Moving to: m/AskMbin!

ok, some of you apparently need to get outside more.

I was seriously addicted to Reddit at some point, but in the meantime I got a perma-ban there. So I gave up and here we are.

I actually kind of feel the opposite way. While Kbin is young, and will certainly be more optimised with time, it works more than well enough to satisfy my want to interact with the world the same way I would through Reddit - though interactions feel more personal. Just in this thread I recognise a couple of names of those I've chatted with before.

Additionally, moving to Kbin finally gave me a chance to do some spring-cleaning on my browsing habits. Where I used only stick to my subscribed feed on Reddit, I find myself much more on All on Kbin, exposing myself to more (though I do stay away from NSFW, unlike what I did on Reddit).

My "life being disrupted" is a tad dramatic, but it's certainly changed my downtime scrolling habits. And there are some niche interests that I can't participate in the discussion of anymore since deleting my Reddit account, because there's not the user base here to support the communities. Mostly, I can't wait until KBin isn't just a place where the most active conversations are about Reddit. I think RedditMigration is the most populated overall magazine, and I really hope that's not a lasting situation.

I feel like someone who has just woken up from cryo-sleep or a soldier who's finally come out of the jungle after twenty years.

The 90s were great for the most part. The Internet was free and open, and there were zillions of forums and personal websites. I call this period the Genesis of the Web.

Then, things got bad. Microsoft monopolised the Web with its shitty IE 6 browser, websites were riddled with malware and popup ads, and you needed an antivirus and an anti-adware on your PC to be safe. I call this period the dark age of the Web. Most search engines died out, and Google became the king of search.

A couple years into the new millennium, Firefox and HTML 5 came about. There was hope again. Mozilla was fighting the good fight to keep the Web open, and new Web development techniques were developed (jQuery, CSS3, Dojo toolkit, Ajax became easier, etc). As a Web developer, this period was very exciting. You just couldn't keep up with the new stuff. Firefox's market share kept increasing, and new websites appeared on the scene: myspace, youtube, thefacebook (basically, proto-social media). Google released their Chrome browser, and IE was dying a slow death. This was the golden age of the Internet.

Then, things got bleak. Apple released their iPhone, and Google released Android. By this time, most personal websites were gone, social media was on the rise, Firefox became less and less relevant, and by the end of the 2010s, the Web had become just a shell of itself. The 'Web' was now just a dozen websites owned by powerful corporations. Engagement algorithms were developed to keep people hooked, and Google analytics tracked everything. Privacy was gone for good. This is the period we are currently in. I call it Corpo Web or the Dystopian Web. Some of us did not want to participate in this version of the Web, so we lived in a separate world (what we call the small web).

Finally, someone came up with the idea of Fediverse; platforms that can communicate with each other through open protocols. Corporate social media platforms are falling apart (reddit, twitter, facebook, etc), and Fediverse is exploding. Each Fediverse instance has its own personality, and it reminds me of web rings in a way. There is always something new to discover, be it a new community or a new instance of Lemmy/Mastodon/etc.

What I would love to see though, is a way to Lemmy instances more unique (custom designs, chat system, games, etc). This would encourage people to visit other instances. Also, we should be able to categorise communities and group them together (like a traditional forum).

I think it is good and healthy to regularly go through changes that affect your daily life.

I've been on reddit for more than 15 years at this point. I definitely feel like there's a big gap now. I think Kbin/Lemmy will be able to fill it eventually, though.

You're not alone. People have a natural propensity to form groups and create connections with other people. Historically those connections have evolved from small and localized tribes to communities, and eventually to cities, city states, and regional/national cultures. It's in our DNA to want to be with other people, even if we joke about how we sometimes do not. We are a social species, and that quality has played a critical role in how our species developed.

We have all done this before, and we'll all do it again and again. Our interests change over time. We move to new communities. Where (and with whom) we spend time changes as we live out our lives. The way we socialize, and the people we socialize with, will change many times. The communities with which you belong never really stay the same. Change is genuinely one of the only true constants. Rather than facing it as an impediment or a loss, we can view it as an opportunity.

Change is difficult, but it can be a very good thing. Change is really the only way we grow. If we retain what's familiar and comfortable then we will never experience anything new. You're better than that. We're all better than that. This is an opportunity that is so rarely afforded to a community like ours to do something different. Don't lament on what was lost, but seize this as an opportunity. Let's make this new community everything you'd hoped the last one could be but wasn't.

This isn't a time to think about what has been lost, but the greatest of opportunities in front of us. Seize it. Seriously. The sooner we turn our other cheek on where we were and focus on where we are and where we can be, the faster this community will begin to truly emerge and transform from being quite simply a refuge for former Redditors, to whatever it is that we want to make of it. It's all about perspective. This is an opportunity for us all. Let's make something of it. Let's do it together.

I'm generally a lurker but have been more active here on kbin. Lurking for 11+ years on reddit I've seen a lot of changes. It was only getting worse for years by the time this all went down. I saw the same thing over and over and over and over. I'm liking this space a lot more but I don't feel like my life has been disrupted, at least in a negative way. I do spend less time on "social media" but everything feels more organic here, at least so far, and I'm happy with my choice to delete and move on from reddit.

I was very active on Reddit for a long time so it's really hard for me to let it go. But let it go I will. They're fully on the path of enshittification and I'm not going down that one with them.

I've just realised that I haven't viewed a single tiktok video since leaving reddit. So I guess I haven't missed them. I never posted anything on reddit, I mostly lurked - as a passive consumer of other people's content. That's the biggest difference I guess. Here I have several different logins on various servers, and I've posted a few times in niche communities. It feels like a mini adventure!

After 6-7 years on reddit via Boost. It really was a big part of my life and it all falling apart really bothers me. Especially since it helped me mentally so much on so many levels.

Also I'm having a really hard time dealing with all the alternatives. I'm trying to get used to kbin but while I know it's still the early stages of the product, as a UX Designer, it just doesn't feel good to use at all at this stage. And it's still a big question mark if the communities and niches I enjoyed on reddit will even grow or thrive on any of the alternatives. Which again really sucks.

But despite the disruption it's caused, fuck reddit and fuck spez. No going back.

Fingers crossed that the alternatives grow and thrive.

It's been a huge pain because no single platform can't be a drop in replacement for Reddit.

I still miss it but I am glad it is over

At first I did feel that way. But as my engagement with reddit went down it felt like my life improved.

First, I’m still new here so having to scroll past all the other comments to post a comment is lame.

Most relevant and importantly though, if you feel like your life is “disrupted” by the actions of a social media company, you might want to reassess your life.

I mean, are you serious? Think about the nature of this “issue”. Anyone of this mindset (aside from the developers who were not given enough time to deal with changes) strikes me as exceptionally childish.

What people should have a problem with is the vast number of bot accounts posting content to drive engagement. Reddit is trash. It’s full of click bait and rage bait just like very other “social media” entity.

What’s awesome here is the segment of people searching for smaller more supportive communities built around their hobbies and interests.

Hail to those who’ve been maintaining Vanilla Forums, etc and creating communities in the fediverse. You’re doing it because you care and believe in passions shared by your community.

I feel more like we're experiencing a new epoch of the internet and society really. It's not just reddit changing it's API, it seems that everything is changing around us and reddit is just one facet of that. The pandemic ending, the rise of AI, new threats of war, fentanyl cheaper than soda, and unprecedented corporate greed are creating a world that we haven't seen before and it's strange for everyone.