Reddit Migration

I can only assume that the people having trouble understanding kbin/lemmy are either relatively young, or relatively inexperienced with technology. Basically those people whose online experience really only started in the era of Reddit/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Those of us who were online in the early 2000s are familiar with web forums. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically just web forums that can be interacted with from any kbin or Lemmy instance that's federated. Those of us who are even older and were online in the 90s (or earlier) are familiar with Usenet. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically Usenet newsgroups, with the particular instance you're on essentially the same as your Usenet provider. Or for the really old folks like me, instances are like BBSes that are connected to each other with FidoNet.

It reminds me of people who get confused getting on Discord for the first time, when it's really just a modern incarnation of chat-rooms or IRC. None of these ideas are new, and people were able to figure out these core concepts decades ago.

Why is this so hard for people?

One thing I want people to leave behind when they unplug from reddit is the clickbait titles:

"Look what my sister just did!"

"Was it really so simple?"

"I should have seen it coming [wholesome]"

Surprise titles are the worst. They really make me feel that the author is just using the tool as his toy. There will be thousands of people like you, what do you think will happen when all the titles will look like yours?

I was unsure of which instance to go with, but I got on Kbin as soon as I saw that it had Oauth. (just don't want to deal with it)

I get both sides. Just the act of having to create a new login/password is too much for many who've gotten used to signing in with their Facebook or Google accounts and they want things to be as friction free as possible and I think that's fair enough. Personally I really enjoyed the process of learning about the Fediverse, figuring out how Lemmy works and understanding its strengths and limitations. But that's not most people. I know one redditor I tried to describe it to said they gave up after the first sentence. If I really simplified it they will understand but in doing so you might misslead them about the world of instances, how they can all differ slightly, how they may or may not fully interact with each other. Me, I'm like holy crap! I'm on this tiny little instance in a corner of the world and I can not only read but like, comment and subscribe to all these other much bigger communities!? Let alone interact with kbin.social which isn't even Lemmy at all!? It just works! But I'm also very tollerant of times when things may not work as expected, but I don't care, because at least it's not reddit ;-)

It is just plain comfortness. Sometimes people can be completely helpless if you switch an option or an app around, even though it is just by one position or even just change the design a bit. So is it with /kbin. It completely looks like and works like Reddit, yet it is different.

I gotta be honest, I'm a tech person myself and I was also slightly confused when I checked out Lemmy for the first time. There were three major things I had to grasp before I felt like I understood the whole concept:

1. Browsing "All" shows content from all federated instances
2. Most big instances are already federated, so chosing the right instance is not really that important
3. You can participate in other instances with the account of your "home" instance by turning foreigninstance.com/c/Community into homeinstance.com/c/Community@foreigninstance.com, which is a kinda cumbersome process right now, but I'm sure some wily developer will come up with an elegant solution for that in the future (like having the option to automatically turn URLs from foreign instances into home instance URLs).

It kind of makes me want to learn coding, so I can participate and make Lemmy better and better, lol.

I don't blame anyone for getting frustrated. The whole concept of the fediverse is quite confusing to someone that knew nothinf about it prior, and I myself am only just starting to get a grasp on things. The whole experience reminds me of the first time i heard about bitcoin and trying to wrap head around the blockchain.

I (and i assume many others) have been unhappy with reddit's direction for some time now, and forcedully ending the life of my third party app of choice (RIF) just happened to be the straw that broke the camels back.

To many of us this is the last straw, but to many others who may be newer users, or may have already been using the official Reddit app this probably does not seem like a huge deal.

Only time will tell if the folks leaving were generating the lions share of the worthwhile content, or if we are just the vocal minority and life will go on. Some folks aren't looking for a new home, and even if these events are what lead to Reddit's eventual demise it will take years for said demise to play out.

I keep clicking links on one fediverse and somehow I become on a different instance and thus logged out, kbin seems promising but no mobile app, Jerboa is glitchy and very WIP. It is hard to grasp. The first time I tried using it I just ended up on different instances and couldn't log in again, not realising that I was somehow brought to a different instance instead of viewing the post in my instance

If the super-easy signup process is a barrier to entry for someone, is that person really worth having here? This may sound crazy, but I want barriers to entry.

Anyone recall how much better the internet was when it cost a few thousand bucks, and a bit of technical know-how, to even get online? It was no utopia, but it also wasn't everyone's Aunt Betty, who can't operate a toaster, on her iPhone screaming "5G gives you covid DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!1"

After finding the voting system better than Slashdot's, I was on Reddit for 14 years; I fell in love with it at the start, and slowly fell out of love each time they dumbed the site down, in order to lower the barrier to entry. It went from a forum for a community of nerds, to a Facebook meme image board, and each step was a painful reminder of Eternal September in action.

The Fediverse still has that old feeling of community, and I don't want Eternal September to happen here (and it is happening, but not to a terrible extent, yet). I wish signing up really was confusing. Nothing good will come from adding training wheels for Aunt Betty.

Most people are really dumb when it comes to technology.

Yeah I won’t lie I’m… very confused but I’m kinda just rolling with it and hoping I figure it out along the way. I can’t speak for others but I find myself generally comfortable with computers and willing to try things out and see what I can do. Some people are afraid to do that and idk how to change it

Lol yep, my wife uses reddit and when I started explaining it she just stopped listening. I'm like and case and point.

Though it took a bit of reading to figure it out for myself, I had the desire to do so. Whereas those who don't really care will continue to browse reddit or whatever imo.

Hopefully it becomes easier to get setup and more elegant solutions are found.

Seriously, the Internet was better before it was so accessible. I might sound arrogant, but I don't care. I want people here who actually have half a clue about how to operate a computer. If someone doesn't even know how to sign up to a website and rage quits, I'm quite glad they aren't here.

My hot take: I'm okay with a barrier to entry (right now).

Getting setup on the fediverse isn't necessarily a super simple process and there is a bit of learning curve for how it works.

That's okay. I actually like it. Here's why.

It means the people here want to be here. It means the people here understand what it is and more importantly what it isn't. It's not a reddit clone. It's not even old school forums. It's this.

And "this" isn't even it's final form. I fully expect for the fediverse to evolve over the next few months and years. As a community develops and the technology is refined, I am sure it will all get simpler as we knock off the rough edges.

In the mean time, this tiny barrier to entry keeps a lot of the whiners and naysayers away. It keeps people that only want a reddit clone, away. If you want reddit, use reddit. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

It's a balancing act, because we don't want to turn so many people away that we can't build a reasonable community, but you also don't want a bad copy of a system people are leaving.

Two examples:

when you're browsing your follows on mastodon, and click on their follows, the list is not true to their follows (because your server hasn't fetched them).

and, when you first subscribe to someone's posts, you can't see older posts (say they've got 100, but you see zero).

I'm aware that there are technical reasons (you weren't subscribed), and open source reasons (nobody has the time to volunteer to fix it), but these are insufficient to help an anxious new user who's undecided about the platform.

That's only Mastodon, which has 7 years of refinement. Don't get me started on the litany of federation-related edge cases of Lemmy's UX failings.