I guess it’s self explanatory but I keep seeing all this stuff about how everyone is moving from Reddit to lemmy and I’m wondering if anyone knows if that’s really what’s happening. If you have numbers that’s even better.
Thanks!
There clearly is not. Even people on here, who say they “quit” Reddit, often go on to say “I only go on it now for this one subreddit” or “I only go on it to check news” etc. Spez bet that people would either not care about him shitting all over the Reddit community for profit, or be too addicted to Reddit to actually do anything about it. And he was right.
These predictions that Reddit will collapse because the “power users” have left are ridiculous. It’s not difficult to find recycled trash on the internet to shitpost on Reddit. Hell, bots can do it, and have been. People just want garbage to mindlessly scroll through and leave their dumb comments on (“user name checks out, har har”).
I will personally never use Reddit as long as it’s run my Spez (or any other equivalent asshole), but it’s quite clear that they’ve survived this API debacle just fine.
It’s the same with Facebook. People are so addicted to it that no matter how badly they are treated they just can’t quit. No matter the evidence repeatedly presented with just how evil FB is, I have still never convinced a family member to get off it. At this point I just will have to be satisfied with them never referencing me or having any pictures of me on it. Reddit is the same, but not as extreme.
It’s the same with Facebook. People are so addicted to it that no matter how badly they are treated they just can’t quit.
Facebook is a very different beast. It exists and thrives because it convinced people to engage personally. It’s difficult to leave Facebook because family and friends are there. And Facebook also bought a lot of the competition and branched out: Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. It also has value to businesses, it has a market place, it truly is a monster.
Reddit has nothing. It doesn’t know its users and most of them are really careful to keep anonymous. It has shared interests communities, but not friendships/personal relationships. It’s really easy to quit Reddit if one decides to. It does not affect daily life.
True. But, the power users leaving will likely have a long term impact.
The thing that set Reddit apart from all the other spaces to settle down on the internet was that Reddit’s users made it work, not Reddit.
They had their faults; moderation wasn’t perfect. But, it was good in the places it needed to be. Reddit was also very good at attracting “experts” in niche topics. You could reliably trust askscience, askhistorians, whatisthisbug, etc.
Reddit has plenty of memes, porn and funny cats to attract the masses, but it was the power users that made Reddit what it was.
On top of that, Reddit was so customizable because of all the 3rd party apps that had polish. Apollo, BaconReader, etc., no ads and lots of options to choose from to suit your needs.
Cutting back your engagement from 30h a week to 30m is a huge shot against Reddit tho.
I kept my account alive but now only follow a handful of subs and am finding alternatives weekly. Discord. Lemmy.
This all results in a huge loss for Reddit because no one’s there for the ads or promoted posts. And that’s all they’ll have left after a while. And that’s not enough to attract a real base. Reddit won’t die overnight but look at what one fatal move did to Tumblr (when they banned porn). It tanked the site so hard that it’s losing money daily now. A stark contrast from when it sold for billions.
Corporations are far too flippant in thinking they are indestructible. And how they handled the API changes tells you that, like Tumblr, they made a serious mistake.
