That is what subscriptions and the local timeline are for. The “all” should show whatever is getting the most attention.

“All” is what new users typically see. Or see immediately after clicking from “Local” if that’s what the instance is set to default to. New users do not have any subscriptions, and if they’re just browsing as guest, they literally can’t subscribe or do any kind of curation.

First impressions are important. Someone comes here brand new and the first impression is typically that of an angry mob.

So to get a bigger userbase, the “default, guest experience” needs to provide a good first impression. This…preachy/angry/politics/news flood is highly likely to just turn them away and not even bother trying to curate to find the good bits.

Ooh, nice. +1 for your admin team. Maybe my instance would consider doing something similar. It is a topic-based instance after all.

Less politics, less news, less “I’m mad about this so you should be mad about it too” rage posting/armchair activism, less “ist’s and ism’s”. Less preachy shit about capitalism bad, communism good (or maybe .ml should just be blocked by default?). Less bitching about Reddit (I swear, I’ve heard less about friends’ exes than some people bitch about Reddit here). Less “hurr durr power tripping mods” circlejerking.

More content about cool stuff, hobbies, amazing feats, movies, books, TV shows, etc.

This place has much of the latter but it’s completely overshadowed by the former to the point you have to almost dig for it. Even blocking the overt news, politics, and political “humor” communities, it still seeps in to comics and memes and unrelated communities.

There’s still plenty of good in this world, but you’d never know it from looking at what’s always topping the feed here.

And a new user checking this place out is going to be immediately hit in the face with all of the former and probably not even see the latter.

Don’t feel bad or at least don’t feel alone. Such is generally my luck too.

One thing has become abundantly clear: You, me, and so many others in the comments here need to be in charge of phone design and not whoever’s been doing it for the last 10 years.

Look at it from a new user’s perspective; someone who has not curated their feed or otherwise “made the fediverse what they want” yet. e.g. They land on Lemmy World or another big instance and their default sort is “active”. Doing that now in an incognito window, and half the front page is rage, same on the second, and the stuff that’s not are some random shitposts and Linux filling in.

Truth be told, looking at that, I probably wouldn’t want to sign up. Especially if I didn’t know that different instances have different cultures, etc.

Assuming they’re a normie (which we desperately fucking need here), I just don’t see that they’d want to stick around. Aside from trolls and spammers, the only people we seem to consistently attract here are the “Wah wah I was banned from Reddit” types and, while there’s certainly a sizable pool to draw from, I wouldn’t exactly consider them the pick of the litter for growing the fediverse.

The point of OPs post is that usage here is declining, and I am simply pointing out that I feel all the rage and politics is not particularly inviting.

Edit: And you know what? I’m just going to fucking say it. There’s too many armchair activists here who won’t let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you’re not angry all the time then you’re somehow part of the problem.

We had the same thought. Right before I saw your reply, I added some hobby communities to my comment as examples.

This place is so flooded with politics and raging over the news that I’m about to choose a random hobby community that’s active and pick up said hobby just to be able to have something besides Star Trek and Linux to talk about here lol.

Just my two cents, but there’s just no reason for people to come here when it’s 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I’ve got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.

Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I’ve been pretty active there lately. If that’s not your thing, then there’s:

• !woodworking@lemmy.ca
• !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
• !artshare@lemmy.world
• !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
• !baking@sh.itjust.works
• !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
• !television@piefed.social
• !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
• !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world

If you’re like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net

The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we’re angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).

I’d love to see the keyboards and trackballs manufactured again if for no other purpose than having them available for other projects.

There was a project a while back called Beepberry that was a little handheld Linux thing that used Blackberry keyboards. Among other reasons, the supply of the Blackberry keyboards dried up so the project died.

I pre-ordered last June and got it toward the end of July. It seems to ship directly from the factory in Hong Kong, so you have to use the tracking link they send you until it clears customs in your country.

I did a first impressions post about it when I got it.

I’m really starting to feel like Android 11 is the “Windows 7” of Android.

I had the LG Genesis that was the spiritual successor to the enV. Loved the form factor but the battery life was abysmal at like 2 hours of use. Yay Android 2.2 lol.

Gemini PDA

Is that the one from PlanetCom? I’ve been looking at both their Gemini and Cosmo Communicator. Both were out of stock when I ended up going with the Minimal.

Source

Looks pretty pocketable (and gorgeous) to me.

I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.

just plain boredom with glass slabs

This. So much this. They’re all boring, too tall, and too skinny with about as much personality as a used up dryer sheet. It’s like they’re designed solely for scrolling an endless feed of mind-numbing slop. I remember being able to actually do things on my older smartphones (RDP, SSH, editing documents/spreadsheets, etc). You can still do those things now, but you basically have to break out a bluetooth keyboard to do anything more than the most basic things and it feels like trying to look at a panorama through a keyhole.

Love my deck … Kind of got side tracked gaming

You sound like me lol: Side tracked by the device’s primary purpose.

Apparently I said “Joe Dirt” sometime earlier in my life and my wish came true.

Every other post being “Promoted” bullshit, the slow-ass web UI, my former favorite app no longer working, and the bloated and track-y first party app. I was never a fan of “old reddit UI” , so that wasn’t a crutch like it was for others.

Nice. A lot more than RPis, too.

This is actually for a Banana Pi but it’s in the Pi Zero form factor so should be easy to modify.