Preface: I am not an engineer. I am not a software guy. But I play games and use websites, and have since i was 8.
If you make the website usable, people will use it.
Reddit and Twitter had a symbiotic dichotomy where they were the embodiment of “causal brainfarts and reactions” vs “long thoughts and thorough argument”. One tweet with an exclamation and some emojis, vs a 7 paragraph breakdown or tutorial in a technical subreddit with hyperlinked sources. Both platforms had just enough to give what people needed in an easy to digest manner.
Kbin (and by extension the Fediverse, which I still do not understand after using this website for a week) just doesnt have that easy to drop in rabbit hole experience that these major platforms do. BUT IT CAN.
But right now pictures are smooshed and theres still huge empty space. It feels old, theres weird bugs like the UI flashing light mode on refresh, and other problems that make a user go “ick”.
Fill my screen with content and let me touch it, interact with it, react to it, let me repost it, let me subscribe to that community or user, and maybe preview THEIR feed or posts so I can get MORE content.
The major companies are at a plateau and know they have to start farming our clicks: thats why we see trends like Tiktok’s “knock on the screen to keep engagement” or “satisfying” videos pasted together with political opinions. Its why every company refuses to innovate while maintaining they deserve more money when they are already the monopolistic hegemony. If kbin can provide a more honest, more personal, more legitimate content sharing experience anonymously, it can explode into the new “front page” as reddit likes to call themselves.
I really like the idea of an integrated Twitter/Reddit alternative, that shares content across “front ends” like Mastodon and reformats information to be readable based on the users preferences. If we (and by we I mean you, the coder who can actually help this open source project) can come up with a design ideology that fosters curiosity, and enables connections, instead of force feeding you ads and sponsored content, that will be the future.
Im really, really hoping the internet heals from this huge burning that Elon and Spez have put on us. I know it can be done.
EDIT: i want kbin to the the place where Iranian women go to be heard. We should strive to be a platform for sharing an education. For connection, not profit, and not propaganda either. #womenlifefreedom #slavaukraini #freepalestine #fucktheccp #beexcellenttoeachother
EDIT2: also NOTIFICATION?! like there is no indication when i go to kbin that this post has any interaction. I have to manually go to the post.
You’re absolutely right. Taking a page from Steve Jobs, the intuitiveness of the interface can make the difference. However let’s remember that a few weeks ago these platforms were just niches, experimental, few even knew about them. Many bugs that have come up in the past week or even few days ago were because they didn’t occur when only a few people used the UI. This is indeed a trial by fire.
Most definitely. But all it takes is one visionary with one repository of a good idea to inspire a community.
The growing pains will hurt, but being open source alone gives me more confidence than I have in CEOs of competitors. Im still trying to figure out this whole “Federation” business with fediverse. If they can make it more digestible it will certainly eclipse the current lot.
And, uh, a good amount of time and effort. Good software doesn’t happen overnight, and often goes through at least a dozen revisions before something good enough to release to users actually comes out.
I don’t even know why the user needs to be exposed to the Fedivere. A “normie” interface would group all of the related subs in the server’s federation and display them as one sub. It doesn’t ask the user which server to join, it asks what the user’s interests are and plops them into a server that matches their interests.
If someone is coming here from Reddit to post their butthole they really don’t want to have to go through a sign up process that throws so much technical “yuck” at them they’re probably just going to take their butthole pictures and go back to Reddit because this looks like geek stuff that requires too much “figuring out” at this Lemmy thing.
Won’t discourse in the Fediverse be better off if butthole posters are discouraged from signing up?