this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

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I know Kbin will grow in time but I miss how huge Reddit was.

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[–] Haan@kbin.social 137 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don’t. I like how I can comment on something and not have it buried. Engagement is much higher here

[–] popshabang@kbin.social 56 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah--I constantly read about how people liked reddit back in the day, or liked digg, but don't connect it to the fact that the reason why they were better back in the day was because they were smaller and more intimate (for lack of a better word).

I'm excited for the fediverse to grow, but for me it's already reached that critical mass for it to be engaging

[–] parrot-party@kbin.social 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

That intimacy was still available on Reddit, but you needed to dig into the niche subs to find it. Commenting on large subs was definitely a cup of water in the ocean feeling.

[–] popshabang@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Oh absolutely--that's really the only reason I was able to stay on reddit. I do miss some of those smaller communities, but have resorted to actual forums now (if applicable), or just going without.

Shoutouts to the fiberglassflyrodders.com forums

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[–] ImDonaldDunn@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ehh…as someone who was on Reddit and Digg back in the day, they were much larger than Lemmy currently is.

[–] DoucheAsaurus@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

Sure but the fediverse isn't just Lemmy. I'm commenting through kbin right now for example.

[–] parrot-party@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They weren't born large. Reddit was seeded with content by the developers before the users came. The secret to growing a community is to grow a community. It all has to start somewhere and frankly, fediverse is starting with a much stronger kick start than digg and Reddit ever had.

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[–] c3VjayBteSBhc3MK@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

As someone who was on Reddit and Digg way way back in the day, there was a point where they were about the size of what Lemmy currently is.

[–] wr4th4@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

hear, hear! i don't miss all the spam and bots.

[–] Bat@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The UI definitely needs an update. Need more distinction between comments.

[–] holo_nexus@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

You can try changing appearance theme found in the settings (gear) icon towards the bottom. Helped with differentiating comments.

I do agree that UI needs improvement which will eventually come.

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[–] Saturdaycat@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I understand this only because my husband still is looking at reddit. I had to have a talk with him as to why I am changing platforms, the point of not visiting a site during a protest, and how Lemmys and kbin need time to grow. He was looking at news and he said "well your site doesn't have anything! It's basically empty where am I supposed to go for discussion!"

I told him he needs to either just view the news sites directly and contribute, or just try to curb usage and allow the sites time to grow. Use your phones native news app for now, whatever it takes to not add to Reddits ad revenue and user count.

[–] CynAq@kbin.social 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If this was reddit, you'd be smothered in replies asking why you haven't left your husband yet.

[–] Ni@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Red flags everywhere, you know I'd forgotten that was everyone's response on reddit!

[–] popshabang@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, there's a lot of content here already.

Yeah it's not the same endless dopamine drip feed conveyor belt that is Reddit, but there's plenty of content to engage with.

[–] Alto@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it's not the same endless dopamine drip feed conveyor belt that is Reddit

Which sure as hell isn't a bad thing!

[–] vyvanse@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I've been enjoying commenting and having a more social experience here rather than endlessly lurking :)

[–] stephfinitely@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Leaving reddit has made me start looking at actual websites for content and then if I like it I bring it back here. Where in reddit everything was pretty much guaranteed to already been linked somewhere. I know if this community get big the same thing will happen. But for now I actually feel a part of the community instead of just passively experience the community.

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[–] Valdair@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

On the contrary, the smallest communities are the most fun and enjoyable to interact in. The big ones are just good for making sure there’s always fresh content on /r/all every few hours. It’ll grow. This is just the first big migration wave, there will be more when the third party apps shut off and there will be more again once people start realizing it’s not just a tiny forum experiment no one cares about.

[–] parrot-party@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The current communities are a bit too small to be really engaging. There's often only a handful of comments instead of a wealth of discussion. It will grow and they will get better, but it's understandable that some people are feeling the content is a bit hollow currently. I bet another doubling in size (very doable) would easily bring us to the activity level needed for things to be lively and fresh.

[–] sic_1@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Yup and that's the reason I think it is crucial now to stay here and be active instead of going back just because the learning heard goes after the memes. As Valdair said, it'll grow step by step now that a proper alternative exists. Everyone just needs to do their part, either by posting, commenting or developing.

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[–] CynAq@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Better to be a grower than a shower

[–] DarkenLM@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It took me an embarrassing long time to process the word "shower" in that phrase lol.

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[–] dh@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Reddit feels like it grew exponentially the last few years. I noticed a huge increase in the number of accounts with auto-generated usernames and accounts referring to Reddit as an "app." To me it also seemed to become increasingly toxic with this new wave of users. Hoping for a big reset with one of these new offshoots.

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[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On reddit if you were european you were basically missing the action since the posts were written by americans and already 8 hours old, and your replies would be buried under the hundreds of comments.

Most of the time there was no point if you weren't present like 1h after a post was made.

The only people who would read your comments would be an AI.

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[–] DoucheAsaurus@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't lol, every comment and post I made there was like screaming into the void. The responses you do get in large subs are either tired memes, people trying to argue even though they agree with you, or just straight up bots reposting comments.

[–] IntendantTradwife@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I usually only lurked on the larger subs because of that problem

[–] rynzcycle@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My wife says, "it's not the size but what you do with it". And she's really smart. But seriously, I'm loving the smaller start. We'll grow, but right now I feel like I'm heard on a level Reddit never offered. Every great journey begins with a single step.

[–] olrik@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have size but don't know what to do with it, can confirm women don't like that.

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[–] IntendantTradwife@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

It's definitely a higher engagement ratio or whatever the right term is for it! I do love that!

[–] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think there’s a size between Reddit and Lemmy that’s ideal. And as Lemmy grows it will get hopefully there. I have no desire to post a comment in a thread with 10k comments. I’m more hopeful that Lemmy will get better than in hopeful that Reddit won’t get worse.

[–] maxerature@social.tath.link 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My favorite subreddits were those that had a good 25k active users. Enough that there were a good 2500 active posters and commenters, and people knew each other a little. However, some support subreddits with 100k+ were nice.

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[–] lh@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It feels like a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I agree - I was definitely more of a lurker on reddit than a massive contributor (14 years, <30k karma), but I loved how there was always a relevant subreddit for even fairly niche interests. I miss that on the fediverse - but at the same time, I'm hopeful that the fediverse will, in time, gain wider attention. I don't miss the low quality content, but I miss the sheer volume of content, and with careful curation of subreddits, managing the signal to noise ratio was easy enough.

[–] heyfluxay@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

Just like a bad ex…. Gotta just let it go.

[–] IsThisLemmyOpen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Meh, I haven't see a single toxic comment since I came here, althought that will probably eventually change. I don't expect toxicity will become a huge issue. Every time I've encountered toxicity on Reddit basically boils down to either covert racism, or false accusations of being a racist.

[–] Scope@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Have you noticed basically no one downvotes here? The user base seems to be more accessible and emotionally mature in general so far.

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[–] Scope@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

kbin could be a bit bigger, but the collective reddit personality is downright insufferable, and I suspect it's largely because of its size. There are just too many people with opinions as strong as they are different, and we're often not any better off after our interactions with them.

Plus all the troll bots and fake AI posts.

[–] yoshi_nori@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I also choose this guy's social media size.

But seriously, it might grow in time. I think if it gets more accessible, people will start using one of the fediverse flavours, and it will grow from there.

[–] Cyder@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

I do too BUT, it's nice to actually get to engage with people when I make a comment due to the smaller community. Reddit is so big, my comments usually get buried quickly under the memes and quips.

[–] mrslinkypants@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When I started on Reddit in 2012, it was mostly because I was in Rarotonga and I needed something to entertain myself that didn't use hoards of data like YouTube did for me at the time and Reddit was largely text and image based so it fit the bill perfectly.

Over the years I definitely saw a cultural shift and the quality of content absolutely dropped but there was still so much of it that I could still lurk...

This fediverse does a pretty good job of capturing that same vibe of text based forums that I'm really enjoying, whilst I totally get what you're saying about the size of Reddit I'm more than happy to be hanging out here and I actually like the simple interface, reminds me of my Nexus 4 days hah

[–] geoffervescent@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I have a hunch: if you knew how much of Reddit's size was bots or work accounts pushing a paid for agenda, you wouldn't miss it.

[–] freebrick@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Became so huge that I was typing a comment on Reddit and most of the time half way through I gave up and close the tab cause it wasn't worth it. It would get buried.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I, too, am a size queen.

Jokes aside, I was telling irl people about how even if I post something to the craft communities, there just isn't a critical mass to make me feel validated from posting.

I made kind of a big overture in many comment sections agreeing with others that kbin felt kinder and different from 2017-present reddit, but then a lot of folks came in and started up the same low-effort content communities and fell back into the same patterns of memes, so now it kind of feels grubby.

And the places on reddit where I loved lurking and reading analyses and hot takes (news, world news, politics) all are total ghost towns in the Fediverse (at least, what early magazines I've subscribed to last weekend).

Whatever the perks are here - and I'm aware it's all a work in progress at this stage - it lacks robustness for me.

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[–] Jon-H558@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I liked it's size in terms of breadth. You could find a niche subreddit maybe on a TV show, hobby or small community and find an active sub.

However on the bigger subs I hated the fact you were drowned by the hive mind.

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[–] Warped@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Size isn't everything. I bet you have heard that before?

Actually, Reddit is too big. Go back ten years, then it was a good size. Before the tons of spam, reposts, onlyfans, owners hell-bent on turning Reddit into some Twitter freak shit show.

[–] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know the overall sentiment is that size doesn't matter, but to new users looking at these sites, that want to see recent posts and engagement. We want people coming from Reddit to feel like the site is growing so they get invested and contribute.

It's still early days though so keen to see how this pans out over the next few weeks, especially with the API ending on the 1st of July. Think we'll get another wave of uptick.

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I think you really mean you miss the diversity of communities. But at the size of Reddit, the front page is just spam/clickbait. Very few people actually want that level of size. The ideal goal is something that has all of the major communities of Reddit, but we don’t really want it to be that big.

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