Helix because it’s simple and works without tweaking it.

That’s Instagram in its normal state, right now my Instagram feed basically turned into LiveLeak

Stuff like this is why I’m nervous to take any medications for my mental health

I used to get a lot of news off Instagram, but lately I’ve noticed that a lot of radical stuff like protests have basically disappeared off my feed, and other people I’ve talked to have said that this is happening with Twitter as well. Now it’s mostly just fear-mongering headlines with no reporting on defensive actions, despite there being tons of protests all over the place in the past few days. The 50501 protests were a lot bigger than I thought they’d be, and the fact that there’s barely any reporting on them is extremely concerning and I think is intentional. Meanwhile I’ve seen an increasing amount of radical stuff pop up on RedNote, like protests and pro-Luigi stuff, while at the same time somehow maintaining a calmer and more unifying vibe (also no ads), so it definitely seems like a better platform (compared to other options that are algorithm-driven) and I’ve been browsing it more instead of Instagram lately. Also, I’m trying to look for ways to connect with more people IRL, which I think is one of the most important things people can do right now to fight the isolating and divisive design of capitalism.

Using AI like Deepseek is a lot easier than shifting through 50 search results, if the question is for a relatively new technology though then it usually doesn’t work

They claim to be anarchist and I’ve seen a lot of users from there criticize Democrats, although they hate Marxists also, so I’m not sure. They’re also one of the few instances that federates with Hexbear, but they do block Lemmygrad.

If by “diverse” you mean “has western conservatives”, then considering how the entire concept of the fediverse is progressive, you’re not going to find many of them here. On Reddit, there’s r/AskPolitics which overall leans liberal and is US centric but is more open to discussion than other subreddits. There’s some other debate subreddits as well which you might be interested in. They’re helpful for developing political views, but after that hearing the same BS from people who have fundamentally different values gets tiring and people leave so that’s why there aren’t many of those spaces.

If you’re open to other viewpoints that are opposed to both Republican and Democrat, leftist instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and dbzer0 have that, and they can have very different stances on other issues as well (i.e. Lemmygrad vs dbzer0). They can still be echo-chambery (which is hard to avoid) but they also tend to have more users that are interested in intellectual debate.

As far as what instance actually has the most diverse points of view, I’d say lemm.ee which federates with basically everybody and I’ve seen users there from all over the political spectrum. However, there’s isn’t much in terms of political discussion there compared to other instances.

I’m not sure, that’s the one reason I use Instagram also. You could use something like MyInsta, which blocks ads and I think lets you disable shit like Reels. You could also try using an RSS feed with proxygram, although I’ve found the public instances to be unreliable and I’m not sure if it still works. Otherwise, you’re going to need to somehow convince them to use a certain Mastodon instance instead (offering to host one for your local area might make people more interested, but even then good luck with that).

“Communities” would work well because most people understand that it describes a group of people with similar interests which is basically what Lemmy instances are (whereas “instance” sounds borderline meaningless to most people as if you’re trying to push them onto a tech project they don’t understand). The Lemmy “c/” could be called “subcommunities” or “sublemmies” or something like that which would help people who are familiar with Reddit understand what they are as well.

no they’re just negative people

Call them “communities”, not “instances”, that might work better

I saw it as an open source Reddit alternative a few years ago and signed up, then left and went back to Reddit because nobody was using it. Then the API stuff happened, some Reddit users switched to Lemmy so I’ve been browsing it now, switched between a few instances and am now back here.

(I do wish it had more communities for specific topics and locations like Reddit has, and ironically a lot of FOSS discussion is still on Reddit also.)

Hey do you want to go get some pizza after work? BTW I love this new messenger called Lemmy, I feel so much safer that we’re not being spied on! C ya

My friend on acid walking into a building and then making the absolute loudest most evil sounding laugh imaginable that echoed throughout the entire area

It might think it’s a video embed or something, this seems like a security issue

I’m addicted to my laptop and basically any social media platform. Block one and I’ll find plenty of others to waste my time on.

If supporting Kamala is your definition of a leftist echochamber you clearly haven’t browsed Lemmy much

I’m a duck btw