With Twitter and Reddit the way that they are, many people are turning to federated servers as their online home, kbin among them.
How are you using kbin? As a Twitter replacement? Reddit? As something new entirely?
Personally I’m trying to follow multiple types of federated content, magazines, and people.
I think kbin has a lot of growth to go through before all that content can become streamlined and look nice - but it’s all there, and that’s what counts.
If there’s one thing I would change, it would be putting the comment box at the top, or in a drop-down instead of at the very bottom of a thread. But, I’m also just happy that the site is more stable and people are posting!
I intended to use #Kbin primarily as a replacement for #Reddit. Content and engagement can be a bit sparse sometimes, so I decided I would try to help by creating and moderating two magazines I have an interest in. Promoting engagement through thread discussions has actually proved more challenging than I thought. I’ve actually found more success engaging with the #fediverse through #microblogging.
I’m currently using microblogging as a means to document my Japanese studies. I’ve found some people I can practice with, along with a few that are supportive of my efforts. It’s not the primary reason I’m doing so, but it is a nice form of positive reinforcement. Though I do wish I could get others to also participate, I do not believe that’s something I can force. Honestly, I’m also pretty okay if people don’t really participate because it’s been a useful tool for myself and I might have the opportunity to aid those who simply wish to lurk. I also think there’s more I could be doing to flesh out these magazines, but I’m okay with taking things steadily and I enjoy where they’re at now.
Mostly as a Reddit replacement, but I’ve found myself using my Mastadon account less too with the microblog feature.
I was really getting sick of all the negativity on Reddit. It feels like about 80% of posts are shitting on someone for some reason that I don’t really care about. Feels like a bunch of bitchy teenage girls all trying to rain on each others parade. I hope they all choke on their own social vomit.
So glad there seems to be NONE of that energy here. I hope it never arrives.
Other random thoughts/observations:
I appreciate that kbin/fediverse is more mature and academic.
I like Star Trek much more than Star Wars and see plenty of ST and no SW here.
While I appreciate that Reddit has more smaller and special interest communities because of it’s size, I like that kbin is smaller. I think it will be a little sad to see it get big.
I plan to stay here for a while. I may host a mag or two eventually. I have ideas for improvements but as a non app user it seems pretty good so far.
Also, thanks to Ernest (sp?) and others who keep the lights on and motors running. You make it all possible.
Jesus Christ youre preaching to the choir here.
I had to leave it at around November 2022 cause I noticed the negativity was seirously harming my mental health. Im only a lurker in all social medias, so I was surprised something “finally” got to me. Since I had been “immune” to metaverse shit up to that point (not because im in any way better than anyone, I just dont have enough IRL friends to matter lol), I was surprised with how much reddit mined my sanity without me noticing.
And I fully intended to only keep Insta for family contact and tiktok for funny videos until GOOGLE FUCKING STOPS WORKING. So now I need another “search engine alternative” -_-
Well, disaster averted, let’s hope we get at least a decade or so of usage on this one!
A Reddit replacement, except without doomscrolling. On Reddit I would follow communities for hobbies and have discussions about the hobby, and I’d like to do the same here. I would also doomscroll news and all the outraged comments on the news, and I would very much not like to do the same thing here.
On Kbin, there isn’t an easily-accessible Discovery feed, which is where I would click and fall into the doomscrolling and people yelling at the news. Once it gets implemented for those who want it, I dearly hope we can hide it. Out of sight, out of mind. Yes, I know it’s my own fault for clicking the Discovery button in the first place. I’ll stick to the magazines I /sub to, thank you very much. I can find new interests perfectly well through real-life friends, and learn about the news from actual news articles.
@RegularBard I wanted to use Kbin as a Reddit Twitter Hybrid, where microblogs and threads are shown together based on magazine and hashtags and you could seamless answer to both. Now I dont know if it is possible to have a view of people i have followed from Kbin, so now in just use it as a Reddit replacement
That page should be https://kbin.social/sub/microblog but I see cacheson also says they have issues with it. I only see people I follow there, but I guess it does show posts from magazines I subscribe to as well, it just must be rare for the magazines I sub to to get (microblog) posts rather than threads. Perhaps for people that subscribe to magazines with common hashtags it might be worse.