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!
Oh and if people are also going elsewhere, where else are people going? (ie not lemmy)
If not lemmy, they are probably going to Mastodon, as it is an open source Twitter alternative.
There’s kbin, which is similar to lemmy, but not the same. They’ve picked up a decent number of users.
There’s others too, but none that have really boomed the way lemmy and kbin have.
Fwiw, if you go to most of the more casual subs, particularly the meme/image based ones, probably won’t notice the lost users from reddit because most of those were already swamped with reposts via bots and karma whores. But if you were into the useful side of reddit, there’s a difference in quality and tone. A shit ton of the exodus was not only power users, but mods.
As much shit as mods get, they really are what keeps any forum from devolving into chaos and stupidity. It doesn’t matter how “power mad” people think they are, what matters is that they put the time in to keep a given forum in a reliable state. The reliability is what left with the exodus.
Moderating a forum is a skill, not an inborn talent. It takes time to develop, and by the time the mods lost from there are replaced, and they get up to speed, it’s months at least before they can start rebuilding the culture of a given forum. Even an experienced mod can take weeks to months to adapt to the culture of a given forum, assuming they don’t make the mistake of trying to force a change.
Reddit straight up killed a lot of tools as well. The bot defense bot is essentially dead. That isn’t something that can be replaced in the time the folks running it have given before they pull the plug all the way. Toolbox is alive, but lost the lead developer, and if it goes, moderating there becomes a major pain in the ass. I still keep an eye on a small handful of subs that aren’t duplicated in some form elsewhere, via things like geddit and stealth, that are having major bot issues, and they aren’t really mainstream. I can’t imagine what the big subs are like in that regard now.
Reddit isn’t going to “die”, not soon. But, as often has been said when this comes up, the reddit we knew and loved is already dead. It’s gone, and not coming back.
Lemmy has exploded in popularity over the last few weeks, that is the mass exodus that most people are talking about.
It’s not a mass exodus. There was a sizeable influx of people from Reddit to Lemmy/kbin, sure, but that’s measured in the (low) hundreds of thousands. Reddit has hundreds of millions of active users.
The reality is it’s not even close to a mass exodus, not yet.
White the absolute numbers aren’t so huge, it’s more about the kind of people who are leaving Reddit. Many if those are former mods or people who create a lot if content. I do think this will lead to an appreciable lots in overall quality of Reddit. Not that the quality they’re had been anything to write home about. But the downward trajectory continues.
Yeah, but a sizeable increase is still very important. These days, Mastodon, Lemmy and so on have decently sized communities everywhere so that you don’t feel like just talking to yourself and a couple of friends anymore. And that’s kind of a tipping point.
“Mass migrations” happen slowly, anyway. A lot of people are very hesitant to leave big social hubs just because of the value there is in having so many people around. But in the end, you have to. We can’t stay on these proprietary social networks forever. Social networks and communication channels in general need to be non-proprietary, decentralized and open, without the ability of companies manipulating what you see and don’t see. And without risk of losing everything when the one big company falls. It’s a fundamental problem of all proprietary social networks.
The Great Digg Migration was way bigger and Digg was never the same after that. If Lemmy gets a couple more big waves from Reddit, it could mean the end for Reddit as it currently is.
I doubt Reddit has hundreds of millions. For ‘big social media’, Reddit was pretty niche until recently. I’d be surprised if they had more than a hundred million.
But that aside, the users that are leaving Reddit are their most important ones. Mods and the people who spent the most time on Reddit. This definitely has the the potential to cause substantial harm to the platform.
While true, I would like to point out who is leaving: The vocal community.
When you see a reddit post and it has 1000 Upvotes and 50 comments, than this means that a couple thousand people saw it, over 1000 votes on it (up and down) and 50 made a comment, and some even commented on a comment. Most people are lurker and are just passive and enjoy the contribution by OP posting it, people curating it by voting for it and giving the topic traction by commenting on it (maybe even provoking another thread of the same topic or adding another thought in another post in the next hours/days or turning it into a meme).
The people, who are leaving - as far I as I see it - are the vocal active people. Not the lurker. So it might not be a mass exodus, but those who are active and vocal about their unhappiness and who are actively searching for alternatives and are now here on Lemmy, are the heart of the buzzing culture of reddit. Those are the ones who bring in new posts, vote actively and comment massively. Not the lurker. So who is left behind on reddit is mostly lurker who are now missing a good part of the active community who commented and voted for them. And I think this is visible on reddit and can accelerate reddits decline.
Its not the mass of the people that is important, but the engaging force that is driving the discourse in a community by being active and vocal.
And I think Lemmy got a good heap of those people.
We could get many users providing useful content thats why I recommend checking out these subs:
Fix problems and errors !techsupport@lemmy.world
Find the best products by Lemmy users reviews !recommendations@lemmy.world
Find the best software options !softwareoptions@lemmy.world
And more (if you know more I will edit to add them)
@anarchoplayworker I don’t have any number but I do come here from time to time when I’m on laptop. Hope there will be a good app for iOS soon.
Yeah and you can access Mlem which is pretty good too on TestFlight. And there’s WefWef which you can put on your phone and functions as an app, even though it’s really a web app. (At least I think that’s how it works. I’m not an expert in such things).
Mass exodus maybe in terms of power users. The average Reddit user used the official client before the api restrictions. My guess is that many people who posted good stuff ditched Reddit.
Oh got it. So it’ll be interesting to see how Reddit does without those people, whether others will step up or whether it’ll just lose all that content.
