Other than the points already made in replies, there's the fact that the only thing discussed in those places is how terrible the thing they're trying to replace is.
Every so often I get curious about something like Mastadon or Bluesky because it comes up here again. So I head over to see whatsup, and it's just post after post about how terrible Twitter is, and how badly it's doing now. Okay, I get it, you moved from Twitter because of blah, can you move on to all the things you _wanted_ to post on Twitter now?
I don't know which circles you visit, but out of my discover feed only one was lamenting about the old internet. Nobody was talking about other social media, the topics that dominated was stock market, stock market, and more stock market.
> there's the fact that the only thing discussed in those places is how terrible the thing they're trying to replace is.
If you only go check it after there is some major news that get people talking about it, then yes you'll probably end up seeing mostly this annoying meta-conversation around the Fediverse.
However, if you manage to stick around just a bit longer you will see that there is a tiny-but-growing number of people who are using Mastodon/Lemmy/Peertube "just" because they have found enough interesting people and conversation.
There is also nothing stopping you from taking initiative and starting the conversation around other, "better" topics. I made a habit of posting at least 3-5 links every day to Lemmy. You can always push out some introduction post on Mastodon with some relevant hashtags to see if you can help bootstrap a community, etc.
[0]: https://communick.news/u/rglullis?page=1&sort=New&view=Posts
As with most[^1] social platforms, what you see is determined by who you follow.
[^1] "Most" may be an overstatement these days.
Not true on FB anymore, but a long way. What I see in my feed.
1. Racist meme - probably because I am visible ethnic minority so they hope it is rage bait. I continue to see a lot of wolf whistle racism on FB although I ignore it. A lot of it reads like it is written by someone who is not a native English speaker.
2. Sponsored post advertising a course for kids who want to be lawyers. Probably because I have a teenage daughter and I am an admin of two home education related groups. Not relevant to anything my kids wants to do though.
3. A post from a group I am in.
4. A stupid anti-home ed post - one of these ones where they take an image of a post somehwere else and mock it. More rage bait. It also talks about American stuff (you have school taxes, apparent?) and I am in the UK.
5. A map from a group I am not in that is copied from Our World in Data.
6. A sponsored post for a luxury bed.
7. A meme from a group I think is stupid, suggesting you encourage your daughters to dress modestly.
8. Pictures posted by a friend.
9. A post from a group I am in..
10. A post from someone I have never heard of.
That makes three determined by who I follow, to seven algorithmically chosen.
>I continue to see a lot of wolf whistle racism on FB although I ignore it. A lot of it reads like it is written by someone who is not a native English speaker.
I'm sure you had nothing like this in mind, but I found this humorous:
"There's a lot of racism on Facebook" "But I'm sure it's written by those illiterate foreigners"
Again, i'n certain you don't actually think like that, just letting you know how it can be misinterpreted because I'm above average sensitive about that (being ESL myself).
Of course I did not intend that. In think its significance is that it is intended to be rage bait, rather than being written by genuine racists.
That's an ingestion problem
Yeah, FB got this bad over the last years. I was a big advocate for Facebook, I really saw the value in having a feed based on posts of people/pages I choose to follow. These days, it's full of absolute garbage, if I open it by mistake, I'm disgusted.