People are not moving over here for convenience, it's new young software with many flaws and missing features. I think most of us are just looking for a brighter future of social networks, one not dictated by a megacorporation and instead segmented more under our individual control. It's impossible for this to match reddit in everything since that's a company with thousands of employees and a 10 year headstart, but perfect shouldn't be an enemy of good.
To me, I loved using Relay for Reddit, but them killing the 3rd party apps in itself wasn't why I left. The whole situation just showed that Reddit doesn't care about the community, they just care about profit, and they'll happily shaft the users and prominent members of the community.
I don't think most people left solely because of 3rd party apps being killed. I think they left because of the loss of trust that move and the subsequent negative PR created.
It's natural people are looking for something new, even though the quality of life is lower for now. Some things are more important than convenience.
Edit: I forgot to answer the question. No, I don't think it's ironic. I think it's telling.
He'll, I typically used the reddit app rather than 3rd party, but they're doing too much shady-ass shit, and have been for too long (mainly thinking of the mod situation and how a few mods control a vast amount of content without seemingly any oversight). It's weird over here, but it reminds me of when I joined reddit more than 10 years ago now, it's got that vibe, ya know?
I also find it interesting that lack of mod tools is a big complaint of reddit but it seems that lack of mod tools is immediately an issue on kbin/lemmy.
But the decisions made on one vs the other are moving in the opposite directions.
While technically correct, I left reddit because the API pricing was more of less the last straw in a long list of issues Reddit has had. It was more of a sign of things to come. This is basically what happened with Digg and why people jumped to reddit.
We aren’t here because this is a better experience. It clearly is not. Reddit has had years of polishing and 3rd party development to make the user experience what it was. Here there’s server crashes, little content, interesting UI choices, and no real idea if this one is going to ‘win’ over some of the other alternatives.
But Reddit killing 3rd party apps is too heavy handed, and people don’t like that. We don’t want to see ads. I’d rather go outside than subject myself to advertisements. We’re bombarded by ads from all directions 24/7 and it’s too much.
Additionally, Reddit will be able to manipulate content and spread propaganda without oversight once they take their users in-house. I’m not interested in being programmed by whoever is invested in the site. This isn’t about ‘3rd party apps’ even though it’s about the apps. This is about leaving a site that is actively going against the users’ best interests on multiple fronts.
There aren't many/any 3pa at the moment, but the admins also didn't recently enact policy changes that are aggressively anti third party, so there's that at least.
Plus the mobile layout is perfectly serviceable on Firefox right now.
It's more than that though.... (I know it's just a showerthought but I'm explaining anyway)
Reddit's mobile experience through the browser is terrible and nearly unusable since it prompts you to download the app when you try to do anything
Reddit's official app is also terrible for a myriad of reasons.
Spez's attitude toward the whole thing really put me off more than anything else
On the other hand:
Kbin and Lemmy both work really well on a mobile browser. An app will be great but it's not necessary to enjoy the site.
The difference is that once a third part app is made for this community I don’t have to worry about some greedy asshole ruining it for profit. I am patient and this community is actually better.
Robot 0: "There is, no more unethical treatment of the elephants."
Robot 1: "Well there's no more elephants, so..."
Robot 0: "Ah."
Robot 1: "...but still it's good."
For Vulcan, the strongest impetus to move to kbin was the Snoo Platform's decision to change how API will be accessed, and also Apollo drama.
Vulcan was a Relay user and Relay's dev decision to move into subscription model (can't blame the dev) due to corporate greed of Snoo Platform's execs successfully alienated me from the Snoo Platform.
It bears a certain irony, that's true. The difference is that the mobile version of Lemmy already feels like a clean third party app. As a long time RiF user I felt at home right away.
tl;dr — fediverse will only improve from today, while Reddit will only decline.
I've used a third party app (Relay) for browsing Reddit for eight years now. It's what I'm used to, and interacting with the same content in a lesser format feels bad.
I've been using Kbin for eight days, and only know it from the mobile browser. Is it as pleasant to interact with as Relay was? No. But the difference is that it will only improve from here. My Reddit experience is primed only to get worse.
Well, to be more accurate, the reddit stuff was due to API changes, which would result in fewer 3rd party apps. (and arguably designed for this result).
The kbin API is still a WIP, but it's free to use.
Ah, but there are also no ads and to my knowledge I've yet to see one single bot. For the near future, anyway. Besides, it's not like I'd still have them in a few weeks if I weren't here
I didn't even know 3rd party apps exists before this storm lol, and I haven't even seen the decline of Reddit because I'm on it since the end of 2019 😅
But I can see that an alternative is really important.
The thing is, this is a third party app. The platform we're on is the Fediverse, it's just third party apps. No, they don't provide the same thread-like experience that you get on kbin, but for now, there's not much a difference in simply browsing kbin instances from Mastodon apps or the similar. This isn't currently great for kbin.social with all the troubles federating, but explore your options!
I never use an app, official or otherwise, for reddit. I left because I disagree with reddit's management and believe the changes will negatively impact modding. I also expect other changes I disagree with given IPO goals. They want users to use their new UI or official mobile app. They will likely try to clean up the site to make it more ad friendly at some point.
Unlike Reddit, there is no barrier to creating third party apps for this. Many of the problems that are softened by third party apps on Reddit, can be solved in the fediverse by communities and users setting up their own instances (with their own policies and customizations).
There are no 3rd party apps yet. But nothing is stopping one from being made. I'm happy to use a web browser to use Kbin until a more rounded App comes along.
We didn't leave because we wouldn't have them any longer, we left because we saw it as unfair how third-party developers have been treated and how the content from users was exploited.
Either way, many people are already working on Kbin and Lemmy apps, some of which already exist.
I'm not having a go or anything. I'm loving this whole transition period. I do miss my boost app though! Does jerboa connect to kbin? or just lemmy? I should go find that out for myself. brb. Also realise that others are most likely being worked on.
It is ironic, but the great thing about Kbin is that since it's not subject to Reddit's bullshit API policies, we could see some great third party apps for it in the near future. Meanwhile the way things are going on Reddit, people probably aren't going to have a choice but to use the official app come July 1st.
It's about locking down the API so that they can harvest user personal data with their own app. It's about the open hate from spez, hoffman, admins toward the community.