Here (kbin), Lemmy, Tildes… I hear Mastodon had a user spike. Is there something obvious I’m missing?

I ask because I haven’t felt the same mass of users that Reddit had. Obviously users have spread out, servers have been hammered, UIs have a learning curve and so on… But there might be other alternatives I haven’t looked at that are worth that look.

  • FrostBolt@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I tested the waters at several sites:

    • Mastodon felt too much like Twitter my taste, too many angry people and too much politics; the UI is slick, though
    • Squabbles UI felt weird
    • Lemmy had some problematic stuff around the person who runs it, and it felt more confusing on which instance to pick
    • kbin has been my favorite; familiar UI, and people seem mostly friendly and chill
    • Valdair@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • fiofiofio@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah right now there’s https://browse.feddit.de/ to browse communities, but putting that in an app (and adding some sorting/filtering options) would be a killer feature

        edit: that site only shows Lemmy communities, not kbin ones

      • wjrii@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        No, it’s centralized, basically a dude trying to re-create reddit with some twitter-like functions and a tweaked UI. So far he’s been diligent, responsive, and willing to (eventually) ban racist trolls, but he has his eye on maintaining control and moving towards monetization. IMHO he’s also in a bit over his head, for instance spending a large amount of time working on local image uploads to spur engagement on meme subs before listening to his user base, who were reminding him of the bandwidth, costs, and legal oversight he’d incur.

        The simplicity of it has attracted people though, and engagement seems good. It’s not a bad site; it just has more potential failure points than something open-source, decentralized, and not-for-profit.

    • Timwi@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • st3ph3n@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yessss, I didn’t even think about that once I started using kbin/mastodon, but you are totally right. There’s a reason why the for-profit social media things absolutely don’t want to just give you a chronological feed.

      • dmc@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        What makes Tildes.net different? Does it do anything differently than Reddit, or is it mostly just a clone?

        I haven’t browsed it for more than a few minutes nor do I have an invite so it would be nice to hear if there’s anything that makes it stand out from other alternatives.

      • Goronmon@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The usage of the ‘~’ itself annoys me more than it should with that site, haha. Both from a viewing perspective and a typing perspective.

      • jcd@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Getting an invite for tildes is relatively easy, but if kbin can keep up with massive number of users, it will likely become much more popular.

        • KuiN@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Know any good ways to get a Tildes invite? I’ve been lurking there for a while but I’m keen to join properly

          • ChrV@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I got one about a week ago by replying to their sticky post on their subreddit r/tildes

            • st3ph3n@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              That got shut down pretty rapidly once the reddit blackout happened. I emailed asking for one. I read somewhere that they have a queue of something like 2,000 invite requests to work through, so it might be a while.

    • zukoju@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.