Was there even a mass exodus? I largely avoid Reddit now, but I do kind of doubt that they’ve been hurt in any meaningful way by all the protests and people leaving…
Just have a look at the content there, it dropped a lot in quality.
As a browser, I notice that Lemmy seems much more dynamic and engaging. It’s small, weird and there appear to be all sorts of things going on in the corners which I didn’t notice so much on reddit (they were probably there, but got overlooked die to sheer volume of content). I like the experience so far, reminds me of the early days of exploring the web.
I’ve noticed the same. It’s possible that a lot of content creators left. It’s also possible that you and I have gotten used to not having the lowest common denominator stream of consciousness from the Reddit hive mind firehosed in our faces.
For a bunch of the subs I frequented the mods just left. Some of those died, some are being taken over by right-wing extremists, some are still chugging along.
I lost all patience with low effort posts. I try to call out anyone asking easily google-able questions or clear karma baiting. It took a couple days of this to realize I needed take a long break from it. I’m debating keeping my account solely to get my karma up a bit more and trying to sell it, not sure yet.
Is it important that Reddit suffers? For me the important thing is that lemmy flourishes and has good oc.
Right? Ignore them, have fun here. No reason to give any thought to them.
It’s petty, but I do hope Reddit suffers. Spez and co has profited off user generated content, free moderation of their communities for a decade plus. Forcing users into the Reddit app that is garbage compared to other 3rd party apps, not to mention the privacy concerns with the app which rivals Facebook.
Quote from Spez in 2016. In May, Steve Huffman said in an interview at the TNW Conference that, unlike Facebook, which “only knows what [its users are] willing to declare publicly”, Reddit knows its users’ “dark secrets”
If Reddit collapses or at the very least their IPO collapses and we can prevent another sociopath from being a billionaire I’ll be very happy with the situation.
This is what I wish more lemmings would grasp. I’ve commented before how there’s this disillusionment that reddit actually died when a bunch of people left. It didn’t. The sooner everyone can stop being in denial about that, the better.
The situation is really more akin to an abusive ex and the people that left realizing that they’re better off without them. You’re in a better place. Stop talking about, focusing on the drama that your ex brought and just embrace your newer better environment.
Millions of people are in that situation and don’t leave because they’ve been manipulated, they’re scared, and in this case addicted. My brother in law switched from Apollo to the official app and hates it, complains every day, and says reddit sucks now…but won’t leave.
Yeah, but like… I have a gf to have someone to converse with. This new gf of mine basically doesn’t speak so I’m just sitting here watching the wallpapers in silence, whereas my ex, while crazy, was very talkative and entertaining.
Ok but your ex getting hooked on heroin and ending up in a prison morgue won’t make your new gf any more interesting.
To use your analogy of the abusive ex… would you want someone to just never talk about the abusive ex? Never process the trauma? That’s what a lot of people are doing. Noticing that the abusive ex is imploding into a death spiral is kind of validating of your decision to leave. It’s part of the process. There’s no need to shame people for it.
The post is a week old, but regardless, people have had their time to grieve and process. Your friends and family were there for you, they let you vent, they helped you make the transition away from your partner…but they’re gone. It’s time to move on. Let it go. You’re stuck in denial while most people have made it all the way to acceptance. Everyone is ready for you to stfu about your ex.
You’re also reading too much into the analogy. This isn’t really an ex, it’s a link aggregating website and online forum. Just like nobody cared if you deleted your myspace, your Facebook, digg, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, etc…nobody really cares that you deleted your reddit account.
Ribbit
Same. However, my reddit usage has decreased significantly. I used to spend 1-2 hours there every day (which was waaaay too much), now I spend 5-10 minutes on reddit at best. The terrible mobile design drives me away because it keeps nagging me to use their app. On the other hand, I also only use lemmy maybe 15-20 minutes per day.
So in total, the stupid decisions of reddit have improved my digital well-being because I spend less time mindlessly scrolling.
Uh…thanks, spez?
We exist though. I nuked my account and haven’t gone back even once. My wife sent me a link to something there yesterday but I made her send me a screenshot instead. That’s the closest I’ve been in about 2 weeks. I don’t care of it hurts Reddit, I’m sure it doesn’t given how many millions use the site, but they did me wrong even before all this shit so I’m done.
If we’re perfectly honest - No.
Reddit has over 53 some odd million users. Million with an M. Lemmy has gained, at most, upwards of just thousands. To call it a ‘mass exodus’ is really overselling it.
It’s going to take a fairly long time, for Lemmy to even scratch 100k even. I’m on both Reddit and Lemmy. Lemmy, for a more positive experience. Reddit, because the numbers are just there.
The landscape was different. Digg was in 2004. Reddit in 2005. They both came in a time where social media was at it’s infancy and it was anyone’s game to make it big. Whereas today, there are already established social media sites and the best any alternative social media outlet can do anymore, is absorb some numbers and try to prove to be the better alternative. It’s a lot about thinking outside the box and figuring what a platform can do that the other can’t.
So what’s the solution to blow this joint and start a new paradigm? Television killed radio. Blogs and streaming killed television. Current social media killed blogs. If the fediverse isn’t the solution, then what’s going to kill and replace current 2010s era social media? And don’t say short form video, because that was cool for maybe a decade before the big corpos started pushing it and it was no longer cool.
Generally I agree with you, but let me steelman a different argument. It feels to me like we are in the early stages of another digital renaissance like the one that happened during the rise of Reddit & Facebook. I remember that time well as I was just starting high school, and Reddit opened an entirely new world for me after leaving Digg. It felt like where all the cool kids hung out if you will. There was this wealth of information, discussion, political discourse, and it scratched the itch that ultimately formed a lot of who I am today.
It has always been the visionaries who are then backed by the early adopters that form internet culture. Lemmy is, again, where the cool kids (and technically inclined) are choosing to hang out. There is an exclusivity to it, and that feeling of breaking from the herd. That is an exciting and addicting feeling for content creators and users alike. This is all happening as major players like Meta & Twitter are warring with each other over users, and while Reddit allowed itself to succumb to the narcissistic ambitions of one moron (fuck u/spez) who never cared about the spirit of what used to make Reddit truly great.
I think a lot of us (me included) got complacent, and bogged down in the feeling that there would never be a time where the internet felt new, and alive again. It is a failure of imagination really, and I hope this can be one shot across the bow to the major power structures behind the previous generation of social media that blind corporatism rarely if ever can capture the magic or lightning in a bottle that has been the bedrock of culture in the information age. Only time will tell how this project will evolve and change or if it can become something truly great that stands the test of time. But I, for one, am sincerely hoping that it does…just as much for myself as for all of you!
This crisis has given Lemmy enough users to be a vibrant, viable alternative with the software and apps undergoing rapid development. This means the next time that reddit tries to pull some shit, there will be somewhere for people to go, unlike this time. Lemmy just wasn’t really ready for prime time.
For comparison, Mastodon got 2.5 Million users and then promptly lost all of them. Since then it has been slowly gaining back and last numbers had them at 1.7 Million already.
This X move by Musk might push them back to 2 million and beyond. The platform has matured.
Lemmy needs a lot of work still, but give it time.
I think you are correct. Lemmy is really just gearing up at the moment, but can’t handle the volume to compete with reddit.
The increase of instances, user guides, communities and third party apps are necessary building stones of a federated reddit alternative of size.
Lemmy has almost half a million accounts ( 400k ) with over 1.5 million posts. lemmy.world grew by ~30k new accounts in June.
Others grew by single digit thousands, so the migration seems to be about ~50k new users to Lemmy.
That’s not trivial, Reddit had those kind of numbers in like 2007. Give it time.
Lemmy has definitely “scratched” 100k https://the-federation.info/platform/73
