I’ve been on reddit for a long, long time and i’ve seen all the changes that have happened in the past decade. I spent a lot of time on Reddit, and have seen the slow infestation of bots, karma whores, and guerilla marketing disguised as posts.
I’m genuinely excited for the fediverse - it seems like an actual improvement over reddit, and not just a clone. There’s a learning curve, but there was one when joining reddit too.
I participated in the migration to Voat, and saw how/why it failed. I’m more optimistic about the fediverse for various reasons, and I’m dedicating my time to helping this thrive.
I was a lurker on Voat, but I’m trying to be active here. I don’t like modding, but I’ve even created my own community here, which is saying a lot given how lazy I am. Hope to interact with y’all more!
And if you’re still reading this, i hope you don’t mind a shoutout to my new community, maliciouscompliance - recreated this as it was one of my favorite places to lurk on reddit!
https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance
EDIT: since a few people asked - I posted in this comment below why I think lemmy has a much better chance than voat did
My only concern is that I’m wondering about the viability of federated websites once the user-base of a single instance gets large enough. At that point won’t it just be the same problem where there is a massive server usage and therefore needs community support?
Yes, and I agree with Lucas here that we need to not flock to the big servers. I am on one where I greatly trust the admin to run a good instance.
I feel like that could lead to issues as well. The best way for the fediverse to work is users spread out across many small/medium instances.
Are you referring to moderation and stuff like that?
That’s still a better situation than Reddit.
Currently, all you need to start a competing instance is a server. You won’t need to fight the network effect, you won’t need to develop the software from scratch.
If the hypothetical single server starts misbehaving, it’s trivial for people to jump ship. Even if entire software projects start misbehaving at this point, there are alternatives. Hypothetically, if Lemmy/Kbin turn evil, you just use the other one.
Much less risk than a single proprietary monolith.