this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
104 points (100.0% liked)
Fediverse
8 readers
2 users here now
This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
founded 2 years ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
and thus the entire issue with reddit. The glory of the fediverse is that there can be competition. You do not work for Disney, you do not own Disney. The community is not yours because you got to it first. If you want to own a Disney forum, start your own website.
We should not be allowing FB/IG to gain their foothold on the work of other people, yet again, so they can eventually take control once it's too late to stop them. Especially not because it would help your own ego and foothold on a community you do not own.
I am using "my magazine" as a colloquial term for "the magazine I moderate", obviously not as the term for "the magazine I own". I trust you know that and are arguing in bad faith.
You can go start your own magazine on another instance if you wish. The presence of one does not preclude competition. Heck, you can even start another one here; we had similar subreddits on Reddit. The /r/WaltDisneyWorld folks were an example of a bad mod team on a power trip, which caused splinter subreddits to pop up like /r/DisneyWorld. The /r/WaltDisneyWorld mod team came here to Kbin and sure enough Kbin has already splintered too - there's @WaltDisneyWorld (original WaltDisneyWorld mods), @DisneyWorld, and @wdw.
If you think you can do a good job running a Disneyland magazine, I'm not going to stop you from making DisneylandResort or DisneyParks or going to Lemmy and making something there. Competition is good and healthy.
But... I don't think you truly appreciate how much work moderating a community can be. I literally was a mod for 1 sizeable subreddit (I was a mod on 2-3 other subs, technically, but they had subscriber counts in the dozens and rarely saw activity).
I'd love to show you what moderating a subreddit with 500k subscribers really looks like. It gets bad. Gore, scat, porn, hate, bigotry, and trolling - you deal with it all. Death threats in modmail to boot. And we were just 500k subs! The former default subs have millions and they are far worse, I've been told.
We ran a community for folks to discuss a single topic: the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA. Not Hong Kong Disneyland, not Disneyland Paris, not Walt Disney World. Those have their own subreddits, with their own communities and their own mod team (plus /r/disneyparks). I wasn't associated with any of them outside of small formalities; I only got to know them during the blackout when we did look into coordinating our own site. (More on that later.)
If each mod team didn't do their job, each sub would be overrun with posts that don't fit the sub. We're constantly removing posts about WDW or Disneyland Paris or Shanghai Disneyland or whatever. We're constantly removing posts from people talking about general Disney stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the park. It's a lot of work to curate a feed, and when the effort is made in good faith we redirect people to more appropriate places to talk about the things they're passionate about.
People joined that subreddit to talk about the Disneyland in Anaheim; many didn't care about Shanghai Disneyland or whatever. If we missed something and a person posts about the "wrong" park (which happens sometimes, even with AutoMod), the community generally comes in and downvotes the post (and sometimes insults the user). From their perspective, they're seeing some content they don't care about/want in their feed. And technically, per Reddiquette, that's what the downvote button is "supposed" to be for - sorting out things that don't belong.
It's like posting a TikTok link to /r/YoutubeHaiku or a picture to /r/videos - each community has a set of rules and a social contract to enforce them. That's what makes a good community with relevant content that makes you come back. Without a good mod team, a subreddit gets overrun with posts that don't fit the sub - you can see some of that here on Lemmy/Kbin already. This is both because mod tools are lacking (no AutoMod) and because people are changing instances as they see fit. For example, @Starwars is abandoned, I think - the only(!!!) mod hasn't been active in weeks. I've seen things here like videos in the politics communities and other things that wouldn't fly with larger mod teams.
(Hit max character length, continued as a reply)
(Continued from parent due to post length constraints.)
You say we should move off-site. There's already a large general-purpose forum for Disney: MiceChat. It's a classic non-federated forum, from a bygone age of the internet. People who aren't attached to a Reddit-like interface typically are on MiceChat, or one of the thousands of Disney Facebook groups. They're the largest Disney community on the internet.
We discussed running our own Disney-themed Kbin instance (like /r/StarTrek and /r/Android both did), that would be a federated competitor to MiceChat. The idea still appeals to me. But the fact of the matter is that we didn't have the time nor money to be admins. I have a full-time job where I can't be spending time working as an admin all day (and - fun fact - I actually did work for Disney, formerly), and I don't have the legal know-how to host a website.
Making a community on someone else's instance doesn't have those same issues. kbin.social has a sane admin team and is permissive with federation, giving the magazine a large reach (but keeping out hate speech and trolls). There are people on here who want to participate in their hobbies - like going to Disneyland, which for many is a hobby - or who want to use the community as a resource (and the Disneyland subreddit was a resource, too).
Because at the end of the day - it is a lot of work, but seeing a thriving community is rewarding. You grow attached to it. It's why people play simulation games; you help shepard people along, make people happy, and watch the line go up. It's not "ego" any more than playing a city builder game is "ego". I certainly never threw my weight around on Reddit; our subreddit was positively tiny compared to others. The only time I used my green badge on Reddit was to give people warnings or make community-wide announcements. The only time I mentioned I was a mod elsewhere was when I needed a "fun fact" to introduce myself with at work/school or when it's directly relevant (like letting people on the fediverse know that the magazine here is run by the same team that ran it on Reddit).
The Disneyland subreddit was a good community, IMO. The whole mod team did a lot of work to keep it good, and I was proud to help out. Connecting people with the resources they need and letting them show off the things that made them excited, while keeping the spambots and trolls at bay and redirecting lost folks to the right spot. It's something you need to experience to understand.
One thing that was missing was Disney's direct involvement. Disney never contacted us. Even when I worked for them - corporate knew I was a mod there but left us alone since it was considered my personal business (my only restriction was that I couldn't say I was speaking officially on behalf of the company). As long as the sidebar said that we were fan-run, Disney never said a peep. Because Disney didn't have any official presence on Reddit, folks would frequently repost news shared by Disney to the subreddit directly.
Threads gives us a unique opportunity to be able to connect folks to official Disney social media right here on Kbin. They'd be able to interact 2-way without needing to make a Threads account themselves (and without Disney needing to come here officially). It's really the best thing that could happen for that type of community, and it would be a shame to lose out on it.
Question, is MiceChat connected to Disney corporate in any way, or are they a fully independent website, of/by/for disney fans?
I hope you see where I'm going with this question and the fact they are the largest community, still around from the "bygone era of the internet". If you allow FB/IG/Threads to gain their foothold, you will not be around 20 years later. If MiceChat had integrated into FB/Reddit/etc, they would not be around anymore, especially not in the independent way they are.
btw, I wasn't arguing in bad faith. the idea of the power hungry power mod of reddit is a widely known concept. Immediately trying to disregard my argument on that continues to show your fragility in your control of your community.
Idk if you're familiar with GenCon, a board game convention in Indy, but I've run the unofficial Discord server since 2017. While not even close to as big as the official server, made in 2020, the users have stayed on our little server and we still gain new users each summer. The thing is, I don't run the server like some big corpo project, but literally as a diy space where people can feel comfortable asking questions and getting to know each other, myself included. I don't ban folks without community input, because while I have the sole power to do so, it's not my community, it's ours. GenCon LLC has never reached out to me, because I'm not trying to do what they do, and I don't care about them because of the same reason. I'd wouldn't mind having a larger number of users, but at the same time, I'd rather keep the community feel homegrown, and not artificially inseminated (with money).
To bring it all around again, kbin and the fediverse works because it is homegrown and community based. Waaaaaaaay back when, Reddit was the same, but being centralized, that will cause problems, thus the problems of the past months. kbin and the fediverse at large (not so much just the AP protocol) will continue to succeed without corpo takeover and influence. It can breed discussion and community without trying to make money off of it. Give them an inch, and they will redefine what an inch is so that it includes all inches in perpetuity.