this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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It finally happened: many Reddit 3rd party apps have officially shut down. With it comes an influx of users looking for a new place.
With the influx come new points of view, new kinds of users with different expectations. This change is already visible, with obvious trolls and attention seekers throwing out bait. What if there is more to it however?

Browsing casually I noticed more and more kbin posts critical of its development, its functioning, and the speed at which @ernest is able to implement updates.

I find it odd that, while denouncing kbin for its current flaws in deployment (despite being clearly stated to be in alpha) the owner of that instance proceeds to praise Lemmy and wave away concerns regarding its devs who

(Lemmy devs) are willing to create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of your beliefs.

despite having proven that their politics do affect their product.

"Just defederate" in my opinion also is not an argument. It's closing your eyes to a problem propagated by those who benefit from influence from the shadows - on both sides of the political spectrum.

Hence my mention of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and Tribalism.
Pushing users towards a preferred platform (in this case, Lemmy) by seeding threadiverse posts with statements such as

  • kbin isn't ready
  • kbin won't have the same engagement as Lemmy
  • the single kbin dev @ernest doesn't have enough time/skill
  • it will never be as good as Reddit

will just lead to Reddit 2.0 painted in red and yellow. As kbin users, we should combat this kind of behavior.

We're all here for a better threadiverse, and a singular means of interacting will not be beneficial to its growth. The reason we're here is because we want a Reddit-like environment, not a single 'frontpage of the internet'. Tribalism in the threadiverse will get us nowhere fast.

Perhaps it was unintentional that kbin was not federating properly with Lemmy instances. What I am afraid of is, knowing the track record of Lemmy devs, it follows a scary trajectory, reminiscent of a few tried and true tactics Reddit and others have used before.

I'd like to state that I am not unbiased. I am helping out with Artemis, a kbin app currently in development.
I do not want to support or make use of Lemmy for many reasons. However, I could not care less if someone is from a Lemmy instance, or if I interact with them in that same space. If I see Lemmy.ml/Lemmygrad.ml behind their name, I will be cautious of their intentions however.

Let's hope we, not as 'rexxiters', 'kbinauts' or 'lemmings', but as fediverse users can actually create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of our beliefs.

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[–] frasassi@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Politicizing the topic through the means of tribalism is certainly an objective of interests against the fediverse so undoubtedly we will see more of that happening as unfortunate as that is. There are absolutely parties interested in pushing manufactured division and creating "us vs them" camps. I certainly hope that most users steer away from the quite frankly silly discussions of why one is better than the other. At the end of the day it should simply be a personal choice based on perhaps aesthetics or some other set of minuscule factors rather than politics. In regards to kbin and it's currently limited functionality: many of today's large platforms began in a very similar fashion. I personally enjoy the quirkiness of kbin and my proverbial hat is off to Ernest for the effort he has put into this.

[–] lavender@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Well said. Aesthetics are another important factor for me, one of the reasons I would not consider a platform such as Squabbles for example. Meanwhile, others are gushing at the prospect of having a ‘new Reddit’ UI experience.