Where else on the web does everyone hang out?
2y 7mon ago by normalcity.life/u/amitten in asklemmy@lemmy.ml
I’m really curious where else everyone here hangs out on the internet besides Lemmy.
I myself am frequently on discord with my wife and friends playing games. I’ve also found myself in and around smaller blogs spaces like Kev Quirk and related people. Reddit used to be a place for me to hang out but I never found a community that I felt connected to. I don’t know if YouTube would be considered a place to hang out, but I frequently spend way more time there than I should. IRC used to be a great place for me.
So, where are your favorite places?
I like Mastodon, but I gotta say, Lemmy has basically taken over as my go to boredom relief app. When I’m not on Lemmy, I’m probably on YouTube.
Then there’s work: GitHub and email.
And play: Steam.
I don't get the whole twitter-like microblogging thing. Mastodon feels kind of strange to me because it's similar to that. I try to find a cool place to hang out there, but it always feels like a waste. But YouTube... the amount of time I give YouTube.. lol
Agreed, YouTube first, Lemmy next, then either Steam or Xbox
I'm still on IRC! There's a raw simplicity to it that I appreciate. You don't have to use a bloated Electron app to connect to a proprietary service, you can just go straight text on the protocol-level in terminal (if you're nuts), and the protocol is open and simple enough to understand that you can easily make your own client even if you're a lazy or mediocre dev.
So IRC, Lemmy, and I guess Instagram (if that counts)
What IRC servers still exist that allow random people like me to just join but have interesting people and channels and not just trolls and spam?
I second this question! I'd like to know some good servers with healthy communities.
Probably should not post those publicly, even on Lemmy.
Sad. Guess we just have to go through them
Do we though? We can just leave them alone and do something else.
Sorry--it was sarcasm.
Alternate question: how can we find interesting discussions on IRC?
Cool, Im going to see how I can sell ad space irc channels this week and then sell it.
Ever since Reddit killed itself, the only places I really lurk are Kbin (and therefore Lemmy by proxy) and Discord. That's pretty much it.
I have ignored Discord for years until recently. It just seems like IRC with a lot of flashiness and emojis. Is there more to this experience? I don't intend to be disparaging, but I looked for some specific topic servers and just found the quality of discussion to be low and the experience to be chaotic.
I'm willing to be told I'm doing it wrong though - is there a "here's the right way to get into discord" approach I'm missing?
Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.
But there are a ton of these big public servers that are essentially just spam, because that's what happens when you collect a load of random people in one place who have one minor interest in common at best, and then try and get them to hang out socially.
It's a group chat app, not a forum. And being thrown into a group chat with 100 strangers is kind of the worst.
Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.
I have barely ever used Discord. What does it offer that you couldn't find in, say, a Signal Group?
Discord is built for gaming. Discord allows you to stream a game directly to a channel with one click. Discord allows for fine control over users in the server and what they are allowed to do. Signal doesn’t really have these features, and I’m guessing it’s becsuse the purpose is slightly different.
The closest privacy focused alternative to discord that I know of is Matrix. I’m thinking of moving my discord server where my friends and I play together over to Matrix. We will lose some features but gain some privacy.
I think there are discord clones that work very much like discord, but I’m not aware of their privacy focus. Revolt comes to mind : https://revolt.chat
Thank you for the detailed answer!
I've never used Signal, so can't really answer that. But really assuming it's the same sort of thing, which group messaging app you're using isn't as important as the people you're using it with.
Personally I don't do group chats on a lot of other apps due to them being quite all-or-nothing in terms of notifications. My favourite thing about Discord (been using it since back when it was in alpha) was the ability to separate out different channels and have actual granular control over what's worth being notified about.
I don't use voice / video chat much at all but it's so handy to, for example, have it for the annual fantasy football draft in my league server even though we literally don't touch it and just stick to 100% text chat the rest of the year.
If signal does all those things too, then they're probably pretty similar.
OK, thanks!
It’s a group chat app, not a forum. And being thrown into a group chat with 100 strangers is kind of the worst.
I do appreciate that nuance but IRC (as of last I checked - admittedly it's been about a decade since I was habitually connected to IRC) is not really like that despite fitting essentially the same description.
Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.
That makes sense, I can see that.
Yeah I expect given how long ago IRC's heydey was, we're talking about quite a different demographic. Everyone I know who used it was on the nerdy side (this includes me, it's not an insult!), whereas things like Discord with their modern interfaces make things easy enough that for example I run a crafting community on there full of old ladies sharing their cross stitch.
Anything that attracts huge numbers of regular folks like that is gonna be a target for trolls and spammers and suchlike, so without good moderation a public server can spiral down quite fast in my experience. Add to all this the ever-increasing hostility and us-vs-them of people on the internet in general, and ugh.
I'm sure there are plenty of lovely spaces out there too ofc, it's just finding them that's the trick :)
I’m sure there are plenty of lovely spaces out there too ofc, it’s just finding them that’s the trick :)
Thanks for the followup - I have to agree and I suppose the takeaway is I (possibly) picked the wrong servers so far.
There are a lot of game development communities there. It’s basically a cheap, more public alternative to Slack.
Yeah seems so, it's pretty ok though. It tracks what is new and your mentions so it's vaguely like a messaging app instead of IRC.
I personally think the best way to use discord is to create a server and invite people to it as you meet them online. For me, it’s gaming that connects me with people. My wife and I meet people that we like and want to play with more, and so we invite them. This usually results in getting invited to other small community servers.
I can't even get past the user interface at Discord. Rarely have I felt so uninvited to participate, even as the site aggressively invites me to participate.
Mostly the same for me. I've been poking around Bluesky too but I'm having trouble finding content/follows I like.
Feeds are the secret at Bluesky. Once you have a few of those you like, look at deck.blue.
It’s interesting that you say that because I have trouble finding content that I like on all microblogging platforms : Mastodon, X, threads and all. If you crack the code, let me know.
Reddit is doing great, actually
Maybe (though this is not the description I typically see about reddit these days) but a great many of us are here because we refuse to be there.
Ditto.
98% YouTube and 2% Lemmy
If rest of the internet dissapeared it would take a while for me to notice.
I'm like 90% YouTube, 2% Lemmy and 8% just googling random stuff. Celebrity facts, historical events, programming problems, stuff I want to buy. YouTube is king though. Kinda hate that I waste so much time on it.
Kinda hate that I waste so much time on it.
You watched some learning materials—programming problems, historical events, etc. That's educative. At least you learned something.
Also, time you enjoy is not wasted.
The problem with YouTube is that is so easy to just default to letting it feed your brain. Frequently it's not even enjoyable, it's just straight distraction from anything meaningful. On the flip side, YouTube can be the absolute best place to learn anything.
The problem with YouTube is that is so easy to just default to letting it feed your brain.
True, a typical example is YouTube Shorts. I hate that 15-second trend.
I literally had to disable YouTube shorts. My life improved significantly when I just didn't have shorts thrown in my face constantly.
How do you do that?
I used this video as a guide and it worked: https://youtu.be/WtFBrB4XqBc?si=635fN0fa7jN77evj
This disables the YouTube shorts suggestions, which is how I would get sucked into watching shorts all the time. You can still go to shorts if you want, but I guarantee you will mostly forget about them with the suggestions disabled. Shows how little value they really give.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/WtFBrB4XqBc?si=635fN0fa7jN77evj
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot!
What do y'all do on YouTube? I have a couple of subscriptions, but after I watch those, YouTube only recommends garbage to me...
I have a couple of subscriptions
That is why, you need to 'tune up' the algorithm 😂
Many of us have been using YT a lot since its conception, that is why the big devil knows us even better than ourselves... Most of the time.
Educational stuff mostly. I will learn about mostly anything even it's not applicable in my life or a topic of fancy.
I avoid every bit of pop culture and drama that fills the site but I will watch a three hour video on the varieties of algae.
That sounds right up my alley. Do you have any good educators you could plug?
I have almost 600 subscriptions. I've been on YouTube since the beginning, pretty much.
Honestly, I read more, do more gardening, play more videogames. Kinda a weird benefit, but I joined two book clubs and a walking group. Started going to a parenting group on Sundays so my kiddo and I are making more friends. I guess reddit just pissed me off enough to go out and be more in my community. It's kinda nice.
Reddit (only subs related to living in Japan since those didn't migrate here), kbin/lemmy, fark (though I almost never comment anymore), and an old-fashioned forum/bulletin board (more stuff related to living in Japan).
Edit: and I guess YouTube? 99% of the time, I'm watching from my TV which doesn't have comments or anything.
Hacker News, mainly.
Sometimes I log on to Reddit to help travelers to my country or hobbyists trying to learn engineering. I try to avoid discussion on Reddit as the quality is often not high, e.g. lots of tourists asking how to commit crimes in my country -- better to just not answer.
For discussion I go here, it's much more interesting.
IRC has always been pretty cool. I might go back to that one day. For now this is just the part of my life where I try to make money and don't have much time to socialize.
Which IRC servers are worth some time?
Oh that's ancient history. I don't think they are around anymore. Used to be on the one for the local hackerspace before they moved to Mattermost.
Then a few for technical assistance with various tools.
Do you just look at pictures on Imgur? Are there actual communities? I’ve only used it as a place to upload pictures to link on Lemmy or Reddit.
Discord
Yeah I'm on like 6 discord servers.
I'm in dozens, but frequent about 6 as well. I find it's pretty good for finding communities about niche subjects which helps replace reddit. It also feels less like yelling into the void since there is that "live chat" feeling, and yet I never feel pressured to answer immediately.
6? I'm on... 90? Oh lord.
YouTube has kicked the wasp nest by blocking Adblockers. Lots of drama over there
What's weird is that you can still use ad blockers just fine while you're logged out. So I just open the videos in a private browsing tab to watch them, but in a regular tab to rate or comment.
XMPP MUCs, IRC, some Matrix Spaces. Lobsters, Mastodon.
I refuse Discord. I really wish I could refuse Microsoft GitHub—source code doesn’t need to be a proprietary social media plaform.
Soon. https://forgefed.org/
I mean federating is nice, but honestly a lot of the social features need to go
if it isn't for work related stuff, there are some self hosted github alternatives like gitlab, gitea and gogs
they might have less features tho
Oh I don’t use Microsoft GitHub for almost anything personal, but some language ecosystems only allow packages on the platform …& the issues, discussions, pull request model has lock-in to where you can’t submit a bug, propose a new idea, or even submit a patch unless the maintainer set up something third-party. Due to so many projects with lock-in, to generally participate in free software you must have an account.
Those alternatives are good, and they are more than feature complete. I sometimes choose alternative DVCS for non-work stuff as well. Can’t be forced or forked to Microsoft GitHub if you are not using Git. 🫡
Since leaving reddit with the migration, I'm now on Kbin, tumblr, Tildes, and playing somewhat more regularly on Subeta and Dappervolk.
Would you be willing to invite me to Tildes? I'd like to join.
I haven't had any invites to give out, I would otherwise!
From what I've read they're given out randomly to Tildes users but I'm guessing there might be an upvote/comment/post threshold that has to be reached first to be eligible, and it's unlikely I've come close to that yet.
I got invited by someone on Kbin tho, so keep asking in threads like these and hopefully you'll get one soon!
Got it. I'll keep asking around. Thanks!
Every time a site update/announcement/whatever happens everyone with an account older than like a week (iirc?) gets topped up to 5-10 invites. You can (could?) also just go to r/tildes or email and ask. They use invites more as a way to slow registrations down than to be an exclusive club so it's really not that hard to get your hands on one.
OK, thanks for the tip. I'll try sending an email.
Where are the invites kept for tildes users to give out? Like how do I find them on the site?
https://tildes.net/inviteshould let you generate some
Thank you! I had no idea.
Do you still need an invite?
(Also is there any way to DM across instances? Not sure how to send you the link ontherwise)
I would love one! I emailed the site admin as instructed in the announcement blog post, but haven't heard back yet. Let me try to DM you (my app shows me the option, although I'm not sure whether or not it'll work...). I'm going to send it right away, so if you see this reply but no DM, it'll mean the DM didn't work.
https://tildes.net/register?code=6BSGR-R8QLT-QK7M8
Let me know if it works! I'll send you another if someone's used it before you got to it.
Got it! Thanks a lot!
Tildes is a new one to me. It looks quite a bit smaller. How do you like it there?
I read through the top pages every few days and there's some interesting people there.
It's a very small community though and not a place for memes or silliness, so it's kinda intimidating and I don't commemt much.
I'm on Kbin but I'm not really sure what the future of the project holds, and the lack of an app (except as PWA) makes the experience less enjoyable than Lemmy IMO. Also on Discuit which is smaller and feels pretty organic and relaxed; I tend to engage more there.
If it counts, I know a lot of people hang out on VR chat. It's a very common misnomer that you need a VR to run the platform, most of my friends don't even bother being in VR they just use it in desktop mode. I expect you probably meant more text-based, but I wanted to throw that on the board as well
Reddit for niche topics, Imgur for weird and funny.
I only hang out here, been spending way less time browsing online, which I'd say is a good thing. Been playing more video games, and even reading.
Also I'm curious about Discord, when people say they hang out there, do they just find a channel they like and keep up with the chat all day?
Also I'm curious about Discord, when people say they hang out there, do they just find a channel they like and keep up with the chat all day?
I think so. I'm in a few discords, but don't really keep up with it. However, people seem to be active in them.
My wife and I run a very active discord server. I created it for the friends that we have made playing video games, and so we just all play games together and chat on there. It wasn't a server that I've really advertised to random people; it's just for people that we end up playing with.
as someone who was heavily addicted to discord: yes, morning routine was basically reading messages from the night, mostly fear of missing out
I wouldn't say I hang out there a ton. But most of my servers are actual personal ones. RL friend groups, my fantasy football league, that sort of thing. Only really active in one big public server and that one I just check in on now and again.
I still use Instagram to keep up and chat with friends and Facebook only because my kid's school only posts there
The obligation to stay on Facebook for things like this is so frustrating at times. It feels like LinkedIn, where I have it because it's the only place to get some information.
Privacy aside, my Instagram feeds now are mostly filled with posts from random people. I do want to follow my friends' updates but the recommendation algorithm keeps churning out rubbish. If only I could bring them out of Instagram and Facebook...
This is it. And board game geek. And discord.
Forums. Those of interests that interest me, specific games forums, OS forums, comic book forums, forums.
Lemmy is just a weird poorly-designed forum I also read.
Which forums do you visit? I’m in need of new forums :)
Bay12 for Dwarf Fortress ( https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ ), The Nice Forum for Freefall http://freefall.purrsia.com/and Doc Rat https://www.docrat.com.au/, etc. etc. You need to go to your interest first, then join their forum second. I'm sure you have interests different to mine.
Twitter and BlueSky. Shifting more so to the latter the worse the former gets.
No Mastodon? I always assume all of us lemmy people use Mastodon (if they are into the twitter kind of thing).
I prefer bluesky
Got an invite code? I don't know how that works...
I only give them out to people ik
I keep wondering if BlueSky is going to eat mastodons lunch when/if they open up next year.
I’m not on there myself, but from all the things I hear it’s got the vibe of doing the federated Twitter alternative “right” rather than, let’s say “idealistically”.
Everything I hear about it seems to be negative, but then again I only really hear about it from people who tried it and hated it and came to Mastodon instead. So I expect they just have different audiences.
wdym by right and idealistically?
Well they’re in quotation marks for a reason … It’s unclear.
The essential idea is “right” is what works and “idealistically” is what some people think should work but doesn’t.
I think it's related to who you follow
Different groups on twitter are migrating to different platforms. If your group went to Blue sky, then that's where you'd go to keep reading their stuff
Yeah I mean I never had a twitter group, so I’m mostly looking for interesting communities and figured there’s a lot of that on mastodon. But to be honest I don’t really find great stuff there.
My routine is, in this order, Lemmy, Mastodon, Tumblr
According to my Android phone:
Sync for Lemmy in second or first place most of the time, same for Telegram.
A bit of Discord and Sync for Reddit too.
Firefox random searches.
A bit of Meta apps (almost zero use of Instagram, but it vary with Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, usually FB is the winner).
Feeder and Feedly at the very last (I get my tech news right here).
YouTube I use it a lot, not on mobile but my Shield TV
TV Tropes is absolutely packed if you ever want to join.
Lemmy is my go to when I have downtime and want to mindlessly scroll but I’ve been really into making things lately so I’ve been on GitHub for fun trying to understand how other projects work.
YCombinator's HackerNews mostly.
Mastodon mostly
Well...
IRC, assorted mailing lists and forums, Matrix, Mastodon and occasionally Reddit (blasphemy, I know)
Not blasphemy at all. If you enjoy it, then it's a great place for you. What good communities do you know of on IRC?
Edit: and matrix? Edit: and Mastodon too? lol
Matrix, lemmy, mastodon, mumble, im not a fan of irc I have an xmpp, i dont use it often tho I also have signal for irls
Ive used discord, trying to run away from it
If anyone wants to chat im down my contact site lol (idk if thats self advertising)
Hey I'm here for it. Thanks for the link--I'll add you to my feed.
Why not IRC? I mean, if you want private conversation, then that's not your place. But for a community? Not sure I see a huge problem with it. I love the idea of XMPP as a better IRC, but I never found a place to hang out there. What do you think?
The only other forum I participate in is Arstecknica.
Discord for games with friends, and for a couple niche pieces of software too small for forums.
Lemmy for broad-appeal topics like world news and less niche tech.
And Im not sure if it still counts when I just lurk now, but Reddit for everything else, since none of it moved over to lemmy. Gaming subreddits, more niche tech, history and accedemic topics, local and lifestyle stuff, ect.
I've found subscribing via RSS to those niche subreddits great for avoiding reddit even more. Mostly on Lemmy to waste time and for general news. Started reading books and being social IRL more which I feel great about.
Mostly YouTube, Hacker News, and some mailing lists. I do join some random forums to discuss non-tech hobbies like English writings, games, or classical music.
Even though I'm technically not hanging out with people, I like to occasionally look through some of the different sites on Neocities to see what cool things people have made.
Discord and the osrs grand exchange w390 or dustbowl tf2
Here and YouTube via revanced while it lasts.
I check insta occasionally. I also have an artist profile for insta so it's a double whammy. Still spend less than 5 mins there though.
Everywhere else sucks rn.
When you say while it lasts, what do you mean?
Since Boost for Reddit still works I'm usually over there.
Wait what? How?
If you moderate a community you still get access
cohost, tildes, lobste.rs, rss feed reader
Just checked out cohost. Looks cool and thanks for the tip.
Lemmy, Matrix and Piped.
Discord, discuit, twitch, feeder (foss rss feed)
Woah I've never heard of discuit before. Looks really cool. How long have you been on there?
Since the reddit api exodus. It's a small community, but feels very tight knit. It's also the least toxic place out of those I listed, excepting rss.
I second Discuit. It was started in response to the Reddit API shenanigans last June. It seems to have avoided the spam and instability that have plagued Lemmy (at least so far).
I refuse to click on the reddit link the creator posted describing what discuit is. Looks like a non-federated appless Kbin?
It's a centralized Reddit clone. Ad-free, at least for now. Supposedly the creator plans to open up the source at some point in the future. There's at least one app I'm aware of (Diskette for Discuit).
Thank you 🙏
Bit dicey for my tastes by the sounds of that
Almost everything with people I know in real life, including family and housemates, is on Signal group chats. That's where the good cat pictures go.
Mastodon, some discord and irl.
As far as socializing, Lemmy is pretty much the big one nowadays.
Well, a little Facebook too, to stay in touch with friends and family, but I use F. B. Purity to remove ads and other features I don't use on Facebook (gaming, marketplace, reels/stories, etc.), plus an extension in Firefox to block Facebook/Instagram from snooping on my other browser tabs. Don't want them building a profile on my browsing habits to customize ads for me, or to sell to third parties.
I also use Discord with my wife and a few close friends, so we can arrange an online video gaming night once or twice a week, and stay in touch the rest of the time.
Before Lemmy, I used Reddit a ton. Before that, I was a moderator for a forum called CommGuys.net (formerly 3C0X1.net), which was a forum for Air Force service members in the IT career field. The former site URL was our Air Force specialty code that designated the generic IT career field, but it changed in 2009, splitting into several different codes for different specialties, so they changed the site to CommGuys; short for Communications Guys, which is what they used to call IT professionals in the Air Force. Nowadays, they call them Cyber Guys, because we're more cyber/web focused and less communications specific. But when social media sites were officially unblocked from Air Force computer networks in 2010, military people ran over to Reddit and Facebook and our forums practically died out, so the site owner finally shut it down.
Oh, and to officially date myself, my first social media platform was MySpace, which I didn't even get involved in until after I left home and joined the military. Social media was not a thing in my childhood, and most of my childhood was without Internet. It didn't become popular/commonplace until my preteen years, and content was sparse for many years after that. I did use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, ICQ, and a couple others in my teen years, but that was basically direct messaging with friends through the Internet before everyone had cell phones.
Even as a teen/young adult, IRC was more of an "old nerdy IT guy" hangout spot, so I rarely got involved with it, despite joining the IT profession in the military. I expected it to die out as more advanced web functionality approached, but I guess some people really like the classics, and it's surprisingly still a thing today.
Oh, and 4chan was a great site back in its early days, but then too many young kids started joining it and taking the "free speech" jokes seriously, so now it's become a breeding ground for fascist misogynistic alt-right extremists. We used to joke around about that stuff, testing the mods to see what our censor limits were, since 4chan liked to advertise itself as the only place on the Internet where you could speak your mind without being silenced or banned. And, well... some people really pushed those boundaries to the extreme and eventually turned the site into a cesspool.
I used to get on 4chan about 13 years ago. From my experience, it was a cesspool even way back then—but mostly on random. There were some other communities that were really cool. I kind of wish that was still a thing
Lemmy, discord and occasionally VRChat
I've never seen misskey. I'll have to check it out
Yeah I just noticed.. that's a shame
Use https://firefish.socialits a misskey fork with more features and has a mostly english speaking community
Thank you!
Lemmy, GitHub, Hacker News, a number of blogs in my RSS reader of choice (Reeder).