Chris TrottierJun 12, 2023

There’s a #RedditMigration to the #Fediverse happening right now. And many of those former #Reddit users are creating accounts on #Lemmy and #kbin.

Funny enough, last December, I predicted there would be another Big Social migration to the Fediverse. I even predicted it would happen in June.

I just didn’t think that Reddit, of all platforms, would be the one to cause the migration.

Big Social has a habit of creating shitty user experiences, and attempting to squeeze every bit of ARPU possible.

Until recently, if you didn’t like it, your only option was to kick rocks.

Reddit doesn’t give a damn. There have been plenty of Reddit alternatives in the past, and almost all of them have crashed and burned.

Except this time, when people join #Lemmy and #kbin, they are interacting with a network of 10 million Fediverse accounts – possibly more. No Reddit alternative has ever had 10 million accounts.

Understand this. Even if Lemmy and /kbin make up an insignificant chunk of the Fediverse right now, everyone who uses those services can talk to 10+ million Fediverse accounts.

Which means that this time Reddit detractors have serious options.

And believe me, more Big Social platforms will cause further migrations to the Fediverse. Each time this happens, that detraction will compound more and more.

Reddit probably doesn’t think this is a big deal. They probably think this is like the other times users expressed dissent.

But this time, these Redditors are discovering the Fediverse.

atomicpoet's instance

Show threadmaegul

@atomicpoet

I suspect you are overselling the significance of the wider fediverse in this.

By my reckoning, #threadiverse (#lemmy, #kbin) users are mostly interacting with themselves and are happy with this. They like their place in the fediverse and don’t need the microblogging platforms.

Moreover, communication and even comprehension across the divide is not trivial. People on both sides are finding it tricky (and disappointingly so). Posts don’t even render correctly on mastodon.

Jun 12, 2023 at 6:23amWeb
Show threadmaegulJun 12, 2023

@atomicpoet
See eg this frustration from a fediverse developer, and their declaration that the fediverse is best thought of as not one thing: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/110526707297264537

In truth, i don’t think the fediverse has yet realised it’s essential killer feature.

Show threadChris TrottierJun 12, 2023

@maegul I’m also a Fediverse developer, and I believe all of this is a work in progress, it is still early, and much is still to be made.

The killer feature is the protocol.

Show threadGeniusakJun 12, 2023
@maegul @atomicpoet The platforms are too different. I've personally never liked of the idea of shoving together completely different platforms simply because they share some protocol. I was one of the earliest lemmy users, and never had interest in interacting with it through mastodon or vice versa.
Show threadmaegulJun 12, 2023

@Geniusak @atomicpoet

It’s an obviously difficult UX challenge, where a shared protocol is just the necessary foundation, and even then, there is friction between lemmy and mastodon over how to use the protocol.

So far, trumpeting the protocol has made sense because most platforms were similarly microblogging based.

Now, hopefully, it will have to contend with truly distinct platforms.

Middleware and clients are, I’d guess, vital areas for this work.

Show threadJay StevensJun 12, 2023

Kbin techincally has a microblogging side and a threaded side, so you can swap between the two.

The main problem is that due to traffic the biggest Kbin instance isn't federating right now, so a lot of the benefits of the fediverse aren't shining through.

Show threadsoaprootJun 12, 2023
@maegul @atomicpoet I think it is kind of cool that posts can cross over at all, but I agree with the sentiment that it is far from clear that this will be a super-common use case across fediverse servers which are significantly different in how they organize posts.