The Linux Desktop has been improving by leaps and bounds over the last few years.
More popular than the OS with majority market share is an unrealistically high bar for success. I could totally see linux become a mainstream desktop OS at some point.
The strong leftist culture is a plus. I know I’m not going to get flooded with nazi shit like so many of the prior iterations of the reddit exodus (e.g. voat).
The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism, but I always found the China obsession on reddit to be odd. While I don’t think it should be banned outright, I think y’all ought to consider what is motivating such a weird fetish (because frankly that is) for a specific government.
I feel like the challenge with that is that is going to be moderation. (well, the challenge is always with moderation)
I wouldn’t really consider myself a “refugee”.
I’ve been feeling like the internet has been become a more isolating and nonconstructive place for a long time, and I have been following the fedverise & other projects for a while, hoping that we might be able to build something better.
I am interested to see where things go.
I became aware of reddit over a decade ago because my friends told me about it.
Lemmy will grow the same way if people find it to be a place worth sharing.
It’s a difficult challenge.
The common refrain about the fediverse is “don’t over think it! You can engage with communities across instances!”
But the truth is the instance you choose does matter to the experience you’ll have. The most obvious thing to consider is what other instances is it federated with and what is it’s reputation? Who you are able to engage with on the fediverse is directly related to your instance.
Second, one of the primary feeds you’ll see is the “local” posts. It’s the default as far as I can tell. For non technical users, that will be the default experience.
So choosing an instance is, for me, a question of what you do and don’t want to see, fundamentally.
The catch-22 is that for those who aren’t power users, you really want to have them onboard to an active instance, which implies a minimum size. But that then makes it more difficult to bootstrap a new instance.
Finally, it would be interesting to have a Split View of what “all” looks like on the instance you choose, and what “all” looks like on the instances it is de federated from.