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?
Yes.
EDIT: Ok, I should add something more. Sadly, yes. I’ve seen comments from people say pretty much that. “I went there and there’s no content and the UI isn’t great”. hrumph. Of course there isn’t and no one should expect there to be. Reddit didn’t start with all that shit either, but Reddit exists now and it pleases a lot of people, despite the cracks forming all around them.
Yeah, when I went to Reddit during the Great Digg Migration, two things jumped out at me: this UI kinda sucks, and the content kinda sucks. It was still heavily dominated by tech topics, like Slashdot. It took a while to grow into the ‘front page of the internet’.