I thought I might leave Reddit entirely, but then I realized this as well. So I have taken to posting some things exclusively here, some very few things also there, and when I do post there I post here first then just share the link.

On the other hand, keeping in mind that my “here” is Kbin not Lemmy, I’ve more or less ceased most of my encouragement to try to get people to join b/c of all the bugs that have been present - some of which seem fixed now but overall the set of features present in Kbin is very much behind Lemmy, which is itself enormously behind Reddit still. It makes sense: people were “hopeful” about Kbin/Lemmy, but to actually realize that hope has been slow going. And that too makes sense: Ernst has had family issues that MUST take priority, although it has greatly slowed down integrations of fixes that others have offered into the main code, for a time. And too there is the fact that Kbin, like many Lemmy instances, has been under DDOS attack. These things take time to develop even under the most ideal circumstances, and all the more so in the face of such challenges. Overall, Kbin is still alpha version software at this point.

And even Lemmy is still just a beta version. e.g. just to name one example: you still cannot migrate from one instance to another across the Fediverse, so whatever instance you choose to join is basically a permanent decision - like if you ask all your friends to come with you from Reddit and then jump ship yet again, you risk alienating them by leaving them behind as you hop around looking for the greenest grass. Joining instances here is nothing at all like casually joining subs on Reddit - they will need to learn all about that, and what it means, and how to curate their experiences here, etc.

In comparison, for now at least old-reddit or even new-reddit on a mobile browser with ad-blocking meets many people’s needs, especially with “everyone” more or less remaining behind on Reddit, and it is a tough sell to try to tell them to give all that up for an objectively worse UI/UX experience (the cost-to-benefit tradeoff is worthwhile to us, but is it to them?). At this point, those with the “early adopter” mindset are already here, and more importantly the content creators have already made their choices too. (Though if Reddit kills off old-reddit, that could change things in a BIG way)

I am not saying that there would be no value in such outreach initiatives, just that they have already happened and yet here we are. At this point it may be worth looking into the reasons why people who already know about Lemmy/Kbin have not chosen to come here. And on some level we just need to be okay with the fact that we are likely going to be small for a long time, especially as the code continues to be developed to help it catch up.

Unless Threads causes things to change much more quickly… which it very well could.

(edit: added UI/UX)

We’ll get there. It turns out that it’s more difficult than many of us realized to build a new social media site from scratch without any VC funding. It’s going to be a long and arduous journey, but I think we have already navigated the most dangerous leg and built a strong foundation.

Large scale movements of people take a very long time. We are on the vanguard, which can be a bit lonely but will ultimately turn out to be an extremely rewarding experience if Lemmy eventually does grow much larger.

I’ll bite. Go ahead and give an example. I feel like most people are ok with people’s beliefs and opinions as long as they follow the whole “your rights end at your nose” premise. Popularity of issues pretty much falls in line with that every time.

Abortion debates are designed to be insane. Amarica uses it to divide and control its voters. For those that genuinely want a discission, im sorry. Here or reddit is probably the sanest place to discuss it online.

Oh, yeah, Lemmy is tiny by comparison. We have to post content instead of just consuming it.

The general social media culture effects us, reddit culture is partially still in our blood. He may be right in that reguard.

I would be interested

I agree. I feel like Lemmy is the place I go to when I want to be angry. All the most active submissions are about some injustice that’s happening in the world - not that they aren’t legit issues, but it’s very tiring. Now I’m sure someone will tell me I should be raging all the time about all of these injustices, possibly by calling me a lib or whatever.

What’s missing are the more niche subs. Risa’s memes have definitely been a lot of fun, but beyond that, the hobby subs are extremely slow and there’s just not enough content in them to keep it interesting.

Removed by mod

My pleasure

Browsing another instance’s local feed? No, that’s not presently part of the official lemmy front end. But many apps have added it on top.

Okay I hear you - so self-centeredness may still be present, as is selfishness, purely short-term thinking, loads and loads and loads of toxicity, etc., but it is not only each one of those, but all of them combined that leads to that enshittification effect.

I once had a guy beg me to block him. I was trying to train new mods and felt the need to literally screenshot his request (sent via DM) b/c it was barely believable otherwise - he simply could not stop himself from being toxic to others on the sub. Ofc such people exist in the world, but at some point, it becomes the fault of the systems themselves if they both allow all-comers yet cause the absolute best stuff to become buried amidst a flood of posts sorted by New, plus even Hot has such a heavy newness component, etc. i.e., requiring moderation in the first place + doing everything possible to “increase engagement” (for the sake of enshittification advertising profits, e.g. you get the privilege of watching moar ads by clicking on or scrolling through posts, not writing out meaningful responses), while also limiting pinned posts to strictly 2 slots, plus making megathreads super-complicated to try to set up in the first place without access to a 3rd party bot written for that purpose (then charging communities who already donated their programming time to make that + computing time & access to run that for the privilege of being able to use it) e.g. the latest megathread cannot simply include a link to the previous megathread that it replaces, + other things too like virtually hiding the sidebar/About section (on the official Android mobile app anyway) with tiny fonts and making it disappear as you scroll. => Everything basically feeds forward to reinforce the doomscrolling effect and toxic commenting - to turn Reddit into the next 4chan/Discord? - while taking Reddit away from its forum board origins.

And all b/c the guy in charge worships at the feet of Elon, not even realizing that what at best would have worked for those circumstances (e.g. a public company transitioning into private, rather than a private one wanting to get an IPO to become public; and yes, highly debatable that Musk’s efforts may work even for that other company:-D) will not necessarily work for Reddit.

Though as you said, a lot of this is independent of the specific company & product itself, and relates more to trends that occur purely b/c of human nature. It reminds me of computers trying to fend off viruses: you can’t just exist in a soup of code that you feel absolutely safe running without any protections, b/c it is too vulnerable to selfish, self-centered, short-sighted counter-purposes that can destroy you. And biological cells are an even better and more complex example, as they also fight off cancerous states of being - ones own cells that have been perverted, twisting the purpose to now grow in a selfish, self-centered, purely short-sighted manner rather than working for the health of the overall body. Our immune systems protect us from all of that and more, including literal dirt that we don’t want floating in our bloodstreams, and that reinforces your point: fluff spreads unless you have a system in place to counteract it. It seems like that is literally a physical rule of the universe, that also applies in virtual as well.

So I guess in this analogy, Huffman is like HIV then (!?:-P), in that greatly diminishing the capabilities of the “immune system” (moderation) - not just recently here with the protests but for the past several years worth of changes to Reddit that continually pushed towards “engagement” but at the expense of thinking/reading before speaking - has lead to the result of modern-day Reddit as it is now compared to what it used to be. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all, and it should be no surprise that after taking a bunch of steps towards a particular goal, that we they have now reached it.

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tbf that election brought a lot of awareness to mis/disinformation, propaganda, and secretive advertising. It could have been going on long before to a lesser degree.

Start of the internet? Is this hyperbole?

IRC bots were common, but they were seen as admin tools, not drivers of participation.

if Hacker News is allowed to federate with Lemmy at large we have failed

Part of the appeal if Tildes has been the right-knit, invite-only community. So no, they probably wouldn’t federate with Lemmy(and shouldn’t).