"Beehaw is relatively new and relatively small at the moment, but it's one of the closest approximations of what Reddit is that you're going to find, and well worth investigating as a Reddit replacement. The interface even looks a lot like Reddit, albeit without a lot of the on-screen features and furniture that build up over almost two decades of operation.
Have a read of the Beehaw mission statement and you'll see the platform is committed to avoiding the "hate speech" and "disinformation" that's prevalent elsewhere. The communities available right now cover everything from neurodivergence and people of color to literature and gardening, so you're sure to find something of interest here."
probably just a bit of safety there, it is a more carefully controlled and moderated experience.
You drop the average internet user into the wrong random lemmy instance without teaching them how to tune it to their liking and they are going to be turned off by the amount of bizzare shit they see and just assume it's all like that.
Not a fan of the defederation. I’m actually displeased they would shout out an instance that will give new users a BAD experience of what the fediverse is.
Trying to get an account on here is pretty difficult though. I applied on the first day of the blackout to give lemmy a shot, but never even got an email back. Ive heard similar from other people.
That would make it pretty tough for new users trying to join the community if they dont know they can also make accounts elsewhere thats federated with beehaw.
The Fediverse is still a strange concept to a lot of people. They assume only email is federated and the rest of the web is sites with only internally facing channels of communication.
Honestly, a lot of us are our own worst enemy when it comes to trying to bring users to this platform. We over-explain it, we want them to be excited about the de-centralized aspect of it. We extol all the virtues of the Fediverse that could bring social media into a new era of humanity.
And that completely shuts down the other person’s brain. Their eyes glaze over. They don’t have any concept of this whole thing, and the data dump is just too much. Even explaining it “like email” will get them confused.
The best thing we can do is, and I know people will hate this, but just GET THEM SOMEWHERE on the Fediverse and slowly introduce them to the idea of subscribing to communities. I’ve been introducing my wife to the Fediverse, and she’s been super excited about it, but even she is far more receptive to macro-concepts than your average person. Even still, I pointed her to Beehaw and slowly she’s understood that communities exist here but more specific communities exist elsewhere, once she found out how to search for them, it makes the concept much easier.
I know people will hate the idea of a “starter instance” but it might honestly be the way to go for your average person. Just get them SOMEWHERE and using it. I know for a fact the first time I saw Reddit (as a heavy forum user), I felt overwhelmed at just so many CHOICES of subreddits. That was a loooong time ago, but no doubt that feeling is even worse with communities existing in a Federated way.
Honestly, it keeps it simpler. The idea of federation and etc can go above the heads of people so it's probably simpler to just focus on one instance and let the users discover the wider world of federation at their own pace.
Personally though, I would have mentioned Lemmy/Kbin in some capacity.
I’ve seen seen Digg being recommended in Reddit posts too. I thought it was a joke but I checked it out again anyway. I thought it look like just any other news site 😅
That's really weird that they would recommend just Beehaw specifically. It makes me wonder if the author understands what Lemmy is. (Or maybe I just feel jealous as a filthy Lemmy.One user)
Out of all the instances I've tried (barring the personal one I setup last night); Beehaw has been the best! The admins seem like really nice people and I vibe with the philosophy of the place. I just made my own because I've always had the idea in the back of my mind, but I wanted to see how well the Fediverse works out before I committed to it. <3 beehaw
I don't even know what Slashdot really is, but I think for a lot of people 9gag will do well as a Reddit replacement. Some people just want dumb memes, doesn't really matter where they come from.
Slashdot is the pre-cursor to digg and reddit in a lot of ways. It's problem was people wanted freedom to create communities and submit posts whereas /. wanted to be able to control what appeared on their site. Both digg and reddit were responses to that aspect of slashdot. That, and their moderation system tried to be democratic, sharing the load amongst users, rather than installing mods (which ultimately was a failure imo).
I did not even know Digg still existed. Use to be my go to place until they ruined the site. I think that was a monetization thing too. Cannot remember much about it or why I left.
9gag is a decent alternative if all you used reddit for was browsing meme subs and never commented. But like, I'm pretty sure that that demographic has already been using the official app.
Having a news article finally promote a fediverse instance is a win in my book.
Only issue is that lemmy and kbin should have still been mentioned as a whole, especially since registering to beehaw seems to take some time.
Another non federated alternative that seems to have some traction with reddit refugees is squabbles. Sad that it didn't get mentioned since it also reached ~17k users. This could end up a good alternative for people that find the fediverse too complicated. Though i myself prefer kbin so far.
Cool they did. But as a sources of tech news and reviews I wouldn't recommend Techradar. They're not that thorough and their phone or pc hardware reviews are not that useful to be honest.
I used to, Joey. It was a little rough around the edges but it was cheap and had no ads. I stopped using in January because I wanted to spend less time on Reddit in general - the site on mobile Firefox sure helped to keep me away :^)
Now I'm gone for good tho - thanks spez for helping me quit!