Yeah that’s a fair point. For me it was the constant twitter screenshots/ tiktok reposts and repeated and shallow discussion of whatever bullshit fill in the blank political figure/ tech billionaire was doing that was killing the fun for me. I really think memes were more fun back in 2012-~2018 or so, mostly because there seemed to be more emphasis on novelty, but the endless soyjack reposts or dead tv show memes (cough the office) were definitely getting stale. I think it works better when memes are on hobby/niche subreddits because I think they invited discussion in the comments, but man are they useless on anything related to current events. Some subreddits did it really well though, places like noncredibledefense (that’s the only one I can think of rn) really had a unique voice and were making new formats.

crossposted to https://kbin.social/m/bestof

There are fascinating thoughts relevant to this that could be explored when people have the technical capacity to catch up the software even just to the submissions that have already been made to the kbin software.

Like instead of just “top” and “hot” and “new” and such, there could be like “popular” vs. “niche”, where niche is a different dimension of popularity. Otherwise, you get the same tired old cats & doggos that “we” (at least, as a community overall) really DO love to see, and that’s…well you’re never going to change people’s minds, so good or bad, it simply is what it is, but it doesn’t leave quite as much room to see anything ELSE that you ALSO want to see is the problem. But where there’s a will there’s a way!:-)

I posted something relevant in https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/113196/An-older-article-that-is-taking-on-new-significance-considering (also duplicating it in https://kbin.social/m/BestOf/t/113715/The-Ennui-Engine-or-how-chasing-short-term-gratification-drains-our) if you are interested. It’s a wall of words but beautifully constructed imho, I couldn’t put it down b/c it really piqued my interest precisely on what I was thinking. But one down-side to the approach that it suggests is that it depends on good-faith actors to always act in the best interests of the community, which lets face it, is never going to happen. So it’s high time that we found some OTHER solution that may be practically more viable. Ironically, the magazine https://kbin.social/m/bestof really does look like one solution to that problem: it gathers the nuggets from across the site and places them there to be read. But it also requires far too much effort, compared to just clicking the equivalent of an upvote or boost button, to be able to rank content by popularity according to some other measure than just “cool meme bro”.

I suppose you could also make an alt account, or even on your main, simply unsubscribe from every magazine like m/memes, or m/starwars, etc. By curating your experience, you can tailor it more to your liking. Although then if you visit those communities, you won’t see any comments in those articles while still logged into that account, so it’s kind-of a one-way ticket for it to disappear for you, not something that you can easily toggle back-and-forth depending on your mood, from one account.

we’re still here because we find corporate control over the forum-space to be “oppressive”

It’s bad when any corporation does that to anyone, regardless of respective points of view.

As someone who was originally part of the Voat migration, I was very skeptical of the move to fediverse precisely because of how Voat ended up shaping up to be. Hell, part of the reason I’m on kbin and not lemmy is because of the huge pro-Russian presence on lemmy.ml. Not all of us who migrated to Voat during those days were bigoted, or had actively hateful views towards certain groups of people, and early Voat wasn’t a total right wing cesspool. I simply wanted to support a grassroots platform that promised to provide an alternative to what was then becoming a highly centralized platform. Ultimately the worst of the worst won out over the reasonable people who were there, and the myriad of technical failings on the web host’s part made us regret being there, and it’s ultimately why I abandoned the platform.

I still fear that happening with kbin, but because of the different circumstances of the current migration, the nature of the fediverse, and the more diverse make up of people on this site, we are at least in less danger of the crazies running the show. My biggest fear is this site failing on the technological front, as there are still many aspects that feel unfinished, and with the recent situation on lemmy.world with user LMAO, there are still a lot of fundamental problems with the site that could be its downfall if not swiftly addressed.

(at least, normal enough)
Perfection!

Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats

I agree with what you’re saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn’t eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit. Memes can be fun and all, but sorting a lot of otherwise really great niche-subs by top of all time back there was often a case of finding nothing of value at all because there were 50 pages of fucking memes at the top of the list. Personal preference, of coarse

It sounds alot like your telling people how they should talk and act, thats not how the internet or social media works. One of my favorite boards right now in the fediverse, especially after a long day is 196. I would rather see 100 posts from 196 then another post about leaving reddit. And i can do that by filtering and subbing. thats how this all works,

I agree with what you’re saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn’t eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit

It will be filled with memes, just like reddit.

That’s the side effect of popularity. That’s the “peanut gallery” effect.

The first people joining any media platform do it out of interest. Because there is the technical hurdle to pass. That’s why the first subs you see are always very technical. First were /programming/, /linux, hardware, /java, then /atheism. Stuff that people want to talk about. There was no /interestingasfuck in the first days of the previous media platform. These misc subs appeared the last.

Now look at the avalanche of subs with zero posts we have. Theses subs are created for popularity, not by interest. They were created day one! Waiting for content. The writing is on the wall.

The “peanut gallery” joins in for the popularity, not by interest. It is attracted by the gravity effect of other people. That’s where the buzz is. And the “peanut gallery” outnumbers us 10 to 1 easily. Once the platform becomes popular is when you will say goodbye to it the same way you said goodbye to reddit. You left reddit like many others because you spend more time clicking the minimize button rather than reading interesting content.

That’s why we should not celebrate the rising numbers of accounts on kbin. Each more subscriber get us closer to the critical mass where the posts are not created out of interest but to increase reputation. You already know the process anyway, you’ve seen it in action too.

I’m down for “kbinaut” being the term for users here.

I suggest “Binners” for fun. Sounds trashy, lol.

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.

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?

That’s one trend I hope doesn’t spring up over here. I hated the fact that 95% of the subs on /r/all were literally the same thing. Like, what was the difference between MadeMeSmile, DamnThatsInteresting, NextFuckingLevel? Just all the same clickbait trash, and then, as you say, some “organic” marketing campaign for the latest Marvel movie.

Edit:
Mastodon handles this by not having an algorithm. In order for a toot to gain traction, it actually needs to be boosted around so that people can see it. A great example of how this prevented “organic” marketing was with @Raspberry_Pi.

When they first joined, their SNS team tried the same easy brand tactics that they used on Twitter, trying to force engagement. It had the opposite effect, and the community backlash was fierce. They have since changed their messaging and become more genuine.

Since link aggregators usually need some kind of algorithm for a “front page,” I think the most important thing is to have it be transparent and static. No changing it every 4 months to increase engagement.

Most importantly, the community should also have a shared opinion on what kind of stuff they are okay with, and this can be more localized per instance.

Old forums are still alive, very much, they’re just a lot more niche because you probably need a desktop computer to read them easily, but here are three examples:

• https://www.romhacking.net/forum/
• https://smashboards.com/
• https://www.belltreeforums.com/

Yeah 😅 I’m not old enough to remember aol chat rooms, geocities websites, or limewire. It just felt like there was an element to the internet at the edge of my early experience that held so much promise and was so much more open, that seems to have largely gone away. I think a bunch of that has to do with the monopolization of power of so many of these companies, and how so much content is now only discoverable through them. Hopefully we’re learning our lesson about the consequences of monopoly now.

Right, still getting used to the federated nature of it all. It’s a bit strange calling it many websites though, a bunch of different instances that all have mostly the same copied base code that all talk to each other is a bit of a gray area, no? Since nothing is indexed for google, it also kind of reinforces that feeling, like a very dim web.

I’m on Kbin and a few Lemmy instances, and I’m curious as to your thoughts on what the functional differences are that make this a winning formula while Lemmy is not. It’s almost the same as Lemmy. Don’t get me wrong, I like it here, but I don’t get much of a different vibe between here and sh.itjust.works for example.

Just chiming in to say Kbin does appear to have a block feature - it’s the little circle with a slash through it next to the “subscribe” or “follow” button for a magazine/user/instance. I only found it recently, so spreading the knowledge around.

I’m an older person, and I have a question, genuinely. As long as we have enough content generating, involved persons in the federation… do we truly need to worry about mass appeal? Or about attracting the “average” user?

I remember extremely pleasant, active IRC channels, and chat rooms on AOL with less than fifteen people that were engaging and enjoyable. As long as the people here are active, quality people, does it truly matter if we can appeal to the average? To put it another way, why try and attract the lowest common denominator if what we want is to avoid the pitfalls that come with them (the low quality comments, the mindless repetition of select in-jokes designed to make the reader engage mindlessly)?

I’m enjoying the vibe here. I mean, I read your entire comment. And then posted this one! Effort is happening! It feels almost like the lawless wild west that the internet once was! I’m not in a rush to lose this in the name of pumping up the number of users, when the only benefit of doing so seems to be a collective lowering of our quality.

Yeah he said “old guard” and then followed it up with “searching for apps” lol. We were on reddit before apps even existed.

Thank you! I think we definitely need to think about when and why we defederate other servers. I get the sense that the voice of the server owner is going to be very important in shaping people’s experiences, and we risk becoming a stronger echo chamber than Reddit. I think being transparent about our process of evaluation of an instance is going to be really important going forward, and there should definitely be a process put in place to make some semblance of an objective standard for federation.

Yeah I agree with most of what you’re getting at, but I think its a bit less of an unknowable alchemy than you’re saying. I don’t think any of the users you mentioned would have devoted their time to making their website better if they didn’t fundamentally trust the website or the community they’re catering to. That trust is built by transparency by those making the website, and clear articulation by the userbase about what, and specifically why they want to see features. We now know what happens when administrators fundamentally violate that contract, and it honestly felt like a betrayal when Reddit did it. We have a role to play in helping to make a place successful, and informing a set of values by which future admins can evaluate whether or not something is good idea, and hopefully not have ulterior profit motives :).

I sure hope so. I’m just worried that we won’t have a mature enough community to strike while the iron is hot. I really want an alternative to succeed, and have for some time. I just fear that if the economy somehow turns around and tech companies start getting their VC money again, all the big companies will just keep on trucking and we’ll all learn entirely the wrong lesson from these experiences. It’ll feel like corporate consolidation of online spaces is an inevitability, and people will just increasingly capitulate. Meanwhile there’ll be an obscure userbase of antiquated posters on this website just quietly plodding along without making any headway, and nobody will come to join us because none of dynamism of a vibrant community exists here.

Yeah I think my tldr does this better, this just repeats a bunch of lines from my post. Chatgpt has a long way to go yet.