12
Im waiting for the Internet Historian video on this
Reddit sheds a few million of its active users but the API changes and death of third-party apps don’t completely kill the site because now it’s pretty mainstream and a lot of people actually don’t give a shit about Apollo, RIF, etc.
A few million is plenty to make lemmy a comparable community. As that continues more and more people who didn't move in previous years will move now, because there are enough people here to make it worthwhile.
I think the main difficulty of a site replacing Reddit is that Reddit clones are now a-dime-a-dozen.
Which makes a federated system like lemmy even more competitive.
I've given lemmy a try 3-4 times over the last couple years. And I think that presently it is getting fairly close to a big enough crowd that is very usable and is comparable to what reddit was like in 2008 when I switched from Digg.
To be honest. Lemmy doesn't need to out compete reddit or whoever. It just needs to be competitive. Not having the brain dead mainstream masses over here is not a loss. However, people have always moved to the platform with more liberty when most other aspects are the same. Otherwise reddit would never have been a thing. Most people were over at Digg for a reason. They only moved to reddit when Digg gave them enough reasons to leave.
A few million active users is extreme. Lemmy isn't going to have that. Currently it's nearing 15k monthly active users, I just hope It'l stay that way and not stagger too much again.
Hopefully lemmy is going to have a better user retention than mastodon
Thing is, I'm kind of settled with the idea that Reddit will still win out monetarily with this. 99% of users are going to take the path of least resistance, which is kinda expected.
So my goal is more around just having a good conversational community, and I kinda like the change in pace now that I'm using alternatives. I don't really focus on "Reddit losing". I just like having a good place to chat. It might be funny to see if they end up reversing course, but I'm not losing sleep on that turnout.
I'm ok with the smarter people forming communities elsewhere like Lemmy. Reddit brain drain will definitely be a thing. It's going to be the new Facebook when this is all over.
That is my feeling. I want Lemmy to be good, so I hope a lot of quality users jump ship from Reddit, but if Reddit retains the millions of passive users, then I’m happy for Reddit to keep them. One part of Reddit’s issue was the diluted quality of posts and comments, so let it continue to exist to filter people who want that experience. ___
Yeah it sounds harsh but once a subreddit got above 100k its quality inevitably took a nose dive unless this was actively moderated against which it usually wasn’t. Lurkers are fine in general but when the whole platform is mostly lurkers looking to doomscroll TikTok style rather the lurkers wanting to read (and upvote) decent high-effort content it all goes down the pan pretty quickly.
If Reddit’s role in the Fediverse is as a great big sponge to soak up the passive users who just want quick content then long live Reddit! Spez staying on as CEO and increasingly zombifying the platform is actually great for us because it will drive active users here and keep the passive users on Reddit.
Depends on the quality of the first-party mod tools and if enough mods stick around. Reddit doesn't work without free labor. It'll be overrun by spam and trolls.
Same. We have seen nothing but reddit shitting the bed. If people are still staying everything, they're not as likely to leave. If this doesn't do it, then that's that. The subs I would consider stating for are dead. Emulation has a post from yesterday, and then 5 days ago. EmulationOnAndroid is still private. Sad to see the community not there anymore, since it was a great way to keep up with everything that was going on, but if they don't pick up here I'll just watch some YouTubers and move on.
Reddit won't come out on top. They'll survive, but it's going to hurt them. They seem to have pissed off most communities on the site. It's the largest protest they've ever had.
Reddit doesn’t run a profit yet, so all they need to achieve is enough to get into the black. Like Twitter, Reddit I don’t think will crash and burn but the quality will drop dramatically. Reddit doesn’t care about quality long as there’s enough users on the site to make the paid ads have value. In the short term I think they’ll succeed in that but it’s going to turn into a cesspool.
But if those up for actual conversation and vaguely respectful debate come over here & leave the trolls and the karma farmers with Spez then that’s a great result!
But if those up for actual conversation and vaguely respectful debate come over here & leave the trolls and the karma farmers with Spez then that’s a great result!
Excellent point. Those of us who actually value conversation will make the effort to find, sign up for, and learn another platform. For the trolls and karma farmers, that’s just too much trouble. There will still be enough targets on Reddit to satisfy trolls, plus we’ve got the sunk cost fallacy working for us: karma farmers would lose their precious karma by leaving. Reddit is much more bot-friendly, too.
Thanks for being a greedy jerk, spez! Reddit is serving the Lemmy community as a bullshit filter!
Should be noted, Twitter is actively crashing and burning and may file for bankruptcy this year.
...And Mastodon seems to be a much nicer place to be than Twitter, even if it is a smaller "community"
Dear Apollo dev, if you updated your backend to support federated services like Lemmy I for one would love you forever.
It would definitely be great, but I was unaware until this thread that the premium version of Apollo is a paid subscription, which is a no-go for me. I'll pay money for an app like that once, never a subscription.
I get that this largely an unpopular opinion, and ultimately, you have to do you, but whether or not an app is first party, third party, or a cobbled together black market party, software development for any service will have to be ongoing until the heat death of the universe or until the service stops functioning.
There’s no getting around that. Anything that realistically touches the web/internet will need to be maintained. It’s the reality of software and security. It may not always require a $10/mo plan, but things are not free. Where seeing the death of the web as a lot of us knew it because funding is finally drying up and companies have to show value, or all of it goes away.
To be clear - I think what Reddit is doing is catastrophically bad; there are ways they could monetize third party apps, they just don’t want to. But to a lot of people who don’t necessarily follow development, it’s difficult to understand how it quickly can consume all of your time. And you’re either paying for it, you are the product, or you’re paying for it with your time (volunteering on open source software).
It’s really amazing to see the incompetence of Huffman. As the CEO, it’s his responsibility continue to drive his company while being committed to its values. They’ve lost touch with what made reddit special in favor for the lowest common denominator user base.
Reddit has three real function, first as a cultivated collection of subreddits, second as a warehouse of incredibly niche and specific information, and lastly as a place to scroll.
They’ve catered to this third audience which I see as the most shallow of user. This part of their function can be easily replaced by plenty of other services. With such tone-deaf and dishonest actions of spez, it’s obvious there was no foresight on trying to set up a smooth transition.
There absolutely could have been a solution here to generate income for Reddit without coming to this painful nuclear ending. It’s been writing on the wall for a while with the stretch toward IPO that their motives and value had become entirely based on money.
See that’s not how companies work though. They may need to be profitable to exist but they exist to provide a service or product. By sacrificing and disenfranchising a loyal core of your user base out of lack of foresight and problem solving, this is just another nail in the coffin of their inevitable demise.
Huffman is a loser and a sell out. Get fucked Spez.
Steve has never been committed to any values that the company has ever tried to say they adhere to. He’s a kid who doesn’t have a clue how to handle people. And never has.
Here's what I think will happen.
-
Spez will forcibly depose and ban moderators who participate in the blackout and install his own yes-men to reopen these communities. A lot of power users will fold and jump back to Reddit's side, out of fear that they'll lose their foothold on the site.
-
Communities like /r/RedditAlternatives will be banned by the admins, along with the communities of any alternative social media platforms that are in direct competition with Reddit. Some subreddits focused around Lemmy instances have already been purged by the admins and I see them quadrupling down on this.
-
Reddit sheds a few million of its active users but the API changes and death of third-party apps don't completely kill the site because now it's pretty mainstream and a lot of people actually don't give a shit about Apollo, RIF, etc. I think the main difficulty of a site replacing Reddit is that Reddit clones are now a-dime-a-dozen.
-
Porn-focused communities decide to leave the site and start their own website (perhaps a Lemmy instance or a standalone site that aims to compete with places like Fansly or OnlyFans), because they see the exclusion of NSFW material from the API is a precursor to a total porn-ban.
-
Reddit announces its IPO and still raises a lot of capital.
- Someone will discover an old episode of The Simpsons where somehow, all of this already happened.
Would any power user ever want to touch reddit with the longest pole if the first half of point 1 happened?
No, but are power users necessary? Most of the front page subreddits are just "post whatever you want here" and they have more than enough 14 year old posters to keep the site saturated.
Power users are more likely to use more server resources and less likely to see ads. They probably specifically do not want them.
That's a good point. I associate power users with niche subjects and generally higher quality posts, so I'm interested to have that demographic move here. I don't really care about front page content, so maybe it's win-win then :D
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22009 readers
168 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS