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.

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."

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.

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.

There's also Tildes.net, although it's invite-only which limits things a lot right now, but I really liked the UI there.

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.

I am new to the fediverse concept. Is Squabbles part of the fediverse?

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.

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 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.

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.