AirBNB was great when it first started out. It was basically people renting out a room in their home for a night or two, for far cheaper costs than hotels and in areas where a hotel wasn't as readily available. It was a good way for those folks to make some cash on the side and helped the traveler find convenient low cost housing for a couple nights

Unfortunately companies and people decided they could buy up properties and start a business selling out rooms, prices skyrocketed and it no longer became worth it. I just stick to hotels now (or hostels if I ever decide to backpack through Europe or something)

Yeah this is the issue I have. I wouldn't even be on instagram if it my friends weren't on it. Pixelfed has a much tougher road to snatch users than a place like Lemmy or even Mastodon for that reason. If everyone I know hopped over with me (which let's be real, I would never be able to get everyone to do that because they would run into the same issue with their own friend networks) then i'd gladly move over.

I have to be honest, the fact we have an active alternative(s) to reddit at last makes this a complete success for me. I've lowkey despised reddit for years. Particularly from 2016 on when bots kind of overran the website and the front page was just filled with toxic garbage that never really went away to this day. I actually did use the revanced patch to get my RIF app working again (though I can't get my ad-less premium back unfortunately), but I've been on here far more than there. I think im just having more fun on Lemmy than I have been on reddit in years. The only reasons I hop back are for sports team specific communities (and really the game threads because I like interacting with other people watching when im watching alone). On the instance i'm on currently there are generated game threads but it hasn't got the users to make them particularly active as of yet. If that ever happens i'll happily cut off reddit for good

So when I was scoping out an alternative, there were five platforms I was looking at.

1. Lemmy
2. Kbin
3. Squabbles
4. Tildes
5. Raddle

I opted against places like tumblr since I was looking for a similar experience to reddit (didn't mind some innovations, but places like mastodon or tumblr weren't the right fit)

Squabbles was interesting but I did not care for the interface, especially on desktop. It's a bit better on mobile but it's basically the card interface on steroids and it's not my preference. I like the flexibility in apps/ways you can consume Lemmy in comparison

Tildes is invite only and tightly controlled. If you aren't interested in like the 4 topics of discussion they have there it's just not that engaging.

Raddle is open source and not for profit which are pluses, but outside anarchist political communities and a few meme ones theres basically nothing else there. Also some of the theming for their forums on desktop are atrocious.

Kbin has some pluses in that in that it can interact with Lemmy and the fediverse. It even has some better integration with places like mastodon due to the microblogging tab. It's still an option in my mind depending on how it and Lemmy evolve. But for now im on Lemmy and haven't regretted it.

I think the big reason Lemmy grew though was exposure and circumstance. It's very decentralized nature I think appealed to people who have experienced what guys like Musk and Spez have done to their social media sites lately and the idea that if an admin/owner here goes off the rails there's some recourse available besides having to entirely leave the platform they've invested their time and energy to. Squabbles, tildes and raddle can't really promise that by the fundamental fact they are closed platforms. So when the reddit drama popped up and after what people have dealt with in Facebook, tumbler, digg, Twitter, etc this place and the fediverse was pushed really hard as an alternative experience that sought to resolve this recurring problem.

POV of future Nationals SP Paul Skenes 👃👃

"Only 4 of us moderating"

"Refuses to add mods meanwhile accepting 1000s of applications to join and building said community in a federated space where anyone outside their instance can participate"

Yep, definitely well planned out by those folks hahaha.

Love it

I can't wait to see the jomboy video on this, Davey's meltdown was so funny to watch

It takes some adjustment. I was gonna keep reddit but I ended up deleting it and all the apps. I'd love to say it was because of Lemmy but I think his whole saga showed me how addicted I was getting to the platform and that it was better to cut bait for good. I did the same with Twitter as well (or deactivated it, for some reason they don't let you straight up delete it right away)

Between the rss feed I have set up, Lemmy, and my insta, discord and text groups I think I'm pretty satisfied. I get all my news and content with far less algorithm shenanigans, low effort spam and rage baiting.

Currently not doing enough to help. Real life has just been far too eventful lately and I haven't been online much haha. But I will try to convince people to subscribe to some of the sports communities my instance is hosting. Want to help grow it.

Besides that, just upvote as much as possible and comment as much as possible, and throw out posts for a community even if you think it's not that interesting. Just need to fill up the wall and show there's frequent activity and the people will come

They may end up being right, but man I'm not a fan of squabbles user experience either. It's just an awkward layout personally

$59.99 for an Atari 2600 game in 2023? That's wild