The saddest part of all this is the countless hours of work unpaid people have poured into the site, moderating, developing, and content creating only to see it end the manner it has.
I'm okay leaving it behind. I didn't contribute much over the 12 years I was there. I mostly lurked. I'm just sorry for all the people that worked hard to make the community better.
I wonder when buying these 3rd party apps as acquisitions, if Reddit brought along their dev(s) in the process. It sounds like they didn't, which would be so shortsighted. Because what it seems is that once Reddit had these programs in their possession, they didn't know what to do with them, or how to integrate them into their own source code...at least with Spell this seems to be the case. I have no idea about Alien Blue, which I had used at one point prior to using Reddit's own mobile app. All they had to do with Alien Blue is rebrand...why didn't they?
How do you employ nearly 2,000 people. an army of unpaid moderators, and not come up with proper tools to navigate your own program, or find profitability off its user data? I think that Huffman has had no plan, leads a top-heavy organization, has been coasting along the company putting out day-to-day fires, and now he's scrambling to quickly find something profitable to show his investors.
There are a lot of things that don't make sense at the core of Reddit, because Google, Chat AI, and ad revenue are the places to make a profit...not API usage from 3rd party apps. I watched a really great video of the history of D&D last night on Nebula, and wow talk about lessons that Reddit could learn about 3rd party contributors.
(I'm going to link the video, but you need a subscription to Nebula and/or Curiosity Stream to view it). TL;DW summary: D&D works best as a business when it collaborates with 3rd party contributors and its fans.
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).
First...Kbin's UI is IIRC currently in its alpha state. This isn't the finished product. Secondly, the UI is setup in the manner old internet forums used to be organized, with some additional tweeks to prioritize boosted and upvoted topics. Finally, this UI may not emulate Reddit in its final upgrade because it's a different kind of social platform.
I'd just ask people to be patient. There has been a huge influx of users to kbin, and lemmy over the course of the past month and the people behind the scenes have been working tirelessly just to keep up with user/server demand.
Put anything to a vote
Run weighted polls to make big decisions in your community, like getting input on rules changes or deciding how to distribute Points.
Unlike regular polls, these polls give a larger voice to people who have contributed more to the community. The more Community Points someone has earned, the more weight their vote carries.
This will end well...
EDIT
What they're really looking for are a bunch of whales to drive engagement.
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.
One of the most influential science fiction monologues was ad libbed, and it's so much better than the original script.
Original script:
"I've seen things... seen things you little people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium... I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... they'll be gone."
Hauer's monologue:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."