Here (kbin), Lemmy, Tildes… I hear Mastodon had a user spike. Is there something obvious I’m missing?
I ask because I haven’t felt the same mass of users that Reddit had. Obviously users have spread out, servers have been hammered, UIs have a learning curve and so on… But there might be other alternatives I haven’t looked at that are worth that look.
After reddit my needs from a social book marking website are simple:
- Completely open source
- Moderators can be recalled by the communities they mod.
- Not for profit (ads are not the primary source of funding)
The internet needs to have something like reddit as core infrastructure. A digital public square. This requirement is incompatible with profit motive. This is why time and time again social media sites fail.
If reddit simply wanted to sustain its userbase, it’d be in a much better place.
That’s fundamentally the problem with the internet (and corporate culture as a whole, really). When a site takes off, the expectation isn’t to sustain the status quo, it’s to continue that growth. It inevitably reaches a point where maintaining exponential growth becomes more and more difficult, but even more profit still needs to be made. They find ways to squeeze every last goddamn drop out of it, almost always to the detriment of the users, the user’s experience, and everyone’s privacy.
The never-ending growth model is fundamentally the problem here, and that’s why I completely agree with you. Like you said, “This requirement is incompatible with profit motive.”
we really need to be done with capitalism, already. it got us here but now it’s obsolete.
Growth for the sake of growing is the model of cancer.
This exactly. Before this whole thing, I had no idea that social media could be open source. Now that I do, it’s what I need.
Ironically, reddit was open source. Here’s the python source code repo for what the site was between 2005-2017. They have it preserved in an archive, and reddit the company still does contribute a lot of open source code and to open source projects, but I don’t think the react rewrite of the site is included in that list.
I second your list and I’d add my personal preference: the public square shouldn’t be ginormous.
Reddit feels like trying to have a conversation at the she time with all the people that could fit in St. Peter’s Square.
After these few days on Kbin I realised I’d rather be in a small town’s square where maybe I recognise some people and my voice isn’t drowned.
A st Peter’s square of everyone trying to be the funniest person in the room. It was impossible trying to have any level of conversation because everyone just jumped in with a dumb joke constantly
As far as funding goes, Diaspora (Fedi facebook, I think) runs off of an ?$8? a year model.
Not unreasonable pricing. The estimate I saw for reddit is about 30 cents a year per user is their current take. Would I have paid $5 a year for ad free access? You bet your ass I would, but it wouldn’t be nearly greedy enough for Reddit.
Hell, I paid $5 to ernest already for having me here for less than a week. Good will isn’t that hard to gain sometimes and reddit lost alllll of it.
I tested the waters at several sites:
- Mastodon felt too much like Twitter my taste, too many angry people and too much politics; the UI is slick, though
- Squabbles UI felt weird
- Lemmy had some problematic stuff around the person who runs it, and it felt more confusing on which instance to pick
- kbin has been my favorite; familiar UI, and people seem mostly friendly and chill
Nice thing about Lemmy instances is you can pick and choose the communities across any random server and sub to them from kbin, without directly interacting with that server. Once an app comes along that lets you browse and discover across lemmy/kbin/tildes the same way you could just search subreddits I think it could take off.
Yeah right now there’s https://browse.feddit.de/ to browse communities, but putting that in an app (and adding some sorting/filtering options) would be a killer feature
edit: that site only shows Lemmy communities, not kbin ones
There’s also Tildes.net, although it’s invite-only which limits things a lot right now, but I really liked the UI there.
Getting an invite for tildes is relatively easy, but if kbin can keep up with massive number of users, it will likely become much more popular.
Know any good ways to get a Tildes invite? I’ve been lurking there for a while but I’m keen to join properly
Same here, not sure how to get an invite.
I got one about a week ago by replying to their sticky post on their subreddit r/tildes
That got shut down pretty rapidly once the reddit blackout happened. I emailed asking for one. I read somewhere that they have a queue of something like 2,000 invite requests to work through, so it might be a while.
The usage of the ‘~’ itself annoys me more than it should with that site, haha. Both from a viewing perspective and a typing perspective.
What makes Tildes.net different? Does it do anything differently than Reddit, or is it mostly just a clone?
I haven’t browsed it for more than a few minutes nor do I have an invite so it would be nice to hear if there’s anything that makes it stand out from other alternatives.
Lemmy had some problematic stuff around the person who runs it
What problematic stuff, exactly? I remember reading about some tankie stuff, but with the amount of information I had to digest the last couple of days, I’m not sure if that was about Lemmy or some other site.
I am new to the fediverse concept. Is Squabbles part of the fediverse?
No, it’s centralized, basically a dude trying to re-create reddit with some twitter-like functions and a tweaked UI. So far he’s been diligent, responsive, and willing to (eventually) ban racist trolls, but he has his eye on maintaining control and moving towards monetization. IMHO he’s also in a bit over his head, for instance spending a large amount of time working on local image uploads to spur engagement on meme subs before listening to his user base, who were reminding him of the bandwidth, costs, and legal oversight he’d incur.
The simplicity of it has attracted people though, and engagement seems good. It’s not a bad site; it just has more potential failure points than something open-source, decentralized, and not-for-profit.
What you said about Mastodon would surely differ from instance to instance, unless you’re referring to the global feed where everything is federated.
What I personally like most about Mastodon, Lemmy and Kbin is that they don’t use an algorithm to decide on my behalf what I should or shouldn’t see. If I subscribe to another user, I will see their posts, and I will see them in the correct chronological order. Not this hidden secret “personalization” algorithm that randomly decides to hide something from me because it wouldn’t draw engagement, and decides to show me something I didn’t ask for because it would.
Yessss, I didn’t even think about that once I started using kbin/mastodon, but you are totally right. There’s a reason why the for-profit social media things absolutely don’t want to just give you a chronological feed.
So far I’m between Kbin, Tildes, Squabbles, Fark and Something Awful forums.
I’d like an invite to Tildes as they’re pretty cool over there, plus that UI is so calming.(Thank you for the invite!)
I’m using kbin.social mostly, I will just follow Lemmy communities from kbin once federation is re-enabled. It doesn’t make sense to me to have an account for Lemmy AND an account for kbin if they’re both part of the Fediverse.
I am also using Mastodon, even though it’s part of the Fediverse. I’m doing this because it’s more like Twitter, and the tweet equivalent on Mastodon is the same as a “Microblog” on kbin.
Ditto on the last point. I understand other Fediverse platforms like Mastodon and such should just work with others like Kbin/Lemmy, but the UI’s are so massively different. So I’ve went with the idea of having separate accounts. One for my existing Mastodon instance and one here on Kbin. To me it feels like the best way to manage it.
As a bonus to all of this, I should be able to easily follow my Kbin account and boost posts over on Mastodon if needed once federation is all sorted.
One additional plus to using kbin over Lemmy is there’s no “Microblog” feature on Lemmy. So if you follow Mastodon accounts on Lemmy, you won’t see anything. Whereas if you follow Mastodon accounts on kbin, their posts will come in as Microblogs!
and everything is still being developed. the fediverse experience is going to be better and better.
I feel like liking squabbles.io is a more controversial opinion than it really needs to be, but I have been! This is my other corner.
I agree! I’ve been enjoying it, despite the fact that it’s still growing so there’s not a heap of content. I’m spreading my time across squabbles, kbin and mastodon and so far like them all for different reasons.
deleted by creator
subreddits that have jumped ship from reddit entirely that I am aware of:
r/traaas - to raddle
r/popheads (maybe) - to discord
r/mashup - to discord
r/disneyland - to discord and kbin
r/gameboy - to discordWhile the official communities (as in backed by the original mods) all seemingly went to discord, a lot of users I notice have been going to a little bit of everything.
List of software I am aware of: tildes, kbin, lemmy, raddle, squabbles, discord, hacker news (for the techies)
I just need certain tech groups, automotive groups and fuzzy kitties so I think kbin will probably be fine. I use RIF for reddit and it’s just plain stupid to kill 3rd party apps and screw with the API after all this time.
We really need a functional app for lemmy/kbin/tildes stat. There’s lots of UI polish needed to get to the point where people can find and check their communities as easily as they’re used to.
Also, as a mod, my biggest reticence around trying to bring my communities here is the lack of any equivalent for wikis. I think in a few weeks we could be in a place where it’s a real replacement but by then the blackout may be forgotten and it might be too late.
On the other hand there will probably be a second chance when reddit kills old.reddit
I’ve been on kbin and squabbles. Liking them both so far
Same here. Squabbles is a bit more Reddit-like but I’m enjoying both quite a bit!
What’s their deal? Doesn’t seem open source. Isn’t federated. Who owns it? Whats their business model?
UI looks clean, polished even. But I don’t wanna buy-in on another closed system that may degrade in the same way.There may be more on their discord, but just from what I’ve seen, the founder was a regular on /r/entrepreneur and has been looking for the right idea to “hit.” It’s closed source, centralized, a PHP codebase, and the founder is declining any extra help or donations, instead doing everything himself and working on an optional subscription to begin proper monetization ASAP and keep control from being muddied. It’s pretty decent, and some of the less tech-centered communities are doing well there, but while there’s not much I can complain about in its current form, something nebulous has my spidey-sense tingling.
I’m more using squabbles just because it’s more discussion-based and I can also find my “communities” there.
That’s a new one to me. Is it also part of the fediverse?
Edit (should we do edits here?) Saw some clarifications about squabble below, including some dubious aspects
I was on squabbles but after 3 days of my feed not changing I figured it died so I deleted my account. Guess i gave up too soon.
It won’t happen over night. As the quality of reddit declines, more people will give Kbin and Lemmy a shot.
A lot of power users are leaving reddit and that’s where the quality was.I mean reddit quality was already in freefall outside of smallish subs. It’s gonna get worse quickly if those people actually leave.
Apart from a few sports subs, and they are a whole other mess of non-typical reddit demographics, I was actually mostly participating in more niche communities (and Star Wars, lol). I long ago unsubbed to most of the big standard ones, which has been a double-edged sword during the blackout. I don’t have a huge gap in where I was getting news and giggles, but most of what I did want to read on Reddit was coming from smaller, often not tech-related, communities that are not going to coalesce quickly. One topic and 5 comments a day on college football is not going to scratch that itch, even in the offseason, and I don’t know when we will actually have a way to bring 19,000 fans of country-adjacent rock/folk/etc. music together in one place.
I was the same and it’s kinda sad to see people are making carbon copies of the big reddit subs here with predictable comments.
My friend told me lots of redditors have migrated to Tumblr. She’s constantly on tumblr, so I tend to believe her.
i went back to Tumblr lol. i’m actually finding it nice.
Most are probably still on reddit.
This, unfortunately, is true.
I checked a single thread in /r/technology this morning from the Narwhal app and folks there are in full apathy mode. “it was never going to do anything”, “It actually helped reddit by making other subs discoverable”, etc.
It’s frustrating to see the level of distaste I have as a 15 year user of reddit and the 3rd party apps they’ve supported doesn’t seem to remotely be reciprocated by that crowd.
And even on the subreddit discords I’m a part of, none of them seemed to be talking about alternatives or have any enthusiasm for such discussion.
why does it seem like people are much more hesitant to migrate websites than they were in the past?
especially for a website like reddit it’s not like most people use it to interact with their friends or anybody who they might deem important.
afterall reddit became popular after digg’s collapse but that’s not even the only example of this
My guess is that it’s younger/newer/more causal internet users who don’t remember the days when the internet wasn’t just, like, 5 websites. I wouldn’t be surprised if the audience on kbin/lemmy skews older since that would be the cohort that was used to forums and an early web that was more shifting and moving, and would be more comfortable packing up and going to another site. Linus Tech Tips made the great point that there’s been a shocking period of stability on the internet with Twitter and Reddit as institutions, but that maybe that time is coming to a close.
My google-fu has failed me, what is Tides?
Tildes.net: another reddit-like link aggregator site. It’s currently invite only, but I can hook you up if you want one.
I’d like an invite. I have a podcast (ioradio.org) and we’re planning to do a show on comparing Reddit alternatives. e-mail adam@ioradio.org
All gone for now, sorry.
Tildes.net and Kbin, bru.
Both set up on Hermit Apps too, which is working well for the most part—surprisingly well. I’m tempted to even try loading old.reddit on it, but it’s the principle of the matter that stops me.
I’m really enjoying kbin and Lemmy. I’m really keen on giving Tildes a go but have been unable to get an invite. I’ve emailed the Tildes team but I’m guessing they’re probably pretty busy these days!
What’s Tildes, precious?
