The thing is it’s super hard to start a niche community due to a fundamental issue with federation. Which instance do you start the community in, and how do people find it?
With reddit you just needed /r/[obscurehobby]. In lemmy you need to check all the instances, and you may find a different versions of the community, but all of them are dead with like 2 posts from 8 months ago because they never got the critical mass needed to catch on because the community was split.
Reddit also has the problem that if someone makes a community and starts moderating like a dinghole, it can be hard to get people to join one with better moderation.
With federation you can have the same name multiple times, so when people search “[hobby]” they can see all of them.
Then you could have a merged view of all the [hobby] from different sources, and if a mod who arbitrarily decides to interpret the rules unfairly or err on the side of permanent bans without discussion, warnings, or recourse, you can at least still interact with other [hobby].
There are serious discusions, you just have to find them. Mostly news and technology articles, but there could be more.
The thing is it’s super hard to start a niche community due to a fundamental issue with federation. Which instance do you start the community in, and how do people find it?
With reddit you just needed /r/[obscurehobby]. In lemmy you need to check all the instances, and you may find a different versions of the community, but all of them are dead with like 2 posts from 8 months ago because they never got the critical mass needed to catch on because the community was split.
https://piefed.social/communities
Piefed search is your answer. You can filter by activity. It also has feeds too that are topic themed.
I’d actually argue its way easier now to start new communities on the Fediverse than Reddit, for a variety of reasons.
Reddit also has the problem that if someone makes a community and starts moderating like a dinghole, it can be hard to get people to join one with better moderation.
With federation you can have the same name multiple times, so when people search “[hobby]” they can see all of them.
Then you could have a merged view of all the [hobby] from different sources, and if a mod who arbitrarily decides to interpret the rules unfairly or err on the side of permanent bans without discussion, warnings, or recourse, you can at least still interact with other [hobby].