Digg:
It had potential, but after becoming an ai news aggregator now there’s none.
Lemmy:
Low engagement / kinda dead. Also, I have heard that the growth is slowing down(somebody pls provide a citation for this).
Besides that, it’s pretty much reddit, for better or for worse.
9gag:
I just made a post there, my first impressions are not good. Got insulted and my post got removed. Now, that might have something to do with me not understanding how the website works, but only time will tell. I will spend more time there to see if it’s worth anything.
federation certainly allows the bubble to close - {dot}world is an example; zero hate, people can absolutely choose to ensmollen their PoV if that makes their world safer. the nice thing is, interesting, thriving alter-views are only a federated instance away :-)
I tend towards the democratic socialist point of view as a default, but damn-me if hexbear isn’t both entertaining and informative, even if I disagree with some of their more… spicy(?) positions (sometimes vehemently).
lemmy{dot}ml is one of the most widely federated instances around, primarily because its a pretty diverse mix of lefty and lefty-ish ideas. lemmygrad{dot} hexbear{dot}net and blahaj{dot}zone and others equality as infuriating/interesting are all accessible from lemmy{dot}ml. its a pretty ideal instance, for me at least.
one thing I do try to make a point of doing is preferentially interacting on non {dot}world posts and comments. many peeps will post across community instances to encourage engagent diversity. keeping things active on non-{dot}world communities helps everyone.