’t want to get yet another. I get that. But Signal is such a solid and unobtrusive app
For the case of your job or school you either use what is required or you need to find another job or school. That might not be popular but it’s the reality. Other relationships don’t have that kind of pull. Maybe RCS could fix some of it but given what happened with XMPP I’m doubtful.
I did that back in 2015 when I moved to discord for my primary social platform. “I am am leaving Skype and Facebook, anyone who wants to reach me can do so at discordname”
Did all my friends move? No, did I lose anything of value doing so anyway? Also no. The people who still wanted to message me either reached out to my family or myself for a phone number, or added me on discord.
You don’t need all your friends to follow, what you need is enough people to leave the platform anyway that more people use that than other platforms in your friend group. That’s why Skype died as fast as it did, a combination of instability and enough people deciding they didn’t care who they left behind and just went to discord anyway.
If their job or uni asks them to use a piece of software they’ll try it no bother but if a friend asks it’s impossible.
normie and/or bootlicker mind set.
Daddy asked me to do this, so obviously it is right and proper
My friend asked me to use Signal due to “privacy”, I think he roof is starting to leak again, give him lip service and continue using whatapps as the “smart” move.
Lemmy doesn’t fill every hole that reddit filled. There are a lot of industry and hobby subs that just don’t have the audience here. Especially the more niche ones.
Shitposting and memes…yeah, we got that in spades. But that’s not what keeps people coming. You can get top-notch shitposts anywhere.
My subscribeds here are dead. I can’t find direct matches for communities I have in reddit, and I have no interest (let alone time) in modding one.
That is a critical mass thing. Reddit 15 years ago didn’t have a thriving pokemon community either. Things grow naturally over time. I think Lemmy is in a good place :)
But, for example, on Reddit there is r/hockey and a sub for each team. On Lemmy those team subs are graveyards, but if you post on c/hockey you might get enough traction to have a conversation. Find the larger community and help grow that first before fracturing to smaller ones.
Yeah I suppose. I came on to reddit early, before there even were subreddits, and comparing young Lemmy to an over-the-hill reddit isn’t a fair comparison.
Still feels like Lemmy tries to be a drop-in replacement for Reddit (sent from Boost for Lemmy), and it really can’t be until it sees much, much more growth.
The internet as a whole is also different than it was 15+ year ago.
Your typical reddit user now doesn’t know what digg is or who Kevin Rose is or the significance of something like 09 F9, sites, people, and events that were big things on the internet are just nothing now.
Hell, tons of users on reddit were literally babies when reddit was young.
Being on lemmy at all is going to come with huge confirmation biases.
Something to consider is that most of these issues with common social media are intangible at best and straight up invisible at worst for most users.
Most people don’t care strongly enough about any of these apps or websites to be bothered. Go ask strangers on the street what they think of spez’s this or that and they will say ‘who’s spez’ followed by, ‘oh, I don’t really care’.
I mean I understand because I wanted to find a good amount of matching communities in lemmy, but that didn’t fully happen. I just had to make the jump.
It’s relatively easy to quit things like Reddit. There’s no attachments to anything, and the content is mostly links to other sites.
When you have followers and follow specific accounts for the content, users are less inclined to leave unless those they follow and their own followers also leave.
The only one that is difficult to replace is Facebook. It’s still the best way to keep up with family and friends from all over. I also like Facebook Marketplace and haven’t found a substitute that is as good.
Your life must be hard now, right?
At every corner of every street, at every TV station, in the faces of others you must see the guy that you hate and you can’t do anything about it.
Leaving Facebook will be an enormous deal for half a generation that literally grew up with Facebook being the internet, period. There are enough people that have no idea what can be, so yeah, I see it
I’ve never understood how or why this is an issue.
Shortly after Spez’s petulant AMA, I ran across a link for Lemmy. org. It looked interesting, so I followed it. I poked around a bit, and it still looked interesting, so I picked an instance and created an account. I played with it a bit, then I went back and found a different instance that looked interesting and created an account there too. And I just kept reading and posting, just like I’d done on Reddit (and half a dozen different sites before that). Some instances came and went and I lost some accounts and created others and eventually settled into a few that I like best, and just read and posted and didn’t leave. The end.
But it seems that every time I turn around, someone’s going on about the hardships of moving to a different site and all the difficulties to be overcome and yadda yadda yadda, and I just don’t get it. At all.
I think it depends on how you use those different sites
I transitioned from Reddit to Lemmy pretty seamlessly like you did. Around the time it became clear they weren’t backing down on the API thing and other bullshit, I looked up some reddit alternatives, chose Lemmy, and kept right on doing what I was doing on Reddit.
On the other hand, I’m having a bit of a hard time ditching Facebook.
The difference is I know the people I’m friends with on Facebook, I have actual relationships with them, I’m there to interact with those specific people. Leaving Facebook without finding a decent alternative and getting those people to switch with me (which probably means they’d also have to convince their other friends to switch too) means losing contact with those people.
On Reddit and now Lemmy, I’m basically here to read articles and have conversations with strangers about those articles. I don’t really form lasting relationships here, I don’t recognize usernames outside of maybe 2 or 3 big names. If they weren’t full of the worst kinds of idiots, trolls, bots, and scammers I could pretty much get what I’m looking for from the comment section on a news site.
Some people do build those kinds of relationships here though, they come to Reddit or Lemmy, at least in part, to interact with specific users and communities that they have some sort of connection to, and when you have connections like that, it gets pretty hard to leave that platform. Unless all of your friends leave at the same time and go to the same platform, you need to either lose some friends, split your time between the two platforms (neither of which may be as good as what you had because not everyone is there) or you have to find some other way of staying in touch and keeping the friendship going (which is often much easier said than done)
A lot of people don’t seem to get that social media services are almost entirely about their userbases, not their companies. Facebook and Meta are unbelievably terrible, but that is where most of the people you know can be found. Switching to something else is easy, but pointless, if your reason for being there is the people.
I have slowly convinced friends and family to begin using MeWe, but only a small number. And most of them still primarily use Facebook. At least recent events are pushing a few more away from it.
Most people’s relationship with any given corporate / algorithm driven social media platform is akin to a drug addict.
Start viewing people who can’t imagine quitting cold turkey as drug addicts, and it makes a lot more sense.
This is what happens when corpos have oodles and oodles from data on how to drive ‘engagement’… and then they do that, via algorithmic content feeds and dark patterns and other kinds of manipulation.
These people are addicted to convenience, to the dopamine hits, to the rage bait, to their validating echo chambers.
They don’t care that it makes them stupid, misinformed, angry, takes all their time, ruins their attention span, makes them feel like ugly failures amidst a sea of beautiful, rich influencers.
If you can’t stop ‘voluntarily’ doing something that’s bad for you without a giant fuss, without needing a guided intervention, you’re an addict.
Yeah, but…
Having experienced and overcome actual addiction, metaphorical quasi-addictions like social media have never been a challenge. Yeah, there’s a sort of stimulus/reward feedback look, and the sites are structured to encourage compulsive use, but I’ve never spent a week in bed feeling like I’m going to die when stopping. And some substances I was fortunate enough not to get hooked on, such as benzos and alcohol, are even more deadly: they can literally kill you if you try quitting without medical support and supervision. You won’t die of seizures when quitting Xitter. At worst, you might try finding something else to waste your time doing.
I was on reddit for several years. One day I started getting hit with bans for nothing because one of the mods had it in for me. There’s no way to win in such a situation. So I replaced the text of every post and comment in every alt with lorem ipsum, then walked away. Nothing of value was lost and I don’t miss it. Lenny is fine, and in the instance I’m in, the mods aren’t power-mad zero-tolerance assholes.
Quitting Facebook was similar. Again, I replaced all the content I’d ever posted on the site with gibberish before leaving. I’ve kept my account, but don’t use it. The elderly relatives I used to keep in touch with on FB have mostly died, and I told everyone else who mattered how they can find me. That part didn’t take long. It was, however, interesting how much dark-pattern bullshit Meta throws in your path when you attempt to disengage.
And if Lemmy and other less toxic social media weren’t there, I’d just do other things. Nobody needs social media, anymore than anyone needs cigarettes.
Extremely well written!
Most people simply don’t care or if they do they don’t need others to care. And then there are the people that want to change something and expect others to do the same, then being surprised they have their own opinions. The next step is of course to rant about it to other random people on the internet just so they can get a confirmation that they are not the problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been trying for weeks to get friends to move to Signal. They don’t have to delete WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to use Signal. Some of these people have got degrees in various computer disciplines and still won’t even give it a try. I don’t understand the reluctance to try new software either. If their job or uni asks them to use a piece of software they’ll try it no bother but if a friend asks it’s impossible. It’s so strange.
I’ve had some luck getting some of my people to switch over by asking them to switch as a favor to me specifically (if they want to of course… And they can always just not use it if they end up not liking it).
Asking them in a more direct way like this seems to work, even if there’s some reluctance at first. I tell them that it helps me out because I can also send stuff to them on my computer, which is true. Then there’s the fact that I just really like all of the extra features it has (it’s just a really good chat app in general), emoji replies, reply quotes, and read receipts to name a few.
If they need any other reasons, the last things I tend to get into are the privacy/security aspects.
Boom, all of a sudden they’re using something better, and even though they’re probably still using those other (shit) apps, at least I don’t have to. You have to start somewhere, right?
Their life would be easier if you didn’t use Signal, simple as.
I don’t agree with it, but that’s the reason.
There’s an xkcd about this: https://xkcd.com/1810/
As the only Android user in a social group of iPhone users I felt this way too much.
You can forward yourself iMessages from a mac via bluebubbles
So just buy a mac. Got it.
I see some older mac minis on eBay for $50-75. But yeah you’d need a mac
I see
wall(Unix) but nottalk(Unix) orPHONE(VMS).Same here. About 25% have picked up Signal, the others haven’t. Even though, like you say, they don’t have to drop WhatsApp to get Signal. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
And there’s no rhyme or reason for who starts using Signal. Some of my most tech-illiterate friends jumped on it, because they were sick of Facebook and Meta. As I’ve if them said: it’s not at all difficult to start using it. So it’s all about motivation.
It didn’t help that there are several other similar spots or there, like Viber. So some people who have multiple already installed don’t want to get yet another. I get that. But Signal is such a solid and unobtrusive app
For the case of your job or school you either use what is required or you need to find another job or school. That might not be popular but it’s the reality. Other relationships don’t have that kind of pull. Maybe RCS could fix some of it but given what happened with XMPP I’m doubtful.
There’s an easy solution for that.
F em.
I did that back in 2015 when I moved to discord for my primary social platform. “I am am leaving Skype and Facebook, anyone who wants to reach me can do so at discordname”
Did all my friends move? No, did I lose anything of value doing so anyway? Also no. The people who still wanted to message me either reached out to my family or myself for a phone number, or added me on discord.
You don’t need all your friends to follow, what you need is enough people to leave the platform anyway that more people use that than other platforms in your friend group. That’s why Skype died as fast as it did, a combination of instability and enough people deciding they didn’t care who they left behind and just went to discord anyway.
It was a lot easier before signal ditched sms.
normie and/or bootlicker mind set.
Daddy asked me to do this, so obviously it is right and proper
My friend asked me to use Signal due to “privacy”, I think he roof is starting to leak again, give him lip service and continue using whatapps as the “smart” move.
The problem is community.
Lemmy doesn’t fill every hole that reddit filled. There are a lot of industry and hobby subs that just don’t have the audience here. Especially the more niche ones.
Shitposting and memes…yeah, we got that in spades. But that’s not what keeps people coming. You can get top-notch shitposts anywhere.
My subscribeds here are dead. I can’t find direct matches for communities I have in reddit, and I have no interest (let alone time) in modding one.
That is a critical mass thing. Reddit 15 years ago didn’t have a thriving pokemon community either. Things grow naturally over time. I think Lemmy is in a good place :)
But, for example, on Reddit there is r/hockey and a sub for each team. On Lemmy those team subs are graveyards, but if you post on c/hockey you might get enough traction to have a conversation. Find the larger community and help grow that first before fracturing to smaller ones.
Yeah I suppose. I came on to reddit early, before there even were subreddits, and comparing young Lemmy to an over-the-hill reddit isn’t a fair comparison.
Still feels like Lemmy tries to be a drop-in replacement for Reddit (sent from Boost for Lemmy), and it really can’t be until it sees much, much more growth.
The internet as a whole is also different than it was 15+ year ago.
Your typical reddit user now doesn’t know what digg is or who Kevin Rose is or the significance of something like 09 F9, sites, people, and events that were big things on the internet are just nothing now.
Hell, tons of users on reddit were literally babies when reddit was young.
We got Linux, don’t forget Linux mate
Being on lemmy at all is going to come with huge confirmation biases.
Something to consider is that most of these issues with common social media are intangible at best and straight up invisible at worst for most users.
Most people don’t care strongly enough about any of these apps or websites to be bothered. Go ask strangers on the street what they think of spez’s this or that and they will say ‘who’s spez’ followed by, ‘oh, I don’t really care’.
I mean I understand because I wanted to find a good amount of matching communities in lemmy, but that didn’t fully happen. I just had to make the jump.
It’s relatively easy to quit things like Reddit. There’s no attachments to anything, and the content is mostly links to other sites.
When you have followers and follow specific accounts for the content, users are less inclined to leave unless those they follow and their own followers also leave.
The only one that is difficult to replace is Facebook. It’s still the best way to keep up with family and friends from all over. I also like Facebook Marketplace and haven’t found a substitute that is as good.
Consider that we live in a world where Trump was elected twice and you’ll start to get an idea of what the issue is
Your life must be hard now, right? At every corner of every street, at every TV station, in the faces of others you must see the guy that you hate and you can’t do anything about it.
Life will be harder for everyone
Most people aren’t intellectually curious like the people here clearly are.
Leaving Facebook will be an enormous deal for half a generation that literally grew up with Facebook being the internet, period. There are enough people that have no idea what can be, so yeah, I see it