I still use Reddit daily for browsing non-PH news and happenings, but I completely stopped posting. Every once in a while I’ll try to comment something but delete it immediately after. I realized that replying and posting ate up a huge chunk of my time and often derail my momentum when working, so I don’t really miss it. But at the same time, posting my thoughts is an outlet and it’s also nice to revisit to see where my headspace was at a particular point. As an alternative, I just post it on my FB feed and set it to “Only Me”.

It doesn’t help that r/PH is a shit-show echo chamber now, mostly because of the users. Nakaka-turnoff yung mga matapobre, antinatalists, eugenicists, and low-effort threads. I haven’t been there for a week pero pustahan mga posts diyan tungkol na naman sa pinipilit sila magperform sa Christmas Party tapos pag malapit na bagong taon sasabihin nila ang lakas lakas magpatunog ng tambutso hulugan naman daw yung motor. They’re seriously just as bad as the bastards on FB’s comment sections.

That said, I’m happy it all played out the way it did. I was able to get UndustFixation started, able to finish some of my PS5 backlogs, go out of the country for the first time since 2012, and I’m bonding with my daughter now through our shared interest in blind boxes (she got me into it actually lol).

There are Filipinos in Lemmy, even those who didn’t participate in this community back when it was more alive. I suspect there were more Filipinos in Lemmy that didn’t participate in the community than those who did. Perhaps it is the usual 90% lurker, 9% commenter, 0.9% poster mix, with the remaining percentage being what I call “community leaders” who set the tone and the stage for the community.

The problem, as far as I see it, is with the very nature of non-mainstream social media: it’s non-mainstream. Sherlock-level take, I know, but the problem is that while there’s a lot of Filipinos using social media, and some of them use non-mainstream social media (such as Mastodon and Lemmy), I doubt it’s enough to sustain a community (at this early state, at least) without some unholy level of effort and commitment not just from the community leaders, but also from the members. I am guilty of this lack of commitment myself.

Personally, I stayed here on Lemmy, but I wasn’t really the type of person that can comment and make posts that are meaningful and relevant to this community. Unfortunately, I guess there’s more people like me here than otherwise.

Moreover, I don’t think it’s easy to spot a Filipino in those non-mainstream media unless they tell you. And as far as my sample size of less than a handful is concerned, they aren’t really coming out of the woodwork just as easily to form a Filipino community in those non-mainstream social media. This is perhaps a consequence of Filipinos (of my generation at least, the 90’s kids) getting used to a social media not of their own, they’ve managed to blend in and are fine with it. Unless there’s a big reason to come out of the shadows and participate in, or create, a Filipino community, they won’t.

Considering how old Facebook has already been when it gained traction here in the Philippines, how old Reddit was when /r/Philippines really got active, I think this community is just before its time. The only kinds of communities here on Lemmy that I can consider self-sustaining and mature enough are the Linux communities and other more geeky-pop-culture communities (LotR, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc). These communities really paint a picture of what appeals to the ordinary Lemmy user right now, and perhaps an indication of what kind of users tend to adopt non-mainstream social media.

Oh, I forgot to answer the question:

Is there any hope for any move outside of the main social medias?

If what you mean by ‘move’ is something like moving /r/Philippines into !philippines@lemmy.world, then no. I don’t think there was any hope of that happening to begin with. What I think might be possible is to have enough people here in Lemmy such that there’s enough Filipinos (or other people interested in the Philippines) to organically grow this community.

EDIT:

I forgot to answer the OP’s question, my bad.

There’s no concievable way for Filipinos to move on from Facebook when it’s the only platform that’s mostly usable with free data. It’s been a while since I had to use it, but iirc the experience was mostly complete sans Post media. Comments loaded photos just fine and most people uploaded the post’s photos in the comments as well, as a courtesy.

So yeah, bar facebook making an incredible mistake, zuck’s trojan is here to stay.

And Reddit just got lucky that they implemented New Reddit on the Web and first-party apps on Mobile right as it took off here in Ph, so most pinoys don’t know what they missed out on Reddit’s more focused, simpler times and with the relatively recent death of the 3P API.

As I read somewhere on the internet, Reddit does have an interest in expanding the Philippine userbase. But I think it’s a vague plan at best and at some point, Reddit wont get the ROI they want.

Reddit isn’t new or dazzling like Bluesky. It popped off in 2019 and the pandemic helped it maintain momentum but it has the same problems Lemmy has right now.

The biggest subreddits are chugging along but its not gonna foster any small communities the same way a Facebook group will. and I suspect most lurkers will just go back to facebook eventually.

You could post about a single thing, even mundane, in your life a day. That would create a touch point to develop a conversation.