It’s like Reddit a long, long time ago before it started going to absolute shit.

So I’m liking it.

Personally, I’m experiencing the opposite as far as activity. I joined about 1.5 years ago and there’s definitely been a noticable increase in activity in that time. I’m seeing more upvotes and comments than when I joined.

First of all, no, does not feel dead to me at all.

Secondly, be the change you want to see. You’ve been here 2 years and 8 months and according to your stats you do not even make a comment a day. The more people like this, the more dead the place feels.

That’s not how I experience it. A few key blocks and I’m not seeing a bunch of assholery. Content isn’t endless, but there’s almost always something to talk about.

I suspect it depends a great deal on subs, interests, and sort order.

I just came from Reddit, so I am still in my honeymoon period. Feels like a breathe of fresh air to me.

Depends where you’re looking. It’s not as active as Reddit for sure, but it also has far fewer non-humans too which seems to be the majority of Reddit these days - either repost bots or even comment bots so the activity isnt real, it’s a mere simulation. I don’t fear that here. PugJesus is real. 😃

This place feels dead. It’s usually quite, but lately it really feels like a ghost town.

The place has a much smaller population, of which an even tinier amount is active. So there is much less content published. One solution is to participate more but too few people seem willing to do it. An other solution would be to make the space more attractive to more users but, like you noticed…

The amount of genuinely hateful content has gone up.

I’ve been saying it since I first joined the Fediverse: default experience is… trash, unless you’re looking for some echo chamber for your pre-existing biases that is. Some may enjoy that experience, I certainly did not, and most people won’t either.

1. New/default experience should be an empty feed, with a few limited broad suggestions allowing them to slowly get in whatever they’re interested and willing to read (even trash content if that’s their thing).
2. Learning to use the filtering tools is key and should be encouraged.
   Personally, I have had a real nice and pleasant experience browsing Piefed because I learned to use those tools: 1) limiting my home page to ‘Subscribed’ only (filtering out all political/memes/low effort content, because 2) I carefully select the communities I’m subscribed to, 3) Piefed making it so simple to filter out keywords and annoying users alike, I never hesitate to use that and, no, I don’t care to block them even if we’re already short on users: my time is too precious to waste it with serial haters and complainers, or self-proclaimed white knights for such or such ‘noble cause’.

Outside of the tech communities, there’s no information hygiene anywhere in sight.

I’ve never seen much of any kind of (an information) hygiene, anywhere online. Certainly not on Reddit… save on very few selected subs… exactly like I can see here.

But once again, one can easily filter the worst offenders in a matter of seconds. Then, it’s up to anyone to stick to it: once I blocked them, I certainly don’t ‘check from time to time’ to see if they’re getting any better. I let them play in their shit pool to their heart’s content, throwing more of it at one another: it doesn’t concern me anymore. And for that I must say I quite like the filtering tools piefed gives us.

the community felt more down to earth, kind, and friendly,

It depends where you look at. When I joined (two or three years ago? I was on Lemmy, before switching to Piefed) the amount of sheer hate that was expressed and that I witnessed was… disturbing, to say the least. I don’t think it has become worse but I could not tell since I learned to filter the sources out.

I wish for the devs to more seriously consider the out of the box experience for a new user and, maybe, consider that not all new users will share their political/personal/philosophical values or biases. I certainly don’t agree with many of the ideas I can see expressed around here, but I’m also old enough to be fine with people having different opinions, and patient enough to see if I can make the tool work more like I want it to and reduce what I consider noise.

edit: typos.

There are too many unhinged nut jobs who are only here to cause drama and stir controversy, and way too much emphasis on their pet issues. They suck and if you get in their cross hairs they will harass you for days due to their intensive sense of personal victimhood and moral righteousness.

I want more reasonable laid back people with interesting things to say who are decent to each other. But it doesn’t seem like the numbers of those folks are growing, more just a consistent number who probably have massive block lists or have de-federated from the problematic/extremist instances.

There is also a new influx of really really dumb people who spam stupid content, who on the surface seem to be teenagers? I don’t know what is up with that. I have blocked a bunch of accounts that are doing this, who ask this community and others like it, really dumb stuff like ‘why doesn’t my poop smell?’ 6x a day.

It’s fine. There’s enough activity to keep me in content (as much as I need content), and I don’t see the hate as much as you report.

The only thing wrong with it from my perspective is that Trump and American politics is poisoning it, but they’re poisoning the entire world so…

The hate is definitely spreading, and nuance is going out the window.
Threads about some subjects legit scare me, with the rabid hate and demand for ideological purity that oozes out of the comment section.

I don’t really see the widespread racism you claim exists here, with Lemmy being one of the least racist Western online spaces I’ve ever been in…

And idk what you mean by dead. Compared to what? I feel like I see the same usernames pop up often, because we have a community of regulars. I don’t think I need it to be more “active”, and it certainly beats the more bot-infested “larger” online communities.

Also, if you really dislike the “leftist” population/takes on Lemmy, why don’t you just go back to Reddit? Like, in earnest, they have a lot of uhh “right wing” stances and all big subreddits support the American empire and silence anyone who disagrees. Just make a new account and resettle there, it’ll be more to your liking!