I know these federated communities exist as well as raddle, but it still seems like most people will stay on toxic and corporate-run platforms like reddit or Twitter. I’m far from perfect myself and I still use reddit sometimes, especially for more niche communities, but when it comes to ideologically strong communities like the anarchist ones, it just feels wrong that the majority still hang out on reddit. Or you know, moving to something like Bsky when Twitter became too toxic but which is still run by a large, for-profit corporation (if they moved in the first place). What are your thoughts? Is there any justification for this?
Look, yelling in the basement of your local bar late at night is all well and good but sometimes you gotta set up on the street corner and scream at the normies to get the message across.
Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.
Lemmy doesn’t have a large userbase. The few that moved I feel are dedicated here. Most people won’t know what Lemmy is if you ask them or what federated social media is. Alternates aren’t viable for most people.
Town square vs a bush behind the abandoned lighthouse.
“Town square”? More like shopping mall food court. What self-respecting anarchist wouldn’t go for the abandoned lighthouse instead? It can only be that they’re unaware that it exists and even has working plumbing sometimes.
“Why do anarchists live under capitalism if they hate it so much?”
Bro, sometimes you don’t have a choice. They might not know about Lemmy or other Reddit alternatives that aren’t corporate owned piles of dogshit. For a while, there weren’t any; that’s why I was there for so long.
It’s also hard to just up and leave a community. Even if it’s in a bad neighborhood. Your friends are there. Unless they come with you, you’re much more inclined to stay.
If you want to be heard, wouldn’t you go to the most crowded plaza instead of the mostly empty one with people who already agree with you?
The crowded plazas owner might restrict you tho. Various well known anarchist accounts such as crimethinc where banned by corporate social media. Also you have to follow many rules to not get banned.
(I still think its valid to be on corporate social media to spread propaganda, but its not as easy as an actual plaza where you can directly communicate with people)
I don’t think it’s an ideological choice for most people. Use of social media is largely habitual and people are just sticky with their platforms. We see influxes of users when other platforms are down for extended periods of time and when one of them does some kind of ideological purge.
Sadly i think a lot of them are deluded into thinking they have to take care of the reddit community or “someone worse is going to take over”. I don’t quite get it myself but I know some of these mods were struggling a lot to get control of their subs (i.e be the top mod)
Why does anyone go to a community they don’t necessarily agree with? Either to start shit or to convert. If your goal is to get other people to see the world your way, or even just to have an argument with someone who doesn’t agree with you, first you have to be where people don’t agree with you. I think this is probably a far sight better than people living in echo chambers, personally.
Alternatively, most people pick the least friction option, it’s only us weird, passionate people who go through the added inconvenience to be on a platform that more aligns with our ideals.
Most people don’t know about lemmy. And as an anachist, the fact this place is dominated by authoritarian MLs is quite off-putting.
Also a lot of anarchists aren’t as terminally online as a lot of us here :).
