Kbin and Lemmy are still fairly new so I do not anticipate everyone would be willing to make the jump if it means putting up with relatively small member counts. We just have to put in the extra effort ourselves to keep these communities fresh and active.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
144 points (100.0% liked)
Reddit Migration
84 readers
2 users here now
### 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/
founded 1 year ago
One thing I've seen get in the way is everyone wants their own instance rather than to setup just one community on an existing instance.
I agree, this is by far the biggest problem. I understand federation, and it does have some advantages, but it splits up an already small community. Before the protest, if I wanted to get some quick opinions from a niche domain, all I had to do was google a few keywords and makenit search only reddit. How would I achieve that on fediverse I don't know. How do you guys search for content here?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Same problem as with any social network migration: the network effect.
Sometimes the largest equivalent Lemmy community for a subreddit is tiny, or worse, nonexistent. Sure, you can go create one, but unless you can also convince other people to join with you, it won't be much fun.
That plus picking servers and browsing communities. Onboarding is not as simple as other social media experiences.
Im not sure how much I want people to leave reddit. There was a lot of garbage users and bots and such. Even if all actual individuals left reddit the corpo, bot, other things from some organization elements I bet would be a fairly large populace.
I would prefer if only those who wants to leave reddit left. That this would be an option only for those who are prepared to migrate, and not the redditor who likes their new UI and their official app. I think this place might be the wrong place for them. At this point Lemmy gives me the feeling of a web forum, which in all fairness is pretty cool tech wise (I really like the federated part) but also more or less just a web forum. I can't imagine what kind of negative experience the average redditor would have here..
"It doesn't look like reddit" "What are communities?" "Where are all the people?" Etcetera.
Which is fair, I think Fediverse has a bit of growing to do still. That being said, I can live without that kind of content here, and I'd rather have more quality over quantity here. That's just me though, I'm looking forward to seeing where this place ends up.
It will take non-early adopters a while. If reddit continues to limp along, there will be people who stick. But I think the real exodus will occur when they IPO. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg now, wait until there are shareholders and post IPO ad corporations to placate...
So lemmy/kbin doesn't feel the same yet. A lot of the content I viewed on reddit, just isn't here in the same way. I think when the api changes take affect, we will see many more people making the switch as in a lot of subs, the content is posted via api when scrapeing other sources. That mixed with changes in moderation will be catalysts to people moving here full time. I also think there still needs to be some work on the interface. Even the best run instances don't have the same look and feel of reddit. If something feels different, people will resist it no matter how much they want to like it. As much as some people may have thought it would be, this is not an overnight migration.
The communities I browse are either small (behavioral science/school) or full of elders who aren’t interested with switching platforms. So that’s a pretty big reason. Some of them have organizations that still have large presences on things like fb. Not having an account hamstrings a persons ability to stay current with professional topics…not great for a lot of fields. Now, this is just my particular instance. But I’ve heard a lot of the same from colleagues and adjacent professions. As for me, my account is deleted and I don’t contribute content meaningfully anymore. Which I suspect is another major downside to all of this, brain drain.
I think kbin/Lemmy is already showing promise as a community gathering-place, but it's nowhere near useable for being a repository of knowledge like Reddit is - if you want to know how to download videos from an obscure local streaming platform in a small country, hear experiences of doctors treating a specific chronic condition, or find answers to a highly specific scientific question, a quick search with site:reddit.com would usually give you the answer, and if you didn't there would usually be a relevant sub with someone knowledgeable in the field.
It's going to take many years for kbin/Lemmy to reach this status of a digital Great Library of Alexandria (if at all), and so much information is still going to be lost if Reddit shuts down.
Where is everything? Whats with all the "View magazine elsewhere" things?
I fully moved to lemmy myself, but still browse reddit just for the vast amount of information available there.