Moving to: m/AskMbin!

First comment here.

I am not enjoying kbin.social right now. The latency is beyond atrocious, at 10+ seconds to load each page. The UI reminds me of 2004 forums that don’t know how users work. The mobile UI is just the worst.

Some pain points:

• I’m a software engineer so I can figure this shit out, but how the hell do I subscribe to a magazine? If I go to it, there should be a “subscribe” or context menu at the top to subscribe/favorite/mute
• Why is the comment box all the way at the bottom? Where’s the “add comment” button on a post?
• Why are comments paginated like a forum? Why not just a “load more” like Reddit? What’s the point?
• Selecting the comment box should NOT zoom slightly into the page. The mobile web UI needs a lot of work from people who know how to do mobile UIs.
• Is there no “homepage” button? Clicking the Kbin logo at the top just brings up a menu, which requires another click on the homepage button to get back.
• Edit: And you can't collapse comment threads? What even...

I really want a Reddit replacement, but this is not it with this terrible UI. It’s unusable, literally–if I can’t subscribe to a magazine then it’s not working.

Would it be in poor taste to steal posts from reddit and post them here? That would be the only reason I go back.

I'll stick with the Fediverse and kbin. It's got teething pains for sure, but it's a solid foundation to build on.

I'm definitely staying here, but there are a few niche communities that only exist on Reddit that I'll probably go back to, just not nearly as frequently.

I'm here to stay. Even if Reddit reverse their API decision, they've made it abundantly clear their first priority is pleasing their shareholders. I don't want to use a platform that so blatantly ignores the wills of the community that caused it's popularity in the first place. It's a shame they've decided to die on the hill of temporarily pumping their potential IPO value via the API at the cost of what made Reddit special in the first place. They've already disintegrated the trust of a lot of hardcore Reddit users like myself overnight. It'll never be the same now they've shown how they really value their users.

At the same time, I'm really excited to see how the various alternative platforms develop. Spending time away from Reddit has made me realise its sheer size can be quite overwhelming and there were a lot of subreddits I followed that were more doom scrolling wastes of time. Going to these other, smaller platforms is taking me back to earlier Internet days in a good way where it feels like you're part of an engaged community rather than a nameless voice among hundreds of thousands. I've been finding the quality of discussion here refreshingly high and respectful so far.

It's honestly exciting being at the start of what feels like a new social media wave. I can't remember the last time a major social media platform went the way of the dodo and people had to start migrating to replacements. I'm finding it really enjoyable being on ground zero. Whatever platform ends up being the most popular, it's a pleasure to be talking with you all whilst we figure it out. :)

I have also stayed away from Reddit since the blackout started (only ever accessed it through Apollo since the Alien Blue buyout). I don't think I'll delete my 11 yo account just yet (Reddit's behavior over the next couple of weeks will determine that). Either way, I plan to stick around on kbin and watch it grow. Reddit has been spiraling the drain for years. Hoping as an internet community we can recapture the good about it (good progress so far!) while also avoiding the bad. The federated nature of kbin/lemmy is very promising.

I've been enjoying kbin for the past couple of days, and once we get through the lag issues I think it will be great!
I only accessed Reddit through sync on mobile and there's no way I'm going back to using the mobile browser. Not much point returning for a week or two before leaving again.