I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?
I’m a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It’s definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it’s great to see something that isn’t Reddit growing in popularity!
So far so good - sh.itjust.works was showing off a solid looking infrastructure (which is so far seamless), so I joined there.
It feels a lot like 2010 era reddit in terms of content, with a whole bunch of people trying to resurrect memes and communities that grew up organically on reddit. I’m not sure if it’ll work that way, because there’s a natural difference in userbase, but best of luck to them. I worry that the difficulty of getting NSFW content online is going to give reddit a perpetual competitive edge, but totally appreciate the legal/moral difficulties wherein.
It took a bit to figure out how to sub to new communities, and along with a lot of other newbs, I’m hoping that that’s something that can be tightened up. Like, a browser extension or something that could recognise you’re logged into some instance, and then create a subscribe link on the page rather than the weird copy-paste-into-searchbar dance that seems to be the standard at the moment.
Overall, great to see that this works and grows. My thanks to the instance hosts and mods.
Fully agree about subscribing to communities outside your instance. That’s something that needs to be cleaned up if were aiming for widespread adoption. It’s too confusing for casual users as it is.
Considering Reddit’s desire to IPO and some of the comments on the spez AMA, I wonder how long reddit would really have an edge on NSFW content. It wouldn’t surprise me if they consider slashing that content similar to Imgur in trying to appease advertisers.
I’d be interested in hearing someone’s experience in moderating NSFW subreddits, since to my untrained eye that seems like it could be a grueling job. Not to mention mitigating legal risks associated with users uploading illegal content to a self-hosted instance.
Point on reddit being likely to shy away from NSFW stuff as much as it can. One day, there will be a mainstream advertiser that goes for an “edgy” brand image and allow for their ads on to appear on porn, and then all hell is going to break loose. I look forward to that day.
I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who has dealt with moderating NSFW subs. Also the more sfw ones, like r/sex or r/bdsmcommunity, where they raise the hackles of conservatives in the US, but don’t constitute as porn.