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Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

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Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#561

Post by Barrin92 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #478
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, definitely better to just blindly click through a ToS on some private corporate social media service...

You don't take an aeronautics course when you buy a plane ticket, because 99% of people don't want to do that. I've been a nerd for ~40 years, I used to live on Usenet, I understand federation inside out, and I don't want to learn another protocol just to try a new website. Blindly clicking through a ToS while chuckling that 'nobody reads that shit lol' is in fact a better user experience for almost everyone. If your…

>there would be physical cities whose population consisted entirely of architects and engineers.

the analog to a digital federation in the physical world, is literally just that, an actual federation. People making choices about what community they participate in isn't technical, it's social. Everyone who lives in a democratic society does in fact participate in how their city is run and governed or understands how to move from one state to another.

You do not need to understand the technical details of federated systems, but it is absolutely infantilizing to pretend that people are unable to choose or build the communities they want, and take some responsibility in maintaining them. This 'consumer' mentality needs to die, people need to learn to be proper citizens on the internet. We ask it from people in the real world, so we can do it online. Why are we pretending the online version of some 19th century company town is inevitable?

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#562

Post by EatingWithForks »

jtode wrote: post #511
EatingWithForks wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making the mistake that just because people on the forum have the skills, knowledge, and general capacity to learn a new tool that they are convinced to put in the effort to learn the new tool. Social media specifically has thrived on a culture of extreme low effort to learn how to start having fun with it (think TikTok showing you cool videos, then an easy prompt to sign up, then an immediate "for you…

Perhaps low-effort users are part of the problems we're experiencing? I think maybe it's time to dial back the user-friendliness just a weeeny bit. Anyways, I see zero evidence that Reddit will come back from this conflagration in any sort of good shape, and I see even less evidence that the VC business model is going to do any better with anything else. Edit: Just sitting here thinking about this. Who exactly gets a…

I actually don't disagree with your point. I'm merely explaining why fediverse-style platforms always get the complaint it sucks because it's harder to use than the centralized alternative, even among a community that should be used to such platforms.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#563

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

omginternets wrote: post #541
TechBro8615 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemmy has the same discoverability and usability problems as Mastodon. Especially for non-technical users, there's too much friction required to find their communities and aggregate them into a single usable feed with a nice client. And that's assuming they can even conceptualize what the fediverse is. I'm a technical user, and I closed join-lemmy.org after ten seconds because it was too many clicks to get to an inte…

I’ve often found myself thinking that the discoverability barrier might be an asset. It keeps the community mostly free of low-quality posters.

^ this is why all of these Reddit/Twitter alternatives will ultimately be tiny little gardens

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#564

Post by Tempat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #445
Animats wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front page of lemmy: Lemmy - A link aggregator for the fediverse. Join a Server - Run a Server - Follow communities anywhere in the world Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github. It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one? These federated things need to be set up so that there's "no…

> No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github Seriously. Have a default server (or set of defaults) newbies dump into after completing a simple sign-up flow. Then let them move it as they benefit from the product and gain an incentive to learn about it. Reddit is up in arms about API pricing and mods. Do you think the average Reddit user would have signed up if they had to first jump through hoo…

I don’t know much about how the fediverse thing works. Would it be theoretically possible to have something kind of like how torrents work, with some central list of all servers acting as the “tracker list”?:

- Servers choose what they want to host and what their personal bandwidth limit is

- A user visiting a specific subforum automatically downloads from whatever servers are currently available to serve it

Then you’d never have to manually choose a server.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#565

Post by bmarquez »

jacooper wrote: post #435
bmarquez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see Facebook Groups divorce from Facebook itself. Maybe allow people to login using an Instagram or Whatsapp identity, or better yet an independent login. I don't really want my group activity to be linked to my Facebook identity for tracking/advertising purposes.

An Instagram account is as bad as a Facebook account, if not worse.

How is it worse? From a privacy perspective they're both terrible and the data flows to the same Meta servers, but Facebook demands you use your real name (and demands photo ID if it thinks it's fake) while Instagram doesn't care.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#567

Post by slowmovintarget »

Animats wrote: post #424
TechBro8615 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemmy has the same discoverability and usability problems as Mastodon. Especially for non-technical users, there's too much friction required to find their communities and aggregate them into a single usable feed with a nice client. And that's assuming they can even conceptualize what the fediverse is. I'm a technical user, and I closed join-lemmy.org after ten seconds because it was too many clicks to get to an inte…

The front page of lemmy: Lemmy - A link aggregator for the fediverse. Join a Server - Run a Server - Follow communities anywhere in the world Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github. It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one? These federated things need to be set up so that there's "no…

And woe unto you if you join in the wrong place. I had to look up what the term "tankie" meant.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#568

Post by BaseballPhysics »

anigbrowl wrote: post #559
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you pretending that this isn't confusing to newbies? I'm not. Absolutely the onboarding experience can be improved. The problem is you're losing the plot, here. The original commenter complained about having to "read up on what rights server admins have over my account, why I should choose one versus another, which servers are de-federating which others, et cetera." But you don't have to do that if you don'…

It's 'being improved' even though it's been identified as a problem from the outset of the fediverse, nearly a decade ago. I don't know how to make this any simpler: Forced choices drive away users. People don't like making decisions without context because they feel like scams. That's why uptake is slow almost a decade into federation. The UX model is bad.

> It's 'being improved' even though it's been identified as a problem from the outset of the fediverse, nearly a decade ago.

Ah, cool, so you just wanna complain. Got it. Carry on!

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#569

Post by mistercheph »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #445
Animats wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front page of lemmy: Lemmy - A link aggregator for the fediverse. Join a Server - Run a Server - Follow communities anywhere in the world Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github. It suffers from the same problem as Mastodon - "Join a server". But which one? These federated things need to be set up so that there's "no…

> No, no. You lead with the benefits to the user. This isn't Github Seriously. Have a default server (or set of defaults) newbies dump into after completing a simple sign-up flow. Then let them move it as they benefit from the product and gain an incentive to learn about it. Reddit is up in arms about API pricing and mods. Do you think the average Reddit user would have signed up if they had to first jump through hoo…

This is not about an IPO or infinite user growth potential in the next quarter. If we want to build a better world, some people must be left behind.

Re: Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

#570

Post by sngz »

ihateolives wrote: post #231
beowulfey wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Lemmy.world. Currently the fastest growing Lemmy server. It feels basically like any other social media site, like Hacker News or Reddit. I was using it, and seeing people post from other servers was pretty seamless and felt intuitive. Honestly, I say this all the time but I think people just need to treat federation like it's email. The difference is that the "email threads" are public to all, rather than in you…

As it happens, another big server, Beehaw, just defederated lemmy.world today. So drama has already begun. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

its a feature not a bug. calling that drama is disingenuous. They are protecting their own instance from trolls that they don't have the tools / resources to handle. Don't like that they de federated? then join a different instance.
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