I’m a Reddit refugee who was on that platform for 10+ years. I saw not just a tremendous amount of controversies, but attempts at introducing alternatives to Reddit during all of them. The 2015 blackout saw a ton of alternatives suggested, and if you go back and look at them many have either not survived or never achieved their stated goal of serving as a viable alternative to Reddit. Places like Voat, Ruqqus, or Parler promptly turned themselves into extremist shitholes and imploded. The truth is most internet communities which found and advertise themselves as an alternative to Reddit die.
However, I think this newest wave of searching for an alternative has more legs than I think I’ve ever seen, and the key to that is the kind of users who are moving. The people who were pissed off by the recent changes are the old guard of the internet. These are the people who still remember searching for and finding RIF, Apollo, or AlienBlue (before it was bought), and have the technical know-how to care about the quality and usability of their platform. I think you all are people who engage with their online spaces with intention, and because of that I believe that we have more of a shot at making this work than I’ve witnessed since I joined Reddit all those many years ago.
In order to make this all work out though, I think it’s really important to cast our thoughts toward what made the websites that have come before us successful. Every single one of these spaces have distinct ways of interaction that indirectly communicate their ideologies. Memes, in-jokes, and lingo form the backbone of online communities and help to direct users back to the source, but they never gain real purchase without a unique viewpoint. I’m pretty sure I can confidently suss out whether a meme comes from 4Chan, Reddit, or Tumblr, just through the message conveyed and the template used. For an online platform to have relevance and draw, I believe it absolutely needs to have an individual and communicable perspective.
Now I am aware that much of this is organically generated, but I think we underestimate how much of it isn’t. The structure of a website clearly communicates to users its core values, and users almost certainly respond to that. The fact that users are by default anonymous on the Chans absolutely contributes to the unique “flavor” of those websites, and the subreddit structure of Reddit allows it to contain a greater variety of clashing values. We can already see some of this on the Fediverse, the tension engendered by the federated instances I think places greater emphasis on building consensus. The fact that an entire server can be excised at will from a group of other like-minded server owners means that one has to always have an eye towards the common consensus, and I think we will see many fights over this in the not-so-distant future.
So as we go forward, and while we are in the most nascent part of this website’s lifespan, I think we should be discussing and commenting on what we think is most important about this space. I’m already seeing that people think that Kbin is “nicer than Reddit” and you’re more convinced that you’re interacting with real people. I think this is all good, and I think that while we’re making content, we need to have an eye on putting that particular spin on all the things we brought over from where we came from. Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats, and having our own slang, but for right now we need to be thinking hard about what we want out of our online lives and how this website can be built to serve those purposes. I think the risk of not doing that, and forever being only a federated Reddit clone is going to leave people forever jonesing for the experiences they had on Reddit, and this space is going to die just like every other attempted alternative has before.
TLDR: Now that we've all left Reddit, for this new place to live my opinion is that we need to have more discussions about what our principles are, and we need to make unique content that brings people to this website.
One of the biggest tensions is going to be that as a community grows, it's going to attract the attention of (a) advertisers who will develop "organic marketing" campaigns, (b) political messaging campaigners for international as well as domestic concerns, and (c) "influencers" who want to market their brands. Each of these will use high-engagement ragebait and awwThatsAmazing-type posts. Reddit's r/all was full of these.
Kbin and lemmy seem nice and refreshing because a lot of those posts don't exist here yet. But if we continue to grow, they will show up. How will we handle this?
That’s one trend I hope doesn’t spring up over here. I hated the fact that 95% of the subs on /r/all were literally the same thing. Like, what was the difference between MadeMeSmile, DamnThatsInteresting, NextFuckingLevel? Just all the same clickbait trash, and then, as you say, some “organic” marketing campaign for the latest Marvel movie.
Edit:
Mastodon handles this by not having an algorithm. In order for a toot to gain traction, it actually needs to be boosted around so that people can see it. A great example of how this prevented “organic” marketing was with @Raspberry_Pi.
When they first joined, their SNS team tried the same easy brand tactics that they used on Twitter, trying to force engagement. It had the opposite effect, and the community backlash was fierce. They have since changed their messaging and become more genuine.
Since link aggregators usually need some kind of algorithm for a “front page,” I think the most important thing is to have it be transparent and static. No changing it every 4 months to increase engagement.
Most importantly, the community should also have a shared opinion on what kind of stuff they are okay with, and this can be more localized per instance.
I think you're both spot on. What I hope is that by voicing this people can "get with the program" and not reward that kind of content. After all, we can still see downvotes on here ;).
@asteroidrainfall @bttoddx I think these two were related. I believe most of those UnexpectedInterestingSmile reposts were made by bot or semi-bot accounts, which were then used to upvote the marketing posts, and this worked because the front-page algorithm promoted things that high-karma accounts upvoted.
So the question is: will a combination of server policies and user actions counteract the effect of advertisement bots?
As you say, part of the answer relates to transparency in front-page algorithms and in up/down votes. Reddit avoids transparency because Reddit is pro-advertiser. Another part relates to user standards. The example you give from Raspberry_pi on Mastodon bodes well. And even on Reddit, I saw users call out "comment-stealing bots" which reposted human-authored comments for karma.
So the future issue will be: will the companies and advertisers try to engage in more genuine ways or will they just find ways to circumvent the transparency and user standards? And if so, how will the community adjust?
I think one thing that might help is to distinguish bot accounts from user accounts. This would make it obvious the intentions of the post.
Recently, I've visited r/all out of curiosity. Prior to deleting my Reddit account I can't remember the last time I had visited r/all. I was always on my home page, and r/all didn't even enter into my sphere. I would only catch brief glimpses of it as my home page loaded (I don't know if this is because I used RES or not). My wife and I would talk back and forth about things we'd see on Reddit, and they were vastly different experiences.
Considering the minimal content so far on kbin, I do peruse "all" frequently, however my default viewing is on subscription. I don't know how many users defaulted their home page to r/all on Reddit, but my wife and I did not. It seems to matter on how you curate your own experience. I'm glad these choices exist on kbin.
Reddit also had an aggressive recommendation system, where posts from your most recently interacted subs would show up more often. I would literally only open one sub via a post on the front page and the next time my /all would be filled with trash for that sub.
That's interesting, and it makes perfect sense the algorithm would work that way. YouTube's algorithm is much the same.
My Reddit home page was default, and like I said I don't know if that was a function of RES or Reddit itself. I didn't see much r/all content at all.
I can tell you one thing about kbin, I already had to unsubscribe to "Cats" here. My feed was inundated with nothing but cat posts after I subscribed to the magazine. I love cyoot kittehs, but I also like to browse more than just cat content. I am however, glad the new participants are introducing all their fur babies though.
I used rif and I took the approach of blocking subs and using the front page rather than subscribing to specific subs. I don't think the algorithm worked through that app since it relied on the developers API key to load content.
I would get a lot of niche content showing up without a lot of the annoying subs spam.