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Reddit's main value is (was?) collective convenience and familiarity. Like Whatsapp. Like Facebook. Those social networks where you wish that everybody you're c

by mekoka 3y ago

Reddit's main value is (was?) collective convenience and familiarity. Like Whatsapp. Like Facebook. Those social networks where you wish that everybody you're connected with would just quit to join something else, together, all at once. But your family and friends just won't budge. You could hate the management itself, but knew what to expect from it and could find solace in the idea that "surely, they won't shoot themselves in the foot!" A devil you know kinda deal. But now, Reddit has gone and shot itself in the foot and the communities are trying to understand what it means for them. The difficulty to find a new home is likely political. So many users migrating to a single new network is a lot of power afforded to any one entity. In an age where so many visionaries have claimed to want a good future for humanity, but ended up either selling that dream away, or revealing their own dystopian version of it, who are you going to trust? Short of the enduring brand and gravitas of something like the Wikimedia Foundation, or Craigslist, who are you going to entrust such a responsibility?

guerrilla 3y ago
> who are you going to entrust such a responsibility? Nobody aka ourselves, which is why we need to get the fediverse working instead of standing on the side bitching about how it's not good enough yet.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  How would you get the fediverse working?
  - guerrilla 3y ago
    Start by participating, and then identifying and elaborating concrete problems and potential solutions to them.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      So what concrete problems and potential solutions do you see? Edit: People have been participating in federated networks since ages. But it is hard. Especially if you want to give users the same experience as with non federated sites. And I am not sure, if for example lemmy has solved it https://programming.dev/post/50696 https://programming.dev/post/50696 So it is an open question, if a federated network can work as stable and easy as a centralized instance. I would think so, but so far it is only a hypothesis.
      - guerrilla 3y ago
        The biggest problem I see so far is discovery and UX. UX is going to be fixed by the devs with time so I'm not worried about that but discovery isn't getting the same attention yet. Right now on Mastodon we have like github repos with lists of people of certain types and then the presentation of user lists by the instances themsleves but these are both primitive. We need to figure something else out. Being able to follow hashtags was a great step forward but we'll have to do better. I think even cultural changes could help, like make it normal to introduce people to eachother. Maybe add a suggest protocol for people to recommend people/communities to other people.
dijit 3y ago
eh, I disagree. Reddit doesn't really have network effects the same as Whatsapp and Facebook. When I say "network effects" I mean two things: 1, A self-fulfulling draw 2, An increase in the utility the more people exist So, having everyone on whatsapp means you can have group chats. Having everyone on facebook means you can plan events. Reddit kinda doesn't do that, in fact it optimises for a loose coupling of many independent and semi-isolated communities. It doesn't really take advantage of any network effects; and like Lois Rossman mentions: there is next to no benefit being on reddit than using private forums except having a single login. Which is essentially a solved problem these days because SSO is easy and ubiquitous (thanks google/github!).
- donkeyd 3y ago
  I have to disagree with this. Sure, it's different from 'all my friends are there' like on Whatsapp and Facebook. With Reddit it's 'all the info is there'. I'm looking for a set of binoculars? Check the discussion on Reddit. Looking for some info in flashing Tasmota? Check the discussions on Reddit. Need some info on debugging my 3D printer? Same. I've resorted to appending 'Reddit' to my Google searches whenever I'm looking for experiences people have with products or services, because it's a pretty sure bet for getting useful answers. It's also well indexed by search engines as opposed to Facebook groups and it has a much lower barrier for asking questions than Stack. The only reason all of this content is there, is the network effect of those loose communities all being attached to the same domain and having a single account to interact with all of them. And of course, not having to search all over to find the best community / private forum for whatever thing you're interested in. As a man of many hobbies, Reddit is great and I really hate that Discord is starting to become the alternative, because searchability is crap and discussions are impossible to follow.
  - dijit 3y ago
    How you find the information on reddit though? I'm going to take a leap and say it's not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars or by using reddit search (which has been terrible since inception and shows no signs of improving). I'd guess instead you use DuckDuckGo or more likely Google. So what you say you really get from Reddit is a site that has a modicum of trustworthiness that it won't ruin your computer and that maybe there's an opinion here that reddit is the canonical place where all binocular enthusiasts will also participate. Am I right in this assumption? If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit? As in, it's not really network effects, it's more "all or nothing" because anything other than everything brings doubt into the trustworthiness of the site/communities. If there's a very popular and well known community (Linus Tech Tips for great example): then their forums are more trustworthy and have much richer densities of information. And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.
yterdy 3y ago
Even Wikipedia sucks. Many articles have biased individuals watching them like hawks; however, as a casual user, you might not notice, and simply trust in the happy idea that misinformation can be edited easily (however real that capability is).
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  It's true, you basically have to take any wikipedia article on any remotely controversial topic with a heavy grain of salt.
- stjohnswarts 3y ago
  Everyone is biased, it's just a scale of how much, and even that scale is biased. You can't get away from it on any forum, it's basic human nature, barring something like a math formula (which I sure can be made political unless it is the simplest of concepts)

by mekoka 3y ago

guerrilla 3y ago

> who are you going to entrust such a responsibility? Nobody aka ourselves, which is why we need to get the fediverse working instead of standing on the side bitching about how it's not good enough yet.

hutzlibu 3y ago
How would you get the fediverse working?
- guerrilla 3y ago
  Start by participating, and then identifying and elaborating concrete problems and potential solutions to them.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    So what concrete problems and potential solutions do you see? Edit: People have been participating in federated networks since ages. But it is hard. Especially if you want to give users the same experience as with non federated sites. And I am not sure, if for example lemmy has solved it https://programming.dev/post/50696 https://programming.dev/post/50696 So it is an open question, if a federated network can work as stable and easy as a centralized instance. I would think so, but so far it is only a hypothesis.
    - guerrilla 3y ago
      The biggest problem I see so far is discovery and UX. UX is going to be fixed by the devs with time so I'm not worried about that but discovery isn't getting the same attention yet. Right now on Mastodon we have like github repos with lists of people of certain types and then the presentation of user lists by the instances themsleves but these are both primitive. We need to figure something else out. Being able to follow hashtags was a great step forward but we'll have to do better. I think even cultural changes could help, like make it normal to introduce people to eachother. Maybe add a suggest protocol for people to recommend people/communities to other people.

dijit 3y ago

eh, I disagree. Reddit doesn't really have network effects the same as Whatsapp and Facebook. When I say "network effects" I mean two things: 1, A self-fulfulling draw 2, An increase in the utility the more people exist So, having everyone on whatsapp means you can have group chats. Having everyone on facebook means you can plan events. Reddit kinda doesn't do that, in fact it optimises for a loose coupling of many independent and semi-isolated communities. It doesn't really take advantage of any network effects; and like Lois Rossman mentions: there is next to no benefit being on reddit than using private forums except having a single login. Which is essentially a solved problem these days because SSO is easy and ubiquitous (thanks google/github!).

donkeyd 3y ago
I have to disagree with this. Sure, it's different from 'all my friends are there' like on Whatsapp and Facebook. With Reddit it's 'all the info is there'. I'm looking for a set of binoculars? Check the discussion on Reddit. Looking for some info in flashing Tasmota? Check the discussions on Reddit. Need some info on debugging my 3D printer? Same. I've resorted to appending 'Reddit' to my Google searches whenever I'm looking for experiences people have with products or services, because it's a pretty sure bet for getting useful answers. It's also well indexed by search engines as opposed to Facebook groups and it has a much lower barrier for asking questions than Stack. The only reason all of this content is there, is the network effect of those loose communities all being attached to the same domain and having a single account to interact with all of them. And of course, not having to search all over to find the best community / private forum for whatever thing you're interested in. As a man of many hobbies, Reddit is great and I really hate that Discord is starting to become the alternative, because searchability is crap and discussions are impossible to follow.
- dijit 3y ago
  How you find the information on reddit though? I'm going to take a leap and say it's not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars or by using reddit search (which has been terrible since inception and shows no signs of improving). I'd guess instead you use DuckDuckGo or more likely Google. So what you say you really get from Reddit is a site that has a modicum of trustworthiness that it won't ruin your computer and that maybe there's an opinion here that reddit is the canonical place where all binocular enthusiasts will also participate. Am I right in this assumption? If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit? As in, it's not really network effects, it's more "all or nothing" because anything other than everything brings doubt into the trustworthiness of the site/communities. If there's a very popular and well known community (Linus Tech Tips for great example): then their forums are more trustworthy and have much richer densities of information. And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.

yterdy 3y ago

Even Wikipedia sucks. Many articles have biased individuals watching them like hawks; however, as a casual user, you might not notice, and simply trust in the happy idea that misinformation can be edited easily (however real that capability is).

sneed_chucker 3y ago
It's true, you basically have to take any wikipedia article on any remotely controversial topic with a heavy grain of salt.
stjohnswarts 3y ago
Everyone is biased, it's just a scale of how much, and even that scale is biased. You can't get away from it on any forum, it's basic human nature, barring something like a math formula (which I sure can be made political unless it is the simplest of concepts)