Some Lemmy compatible platforms do stuff like that

• allow you to see both Lemmy style content and Microblog style content in the same platform
• allow you to follow individual users.
• include hashtags that federate out so the Lemmy posts appear under that hashtag for microblog users

Something like that could work, as long as it’s an additional option and not a change to how communities currently work.

Mixing hashtags with communities sounds like a bad idea because of how much content would come in at once. For example, there are a few RSS feed communities and already those ones are overwhelming to keep up with. Most posts sit with no comments and 1 vote, which doesn’t work for the vote & comment based way we organize content here.

We can improve how we federate these platforms together, but I prefer the tagging method. That way it’s a conscious decision to post a microblog post in a community.

Welcome!

For this universe of instances to grow, but also to add a bit of personality to the platform! Do a bit of Reddit and add customization options for each community, like on the Minecraft Subreddit of old Reddit that I’ve always smiled at.

For sure! We don’t talk enough about how much customization there is for Lemmy. There is a wide variety of mobile apps that do things in different ways, and userscripts/userstyles to customize the desktop interface. A lot of instances are also running multiple frontends, each maintained by a different dev or team.

For example, our instance is running:

• Voyager interface at voyager.lemmy.ca
• Photon interface at photon.lemmy.ca
• Alexandrite interface at alex.lemmy.ca

Many possibilities, and I’m hoping we can see community customization too someday :)

I like sea otters

Thanks! Just joined :)

Some alternative frontends and apps have it that way, but the default Lemmy UI doesn’t I believe.

This should be the relevant issue:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1401

I do like your ad ideas nonetheless @zabadoh@lemmy.ml. If we were swimming in money, it could be more of a discussion

A near black screen with small text at the bottom would be fun. “Ads suck, so we removed one for you. Come to the Fediverse for ad-free social media”

My reasons against that

• we’d be directly giving money to Reddit
• users dislike the places they see ads about, and it would appear extra desperate because of the point above
• money is better spent supporting developers and content creators on here

Not to mention that Reddit will probably shut that down

That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything though. A number of subreddits continue to have automod messages and pinned posts directing people elsewhere. There are a lot of people on Reddit who WANT things to succeed here.

So some other ways to help.

On Reddit:

• work with subreddits to set up parallel communities here, and ease the transition of people moving

• find subreddits that benefit from backups / fediverse communities, and work with them to improve things

On the fediverse:

• write up guides and update existing resources to help newcomers

• Post interesting content on the fediverse. People use things they get value out of, and new people won’t stay if things are quiet here. Set up an RSS feed, share the cool videos you see, write about your thoughts on casual communities.

Specifically financial:

• Donate to the development of a project you like. If you can, reoccurring donations provide stability for the developers to work on things.

• Donate to the instances that are running the services and platforms

TLDR:

• Money can help, but paying for ads isn’t the way to go (at least not yet)

I think there are two big things:

• No one can sell the data when it’s already freely available for everyone

• Only the data that needs to be collected, is collected. Only the data that needs to be public, is public.

Pushing for these points to remain true should help a lot.

On the first point (pretty sure I also posted about possible licenses at one point), the problem is that it doesn’t really help anyone that doesn’t care about the license. Until we can collectively organize to defend our licenses legally, the next best thing might be to remove the profit incentive entirely.

On the second point, this does away with a LOT of other metadata (ex. Location, device orientation, contacts, etc.) that won’t be available for abuse. Reddit killed off third party apps because they want people to use the official app. Part of that was for ads, but part of that was ALSO to collect more data. If we build the platforms and the clients in a way that the data isn’t collected, then we’ll be better off

Appreciate you taking the time to make things better :)

This would be very helpful with current moderation issues. If we’re already feeling behind with the current userbase, imagine how bad it could get with another migration.

I’ll add more thoughts here as I have them:

• You could change the wording on the report options to clarify when a report should go to the community mods (ex. “Does this break a community rule?”). Any other issues should probably go to the admins?

  • It might help to allow community / instance admins to modify this message.

• While I don’t think admins should be removing things that were reported to the community, they should be able to remove things outside of reports (even without being a mod). Sometimes spam might get reported to the mods, but the admins need to take action. Could the ‘read only’ view add a little warning before action is taken?

Also a different but related issue:

• setting some default report options that automatically go to the admins. For example: “spam” or “NSFW”. This could allow the admins to triage content, or set better automated tools. It’s harder to do that with free form reports

Giving the idea a fair shot, what did people use private communities for on Reddit?

We had one for testing automod, but either that doesn’t really need to be private or you could use a closed instance on Lemmy for it.

Other than that, I know of the meme communities that you’d randomly be added to

Welcome! Feel free to post on newToLemmy@lemmy.ca with any questions that might come up as you settle in :)

Most apps handle it internally, but if you’re on the web browser you can use the Instance Assistant extension to do it for you. It adds a little “open post in home instance” button

I’d be interested as well!

I’m an explorer 🔦

Edit: Oh cool it changes each time?

Some instances also have communities for them. It might be nice to have a built in system for requests, but it’s not that urgent. There aren’t that many communities and there’s a decent chance of abuse, so manual review makes sense

Here is our request community for example:

communityrequests@lemmy.ca

We have a guide over on !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, here is the current version as of 2024-01-02

📚 Guide | How to find a community? How to promote a community?

🙌 Communities for discovering new communities

🌐 Instances to look through

🔎 Search Engines

🔥 Apps and Browser Extensions

👽 Coming from Reddit?

Agreed

Now is the time to figure this out before the next big rush of people

You could post this on !fediverse@lemmy.world as well

*Fixed link

Very cool!

😊