Why do most reddit alternatives end up becoming shit shows?

Cat_of_the_Round@beehaw.org to Chat@beehaw.org – 106 points –

For context: I was a much more ignorant person back in 2014 than I am today. My views then do not reflect my views now (tw: Fatphobia, Sexism, Sinophobia, transphobia, Z-propaganda)

This isn't my first rodeo dealing with a reddit migration. My first attempt to leave the site happened back in 2014 when several subs got banned, including several shaming subs when Ellen Pao was CEO of reddit.

Back then, there were a lot of unfounded rumors of the site being taken over by the Chinese government (cause Ellen was Chinese American), and being an ignorant person, I fell for it hook line and sinker.

So around that time, a few reddit alternatives started getting passed around, including a site called Voat. It was basically just like reddit, but the bandwidth and UI wasn't nearly as sophisticated as reddits, thus the site constantly crashed. I spent a bit of time on there before heading back to reddit and never looking back. And the main reason I left was because the overall culture there was mean spirited, unhinged, and basically a reactionary version of reddit (which looking back makes sense considering this reddit migration was basically a reaction from trying to protect people)

Fast forward to now, and I'm starting to get de ja vu from the fediverse. At first I was on kbin, which seemed promising at first until I noticed that any article involving trans issues had a slew of transphobic comments that had a lot of traction. Realizing there was very little moderation being done there, I gave lemmyworld a try, but same issue, plus it seemed any article having to do with Ukraine had a lot of pro-Russian posts. And whenever I bring up this fact, I get a lot of pushback from users and mods. Part of the reason I ended up here is because one user told me "If you need a safe space, you should go over to beehaw with all the other snowflakes."

At this point, I already have a fairly negative view of the fediverse. I hate what is happening to reddit right now, and yet it feels like the alternatives aren't much better in providing a safe environment for its users.

Maybe my problem is with redditors, but at the very least reddit was equipped to keep the dumbest of dumbasses out of visibility. Here, even in supposedly more open minded communities and instances, such dumbassery has just as much weight as thoughtful, upvoted posts.

I don't know. I can't see myself staying involved with this project for long, if it's just going to remain as unpleasant as it is now.

Also, sorry if this isn't the right community to be posting this in. I'll gladly move this where this needs to go if its the case.

Edit: riveting discussion example: @Cat_of_the_Round fuck philosophy. unless you reeeeelly care that much. your behind a kb for christ sake. Oh no. Someone had an opinion. I’m assuming you can in the very least ignore them. Othewise who the fuck cares?

yeah, I think I'm done here.

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I wish you provided specific examples of this behavior because otherwise it just sounds like a doom and gloom post. I'm personally having lots of fun and while I've run into some people that obviously aren't here to build a community, generally I like the vibe and overall excitement in the air. If there really is a bunch of people trying to ruin it, I think it's in everyone's best interest to stop it before it gets out of control.

I have yet to see any anti trans stuff on kbin and I'm on it all the time, so I think OP is full of shit.

I don't necessarily think OP is FOS. I'm just having an entirely different experience. That could be because I signed up with kbin.social and am subscribed to non-political magazines. It's been a very chill experience so far.

I asked him for examples, because my suspicion was that he signed up on kbin, but saw a post from lemmy or exploding heads or something. And he was new to the fediverse so he didn't realize that just because he's seeing it on kbin, that doesn't mean it's fron kbin.

But he didn't reply.

Yeah, the only pisstakes I've seen on lemmy/kbin (which I've probably been actively scrolling through for about 15-20h by now), have been downvoted to oblivion. And I only think I've seen two.
Imo the community so far has been great, dunno if it's because it's still new and exciting to people, but I feel like there's a huge difference in positivity in communities/magz compared to their subreddit equivalents, and more helpful/interesting comment sections.

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