I’m a Reddit refugee who was on that platform for 10+ years. I saw not just a tremendous amount of controversies, but attempts at introducing alternatives to Reddit during all of them. The 2015 blackout saw a ton of alternatives suggested, and if you go back and look at them many have either not survived or never achieved their stated goal of serving as a viable alternative to Reddit. Places like Voat, Ruqqus, or Parler promptly turned themselves into extremist shitholes and imploded. The truth is most internet communities which found and advertise themselves as an alternative to Reddit die.
However, I think this newest wave of searching for an alternative has more legs than I think I’ve ever seen, and the key to that is the kind of users who are moving. The people who were pissed off by the recent changes are the old guard of the internet. These are the people who still remember searching for and finding RIF, Apollo, or AlienBlue (before it was bought), and have the technical know-how to care about the quality and usability of their platform. I think you all are people who engage with their online spaces with intention, and because of that I believe that we have more of a shot at making this work than I’ve witnessed since I joined Reddit all those many years ago.
In order to make this all work out though, I think it’s really important to cast our thoughts toward what made the websites that have come before us successful. Every single one of these spaces have distinct ways of interaction that indirectly communicate their ideologies. Memes, in-jokes, and lingo form the backbone of online communities and help to direct users back to the source, but they never gain real purchase without a unique viewpoint. I’m pretty sure I can confidently suss out whether a meme comes from 4Chan, Reddit, or Tumblr, just through the message conveyed and the template used. For an online platform to have relevance and draw, I believe it absolutely needs to have an individual and communicable perspective.
Now I am aware that much of this is organically generated, but I think we underestimate how much of it isn’t. The structure of a website clearly communicates to users its core values, and users almost certainly respond to that. The fact that users are by default anonymous on the Chans absolutely contributes to the unique “flavor” of those websites, and the subreddit structure of Reddit allows it to contain a greater variety of clashing values. We can already see some of this on the Fediverse, the tension engendered by the federated instances I think places greater emphasis on building consensus. The fact that an entire server can be excised at will from a group of other like-minded server owners means that one has to always have an eye towards the common consensus, and I think we will see many fights over this in the not-so-distant future.
So as we go forward, and while we are in the most nascent part of this website’s lifespan, I think we should be discussing and commenting on what we think is most important about this space. I’m already seeing that people think that Kbin is “nicer than Reddit” and you’re more convinced that you’re interacting with real people. I think this is all good, and I think that while we’re making content, we need to have an eye on putting that particular spin on all the things we brought over from where we came from. Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats, and having our own slang, but for right now we need to be thinking hard about what we want out of our online lives and how this website can be built to serve those purposes. I think the risk of not doing that, and forever being only a federated Reddit clone is going to leave people forever jonesing for the experiences they had on Reddit, and this space is going to die just like every other attempted alternative has before.
TLDR: Now that we’ve all left Reddit, for this new place to live my opinion is that we need to have more discussions about what our principles are, and we need to make unique content that brings people to this website.
I think we’re at the point that we need to stop thinking of things as “ex-redditors” and now as “kbinauts”. While it’s true that many people have come here from reddit, it’s not “people from reddit”, it’s “people on kbin”.
One thing I’ve noticed about the fediverse is that different instances have different ‘feels’ to them, and I think kbin is uniquely positioned to emphasize this a bit, since kbin differentiates itself almost ironically as “not a lemmy instance”. It pops up in so many threads of lemmy users discussing things, and then the random “oh this is a kbin thing”.
In sharing communities, it’s common to have a “for kbin users” link.
I see quite a few lemmy users differentiating themselves “as lemmy” as well. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
ultimately I think you’re right though. the sooner a proper culture can take root, and a particular “way of doing things” is cemented, the more likely it is that kbin will stick around.
I’m down for “kbinaut” being the term for users here.
i like kbinaut. It’s cute :)
There’s a minor synergy between that and the reddit alien…
Ha! You put your finger on what I could not figure out what it was about this term that felt like it made a weird sort of sense!
I suggest “Binners” for fun. Sounds trashy, lol.
I also prefer “Binners” because we have “binned” the other lame social media companies.
Also, trashy can be fun!!
On linux systems, the “bin” directory contains a large number of scripts and programs.
Sincerely,
Binnerman.
Ugh. You’ve started the horrible puns.
@RemembertheApollo I’m putting ‘binheads’ forward for consideration. Easier to say than ‘Kbinaut’ and only slightly straighter laced than ‘binners.’
@bttoddx @Otome-chan@kbin.social
Cool, then spammers and tolls can be called bin chickens, right?!
The whole phenomenon of Lemmy v. KBin will wind down as the “threadiverse” matures. Over on Mastodon you’ll occasionally see people clamoring over Calckey and how it’s better because of blank, but people just get over it. That’s the amazing appeal of the fediverse, if some other site has more features or better moderation you can just move there! I know many people who hop between instances, apps, and services just because they want to try new things.
I’m so excited because I know KBin will eventually get better federation, administration, and moderation features. We will soon we’ll be able to communicate and share with everyone on the fediverse.
You make me optimistic for the future of the fediverse! I’m also struck by how much discussion there is of instances, and how there’s still a vibrant marketplace of ideas. It’s pretty wild how much google has calcified the rest of the internet, and search has solidified the power of a few companies.
I’ve been on mastodon for about 3-4 years now, and it’s really nice, I just hope that kbin/lemmy will keep up, it’s really nice to see that there are a lot more of people on here now than there used to be, the lack of people was what made me never use it before, but that for sure is gone now :) It’s really nice to hang around here :)
Yeah I think this is a good point. I’m still getting used to the interface, I wish there was a bit more salient of a way of discerning what is a kbin post on the all feed? I know I can look underneath the title of the post, but maybe having an icon (like whatever the logo ends up being) on the right side of the title might be a good idea to privilege kbin’s posts for kbin users over lemmy’s without exempting those posts from the feed?
Get the kbin enhancement script and it’ll extend all the names to include the host instance.
Ooh goody! I should’ve thought to look for that, thank you very much. Cheers!
Get the Kbin Federation Awareness tampermonkey script.