I’ve been on Beehaw and Lemmy.world for the past two weeks now and while people seem to be posting content that isn’t about Reddit or Twitter or how great federated platforms are, such content does not receive as many comments/discussion as topics about the Reddit API controversy, or the current Twitter controversy, etc.
I prefer to sort by “new” when on the main page of either Beehaw or Lemmy.world. Most posts scarcely get a few upvotes and almost no comments. Without comments, I feel far less inclined to leave a comment unless there’s a discussion already going on.
It feels like the gravity of discussion is still mostly centered on complaints and discussion about Reddit (or Big Tech in general), despite this platform being billed as a Reddit replacement. Hopefully that changes with time but there’s a reason I haven’t left Reddit yet.
I do wonder how new communities will reach critical mass. I don’t understand how fediverse searches and tags work yet. How do people discover a new community about cute seals or Toledo or Fortnite?
Do the creators of these communities need to be using tags in a certain way?
Lemmy Explorer filters also through the descriptions: https://lemmyverse.net/communities
and there’s also still Lemmy Community Browser: https://browse.feddit.de/
community promo: https://lemmy.ca/c/communitypromo
wow this Lemmy exists! https://lemmy.ca/c/wowthislemmyexists
a few more search-sites turn up with this filter: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=find+communities
afaik Lemmy does not have a tag recognition yet.