this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

founded 1 year ago
 

Can I just rant a little to you all?

I've tried numerous times to help people from reddit set up an account and get started on Kbin (and lemmy), but 4 out of 5 times people can't seem to grasp the concept of registering an account and starting to use this platform. Even breaking it down into 2 steps, with direct links... They get angry, and then ragequit their attempt in a huff saying how it's too fucking complicated and it will never take off because it's so hard.

Ok, I get that the fediverse is complicated if you think deeply about all the interconnectivity and federation etc, but there is no reason you even have to think about any of it to create an account and get started. Like, at all.

It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying "here, I can't figure this out". When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button...

I'm just so frustrated with people's complete lack of ability to help themselves.

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[–] badgerific@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying "here, I can't figure this out". When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button...

It's not just you, the one who is helping us, feeling like this. It's us feeling like this too... or atleast I feel like this.

Suddenly, I'm no longer the technologically sound person that I used to be. I'm overwhelmed. My hectic schedule and paucity of free time is not helping the case, either. There's just too much to read about; figure out... Took me a good hour or so just to create an account. Then another good few minutes to login, when it asked "instances" or something that I wanted to login into.

It's quite different from what I'm used to. I'm feeling as though there's so much that I'm being forced to learn. And I'm annoyed, extremely annoyed, that I've been forced to leave the one place I used to enjoy. I miss the content that I used to enjoy on reddit.

People like yourself, ones taking time out of their day to help us, are really a boon right now. For days (really, a couple hours spread across days), I searched for alternatives to reddit. Tried to read and grasp a couple of guides before I made-up my mind to take that plunge.

I see where you're coming from. And all I can say is, maybe once people get into the head-space to finally migrate, they may be more open to learning. They may still rage a bit about it - I know I am. But they may be open to learn.

Just want you to know that these guides and helps are most welcome right now. Thank you for helping us.

[–] Shortcake@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you want those people who can't even make an account here anyway? Lol
In all seriousness, SSO is a thing and maybe the devs are already looking into it. Google, Facebook. Git, and more all have ways to sign in to services for you. I wouldn't vote to use them given the ideals of why people are moving to these platforms, but if someone wants to use their apple account to sign in here and that makes it easy for them. I'd be happy for it's implementation.

[–] McBinary@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess that is the silver-lining, we can weed out people that wouldn't be able to contribute anyway. It's just maddening that there are even people like that out there. I kind of gave up on helping people bridge the gap from reddit to here.

[–] Shortcake@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think the basics of posting a few links and then leaving it at that is good enough. Eventually it will get easier and we will get more users, best to not overload the servers now anyway

[–] insomniac_lemon@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was unsure of which instance to go with, but I got on Kbin as soon as I saw that it had Oauth. (just don't want to deal with it)

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why is this so hard for people?

One thing I want people to leave behind when they unplug from reddit is the clickbait titles:

"Look what my sister just did!"

"Was it really so simple?"

"I should have seen it coming [wholesome]"

Surprise titles are the worst. They really make me feel that the author is just using the tool as his toy. There will be thousands of people like you, what do you think will happen when all the titles will look like yours?

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[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Most people are really dumb when it comes to technology.

[–] pasci_lei@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

It is just plain comfortness. Sometimes people can be completely helpless if you switch an option or an app around, even though it is just by one position or even just change the design a bit. So is it with /kbin. It completely looks like and works like Reddit, yet it is different.

[–] hardypart@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I gotta be honest, I'm a tech person myself and I was also slightly confused when I checked out Lemmy for the first time. There were three major things I had to grasp before I felt like I understood the whole concept:

  1. Browsing "All" shows content from all federated instances
  2. Most big instances are already federated, so chosing the right instance is not really that important
  3. You can participate in other instances with the account of your "home" instance by turning foreigninstance.com/c/Community into homeinstance.com/c/Community@foreigninstance.com, which is a kinda cumbersome process right now, but I'm sure some wily developer will come up with an elegant solution for that in the future (like having the option to automatically turn URLs from foreign instances into home instance URLs).

It kind of makes me want to learn coding, so I can participate and make Lemmy better and better, lol.

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[–] Deralax@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I don't blame anyone for getting frustrated. The whole concept of the fediverse is quite confusing to someone that knew nothinf about it prior, and I myself am only just starting to get a grasp on things. The whole experience reminds me of the first time i heard about bitcoin and trying to wrap head around the blockchain.

I (and i assume many others) have been unhappy with reddit's direction for some time now, and forcedully ending the life of my third party app of choice (RIF) just happened to be the straw that broke the camels back.

To many of us this is the last straw, but to many others who may be newer users, or may have already been using the official Reddit app this probably does not seem like a huge deal.

Only time will tell if the folks leaving were generating the lions share of the worthwhile content, or if we are just the vocal minority and life will go on. Some folks aren't looking for a new home, and even if these events are what lead to Reddit's eventual demise it will take years for said demise to play out.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

I keep clicking links on one fediverse and somehow I become on a different instance and thus logged out, kbin seems promising but no mobile app, Jerboa is glitchy and very WIP. It is hard to grasp. The first time I tried using it I just ended up on different instances and couldn't log in again, not realising that I was somehow brought to a different instance instead of viewing the post in my instance

[–] snorkbubs@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the super-easy signup process is a barrier to entry for someone, is that person really worth having here? This may sound crazy, but I want barriers to entry.

Anyone recall how much better the internet was when it cost a few thousand bucks, and a bit of technical know-how, to even get online? It was no utopia, but it also wasn't everyone's Aunt Betty, who can't operate a toaster, on her iPhone screaming "5G gives you covid DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!1"

After finding the voting system better than Slashdot's, I was on Reddit for 14 years; I fell in love with it at the start, and slowly fell out of love each time they dumbed the site down, in order to lower the barrier to entry. It went from a forum for a community of nerds, to a Facebook meme image board, and each step was a painful reminder of Eternal September in action.

The Fediverse still has that old feeling of community, and I don't want Eternal September to happen here (and it is happening, but not to a terrible extent, yet). I wish signing up really was confusing. Nothing good will come from adding training wheels for Aunt Betty.

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[–] Sheerfire96@startrek.website 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah I won’t lie I’m… very confused but I’m kinda just rolling with it and hoping I figure it out along the way. I can’t speak for others but I find myself generally comfortable with computers and willing to try things out and see what I can do. Some people are afraid to do that and idk how to change it

[–] PeriaptGames@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Anyone got a good tutorial to share for folks who want to jump?

[–] whiny9130@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Two examples:

when you're browsing your follows on mastodon, and click on their follows, the list is not true to their follows (because your server hasn't fetched them).

and, when you first subscribe to someone's posts, you can't see older posts (say they've got 100, but you see zero).

I'm aware that there are technical reasons (you weren't subscribed), and open source reasons (nobody has the time to volunteer to fix it), but these are insufficient to help an anxious new user who's undecided about the platform.

That's only Mastodon, which has 7 years of refinement. Don't get me started on the litany of federation-related edge cases of Lemmy's UX failings.

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