this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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There are a lot of people exploring Lemmy and kbin right now who aren't being intrinsically motivates to seek something different. They're looking for a parity, 1-tog1, drop-in replacement for Reddit because the stuff they liked interacting with on Reddit disappeared for a few days.
They're not here to play in a new possibility space, they're here because they want Reddit, and Reddit is not acting like Reddit anymore.
But this isn't Reddit. This is a totally different space that... Kinda looks like Reddit, but not really?
And it certainly doesn't work like Reddit.
One of the things we saw with the Twitter migration was a bunch of people insisting everyone make the Fediverse work exactly like Twitter, even though there are both social and technical reasons why that is never going to happen. Those people didn't want to engage with those reasons, they just thought "it worked this way over there, it needs to work that way here!"
And I don't know what to say to that person, other than "It sounds like you already have what you want. Over there. Have fun!"
I think most people coming to kbin and Lemmy are aware that they're not reddit lol. Even if we do wish they had some things that reddit has.
The people you're (justifiably) worried about aren't leaving Reddit because of the blackouts. The Reddit experience and content haven't disappeared- all you have to do is switch to subs that didn't go dark and post/consume content there instead. Eventually the protesting subs will be reopened under more subservient mods and everything will go back to "normal".
People (like me) who are exploring entirely new communities right now are the ideologically motivated ones who don't like what Reddit leadership is doing and want to find a new place without that kind of toxicity. Based on my very limited experience so far, that seems like the kind of person who would fit in here.
The motivations were pretty similar for people exploring Twitter alternatives, too. They didn't like Elon, didn't want to be associated with him, and branched out.
Then he started breaking shit, and more people branched out. Indeed, every bit of Elon cringe that came out for 3 months was accompanied by a wave of Twitter users hitting Mastodon servers for the first time.
The real difference, I think, is that Reddit users -- and especially Reddit users who are going to be most impacted by the API circus -- are used to a higher level of technical complexity than Twitter users. People aren't necessarily groking the complexity here yet, but they're open to it being complex, to rolling with the punches, and to just... playing with it.
Enough of us are, at least.
A lot of the Twitter users just showed up and basically kept asking "Why isn't this Twitter?"
There were other issues, too, of course. Sociological issues. Mastodon had a relatively large established population, and that population was... I guess the word I'd use is "wounded". And they'd established a culture and social norms that weren't compatible with Twitter users. So, when Twitter users started showing up, they started trying to impose those norms in a way that was both confrontational and also just laughably ineffective.
The 400 or so tankies stirring up shit on Lemmygrad were never going to be an issue for Redditors, though. They weren't when they were on Reddit, and they won't be now, either.