With time we’ll get there! The more we slowly contribute to the niche topics, the more we’ll see these communities grow. I’m sure there are a sizable amount of people from Reddit looking for their niches on here to start growing more for them to fully hop over. I’ve got a good chunk of mine on Lemmy now, but still a handful of ones I haven’t found a comparable server for yet. If I understood running a server more I probably would have started a couple of my own for these topics.

Is there anywhere on Lemmy people can request for servers to get started? I think that would be helpful to have since missing topics are some of the barriers of entry for some people.

It definitely does, I tried my best for months, but it didn’t make enough of a difference unfortunately. It does makes sense that so many are struggling. If it was just online problems then that would be one thing, but people are trying to have their basic needs met which further causes problems.

I think blocking is important, if you’ve responded to their misinformation and they move the goalposts, I would call them out on it and then block them right then. That’s a great question, I haven’t been here long enough to personally, there might not be a cap though since I couldn’t find a reference to one upon my searches.

Did they change the way things are formatted? Such as the [removed] comments now just appearing as [deleted]? Deleted would imply the users removed their own content while removed would imply the mods or admins removed it, at least that’s how things have always been. However, I have only been seeing a sea of [deleted] lately.

I feel like the admins over there really take for granted how much people care about Reddit. The more they degrade the sense of community, the more it continues to crumble until users feel that there’s no point in going back.

With how many posts are just pure AI generated rage bait, it’s becoming more clear by the day how little worth there is left on Reddit.

It’s not all one country doing it either, although they are one of the largest players. Intelligence networks and private citizens from multiple countries and backgrounds have bot farms and have bad actors sowing division online. I’ve noticed that IRL is nowhere near as polarizing as online is framed, even with the most staunch people on the extremes that I know.

What sucks is that all of what some of these bots and bad actors do all day every day is post their same tired points, in different threads and communities. It’s like playing whack-a-mole trying to respond to all of the misinformation. They want to exhaust the people trying to refute them and control the narrative by parroting the same debunked misinformation over and over again. They won’t even defend their points, but move onto some other thing for you to have to debunk.

I think the answer is to be a poster that sets the message from the start, not get caught in the weeds of their bad faith discussions, and pressing them for a change on failures of their argument rather than just defending your own points. They appear to have a stronger frame of view since they are always on the attack in arguments, flipping the script makes their arguments crumble since they can’t defend them.

Reddit removes all the time, but they shadow remove so you never get a notification or anything.

I bet Frank was trying to amuse her with that one. :P

Lmao this made me think of the cat above saying, “Long live the king” before knocking the other one into the sink.

There’s always the potential for them to grow as a community here. I’ve found a few smaller communities I liked that were slow at first but have been gradually gaining traction.

I started the switch over after how grossed out I was with Reddit advertising betting on the elections, and the overwhelming number of bots and bad actors trying to influence people constantly in most of the subreddits. Since then, I’ve been promoting Lemmy, BlueSky, and the Fediverse as a whole on Reddit.

I believe we are on the cusp of another great migration. The more enshitified things continue to get on Reddit, the more real people will leave for spaces like here. At some point it could just be mostly bots talking to other bots on Reddit.

Hello to you as well! :D Go team Blaze! Lmao

A promising sign! With everything happening on Reddit right now, many people are looking for alternatives. Lemmy fits the void old Reddit left quite nicely imo. I’m still new around here but I look forward to helping nurture a kinder and more insightful social media experience than what Reddit has to offer.

RCV is Alaska is still relatively new for voters. Republicans only fought against it in Alaska when a Democrat managed to win an election when RCV was present, which they may have still won with FPTP as well.

The Democratic Party is not strongly for or against alternative voting systems. More or less on a state by state basis it could be in their favor to have, and the same applies with Republicans as well.

Some forms of Alternative voting have been banned in red states. They certainly are trying to prevent it and marketed against it hard in 2024. 2026 will likely have less Republican turnout due to it not being a presidential election year.

Many states were trying to push RCV and failed to get it passed in 2024. I feel it mostly had to do with not enough people understanding how it or other alternative voting systems worked. We have two to four years to work on educating people about how alternative voting systems will work and trying again and again to get an alternative passed. It’s okay if each state chooses something else, as almost anything is a step up from First Past the Post.

I will say that Alaska opting to barely keep RCV is still a solid sign for Alternative Voting systems as whole, as everywhere else it was on the ballot but not in place it got voted down in 2024.

I think along with a state centered Alternative Voting strategy, a lesson we can take from 2024 is trying to go for grassroots change at the local, city, school board, and union board elections level to promote alternative voting systems. If it’s something people are familiar with, it’s much more likely to succeed at the state and national levels. What’s neat is that even low stakes things such as a vote for what you and your friends want for dinner or what movie to watch can use these different voting systems to introduce people to the idea.

It will take time and hard work for change to happen, but every bit we do now will matter if we want to try to shape things for the better.

It functionally can’t without changing the system, imo. The system itself must change or the Democratic Party needs to be changed from within by electing more people like AOC. That later type of change can take decades though, and the more business oriented side of the party doesn’t make it easy for progressive to move up the ranks. Also, the old guard of Democratic voters is not as progressive as the younger base. The Baby Boomers and Gen X for instance don’t exactly want all of the same things as Millennials and Gen Z. The fact that Millennials and Gen Z do not make up the largest percentage of the base voting in elections influences some of the decision making as well.

It could happen in at least some states. It takes ballot initiatives that require signatures. If you have other ideas I’m all ears, but I think at least starting the process to change our current system and can be applied fifty states is at least worth a shot. It requires grassroots organizing and would benefit a lot from smaller political parties getting on board as well.

If it has the BlueSky moderation tools I think that could go a long ways to keeping it a pleasant place. Quality moderators can help steer the culture of the boards as well.

I agree, I actually have been wanting a 4chan type replacement for a while and I believe there are enough tools out there with a federated space for it to be possible. 4chan’s method of communication in the best of times is fun and spurs some interesting conversations, when it’s done right. I think we all know what 4chan does wrong, mostly its lack of any noticeable moderation or automods.

If it had the same type of moderation tools that say BlueSky had though, where things like misinformation, slurs, etc. are removed/hidden as the default setting for users. Then this would go a long ways to building a kinder community/discussion space.

That’s close to what happened in 2024 tbh. Sites like Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube were heavily botted and full of bad faith actors to promote misinformation. Since there are no guardrails like BlueSky has for instance, the bots could show up early to every thread/post/video to set the narrative and then they’d be the last to reply before threads closed to get the final word in.

I believe the future depends on more Federated sites to become mainstream and for Federated sites to adopt the same moderation mechanisms used by BlueSky.

I think it’s important to work towards enabling more political parties between now and 2028. We need alternative voting systems like Alaska and Maine have, but in the other states as well. That is only really possibly through getting ballot initiatives passed in each state for something like STAR Voting, Ranked Robin Voting, Score Voting, or Ranked Choice Voting.

A different voting system enables us to move away from First Past the Post, which is what forces a two party system. By having this, there can be more smaller parties that more truly represent the values of each state that can work with the bigger parties. Plus, it opens up the door for the most liked candidates to not knock each other out over the least liked candidates when tallying the votes.

All that is needed in about half of the states is to get signatures to put ballot initiatives up for a vote. Through grassroots action we can make a meaningful difference, and get more politicians like Walz that actually care about us in office.