Shower Thoughts

you left reddit because 3rd party apps were being killed off.

I left reddit because reddit sucks and I've been looking for an alternative for a long while now.

We are not the same.

People are not moving over here for convenience, it's new young software with many flaws and missing features. I think most of us are just looking for a brighter future of social networks, one not dictated by a megacorporation and instead segmented more under our individual control. It's impossible for this to match reddit in everything since that's a company with thousands of employees and a 10 year headstart, but perfect shouldn't be an enemy of good.

To be fair, kbin on a mobile browser is already leagues above the official reddit app

To me, I loved using Relay for Reddit, but them killing the 3rd party apps in itself wasn't why I left. The whole situation just showed that Reddit doesn't care about the community, they just care about profit, and they'll happily shaft the users and prominent members of the community.

I don't think most people left solely because of 3rd party apps being killed. I think they left because of the loss of trust that move and the subsequent negative PR created.

It's natural people are looking for something new, even though the quality of life is lower for now. Some things are more important than convenience.

Edit: I forgot to answer the question. No, I don't think it's ironic. I think it's telling.

He'll, I typically used the reddit app rather than 3rd party, but they're doing too much shady-ass shit, and have been for too long (mainly thinking of the mod situation and how a few mods control a vast amount of content without seemingly any oversight). It's weird over here, but it reminds me of when I joined reddit more than 10 years ago now, it's got that vibe, ya know?

tl;dr — fediverse will only improve from today, while Reddit will only decline.

I've used a third party app (Relay) for browsing Reddit for eight years now. It's what I'm used to, and interacting with the same content in a lesser format feels bad.

I've been using Kbin for eight days, and only know it from the mobile browser. Is it as pleasant to interact with as Relay was? No. But the difference is that it will only improve from here. My Reddit experience is primed only to get worse.

Browsing on mobile without being asked to log into the app every 10 seconds is already a huge improvement for me.

I also find it interesting that lack of mod tools is a big complaint of reddit but it seems that lack of mod tools is immediately an issue on kbin/lemmy.

But the decisions made on one vs the other are moving in the opposite directions.

This is a new town, not a razed town.

There's a difference between "actively killing" and "actively developing" third party apps.

You look to the future, not the past or present

I left Reddit because they killed 3rd party apps. I came somewhere 3rd party apps can’t be killed. Also, there’s several 3rd party apps.

At least the alternatives come with functional and decent mobile websites.

While technically correct, I left reddit because the API pricing was more of less the last straw in a long list of issues Reddit has had. It was more of a sign of things to come. This is basically what happened with Digg and why people jumped to reddit.

Are you on crack my dude? I'm viewing this post from Jerboa right now

It’s not about the 3rd party apps, it’s about sending a message.jpg

Well browsing this on a simple browser isn't that bad. Miles better than trying to browse Reddit on a mobile browser.

There aren't many/any 3pa at the moment, but the admins also didn't recently enact policy changes that are aggressively anti third party, so there's that at least.

Plus the mobile layout is perfectly serviceable on Firefox right now.

We aren’t here because this is a better experience. It clearly is not. Reddit has had years of polishing and 3rd party development to make the user experience what it was. Here there’s server crashes, little content, interesting UI choices, and no real idea if this one is going to ‘win’ over some of the other alternatives.

But Reddit killing 3rd party apps is too heavy handed, and people don’t like that. We don’t want to see ads. I’d rather go outside than subject myself to advertisements. We’re bombarded by ads from all directions 24/7 and it’s too much.

Additionally, Reddit will be able to manipulate content and spread propaganda without oversight once they take their users in-house. I’m not interested in being programmed by whoever is invested in the site. This isn’t about ‘3rd party apps’ even though it’s about the apps. This is about leaving a site that is actively going against the users’ best interests on multiple fronts.

It's more than that though.... (I know it's just a showerthought but I'm explaining anyway)

Reddit's mobile experience through the browser is terrible and nearly unusable since it prompts you to download the app when you try to do anything
Reddit's official app is also terrible for a myriad of reasons.
Spez's attitude toward the whole thing really put me off more than anything else

On the other hand:
Kbin and Lemmy both work really well on a mobile browser. An app will be great but it's not necessary to enjoy the site.

Jokes on you lemmy has apps

The difference is that once a third part app is made for this community I don’t have to worry about some greedy asshole ruining it for profit. I am patient and this community is actually better.

It bears a certain irony, that's true. The difference is that the mobile version of Lemmy already feels like a clean third party app. As a long time RiF user I felt at home right away.

kbin doesn't need a third party app because the website works great, and unlike reddit, isnt filled to the brim with ads and trackers

Robot 0: "There is, no more unethical treatment of the elephants."
Robot 1: "Well there's no more elephants, so..."
Robot 0: "Ah."
Robot 1: "...but still it's good."

0:50 of Robots, by Flight of the Conchords

I didn't even know 3rd party apps exists before this storm lol, and I haven't even seen the decline of Reddit because I'm on it since the end of 2019 😅
But I can see that an alternative is really important.

For Vulcan, the strongest impetus to move to kbin was the Snoo Platform's decision to change how API will be accessed, and also Apollo drama.

Vulcan was a Relay user and Relay's dev decision to move into subscription model (can't blame the dev) due to corporate greed of Snoo Platform's execs successfully alienated me from the Snoo Platform.

Ah, but there are also no ads and to my knowledge I've yet to see one single bot. For the near future, anyway. Besides, it's not like I'd still have them in a few weeks if I weren't here

If you think about it in a different sense...every instance is a 3rd party app

Mind blown!!

P.s. - first comment in the fediverse...(I don't like that word)...in the Federation!!!!

Well, to be more accurate, the reddit stuff was due to API changes, which would result in fewer 3rd party apps. (and arguably designed for this result).

The kbin API is still a WIP, but it's free to use.