What comes after the blackout is the exodus. So in time, Reddit will decline and people would hear more about Lemmy as the network effect grows, Lemmy can come out pretty strong.
What comes after the blackout is the exodus. So in time, Reddit will decline and people would hear more about Lemmy as the network effect grows, Lemmy can come out pretty strong.
I didn't go and check things out. But I gotta say, before I was an only Reddit user. Now I don't expect to totally forgo Reddit forever, but I now know there are alternatives and it is a nicer community so far here.
At least here I'm not getting spammed with bots and "Satan Gets Us" ads.
Same. I won't let go of Reddit completely until more of the people in my favorite subs migrate and rebuild their communities here, if they do so at all. But Lemmy and Mastodon will become my new main social hubs either way.
Someone's gotta be the early adopters, it looks like that's us today.
I wish. It's some religious mumbo jumbo that has a pic you can't avoid and fills the whole screen
there's room on the internet for more than one link aggregator - even if reddit returns and is bigger and badder than ever, I still wont use it. that platform is dead to me now
For me it's been pretty great. Lemmy and the fediverse kinda remind me of reddit circa 2007 or 2008 before the eternal September. I'm going to enjoy this for as long as it lasts.
Same, I could never really get into mastodon as I never liked Twitter much, so I'm pretty happy I found out about Lemmy. I know everyone on this site has been saying this, but it feels fresh, and the fact that it's all open source and community owned is great.
I'm watching the Active last month from the Lemmy stats and see that the spike didn't yet turn into a needle.
I'm not sure what you were expecting to see? /r/all was never going to look obviously different, there's just too many people on Reddit. 99.99% of Redditors could leave and the remaining 0.01% would still be enough to churn out a passable couple of pages of content on /r/all.
Plus the people who care about the situation are exactly the people who aren't currently participating on Reddit, so it's hardly surprising that no-one is really taking about it there.
I think the reaction on the site itself also suffered from the AMA getting hard buried.
Which was stupid. People should have upvoted the post in the AMA sub which was just a link to the AMA on the Reddit sub. It wasn't even pinned. And even if you did find it, until they did a summary you couldn't see his responses because also buried (understandably)
That said, yes, I agree with you and the adjacent poster - the upside is alternative platforms got a huge boost, and even if a lot of the influx doesn't stay, it's still a huge boost.
Have you ever added the word Reddit to a web search so you could find an answer online without a lot of digging?
Stuff like that I imagine got hit hard. There will always be core communities that either stay up or are easy replicate but I imagine they'll be losing a lot of smaller communities.
There are several points to be made:
The Old Reddit, whatever it means, is long gone forever. Aaron is gone. Spez does not care. No apologies or retracting will be made and that's it.
Reddit must have calculated that there are enough 'casual' crowd (not a long timer, does not use or care about 3rd party apps or the old interface, comes for the quick laughs and watches ads) so they could withstand whatever pressure the 'hard-core' crowd (long timer, uses and cares about old UI and API changes, does not generate ad views in general, spends long hours in site) generates.
Reddit must have also considered the possibility of the second crowd simply going away. I suspect Spez or the investors simply does not give a damn about it. Ad revenues are everything and there's a loud minority that threatens to leave? Why should they care, after all? All they see is a potential for "more" growth.
What they do and must care is the eventual entrance of a sizeable competition that eats into their revenues - less visitors mean less ad revenues. Lemmy and Fediverse, as much as I love it and will keep using it, is not that threat - yet.
What will probably happen is that the wider internet will label the riot (as of now) a massive failure, laugh at the "bravery" of slacktivism or whatever the latest meme can be slapped at.
Despite that, it should mark the emerging of a sustainable group of Reddit-like communities that could, in one day, become the competition Digg never thought they would face.
No, I don't think Lemmy is perfect. I do have an issue with the dev's political stance. But as long as they don't become the Spez of what was supposed to be the Federation, and the software and the protocol and the community can sustain and rule themselves, things might be alright.
Reddit will eventually die, like many other internet websites. Perhaps not now. They won't go out in a spectacular way the Digg v4 happened, but simply wither away like Facebook. But we have another home, and it's all that matters.
The question is basically, how many mods and power users moved to other platforms. It was clear that Reddit would not die over night or that the Fediverse would be able to take on all the users of Reddit.
But without much of the volunteer labour, Reddit will enter a slow death spiral of worse and worse subreddits and the remaining users will slowly leave as a result.
Actually been dramatic for Lemmy. Users went from a little under 50K to a little over 125K total users. I do not know how that is not dramatic. It is not about Reddit really, it is about how many of these users will stay here.
Don't underestimate the power of disgruntled users. There is no place right now that can handle Reddit - all the alternatives that aren't monolithic corporations can't handle the traffic. Kbin included. So the best anybody can do right now is be on the lookout. This isn't like it was when people left Digg for Reddit almost two decades ago. It takes quite a bit of resources to manage a large migration - it will be in small steps, but rest assured.... Reddit's mods and their communities now are forever changed....
As a mod of some reddits that will go back online, we're now going to be actively promoting alternative sites to also post content on and congregate - we have to do it piecemeal because of the technical requirements. We'll also be expanding the topic of our subs to include any news that's critical of reddit proper and these issues, so we won't let things die.
I'm hoping that people who are annoyed by the direction Reddit is taking will help migrate over their subreddits to here.
There's been a huge uptick in users joining by the looks of it and hopefully that upwards trend continues, it'll take months or years I'm feeling to get to the million users mark but so long as there's somewhat of an active scene here then people will come..
What I'm most happy about is that the Fediverse so far seems to be mostly actually pretty good people (though I've been largely chilling in kbin since the blackout started -- it only just turned on federation). Most past attempts to abandon reddit only saw the most toxic, horrible people leave. Sites like Voat were never an option because the users were awful. It's nice that so far, I haven't really seen any of that. In fact, it feels the opposite, with the people who left reddit being disproportionately great people, with the toxic people being more likely to stay on reddit.
I wonder if it'll last? I hope so. I wanted to leave reddit in the past but never felt like there was anywhere comparable to go that wasn't shit.
There's a decent chance it will. The fediverse is—generally speaking—a fairly friendly and welcoming place. That's in part to it's decentralized nature and individual moderation tools. Bad actors can be blocked on an individual level (I just blocked /u/donaldtrump last night because I do not want to see stupid parody accounts and just like that he's gone) as well as on an instance level for anyone not following the rules.
Each instance has their own rules about how to behave, so the bigots and whatnot get booted if they cause problems. Eventually they find an equally terrible server that will have them and once they start up again, that instance can be defederated, which is basically like cutting off the bridge to their island… no way to communicate. Eventually they end up alone or with equally terrible people on other instances.
That's not to say that the fediverse doesn't have it's share of problems or is perfect, but we're working hard to try and keep this a decent place to be.
How are instances defederated?
Kbin has been really great, everyone here is a lot more civil. I remember when reddit was like that prior to digg v3. And then eternal September. It took a while before reddit got to where it is now with almost everyone with any expertise on the website. But I think for the most part, decent people and decent communities are more fulfilling.
I had a lot of hope in the lead-up to the initial 2 day blackout, but after seeing literally zero coverage about this across other media platforms I now know there will be no backpedaling on the API changes. The best we can hope for is affecting their income from ads a tiny bit.
In the uk the BBC reported on it as did the guardian. Its been all over YouTube.
Really? I literally got served a CNN article about the blackout, it's definitely getting coverage
The blackout caused some more media attention beforehand, so that's part of the win I guess. Perhaps all the negative attention still isn't enough, but it did sent a message.
You have to remember that the internet in general has short term memory but surprising good memory at other things. It was good to see people actually get together for a few days and see that there are still subreddits that stayed dark. I know people are still leaving after these apps start to close down as well.
It's hard to fight EVERY corporation, but I feel like the amount of people that have been burned by Twitter will have that lingering thought in people's mind with Reddit as well.
Only time will tell, but I hope that people continue to fight these greedy CEOs that think that they can literally get away with literally anything...
Oh god.
The black out is still happening right now.
There are subs who are blacking out indefinitely still.
But I don't know what people expected to happen after 48 hours?
The subreddits who participated already told that it was a "warning shot" and new actions were to be taken accordingly after.
And r/all is not Reddit.
r/all is the tumor of Reddit itself. It is the instagram and facebook equivalant of the "feed page". It doesn't define what makes Reddit...Reddit.
Again something that RIF did for me, it made r/all bearable to scroll through.
It are the communities underneath who provide advice, information and a sense of comradery who define Reddit.
When those communities leave, then you can fasten your seatbelts.
Reddit and it's userbase are not gonna survive of what is happening on r/all.
It will be a marathon and we should probably see in a year or maybe 2 if what is happening was effective.
I disagree a little. I get your point that /all is not the best of Reddit, it's everything at once. But that's sort of what is missing at the moment in other places, a mass aggregate of things to pick from. Also missing is a default collection of the "best" of /all, the home or popular lists, because when you start out at one of the fediverse places you have to build your own from scratch/almost scratch. Perhaps that's better in the long run, but it is a bit overwhelming and I've seen posts already asking where to find lists of communities to join.
I've seen posts already asking where to find lists of communities to join
I have seen a lot of that, too, but I view that as a plus. I mean, you have all these people wandering around here, asking for directions to the equivalents of all their old digital gathering places, but they are engaging. Like, actually having conversations and building camaraderie and all that jazz that happens when you build a community, and that's just awesome to see, man. Where we all come from wasn't like that at all; smaller subreddits aside, it was like shouting into the crowd at a frickin Kid Rock concert, y'know? The atmosphere wasn't exactly conducive to conversation. Not to say good conversation was impossible in big threads; it happened all the time. But it was always just so frickin loud and obnoxious in there, ya know?
And now we have this new space, and its newness is forcing people to talk, and...ah fuck, I forgot where I was going with this. Um... Reddit bad! Me like Kbin! Or something. Have fun with settling in, and I mean that sincerely.
Yes, I tended to stay in the niche places I had found, only going out to the big ones during major events or news because of the same reasons. Smaller crowds feels like a discussion, big ones is a shouting match with only a few hearing you. I come from the days of BBSes, and this right now is exactly the same feel, only not just local people. Now we just have to figure out how it works, and how it can be improved.
Ah, ye old Bee Bee Esses. Sadly, I missed the boat on that...I was definitely old enough and technically capable, but I didn't know they existed. I hear you though, my first real exposure to the internet was Gopher! You could find all sorts of stuff out there, like in people's shared directories, but more importantly, MUDs! Damn near flunked out of college because of them. Fun times, though! The internet was so much smaller back then.
I see your point but I think you misunderstand me a bit.
r/all is somewhat of a "front", it can show that the place is vibrant and that there is something to do and something to scroll through.
But for example I never saw anything from r/mealprepsunday on my r/all and when I had reddit it actually was an subreddit that I was subscribed to and used frequently.
If the subreddit above gives me a reason to stay on reddit and it would dissapear then an vibrant r/all isn't an incentive for me to stay.
Can you see where I am coming from?
a page like r/all has it's use. It can reel people in and give direction but it will not be the reason people will stay.
I get it. The reason will be community and common bonds, it's just finding each other that is the struggle right now, and how to bets build things anew and to last. Lots of development and growing pains to come, but it's a nice change I think, even if it takes a bit to get mature and pull more people.
I have had at least a dozen instances where I have done a Google search for a problem, and clicked a Reddit link without thinking, only to get hit with a private message. I do have an unusual number of problems per day (software dev who seems to spend their evenings trying stupid technical stuff), but I guarantee the impact is not seen on Reddit, but in the many users who never get there.
The torrent dumps they are referring to are probably the pushshift dumps which can be found on here but they're a good bit complicated to use efficiently and are mostly text/link dumps only. I'd love to know if there are other torrents though which offer more readability or similar.
I think that it depends a great deal on what subreddits you use. I mean, I normally use only a small number, and they are all presently private or restricted, so it has an impact.
And if you specifically want information on something coming from Google and are trying to read old posts with information about, say, how to work around some bug, then that is disruptive.
But if you just hit Reddit looking for something interesting to look at or read, which is a legit use and how many people are going to use the thing, then I think that the impact is probably limited.
It was pretty underwhelming. I think ultimately it's, unfortunately, pointless. Spez gonna spez and him and other people monetarily invested in reddit will get theirs--they'll cash in on the IPO and walk after that being richer than before. Whether they stick around to try to improve the platform or not is anyone's guess but... at least there are lots of us who likely won't go back to reddit like we used to. I like this place a lot so far!
I never expected the site to just shut down and be in flames from a 2 day partial shut down. I'm pretty happy with the communities that have popped up and discussion about alternative sites.
There's been a heap of discussion on alternatives and without the blackout I wouldn't of even found great sites like kbin.
I expect that come the 1st July when third party apps stop working, we'll get another wave of annoyance and hopefully can use that to help people flee
I know that come the 1st if nothing has changed I'll be purging all my old comments and deleting my accounts.
A private subreddit isn’t going to bubble up to the top. It’s bound to happen.
I think a better option is to let subreddits stay open and simply push their migration agenda to the top of the algorithm naturally. It might be telling their community to move to discord, fediverse, or something else.
It went about as expected, IMO. 90% of redditors just don't care that much - even if they agreed with the blackout in principle, most of them were likely just waiting patiently for their favourite subs to reopen so they could go back to browsing as usual. A quick browse through some of my subscribed (and still open) subs revealed a lot of commenters weren't even clear about what was going on.
But it has had the effect of essentially kickstarting a community here which seems to be taking shape nicely and there's finally a (small but growing fast) alternative to reddit - which didn't really exist before. I can see the following months and years seeing a gradual shift in user base from reddit to here.
Reddit's not going to die overnight; that was never going to happen. But it's possible it's the beginning of the end of their empire and the slow decline to the ranks of the remember-that-website-whatever-happened-to-that club. Time will tell I guess.
I'm actually pretty surprised with, despite how few people there are by comparison, how active and useful this has already been. And I'm expecring it to only continue to get better. Pretty sure I'll have little reason to go back to Reddit except for some useful historical posts.
Especially after apps are shut down I'm expecting another flood of new users. And the numbers keep climbing (today kbin alone has gone up another at least 10%)
Cheers to that ! Just decided to register here today. I won't ditch reddit entirely but will slowly migrate away.
I never would have found kbin if it weren't for the blackout. I plan on staying around too. I will still use reddit for the smaller subs I'm in were discussion threads are actually that, but I unsubed from all the news and politics type subs. I was weening off those anyway since they make me want to just go to comments for entertainment instead of reading the article.
I think the death of 3rd party apps in a few weeks could be another moment when we see a big change in consumption habits. I don't know that it'll push people here, necessarily, but I would imagine it'll hurt reddit traffic.
The other wildcard is what do mods do? If some big subreddits never come back, or a lot of moderators leave, what will that do to the quality of reddit?
I agree, this could be a slow burn, and these communities definitely have been kickstarted, which is nice. I just think the slow burn might be over the course of months, not years.
The migration will definitely pick up once the apps no longer work, and even if there isn't a seismic growth in users in the fediverse the seer size of reddit was both a blessing and a curse.
I think Reddit has become too mainstream to die. I think it will simply continue to become mainstream, perhaps eventually become more like Twitter in terms of userbase. and the next generation of niche forums will be born, and therefor the next Reddit. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe reddit will 'never die.'
Reddit isn't going to disappear, but that doesn't mean it won't die. Going public will kill Reddit. The parent company isn't profitable, and the product isn't profitable, and public investors will only tolerate that if growth suggests future gains.
Those future gains will be had by strangling Reddit and twisting its corpse into something much less useful, interesting, and fun.
Reddit's animated corpse will carry on for years, but that IPO will be a poisoned pill for what we know and recognize as Reddit.
Support your admins, if you can. But yes, bouncing around will happen. Hopefully with added development support coming from an expanded userbase, account migration can be implemented on both Lemmy and kbin and people can move around with relative ease, as the need or desire strike.
Yep! Reddit won't die. It is becoming (and in some ways has been for some time) one of a very limited number of sites that the majority of the interconnected globe uses to exchange information, like Facebook. Even if it loses .5% of its current userbase to some alternative, it's barely a drop in the bucket to Reddit, but that number is HUGE if it's mostly dorks like us setting up a new home here in the Fediverse.
It's a win-win; we want quality discussion here. Your average modern Reddit user wants the information drip. (And I should say, it's entirely possible to be someone who uses both during this transition phase)
As a Gen-X parent, I've abhorred the look and feel of Facebook even from the beginning. When I first made an account I got connected with old high school people and thought it was pretty neat. But then I tried to share some thoughts for discussion like one would do on a BBS/forum/Reddit, and realized that wasn't what it was for. That was the last I posted. I know I'm in a minority and people who love it have a need for sharing everything they do, but that isn't me.
There's a saying I like: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I don't think this means that a person can only be one of those, but that in discussions there is a level of thinking going on with the category. I prefer the first one more, and even Reddit had places where you aren't going to find that...but it had some, and I enjoyed my time there.
Oh, and get off my lawn. You too, boomers. Everyone get off the damn lawn!
I'm also a Gen X parent on Facebook. I don't post anything, but so many groups use it as a public posting board. My kids sports leagues all have Facebook groups, my son's piano school use Facebook for news and information. It's really become indispensable as a collection of small, easy to use, newsgroups...
The difference that I see between reddit and twitter is that reddit hasn't been purchased to be the plaything of a billionaire. This matters because unlike facebook and google, reddit and twitter aren't profitable. That means that reddit doesn't have to pockets to buy up competitors, lobby for beneficial regulations, focus on expanding overseas, or move into making hardware.
Reddit is just the plaything of anonymous billionaires that's the whole reason they want the IPO at all costs because they can't cash out without it, even if it is less than they had hoped for.
Yet. It hasn't been bought up yet, but they really really wish they were. Reddit has flipped to profits only mode already and they're never going to change now. Being bought out during
IPO isn't going up change that either, only intensify it
I agree, but those who are left are either looking for easily digestible memes or content created by others. Without an engaged community, Reddit has to be afraid of the next shiny thing that comes along, and I think that TikTok has shown us that they don't even care if that next shiny thing is spying on them.
think that TikTok has shown us that they don't even care if that next shiny thing is spying on them.
I think "is spying on them" has been baked in since Snowden at least. The TikTok early adopters grew up in a post 9/11 world predicated on being spied on.
The only real difference is it was someone else's government doing the spying, for a change.
I'm still on Reddit and don't plan to leave, but it's always nice to be on alternative sites like Lemmy. Half of the subreddits I read are still shut down, and there is debate on some subreddits on whether or not to stay shut down. It seems like most average users don't care about the API changes and some are wondering what the big deal is.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
But on the other hand, look at how much the lemmy and kbin user base has grown. The blackouts had a significant impact in increasing lemmy adoption and usage.
Prior to the announced blackouts, I had no idea Lemmy even existed. Now here I am running my own instance.
Also, advertisers Reddit sells to have halted their campaigns until “next week.”
I think while on the surface it might feel underwhelming, it had more impact than you think. And now mods are discussing extending the blackout too.
save