I really wanted to like tildes, but it was just a little bit too small for me. Lemmy/piefed is about the right size: you can usually get a core group of 2-3 people who are into a niche, with various other "occasionals" contributing (my personal examples: !gothindustrial@lemmy.world, !sumo@lemmy.world, !juggalos@lemmy.world) Long-term it'd be nice to be just a bit bigger so we'd have a couple more core members in niche subs, or cycling thru people in case folks drop off bc of "life", but we're in a good place ATM.

I liked the UI when I first encountered it, but it being invite-only killed what interest I had in it pretty quick during the 2023 reddit exodus. Seems to still be invite only in 2026.

tildes has a very strong bent. if you say anything the admin disagrees with you get banned.

was banned there pretty fast because i kept quoting legal stuff, and the users didn't like that and the nor did the admin. they don't like facts that interrupt their biases.

for me quality discussion should include facts, not consist of convenient narratives that are highly biased. but that isn't what the users and the admin their believe. fwiw i also got my comments for removed for my disagreement about movies being good/bad/great, which is entirely subjective. but apparently my dislike of tropey action films, like Christopher Nolan's and Hans Zimmers BWAHHH BWAAHH nonsense, upset people.