Skyrim, LL, and the Fediverse

[DocClox]

TL;DR:

 

I'm looking for a Reddit alternative. Lemmy and the Fediverse look like decent contenders. However finding an instance with good content for Skyrim and similar isn't particularly easy, and ones that are likely to tolerate LL type content even less so. So I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or recommendations on the subject.

 

A Reddit Alternative

 

What Cory Doctorow would call the Esnshittification of Reddit proceeds apace. Reddit are following Twitter's lead in charging for API access, with a view to shutting down all the unofficial apps. That's going to stop me reading from my phone. Reddit's mobile app is deliberately awful, the official Reddit app is worse, and on the desktop it's only a matter of time before they withdraw oldreddit and make everyone use the awful new site.

 

Sooner or later, I'm going to want out. This is a good time to start scouting alternatives.

 

The Fediverse

 

The Fediverse is a distributed social networking system that federates lots of servers with no central control. You subscribe to the instances that support your interests, and use an app like Mastodon or Lemmy to browse the content. However, not all instances support all sorts of content. I'm looking for gaming instances, preferably news that are interested in Bethesda style games, and preferably ones which are tolerant of boobies in posted images.

 

So, Recommendations?

 

I'm not really interested in subscribing to all and sundry on the off chance they might be ssuitable, just to unsub again. I'd sooner be selective from the start. Trouble is, there's not a lot of fine detail about the instances listed on the mastodon site, just some generalities, and there doesn't seem to be a way to browse casually. So I'm wondering if anyone else has looked into this and what their findings may have been.

 

Oh, and before anyone says "Discord", I'll just say that I'm not at all interested in moderating all my future chats through a single corporate entity that demands a strongly verified email address before you even start.

[DrunkenCow]

The only aggravation free alternative is to destroy all digital devices and make real friends.  

 

Software goes from decent to crap based on the whims of the people in charge of it and is subject to the whims of bureaucrats as to what is allowed to be posted or even exist in a dns listing.

[DocClox]

21 hours ago, DrunkenCow said:

The only aggravation free alternative is to destroy all digital devices and make real friends.  

 

Sure. We could all sit around and talk about tractors and and other things of local interest, and about how things were better in the old days, before they invented that new-fangled internal combustion engine. I could get a flat cap and a whippet and a walking stick, and they'd reserve me a seat in the local pub.

 

Then again, I might not get quite the same synergy that you can get from having the conversation include people from New York, London and Melbourne. I mean I could try shouting really loudly, I suppose. Although that would probably get me kicked out of the pub, so there goes the primary benefit of the approach.

 

21 hours ago, DrunkenCow said:

Software goes from decent to crap based on the whims of the people in charge of it and is subject to the whims of bureaucrats as to what is allowed to be posted or even exist in a dns listing.

 

Yeah, OK. You have to occasionally make a bit of an effort if you want to find a minimally shitty solution. Saying "it all turns bad, there's nothing to be done" is a counsel of despair. I like to think we can do better than that.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by DocClox

[KoolHndLuke]

I've looked into a few sites as possible alternatives, but the communities are so small and there's barely any traffic on them to stay interested for long. That is when looking for sites that support both Beth game modding and NSFW. Some games have very big, robust modding communities for instance that I just haven't played and really don't intend to.

 

But honestly, everything is migrating to Discord anymore and it seems we just have to accept that.

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I've looked into a few sites as possible alternatives, but the communities are so small and there's barely any traffic on them to stay interested for long.

> That's because LL is

 

> Few times i was very close to live the forum but people like you (you know who you are) made me stay. And I am glad I did.

 

[DocClox]

48 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I've looked into a few sites as possible alternatives, but the communities are so small and there's barely any traffic on them to stay interested for long. That is when looking for sites that support both Beth game modding and NSFW. Some games have very big, robust modding communities for instance that I just haven't played and really don't intend to.

 

Annoying, but fits with what I've seen. If you're not a privacy nut or a Free Software type, there doesn't seem to be much happening on a lot of them.

 

48 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

But honestly, everything is migrating to Discord anymore and it seems we just have to accept that.

 

 

I fear I shall prove a slow learner. I'll buy a flat cap and a whippet before I trust my discourse to that place.

 

Either that or go back to IRC and see if there are any fellow dinosaurs still frolicking in the Lost World. One of the two.

 

43 minutes ago, Evaloves4 said:

> That's because LL is

 

> Few times i was very close to live the forum but people like you (you know who you are) made me stay. And I am glad I did.

 

 

No shade on LL whatsoever!

 

That said, LL doesn't have the subscriber base of Reddit, and sometimes I want to ask questions of a non-perverted nature. It's occasionally useful to be able to tap more than one resource.

Edited June 7, 2023 by DocClox

[KoolHndLuke]

24 minutes ago, DocClox said:

That said, LL doesn't have the subscriber base of Reddit, and sometimes I want to ask questions of a non-perverted nature. It's occasionally useful to be able to tap more than one resource.

I know a lot of people hate that site, but I've gotten some pretty good info off of it from time to time. Just can't bring myself to participate there for reasons. Kind of reminds me of Nexus too much I think, but with a bit more intelligent topics/responses.

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, DocClox said:

 

Annoying, but fits with what I've seen. If you're not a privacy nut or a Free Software type, there doesn't seem to be much happening on a lot of them.

 

 

I fear I shall prove a slow learner. I'll buy a flat cap and a whippet before I trust my discourse to that place.

 

Either that or go back to IRC and see if there are any fellow dinosaurs still frolicking in the Lost World. One of the two.

 

 

No shade on LL whatsoever!

 

That said, LL doesn't have the subscriber base of Reddit, and sometimes I want to ask questions of a non-perverted nature. It's occasionally useful to be able to tap more than one resource.

> My apologies if I missed the point of your thread. Sometimes I do that because of my lame knowledge of English. Sorry.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I know a lot of people hate that site, but I've gotten some pretty good info off of it from time to time. Just can't bring myself to participate there for reasons.

> My prince used to be subscriber on that site when he played Skyrim. He didn't like their "aggressiveness", whenever he was online they forced their page opening all the time even when he wasn't logged on on their site. he hated it so he unsubscribed after some time.

[DocClox]

13 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I know a lot of people hate that site, but I've gotten some pretty good info off of it from time to time. Just can't bring myself to participate there for reasons. Kind of reminds me of Nexus too much I think, but with a bit more intelligent topics/responses.

 

 

I can dig it. I refuse to participate in Nexus for anything more than purely technical mod queries or bug reports.

 

Reddit ... hasn't always been this bad, I think. Or maybe bits of it are better than others. I started there eight years ago, mainly because I wanted an active Morrowind forum, and that's not really a game LL covers. I stuck around to get involved with teslore (and gave up sometime after ESO came out - why argue about lore that gets rewritten monthly based on focus groups and fanservice?) but carried on with a few other subs. I'm mainly active in the starfield sub right now.

 

The users and mods get a lot of shit on Reddit, much of it deserved, but lately they seem determined to force everyone onto the shittiest way of reading it possible. It might not be time to get out yet, but its certainly time to think "exit strategy".

 

19 minutes ago, Evaloves4 said:

> My apologies if I missed the point of your thread. Sometimes I do that because of my lame knowledge of English. Sorry.

 

No offense taken. I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not abandoning LL

 

7 minutes ago, Evaloves4 said:

> My prince used to be subscriber on that site when he played Skyrim. He didn't like their "aggressiveness", whenever he was online they forced their page opening all the time even when he wasn't logged on on their site. he hated it so he unsubscribed after some time.

 

Yeah. That sort of thing is the reason I use "oldreddit" and unofficial apps like Infinity. But Infinity is going away (because hobby developers can't afford a million bucks a year license fees - no exaggeration!) and they're determined to push us all off oldreddit and on their barely functional JavaScript soaked replacement.

 

This has been coming for a long time, I think.

[DrunkenCow]

On 6/7/2023 at 7:59 AM, DocClox said:

 

Sure. We could all sit around and talk about tractors and and other things of local interest, and about how things were better in the old days, before they invented that new-fangled internal combustion engine. I could get a flat cap and a whippet and a walking stick, and they'd reserve me a seat in the local pub.

 

Then again, I might not get quite the same synergy that you can get from having the conversation include people from New York, London and Melbourne. I mean I could try shouting really loudly, I suppose. Although that would probably get me kicked out of the pub, so there goes the primary benefit of the approach.

 

 

Yeah, OK. You have to occasionally make a bit of an effort if you want to find a minimally shitty solution. Saying "it all turns bad, there's nothing to be done" is a counsel of despair. I like to think we can do better than that.

 

 

 

See, this is just you whining about your neighbors and being unwilling to leave the comfort of the screen you carry everywhere to find that your neighbors may actually have the same interests the AI posting from Nigeria has.

 

You asked for a reddit alternative, you were given an honest answer.  There is none and very little keeping LL from being dumped from the internet like a certain forum dedicated to tropical horticulture.

[DocClox]

2 hours ago, DrunkenCow said:

You asked for a reddit alternative, you were given an honest answer. 

 

And I thank you for your response and commend you for your sincerity. Nice meeting you.

[Guest]

I tried Dread some time ago, but there was nothing about Skyrim there. 

I ask myself if the dark web is ever going to mature, since even honest farmers are turning into outlaws these days. 

[DocClox]

Fediverse isn't dark web, it's just decentralized.

 

There was someone posted a skyrim modding instance over the weekend. I registered, but when I tried to post I couldn't log in. Technical difficulties somewhere along the linem, I assume. Either that, or I'm Doing It Wrong.

 

I'll post if I get it sorted out.

[Splendor Solis]

There isn't really an alternative. Reddit pretty much killed all the oldschool forums; and then its size gave it an inherent quality that no other, technically better alternative could compete with ("network effects"). Alt-tech has an inherent flaw in that the people most likely to use it are the ones getting banned from what the platform is spinning off. The owners of the platform, at this point, have two options: (1) allow porn, gamer words, and generally "toxic" content to dominate the site, or (2) implement content control that will instantly alienate a large chunk of your audience and probably set you down a slippery slope of being no better than the big sites. Note that being the wild west will kill all ad-revenue and censoring people will kill donations. The thing with these platforms meant to be mainstream instead of niche is that they need to be the first place your grandma posts pictures of her cat and the first place your 13 year old brother shows off his totally real triple kill in Call of Duty. Anything less than that and you are (at best) a small niche forum.

 

For Skyrim in particular, I don't know if I've seen anything active that isn't reddit, nexus, loverslab, twitter, 4chan, the steam forums, or whatever bethesda's forum is called. It's not surprising though. Even giant social media platforms haven't been particularly profitable.

[DocClox]

6 hours ago, Splendor Solis said:

then its size gave it an inherent quality that no other, technically better alternative could compete with ("network effects").

 

Platforms fall. Remember MySpace? Yahoo? AOL?

 

 

[Splendor Solis]

On 6/13/2023 at 2:36 AM, DocClox said:

 

Platforms fall. Remember MySpace? Yahoo? AOL?

 

 

That's a good point, but those platforms also weren't monoliths like some of the modern companies are. It was possible to capture a niche like students, old people, etc, and build up to a universal platform. Now the mega-platforms themselves have subsections to control the niches and the gulf between the large and small platforms is so big that it's a lot harder to build up from zero. New platforms are certainly possible, but they will have to be genuinely innovative in a way that makes them more desirable to consumers. If someone tries releasing reddit 2.0 in 2023, it's almost certainly going to be crushed under oligopic competition.

[OrcishOatmeal]

I've been testing out Lemmy for the past week, it seems the basics are there but nothing else, the content is very light, its good the userbase is growing but a lot of users (including me) just lurk looking for images - I have tried to find more niche communities (subreddits) and post content but i dont think its going anywhere yet

 

It also doesnt help theres no reliable apps yet, from what i've read, there isnt a proper api yet, im currently in testflights (beta ios apps) for 3 different lemmy apps, they all have different functions that work and not, it seems very jumbled

 

And ofcourse, the federation system itself, my main account is currently on sh.just.works and alt/NSFW account is Lemmynsfw.com, it isnt an issue at the moment but i could see that if there is a big update to lemmy and instances aren't updated that could create problems

 

My biggest worry is owners of different instances can "defederate" other instances, so, if one person from a large instance says somthing bad, then could the whole instance be ruined?