Here's how it's going to go down. - Beehaw
beehaw.org
Some context: I was /u/Blackstar9000 on Reddit. You might know me from /r/TheoryOfReddit. Or maybe not—I ditched my account there a number of years ago. I’ve been on the Fediverse for about 6 years, primarily via Mastodon. Last October, I deactivated my Twitter account. I’ve been through a bunch of social media sites, and I’ve seen the patterns. This post is about those patterns. A lot of you are trying out Lemmy or Kbin because of what’s been happening at Reddit. (Welcome to the Fediverse!) And a lot of you will be going back to Reddit as soon as things quiet down. You might not think you’re one of those people, or you might not be sure where you stand. I’m not here to tell you what to do, just to prepare you to decide. That’s the goal: a decision. As opposed to letting inertia decide for you. There are a few factors at play here. One is that you’re accustomed to Reddit. You may not like what’s been going on there lately, but the platform is familiar, you know how it works, it feels like a broken-in pair of sneakers. Every bit of friction you feel here is going to nudge you back in that direction. Another is that the Fediverse is different. Lemmy and Kbin are designed to do something very like what Reddit, Digg and other link-aggregating social sites do, but the fact of federating with the broader network makes certain complications impossible to avoid or ignore. And there are deliberate differences that have less to do with federation than with what the devs thing might work better. Some people adapt quickly, others don’t. Some people just plain don’t like it. In any case, there’s a learning curve, and that’s bound to be a source of friction. A third is that Lemmy and Kbin are still finding their footing. These are independent, open source services, and they’re in the process of becoming the things they’ll one day be. Mastodon went through similar growing pains, and a lot of people bounced off of them during those awkward years when the UI was rough and the feature set incomplete. People’s ideas about Mastodon changed more slowly than the service itself, and it wasn’t until things got really bad on Twitter that adoption rates kicked back up again. Mastodon still isn’t what Twitter became, and probably never will be, but it’s a much more professional-feeling piece of tech than it used to be. Someone is building the airplane we’re flying on. Any Fediverse service that survives long enough will go through that process, and if you’re not clear-eyed about the need for patience, that too can push you away. A fourth factor is social. If you’ve been on Reddit for a while, then you probably have a decent mental map of your relationships on that platform. You’ll probably reconnect here with some people you know from there, and maybe even carve out spaces where you can reconstruct some of the communities you were a part of there. But you can’t transplant your entire social map. To stay here—to even want to stay here—you’ll need to build a new web of relationships, one that might include some portions of the old web, and that’s more friction. All of that friction adds up, and the only antidote, really, is resolve. So you’ll hang out here during the blackout, when there’s friction on both sides of the line. A small minority of you will take to the Fediverse immediately and move most of your activity off of Reddit. But only a small minority. Some of you will get a taste for it and split your time between here and Reddit. For most of you, though, the gravity of your history with Reddit will win out in relatively short order. No hard feelings. We’re happy to have the people who stay. But if you go back, let that be something you’ve decided to do, not just muscle memory taking over. Because that’s another thing I’ve seen happen time and time again: People try out the Fediverse, only to drift back to the corporate platform. Then six months later, a year, two years, something new comes up. The platform finds a new way to alienate users, and some subset of them will go hunting through their email to figure out which Fediverse server their forgotten account is on, and what login name they used. (Trust me: keep that info somewhere you can find it.) Going back is a valid decision! I just want you to decide, rather than let muscle memory decide for you. And if you go back, set a limit for yourself. Figure out the straw that would break the camel’s back. Tell yourself, “If they ever do this, I’ll delete my account,” so that if they ever do that, you actually will.
    • themobyone@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Sorry. Don’t know why this happened, if you open up the original post it opens with paragraphs.

  • themobyone@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    I hope x-post (should we call it that here?) is allowed. for some reason the formatting got messed up

  • FrickAndMortar@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I AM a little on the fence, as many others are - I haven’t deleted my 10yr Reddit account, st least not yet. But I WILL stay off the platform for at least a month. I intend to be very limited in my interactions there, for the foreseeable future, and only visit for specific reasons, not to just browse. I intend to spend the time I WOULD have spent, in finding similar communities here instead.

  • deelayman@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I am in stubborn opposition to the official app. That is the biggest thing that will drive my usage of Lemmy.

    Most of my future redditing will be much more deliberate time on my laptop browsing specific subs rather than scrolling the front-page on my phone.

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Good points! I’ve been online since the '80s, so this isn’t my first rodeo - not by a long shot. And I really dislike venture capitalists, having spent 7 years working in one of the largest venture capital law firms in America.

    I’m going to be clear-eyed about this. There are some things I want that the Fediverse can’t supply, at least not yet. Things that require a user base of a certain size. I’ll go back to Reddit for those things.

    Dating, for example. I found a while back that Reddit was the best place for me to meet compatible women. The Fediverse can’t match that at this point. I don’t even know if there are dating communities here, much less for demisexuals. And the odds of finding compatible women in my particular neck of the woods? Infinitesimal!

    Another interest is gaming. At some point I expect to be looking for gamers to join a campaign I’ll be starting. Again, that requires a large user base - particularly since I would like to find at least some gamers in my general area. The Fediverse can’t fulfill that need for me. I hope that someday it can.

    But my trust in Reddit is irrevocably broken. I’m not comfortable there any more. So I will be maintaining a strong presence here. My hope is that the Fediverse will become popular enough to meet some of those needs. I think it could happen.

    People talk about the relative technological complexity of the Fediverse as a barrier to widespread adoption, but I’m skeptical about that. I remember when I had to explain to people what the internet was, and they looked at me like I was from Mars. Now I’m sure all of those people use the internet all the time, everyday. The technological gap wasn’t insurmountable for them after all. The same, I believe, is true for the Fediverse.

    One more thing: I’m pissed. I contributed a lot to Reddit over the years. Yes, I did it to feel good, for the most part. I recommended books to a hell of a lot of people over there, and I know that at least some of them actually read some of the books I suggested. That gave me a good feeling. The owners of Reddit took that away. So, if I may be forgiven for the expression, fuck them! I won’t be giving them any more of my time and effort than the absolute minimum. I’d rather spend that time here, trying to make this a more inviting place for people who don’t realize that Reddit is just screwing them.

    Also, there are other things I could be doing with my time as well. There’s a whole world of books to read, for example. 😄

  • femboy_link.mp4@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Remember that fediverse platforms don’t have to kill off centralised social media networks, they just have to be a viable alternative. Users will come and go, I’ll probably be one of them. I’ll try my best to build solid foundations for communities I care about here. But yeah, as much as I’d like to cast it off entirely there’s no doubt in my mind that I will keep Reddit around for the foreseeable future at least because the objective reality is that all of my hobbies have well-established roots there with huge knowledge bases, and psychologically that’s going to be difficult to let go of. Will I be thinking much more carefully about what kind of future I want to help build for social media when choosing where to put my future content though? Absolutely. And in my mind, it’s not on a platform that has proven time and time again that it is more than willing to sell its users down the river.