For a sub that’s supposed to promote Reddit alternatives, there sure is a lot of pessimism on there. I see so many people dismissing Lemmy and kbin already for being too inaccessible, the UI is clunky, it’s hard to pick up etc and saying these sites will never take off. But why? Of course a platform in its infancy will have hurdles to overcome, and it takes time for devs to implement all the QOL features to make the site more intuitive. And when I see people trying to explain how Lemmy works, people just respond “Too complicated, I’m not reading all that etc.”
Do people expect a fully functional Reddit clone with all the same features to conveniently exist somewhere they can hop to? Do people not realise that Reddit itself was just as confusing when users migrated from Digg all those years ago? Do they not realise sites take time to mature?
RedditAlternatives is the only subreddit I still use because I want to help people make the jump, but it’s kinda disheartening seeing the attitudes there. Anyone has a more optimistic take on this?
I’d only add that it’s safe to assume that Reddit is engaged in an astroturfing campaign against any potentially viable alternatives.
Conveniently enough, I think the fediverse has already reached the point that it can’t be stopped by bad publicity. There are enough people already here that it’s pretty much here to stay. And in fact, I think a case could be made that anyone who doesn’t even investigate the fediverse because of what some yahoo, shill or bot on Reddit says isn’t much of a loss anyway.