Content quality and the rate of submission has clearly plummeted. /r/all has become stagnant, and completely filled with memes and shitposts. Comment quality has amazingly gotten even worse (4chan level in a lot of cases), and there are definitely less participants on threads.
In comparison, I've found commentary in the fediverse to be more active, engaged, and positive than Reddit has ever been - and I was there since before Digg. My kbin feed, with a bit of tweaking and expansion out to other instances, is more useful by far than Reddit ever was, and it's activity level is beginning to match what used to be common on Reddit.
I think that Reddit was banking on not having a competing centralized corporate entity to absorb their users, and that it would prevent a Digg style exodus from their site. And to some extent, they were right - users, primarily readers still came back to reddit and have continued to do so because it's still the easiest place to find content on the internet. But, as you can see from the slow heat death of /r/all - that's changing.
What Spez didn't count on was that their moderators and content creators - the real engine behind Reddit - would leave. He assumed the thrill of having a large audience would be enough of a carrot to keep them participating while he made the site more difficult to use. This was a significant miscalculation, as anyone who's ever run a forum knows. Only about 2% of your users on a site will post, which means that if you alienate that 2% by any significant amount, you'll see a following degradation of non-participating readers as the content dries up.
Huffman should have realized this, as in Reddit's early days, he and the other admins on the site would regularly post with sockpuppet accounts to keep the content flowing enough to maintain readership. This mess is clearly of his own making, and one that he personally should have anticipated given what he and the other admins had to do to build the community in the first place.
But what's more interesting to me is what this (and the Twitter debacle) has done to illustrate the flaws of relying on centralized media. It's created a discussion about the wider internet and an interest in expanding it that hasn't been really talked about since the last decade. There was no reason to expand out from the centralized services as long as they were working well, fairly, and with an eye towards fostering their communities. It's when they moved into looking at their users as profit centers, and their moderation of content as a means of social control that it became clear that this contract of social responsibility had been broken.
And when that contract was broken, it broke the soul of Reddit's community. Nobody wants to contribute to Reddit, because Reddit isn't about creating a good space for the internet community to grow anymore. It's about how much money it can make Spez, and most of us really don't feel like working for him for free.
Content quality and the rate of submission has clearly plummeted.
I’ve noticed this too. Almost all of the subs I regularly go to have been filled by obvious “seed”-content posting by brand new and never before seen in the sub accounts, with upvotes equaling some of the highest voted (for the sub). It actually pushed me to migrate to Lemmy more.
I’m really fascinated at how in the lead up to this they consistently alienated moderators and users so into reddit that they looked up 3PAs. Like they really went ham on the users that make their site work and go all shocked pikachu when people leave/disengage/protest. That’s a level of social incompetence I can’t conceptualise when the stakes are this high.
Extremely well said, and I would repost you to the bestof magazine if I didn't think bestof communities were lame.
As I keep reading about all of this unfolding, a phrase that keeps rattling around in my brain: oppositional defiance disorder.
I am not a doctor or psychiatrist so I am not being too serious by bringing it up, but I am facetiously curious about who has the worst ODD among all the players of this drama.
Is it Steve Huffman and his refusal to back down? Is it the rexxitors who jumped ship on June 12? Is it the redditors who stayed to troll Huffman and his edicts? Or is it the redditors who stayed and are crafting a bespoke cesspool in snoo's carapace?
Huffman has always been a narcissist, and notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to people challenging him - the fact he'd go in and edit other users comments critical of him speaks volumes as to both his sensitivity to criticism and the levels to which he'll stoop. I think these tendencies and Reddit's slow turn towards autocracy were exacerbated with the Tencent investment, and has only accelerated as the site attempts to become profitable.
So, I was on reddit for over 11 years, but I didn't arrive there from Digg. I remember a big kerfuffle surrounding Huffman and his willingness to change critical comments, but I was fairly oblivious to the ramifications of all that. I think I was just largely enjoying the halcyon days of Pao where you didn't have to think about reddit's corporate structure too far beyond how skivvy Conde Nast was.
This current controversy I guess seemed more relevant to me because I exclusively used 3PA to access reddit. Back when I had iPhones, I was paying for one of the tiers of Apollo because I liked it so much. I am pretty sure I used to use alien blue way way back in the day. I used these mainly because reddit didn't have an app on offer at all at these times and reddit for mobile was just inoperably clunky to use. As a share of the market, I was already brand loyal by the time reddit finally saw the writing on the wall that there was a need for an app. Now that I'm on Android, I was using Infinity (mixed feelings there about the fact that Infinity kept operating and I've since migrated and deleted my reddit accounts). I still feel resolved in my decision to leave reddit out of the principle of it all, and solidarity with Christian's mistreatment even though my app of choice is apparently staying online.
You refer to the Tencent movement as a notable moment that shifted the course of reddit. Any other pivotal moments that come to mind for you @arotrios ?
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
And the beautiful irony is that in their mission to secure an increased IPO valuation they merely reduced it substantially. Gonna need some more popcorn as we watch them burn it to the ground
The fact that Relay can stay free of charge while "exploring subscription options" means Reddit modified their terms with some developers. The original deal announced at the end of May meant devs would incur charges starting July 1, although they wouldn't have to pay for those charges until August. That would mean racking up potentially millions in costs right away.
Reddit said they would work with developers who kept communication open, but then they wouldn't answer emails. If a deal was made with Relay it would have been very last minute and therefore rather unprofessional.
I used Relay but will not reinstall because it is temporarily free. I am done with Reddit. They don't respect their users or recognize where their value derives from.
I also suspect that there were inconsistencies between pricing based on the 3rd party app in question. I don't mean that Apollo was being charged more (in proportion) for having a larger userbase compared to apps like Relay or narwhal, but that Apollo was being charged almost double per unit to access API than Relay or narwhal. I am reading between the lines of articles published two *weeks ago about this because it didn't make sense to me why these smaller apps would be able to afford the business model if Apollo had a $20M bill to pay in August.
What gets my goat is why didn't reddit ever just headhunt Christian or other 3PA developers and bring them into reddit corporate to build out their native app? That's what Google or Microsoft would have done to quash competition. Or, to be truly evil, hired Christian and then never let him work on apps again with both an NDA and a non-compete in place.
Huffman regularly calls reddit unprofitable with a heavy dose of ire, but I think there could have been a way to bring a reputable 3PA dev into the fold to keep the reddit native app at least comparable in UX.
They DID do that, when they bought Alien Blue. Then they promptly destroyed it. Good UX != profits. So they butchered it into some sort of zombie app where everything was designed to make them money. And that’s why they are pushing so hard to make EVERYONE use it.
If anything, they hate 3PA devs because they show users what the experience could be like - how good and clean it could be - if they didn’t have a greedy corporation trying to sabotage everything.
They don’t need to hire anyone to pacify them. Reddit doesn’t gaf what happens to the devs, whether they are pacified or not. It’s like a tiny baby fish cursing the ship that just harvested 120,000 fish in a net. The ship laughs, and sails away.
Hopefully things will be better once federation grows in popularity. I know I’ve been using it daily since this all started. But sadly I have to augment with reddit because there just aren’t enough people here yet.
Reddit just put itself at the end of the content website human centepede. Why bother re-inserting the 6-time digested poop somewhere further up the centepede?
This is hilarious. Reddit resorting to bots…like a new twitch streamer trying to con their way to partner. What a sad, sad outcome for what was once a great website.
Between Reddit and Twitter I hope big tech begins to take notice and realize they don’t control as much as they think they do. They’re much easier to replace than they think, and ultimately they’re just ad companies.
Reddit, reddit is on fire we don’t need no water, let that mother fucker burn, burn mother fucker. Now when we came out, we told you it was just about 3pa bad treatments, Then spez had to send internal letter with his motherfuckin' opinion about how futile the blackout is. Well this is how we gon' do this
Fuck spez, fuck reddit admins
Fuck any mods that are not protesting ,
And if you want to be down with reddit API decision , then fuck you too.
Reddit has been around for quite a while. There are those of us who used to be tech-savvy "back in the day" that don't handle change either quickly or well. For a casual social-media only user, this can be similar to the experience of a cave-person discovering fire. There are bound to be questions, especially when dealing with multiple types of instances on the fediverse. If we want this to grow into its full potential, we NEED to be patient and welcoming to even the most technologically illiterate.
There are those of us who used to be tech-savvy "back in the day" that don't handle change either quickly or well.
I feel personally attacked, lol.
The problem I find with the technologically illiterate is that they immediately blurt out what’s on their mind. They ask the same fucking questions over and over, without searching first. The signal to noise ratio drops way down and every day is the same shit.
I am more than happy to interact with people of all walks of life but the internet is very “Groundhog Day” compared with when techies were the only ones on here. I’m not sure what the solution is that gives us perpetual cake.
this platform doesn't have search and as far as I understand, doesn't want to have search. so where are you thinking people are supposed to search exactly?
I would love to see your tutorial about how to search for information here.
For those that enjoy using Reddit, they are perfectly happy to remain... so why try to force the issue?
Their criticisms of this place are most often correct - it does have less functionality, it does have a barrier to entry, starting right from the beginning in picking an instance to join, and if you later switch then you have to make a new account and start over (I think? although your old content would still be accessible, it wouldn't be "yours" anymore without logging into the old one). We prefer it anyway, but it's up to them what they want to do.
I’ve also noticed a pattern of people asking for the fediverse to just behave exactly like reddit and thinking ant architectural decision that differs from a users perspective is an antipattern
Yep, this. I'm old, and I used to be super technically literate, but not anymore. Now I'm happy to keep my kids alive, use my smartphone to run my life, and ask a lot of questions. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out how to subscribe to something, and I'm not even 100% sure I did.
I'm cranky for at least 2 days if I have to get a new work computer for any reason. I don't want to lose my reddit communities, so I'm trying, but I won't if people are just rude to start.
I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out.
Haven't been back there and didn't read the comments...
But I think I can understand to a degree:
Too many choices: Picking an instance can be confusing for folks that are used to only having to remember 1 name. I personally think this is a bit like people trying Linux for the first time and getting confused by all the choices available. Basically, it's what some people call "analysis paralysis" but add to that the fact that you'll get 12 different recommendations from every 10 people you all (e.g. there's no clear consensus on the "best" one bc "best" means something different to each person). I think one list I saw on GitHub literally had over 200 instances... For non-techies, I could see that being a bit confusing
UI differences: some things like making a post on kbin are a bit different (IMO not bad but still different enough that I could see some folks getting confused). Doing searches on lemmy for specific topics (not finding communities but searching for something in a community) is done from a different area on lemmy than on Reddit and IMO is kind of a pain in the ass currently. And on kbin, frankly, I'm not even sure we have that feature at all.
Missing features: haven't tried mobile apps (which could again be another point of confusion) but for desktop at least, AFAIK we don't have anything comparable to RES yet. There's no analog to multireddits. And we don't have anything similar to reddit's Saved feature yet. All valid complaints in my opinion. And someone used to any or all of those, might spend a lot of time looking bc they just don't know if it's hidden or does not exist. So, yeah, I could see so confusion there too.
I think there are a lot of advantages they're probably missing too. I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing. I saw one guy mentioning how there's no karma bullshit to deal with for new accounts and absolutely agree with that sentiment.
tealdeer; meh, I like the fediverse and it's not hard for me but I'm not shitting on people who don't get it. If they want help, would probably help but not going to push it on people either. It is what it is and that's good enough for me
I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing.
I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing.
You can still do that on new reddit. When looking at your own profile while logged in, there's a little camera with a plus in the corner of your current avatar/placeholder. (There's also a separate icon further to the right for uploading a banner image.)
Edit: Dang, I didn't expect that image to look so big, it's only 600x300
It makes no sense to me that there are separate forums for the same topic that have the same names other than "@instance". IMO there should be a single place that is /politics which has the same posts and comments regardless of which instance you're logged into. If these instances are "federated" with each other then they should act like a single shared space. Or at least that's how it seems like it should work to me.
Hell no, I do not want this to happen because then you have lemmy tankies and exploding-head fascists all dog piling into normal discussions, saying preposterously stupid shit to spoil what you read as you scroll through the comments.
I'm not sure how federation does anything to prevent that from happening, though. They can still do that on your instance, from their instance.
At most, I suppose an instance could defederate from a troublesome instance that's doing this, but the more that happens, the more fragmented the Fediverse becomes, and it starts to defeat the purpose of federation in the first place.
Then as a user you would be free to click to filter out comments from lemmy, and the top mod of /politics could choose to "defederate" from lemmy for that forum, and users at lemmie would be free to create /politics_tankies or whatever.
You have /r/gaming. /r/games. /r/truegaming. /r/videogames. /r/videogame. Etc.
Each community was slightly different in subtle ways, but some people were subscribed to multiple (basically identical) communities. Others self-sorted into different communities based on moderation style and community vibes.
Not to mention that your idea of how federation should work kind of ignores moderation and community preferences. Communities hosted on Beehaw are tightly moderated. There may be other communities that want something less strict. How do these two reconcile with one another? What happens if a conversation is removed on one instance but kept around on another?
If local mods only have local power, they can get quickly overwhelmed as you effectively need a mod team on every single instance. Smaller instances wouldn't necessarily have the manpower to have their own dedicated mods for literally everything.
Well, instances are all different, independent websites. As an admin, if I can't name a community whatever I want on my own website, I'm probably not participating in this ecosystem.
Plus, 1000 times more posts get posted to r/bigsub than you or anyone ever reads, and 10,000 times as many comments. It creates an environment where no one is actually discussing anything, and are just jockeying for attention.
You won't actually miss anything except for big vanity numbers by just choosing the community you like best for a topic and just... Ignoring the others.
I just find ActivityPub kind of confusing. It works for Mastodon because that's user-centric, and most people only have an account on one site. But the same communities can exist on multiple sites, and it's confusing to navigate all of that.
This sounds like someone who hasn't even tried. These instances aren't difficult to navigate, they're just setup a little differently. It's like refusing to go to another country because they use metric instead of imperial (or vice versa).
But the same communities can exist on multiple sites, and it's confusing to navigate all of that.
I mean, on Reddit the same communities can exist on the same site. I'm a member of r/europe and r/europes, and of r/introvert and r/introverts...
Federation isn't the cause of competing communities. What happens on Reddit is that eventually enough of a mass of people congregate around one sub for a topic, and that becomes the de facto main one. The same thing will happen here.
True, and this is also a side effect of the mass migration from reddit. People have created multiple versions of the same community name on different instances. Things will consolidate over time, and people will navigate to the most active community (or communities).
But the other aspect of the fediverse is you can have more than one community with the same name; thats a benefit. Like why should there be only 1 "PCGaming"; different groups of users might want to form their own community which approaches the matter in their preferred way. So you could have 2, 3, or many different communities reflecting different ethoses, based on different instances. That's not a bad thing, but might be hard for people to get used to initially coming from the monolithic approach on Reddit.
Frankly, you're incorrect. It's an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content. Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes, or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It's incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
Genuinely I don't understand the issue? You can search the Fediverse from one instance using the Magazines tab in Kbin to find places to sub, or sub to communities you find in all feed etc? Is the issue to do with the duplication of communities at present and lack of clarity which ones are more active?
For me at least the federated set up works well, but I need more visibility of total community sizes when searching Magazines. The search shows me the number of users subbed from this instance, where as I'd also like to know the total number of users subbed across the fediverse to guage how big that community is overall.
Also as you mention, it would be good to see duplicate communities merged across instances - but some of that is the reddit migration with 1000s of new users creating the communities with the same name on multiple instances in a short amount of time. Consolidation will take time (and sometimes there may be a good reason to have two separate communities with the same name) but long term there does need to be tools to allow communities to migrate base from one instance to another or merge; otherwise there is a risk a community could die if an instance falls over.
But I'm not switching between instances - I was initially and realised it was pointless. I have chosen to be on 2 instances - Kbin.social and Feddit.uk, deliberately to keep my UK and generic feed separate for now, and also to have a Kbin and Lemmy experience. I personally strongly favour Kbin at the moment. I don't get the analogy of tabbed browsing or separate forums; you can see the whole fediverse from one instance (barring defederated instance like Beehaw). What am I missing?
You can search the Fediverse from one instance using the Magazines tab in Kbin to find places to sub, or sub to communities you find in all feed etc?
This is the first thing. I think this might not always be turning up everything due to the delays with federation. While we might be able to agree that this is good enough, I think another reasonable person can look at this and say that there's room for some technical improvements.
Is the issue to do with the duplication of communities at present
This is the second one. As others have also pointed out, reddit has the same issue so it's not unique to federation (tho this person seems to get hung up specifically on the precise naming to make it federation specific). I think we can adapt the reddit solution (multireddits) to here as well though to solve this (i.e. come up with a scheme for multimagazines).
But I'm not switching between instances
This is the third one, but I think this is not valid. As you say, one can choose to have multiple accounts on other instances, but it's not needed to participate on the other instances. This person says it's their choice to have the other accounts - but then makes a big stink over the effort of having multiple accounts. Like if it's that much trouble then just don't do it.
long term there does need to be tools to allow communities to migrate base from one instance to another
I thought that this might be an issue but actually I raised this point and it wasn't responded to.
The fourth one is that this person seems to consider kbin.social its own distinct platform - which doesn't make sense in light of federation - and seems to prefer centralization in general (despite seeing the good from multiplexing BBSes), but I'm waiting on a response as to why this should be the case. Like what are the specific arguments to prefer centralization to a single server or a single instance?
It does occur to me however that if a paid shill were to try to promote a centralized service over an open source federated one, a way to win folks over might be to present oneself as a highly experienced technical person with direct expeirence in both kinds of systems, but who ultimately prefers centralization and has good technical arguments to back it up, including pointing out flaws or gaps with the existing federated system. And also insist that more people flock to the single overloaded flagship instance, perhaps causing it to overload and die off.
Not saying for sure that this is the case here, but food for thought.
Not saying for sure that this is the case here, but food for thought.
Nah, I don't think it is the case here at all. The guy had an opinion and was expressing it. I didn't agree, but it's good to see some proper discussion going on.
FWIW The biggest thing I would like to see implements sooner rather than later is a way to handle multi magazines, chiefly because it's not actually that much of an issue yet. A bigger deal seems to be people asking is there a community for X, y, z. So if there's a plan in place then that would be good.
But even the way on some Reddit subs mods sometimes have a list of 'Associated Subs' (so a Reading sub might basically give a shout out to Books, Literature, etc... would be good
Nah, I don't think it is the case here at all. The guy had an opinion and was expressing it. I didn't agree, but it's good to see some proper discussion going on.
FWIW The biggest thing I would like to see implements
I think @kbinMeta is the typical goto for things of this nature.
But even the way on some Reddit subs mods sometimes have a list of 'Associated Subs' (so a Reading sub might basically give a shout out to Books, Literature, etc... would be good
It's different, it's not that difficult, only mildly annoying with some compatibility issues for platforms that are still basically in their alpha phase (like kbin).
It's incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on this. Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform, not all KBin instances; or Mastodon.Social, or even Lemmy.ML. Yes, there's not a singularity yet, but even this limited plurality shows that it's a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
Frankly, you're incorrect. It's an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content.
What issues have you specifically noticed with this? I've only seen a few - the main one is sometimes it's hard to find magazines from elsewhere unless you already know the name of it and the instance it is on (but folks are creating websites to help others find this, so this is a problem being solved right now). The other one is that sometimes federation is slow, so posts and comments on the hosting instance can take hours to show up on another one. But there are technical fixes to this as well (I'm thinking that maybe the next version of activity pub should include a pull action, so other instances can ask for the latest content on behalf of their users from the hosting instance).
Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes,
I wasn't around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What's the issue with "having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes" ?
or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It's incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This .. is not really the way to do it.
Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform,
Don't confuse terms. kbin.social is an instance, the platform is kbin the software.
I'd argue that this is a technically a different platform - microblogging vs what reddit/lemmy do. But by the magic of federation we get both in kbin.
or even Lemmy.ML.
There are problems here with this instance that go far beyond what you are saying. But that's the nice part of federation - even problematic owners can be dealt with. Can't say the same for a centralized service.
Yes, there's not a singularity yet,
Why use this term? What does it even mean in this context? A singularity is a term from physics and represents when the existing rules break down, like in a black hole (collapsed star).
but even this limited plurality shows that it's a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
Again, this suggests you don't really understand federation. Barring one problematic instance, there aren't any serious issues accessing all the instances you mentioned from, say for example, kbin.cafe
What issues have you specifically noticed with this?
The issue I've noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don't tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They're identically named communities. I'd rather have as false positive of a gun user's instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse. Don't tell me to just use the "subscribed" view. That doesn't pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers. Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they'll be in their own corner. They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that's not theirs. There's no central place for hosting these communities. If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense. I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all. I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@. , not just cooking@kbin.social. That's a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
I wasn't around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What's the issue with "having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes" ?
Back in those days, BBS mail was less "email" and more "text stored on server". To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply (any good BBS software would remember where itwas from, and offer to call back and send each message). Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content. The pain has been massively reduced over time, and I'm glad. My next point bounces off yours:
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This .. is not really the way to do it.
You're right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice. In this case, I can't check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@. without checking the group from each federated server. Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded. That's the point I'm getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
I disagree with your latter point. kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software. I'm not interested in a smaller community. I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design. Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
I don't care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They're web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success. I don't care about political leanings. I'm talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that's the right of an Admin.
The issue I've noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don't tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They're identically named communities.
Since lemmy terms a "community" as the same thing as a kbin magazine, but community can also have a more expansive meaning, for clarity I will refer to lemmy magazines and use community in it's more expansive scope.
rpg@foo.bar isn't a real thing obviously but is your standing for an rpg magazine on any other instance.
rpg@lemmy.ml and rpg@kbin.social appear to be two separate magazines, hosted on two difference instances, and owned and moderated by two separate groups of people, but about the same topic - role playing games. If you ignore the instance part of the name, then they have identical names - which makes sense because they cover the same topic.
There is a UX issue on kbin where the instance part of the name is hidden, but there are also kbin styles that fix this.
Getting fixated on the identical name part is getting hung up over a minor technicality. Remember that reddit has a similar issue with very similarly named subs, where you might have /r/X and then /r/TrueX and /r/XOriginal - something that was encouraged by reddit's own policy, where instead of getting involved with a mod of a sub they would just encourage you to make your own sub.
I'd rather have as false positive of a gun user's instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse
I think this is legitimate. This was solved on reddit with multireddits but kbin doesn't have an equivalent yet.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@. , not just cooking@kbin.social. That's a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
Good point. Even if kbin/lemmy don't support it, maybe we can get multimagazines working first at say an app level (like in Artemis).
Don't tell me to just use the "subscribed" view. That doesn't pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers.
I wouldn't as that's not what that view is for. You want to view a multimagazine that covers a given topic like rpg rather than see your own subscriptions.
Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they'll be in their own corner.
They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that's not theirs.
They can go as far as to mod magazines in another instance. How are they thus foreigners? This is the point of federation - that equal standing to view, post, contribute, moderate, etc across instances.
If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense.
From a centralized, non-federated point of view.
There's no central place for hosting these communities.
Because there is no need for that. I'd point to the example of r/blind - they continue to maintain their sub on reddit but officially the community is also available on their own lemmy instance as well as through their own website. One community, but not centralized anywhere.
I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
With federation, you don't have to go that far. Communicating across instances works automatically and you only need one account to do so, as opposed to creating a new account on each forum.
I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all.
I'd recommend you check out some of the older posts on @RedditMIgration as there are lots of links to community (not magazine but community in the broader sense) run websites that try to solve this by listing all of the magazines on instances.
This is probably simpler and more fruitful than searching manually.
There's still chaos in terms of instances and softwares. Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again, Reddit remains the superior option. There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one. How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
That's what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don't have to think about it. I don't care about the backend, I'm not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash. I'd argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn't understand even if you simplify it. The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit. Until it is, I'll keep one foot in spez's yard. If Meta's Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I'll move there
.
To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply
Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content.
Then I'd argue that the fediverse looks more like the multiplexed BBS. I mean, federated is literally in the name. We don't have the pain that comes from using non-multiplexed BBSes here.
You're right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice.
No, I'm still right in this case. Your alts can still take advantage of federation and subscribe to magazines on other instances and reply and so forth.
In this case, I can't check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@. without checking the group from each federated server.
No, not true. That also applies in the "original" case (where you only have one account in the fediverse). This is the multimagazine/multireddit thing already touched upon above. That's legit, but let's assume for the sake of argument these three points: 1) there is a working version of Artemis (the kbin app), 2) it supports multimagazines, 3) there's a json format from the websites that list magazines that can be imported into Artemis to automatically generate a multimagazine for the user that's local to the smartphone.
The above problem is solved, as you can use that Artemis, passing it the magazing listing website, and get a multimagazine set up with all the different RPG magazines. Maybe Artemis even supports optionally autoreloading so as new RPG magazines are setup (either in new instances, or someone makes a /m/TrueRPG on an instance that already has /m/rpg) your multimagazine is automatically updated.
Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded.
They are to the instances. Some people are going farther and trying to mirror articles between different magazines using bots. However, I kind of feel the multimagazine feature would be enough to check this box.
That's the point I'm getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
We're not there yet, but it's also not too far off.
That said, I find your view that multimagazines are essential to be interesting. I only first heard about multireddits only after I'd permanently parted ways with reddit.
There's still chaos in terms of instances and softwares.
This is actually a good thing. Monoculture is bad, diversity is good.
Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again,
Too easy for a single disease to wipe things out in that case.
Reddit remains the superior option
Where one can be permabanned at random, with a non-functional appeals process where it's virtually impossible to get ahold of an actual human? Where you can have the ownership of your sub that you spent years working on seized and taken away and handed over to someone else?
I'd argue that reddit has a different disease, and it's showing why both centralization and monoculture are bad (third party apps being killed off because they never supported anything but reddit itself is an example of the latter).
There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one.
You're kidding, right? How many subs in reddit have RPG in the name and actually broach the same topic? r/rpg_gamers , r/RPGdesign, r/TabletopRPG, r/StrateyRpg, r/RPGCreation, r/solorpgplay? This last one doesn't have rpg in the name, but - r/Solo_Roleplaying?
If you are really going to push that reddit only has one sub for the role playing game community, then I'm going to need you to explain to me in detail how each of the above subs is different from r/RPG and from each other, and why they are a separate community from any other sub with rpg in the name.
How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
Dunno, but how many subs in reddit that have rpg in the name are there? Why must each redditor be forced to answer that question? (The answer to the second is they don't need to answer that question at all - either on reddit or on the fediverse.)
Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the 'more' popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I'm sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
That's what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don't have to think about it. I don't care about the backend, I'm not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash.
Again, sounds like if we did have multimagazine support (as I described earlier) then things would be fixed for you. If I've missed anything, please detail that out.
The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit.
So actually there's an active effort to re-expose lemmy's API as reddit's own API (allowing folks to use things like PRAW with lemmy and even kbin thanks to the magic of federation). In theory third party apps could simply point to a server hosting this API, instead of reddit's site, and just work with the fediverse.
I know that's not what you meant, but that is pretty drop-in.
Until it is, I'll keep one foot in spez's yard. If Meta's Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I'll move there
It likely would because it seems like it won't federate with the rest of us and just either be a single instance or at best a group of instances controlled by fb that only federate with each other. Either way the number of duplicately named magazines is strictly limited.
. I'd argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn't understand even if you simplify it.
Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the 'more' popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I'm sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
No worries, it's intelligble, and I get it as I got hit by the same thing.
I disagree with your latter point.
Okay, but I don't think you've adaquately explained why.
kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software.
But it can also join with older, more established communities on lemmy instances like lemmy.world and the two can share content with each other. From a kbin.social account I can fully participate on lemmy.world bar two exceptions (owning a lemmy.world magazine and being a lemmy.world admin), and the reverse is equally true. Hence why I view lemmy/kbin as essentially a single platform.
In your case, "local" seems to mean central to the server. But why is this an inherently important attribute?
I'm not interested in a smaller community.
Again, the point of federation - the different parts (instances) merge into a single platform and community. Each instance hosts a smaller part of the whole community, instead of needing a megacorp capable of hosting the entire one on a single set of servers. Ideally, seamlessly, but in practice I admit there are still some rough edges to work out (e.g. multimagazine support).
There might be a point here when dealing with magazine fragmentation - but reddit has the same problem to a degree and we can borrow their solution (multireddits/multimagazines) to resolve that issue here as well.
I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design.
Yes, but why? This is the part that is yet to be explained. I think the dangers of single-site centralization have already been demonstrated (e.g. loss of 3rd party apps, mods losing their subs when protesting, folks getting permabans for no apparent reason or for obviously incorrect reasons, etc.)
I don't care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They're web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success.
Following this to the extreme, you shouldn't want to use either twitter or reddit, because they can't talk to each other. Right? (Okay, single sign on is possible, but after that you still have to interact with their websites and apps separately.)
The fediverse lacks the first mover advantage of being born in the ninties or early aughts and also lacks big megacorp backing, but it has seen bigger growth than single site replacements like Squabbles or Tildes, and I suspect federation is a big driver of the difference there.
Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
Except that they all speak the same language (ActivityPub) and differ from big monoliths like twitter and reddit that can't talk to anyone else. So from an intelligibility perspective they are a step up.
I don't care about political leanings. I'm talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that's the right of an Admin.
Honestly like, the dude you're responding too is referencing BBSes and using the web before tabs. If a user like that is expressing some confusion, disorientation, or irritation, you should regard it the way you might your grandfather critiquing your home. He could be cantankerous, but he probably does have some insight stemming from decades of experience. NTOG and I have been on opposite sides of almost every thread I've encountered them in but it's pretty clear they know their way around message boards, so if something is confusing them it might be a bit confusing yet.
I'm just as old as he is, maybe only a few years younger. I started to learn computers on a Commodore VIC 20 and 64, used tape drives for storage. I entered into BBS near the end of its popularity, however I used chat boards, AOL, and Geocities...old forums as well. I also moderated a forum for a few years on a Star Wars fan site before the admin shut it down and I moved to Reddit.
I have a lot of experience navigating forums as well...Fediverse sometimes takes a little bit more digging to find what you want. The point I was also trying to make is that these platforms are also in their infancy, their alpha programming state. So things will change, the platform will develop. This kind of thing isn't built in a day, yet IMHO it's so much nicer not having ads forced down my throat on desktop every five posts.
If this person doesn't like the experience here, then there's nothing saying he can't go back to Reddit.
My advice would be to not wait for someone else to create communities would like to see, but create them yourself and just start posting. If you are not interested in moderating I’m sure you will be able to find someone else to take over.
You can post them in !newcommunities to get some attention, but like minded people will find you.
My niche community /c/latteart@vlemmy.net (self-promo)
Do you need 3rd party tools to moderate on lemmy? Can you do it on mobile?
I have thoughts of starting some communities, but no point if I can't do it from mobile.
It depends on the different clients as most of them started developemnt just weeks ago, but all most popular ones support moderating actions. But Lemmy lacks some hardcore/automatic moderation tools at the moment.
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