I think it’s all had a bigger impact on Lemmy than it has had on Reddit. The lasting impact might be that Reddit now has viable competition for the first time since Digg, which is a good thing.
Yeah. They do not realize that despite “their traffic being back to normal” they destroyed their monopoly status. It’s a slow rot. But a rot that will kill their value eventually. And I am here for it.
On the bright side for them, they still have a commercial monopoly. The number of ads might go up while the quality of the content goes down.
Inertia will keep a train going for a while, as the engine dies.
The people that are now on lemmy were the heaviest users. The ones that bought 5 different apps to improve their experience and figure out which one they preferred : the mods, the creators, etc.
Have they all left Reddit completely? Probably not, but now they split their time. And stats say the proportion on Lemmy is increasing.
We now have an opportunity not only replace but contribute in the creation of something new - new mechanics, new rules and more.
Reddit is tired and has been for a while, Lemmy developers are building the Reddit they always wanted, and are innovating at breakneck speed.
Simple things like Top by 1, 6, 12 hours which we now have here, was badly needed in Reddit but they were too busy trying to shoehorn video and flairs.
I just dropped Reddit from my phone today, the Firefox moderator protest to change r/firefox to “We are a subreddit about fire foxes aka red pandas” was oddly enough the breaking point for removal from my phone (despite last night’s unfortunate hack).
The protests have just become the new reddit fad. Anyone still there that’s not part of a self-help, resource/info sub, and claiming to be part of the ‘protest’ is just circlejerking.
I’m kind of starting to feel like that actually may be what reddit wants - because the tech savy people using third-party apps are also probably just ad-blocking, and it’s usually a niche content that will never be massively consumed. Compare that to the junk at instagram or TikTok, that doesn’t require any kind of effort to interact with, and compare how many users such platforms have.
I think Reddit would be pretty happy with their content turning into TikTok junk for the masses, and their userbase changing into consumers of that content. Just because there’s just a lot more of people who consume such content, and who are used to companies milking them for profit and bombarding them with ads, because they just don’t care.
EDIT: And by driving away the “nerds” who moderated and kept a higher standart of content, which in turn turned away the users looking for more easily consumable content, they may get just that. The teens who probably heard about Reddit being the place where cool nerds hang out and tried to get into it, only to be turned away by actual content, will now find exactly what they are looking for.
I’m okay with this. As long as Lemmy is thriving with good content, that’s all I care about.
Yeah. I don’t expect Reddit to necessarily collapse immediately, or Lemmy to replace Reddit for all Reddit users. I’m just happy if Lemmy becomes at least a medium-sized social network. That means that it would have moved from a niche platform into a large enough ecosystem to sustain itself, and become a viable alternative to Reddit, like you said.
With a huge platform like Reddit, the impact of the current events might not be instantly obvious. But with everything going on recently with Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, and even Threads, I think it’s clear that there’s some kind of transformation of the social media landscape going on. But how long it will take, and what the end result will look like, is anybody’s guess. Maybe it’s the fall of the old giants and a rise of new, more democratic platforms. Maybe the giants keep standing, but significantly weakened, with a bunch of new, smaller, more open platforms becoming real alternatives. Or maybe it’s something else.
Be it as it may, I’m glad that the status quo is being shaken up a bit.
I’d be happy if Lemmy becomes like what Reddit was when it started and never grew beyond that. I don’t need tons of clickbait outrage trash to doomscroll though every day.
The only thing I really miss from Reddit is a few of the smaller, niche subreddits that had small but active userbases. But that will come with time as the Lemmy userbase grows.
Yeah. I still go to reddit for those, since I don’t have the time or energy to put into moderating anything, and/or don’t want to talk to a void. Sucks, because I want those communities here to be active, but content creation is taxing.
This. Some of the users in my favorite niche communities have migrated over, but overall, it’s still a bit of a ghost town compared to the same niches on Reddit.
Reddit was at its best when you stuck to the smaller subs where people were primarily positive and cheering on newbies, which really makes for active, welcoming communities that I truly miss. Having a bigger user base in those smaller communities is invaluable, because having a place to come and get advice from people who’ve been around the block is way different than the blank canvas you find in the same communities on Lemmy. My personal favorites were subs that specialized in “you like this? Have you tried that?”-type threads, and one of the coolest community norms I ever saw was in r/doommetal, where instead of blacklisting bands that got posted too often, they had the “Green List,” and anyone who posted anything from the Green List was cheered on and inundated by suggestions for more bands similar to the OP.
I found many of my favorite small bands and content creators in subs like r/doommetal, r/OSR, and r/boardgames, and the amount of good advice I got in subs like r/professors, r/luthier, and r/chempros is impossible to overstate.
I’ll miss my reddit niches, and I just hope the Lemmy niches eventually grow up to be a real replacement for those communities.
Now that I think about it, what if someone created a Lemmy instance that just… Mirrors chosen Reddit subreddits 1:1 via a scraping bot? So that if you wanted content from a subreddit, you could just subscribe to it on that instance, or ignore it if bot content isn’t what you want. It could work for smaller more niche subreddits (because I suppose that you would quickly run into a throttling problem or bot detection otherwise), but it may kickstart a few communities.
I feel like having no karma and Thus no rewards for such behaviour helps a bit.
What really helps is the power users and moderators moved over too this time. Hopefully with this type of userbase Lemmy will be able to self-moderate and won’t end up like Voat.
I hate to see the content we created help fund the pockets of spez and his fellow crooks, but at the same time I’d also hate to see tonnes of possibly the most valuable information on the internet going down the drain. I’ll be happier to see Lemmy get to the point where people can say “there’s a community for everything” more than seeing the collapse of Reddit.
I deleted everything. It’s too bad, a lot of searches are going to turn up threads and find blank spaces where the answers should be.
Yeah I’ve already had a few niche searches result in finding [deleted] content.
I can say I’ve noticed. Do you think spez ever will?
I don’t think it’s ever occurred to spez that anyone else would know more than he does.
*pre-2010 Digg
Digg after that was no longer competition. It was an ad-riddled trash-fire which drove a massive number of its users away to places like reddit… including myself… who just kinda did something similar with reddit.
I went to Reddit from Digg during the great migration and I didn’t look back. The Ads and format change were a huge misstep on their part. I honestly would have left Reddit when they went to New Reddit if we would have had Lemmy back then.
when they went to New Reddit
I never went to New Reddit…
I would have left even if Lemmy didn’t exist.
Yeah, I jumped ship without a plan. After a couple days I remembered I had heard about Lemmy in one of the “What are you going to do on July 1st” posts.
Am so happy with the results that I honestly no longer care what happens to reddit, I prefer this.
Smaller? Sure, but it’ll grow. Even if it tops out at current user base I wouldn’t see that as a bad thing.
I know it never left for PC and I used it over there but I was mostly a mobile user and killing Apollo destroyed my desire for reddit.
I was also not a fan of some of the changes that affected everything like removing NSFW from r/all.
Same. In fact I tried to find alternatives but there just wasn’t one at the time.
Old reddit still exists
For now, yes. As clueless and inept as Spez has been about this whole thing, it’s only a matter of time until old.reddit gets nuked.
They already tried nuking i.reddit a few months ago.
There’s a workaround, you can append
.ito the end of a URL and it works, but still, shame to see the lightest weight reddit interface disappear
Yes but evenso site wide changes still affected old reddit. NSFW subs were still removed from r/all and the sponsored content was still there too. Not to mention all the bots and spam. I was also primarily a mobile user so killing Apollo was the end for me.
It did indeed, I knew nothing about the fediverse before the reddit protest began, didn’t even know lemmy existed, now I happily migrated here, like me many other people.
Same, joined last week after my app of choice was killed. Already spending more time here than i was at the end of my time on reddit.
Was getting so sick of the rage-bait, low quality comments and general snarky behavior, i might have quit anyway. So much better here.
While I see many comments regarding the Reddit changes, unfortunately I am not seeing much discussion in any other posts yet.
Dropped Reddit a month ago after 12 years of daily use and while it was tough in the initial days Lemmy/Kbin activity has really picked up and is beginning to absolutely fill the gap. Just need the apps and a bit more stability and think it’s going to be a proper successor.
When the protest started I poked around the Fediverse and it was a ghost town and was a little concerned that Reddit might not have any competition. But since the end of June posts and content have been going way up, and the quality of the posts is way better than Reddit, even before spez fucked things up.
Yeah I think a lot of people were skeptical if Reddit would actually follow through initially… I know I was. I thought they would back pedal, but realized shortly after Spez’s disastrous AMA that wasn’t gonna happen. Someone else mentioned Lemmy in a different thread and that’s how I first heard of it. After some research to learn about the fediverse and ActivityPub, badda-bing, badda-boom, I’m here and haven’t looked back.
Same here.
There are a few (very few) communities I am still waiting to become active and useful here but Reddit has been moved to page 4 or my social media folder and I rarely ever scroll to it.
Good riddance too. The move to Lemmy/Kbin also pushed me back onto Mastodon and I could not be happier.
Is there a 101 for dummies about lemmy/kbin/mastodon? I dont know what any of those words mean
Edit: just realized kbin isnt on there. Kbin is another Lemmy-affiliated site, but it also lets you see mastodon posts. You need a seperate kbin login to use it, but the site looks similar and behaves similarly to any Lemmy instance.
I think a big help will be creating a streamlined sign-up process in the apps themselves. Menus to pick a server and create an account. Maybe tell the user which servers are biggest/ask if they wanna browse servers by specific content leanings. That way it’s not intimidating. I’m a tech guy and even I was a bit perplexed in the beginning and that will keep anyone with a non-technical background away: we tech nerds forget that things not “just working” isn’t a feature in the eyes of a majority of people. (For better or for worse.)
I have been using Kbin exclusively while waiting for the Artemis app to be released but I decided to Memmy for Lemmy to see what the hype was all about. Well I’m loving Memmy, it does exactly what you discussed. The app makes it super easy choose an instance and create an account. Does the app need some work? Yes but it’s leaps and bounds better than browsing through a mobile web browser.
I use both Memmy as its based off of Apollo but there’s also wefwef you might want to check out but I like Memmy more
Yeah I spent 2 weeks on Jerboa unable to post, comment, subscribed etc because the instance I joined was not yet a login option on the app. Still have that issue with every other app.
You can tell the devs are working hard on these apps though. It’s a race to get a polished app released before people lose interest in leaving reddit.
Liftoff has been pretty good for me. Might be worth exploring.
Indeed. I’ve seen the rate of app updates pick up recently, and I feel it’s noticeably smoother than a couple weeks ago. Great effort is being done and I’m grateful towards the devs for that.
Just in case you don’t already know: On most apps you can type in your instance instead of selecting one from the drop down menu. Im on a small instance too and it took me a week or so to figure it out last month lol
I look forward to talking about my first few weeks on Lemmy in years to come: “Back then I had to use an app that was in alpha and wait ten minutes to load a page full of bean memes! And then we got hacked!”
/r/heat was a big loss for me. But /c/nba is actually nice, since everyone has been respectful. I avoided /r/nba since everyone was so hostile to each other and it contributed so much to me hating most fanbases.
Hello fellow /r/heat sub. I’ll have to check out /c/nba then. How long does it take for a sub to be confirmed? Mines been on pending for a while.
The pending is apparently a bug and still see the feed as though you are subscribed.
Same, a little bit of added qol to Memmy as well as some content on some of the more niche communities I used to frequent and Reddit will be solely used for searching obscure problems in the future if even that.
R/ videos got clever, I love it. Thier new rule is
Only text posts describing videos are permitted, and must describe a video in detail. Video links are permitted in the comments only.
That must be interesting haha
When a subreddit accidentally does more to help blind redditors than Spez does.
As someone who primarily used reddit with accessibility apps (RedReader) this would have been awesome.
Sadly, reddit doesn’t find me valuable enough to even let me try to use the site in a way that is comfortable for me
How’s lemmy going for you? I feel like now is the perfect time to let app devs know about quality of life features.
Just gave your comment a vote. In case your assistance software doesn’t register the vote.
Didn’t they actually doubled down and accessibility apps are exempt from the API pricing and can be used for free?
Although, if I was developing such app, I’d probably just stop doing it for free after how they’re treating the rest of the userbase, so there’s that…
Also each post MUST include profanity. Well done, r/videos.
I cut ties today. I had been a mod in a sub of over 3 million users for years. All reasonable folk on the mod team were gone and a huge fight broke out because I suggested that we “Try to be decent to each other” as if it was the most offensive statement they had ever heard. I have zero regrets leaving that kind of toxicity behind.
This is the real result. Yeah subs will open back up, but the mods who are left are just weird keyboard warriors who think being a mod is like being a cop (I mean obviously this is a generalization, but it’s mostly true) The quality of individual subs is going to suffer and therefore the overall user experience will suffer.
Yeah, if that place dies it’ll be a wither on the vine situation with a somewhat slow negative feedback loop rather than anything overnight. Or it might limp along a wounded and lesser animal ala twiiter.
I’m kind of starting to think that may be what Reddit wants anyway. Just look at the kind of content that floats around on TikTok and Instagram. The tech nerds will leave, but that will leave space for scrollable junk content for an entirely different - and a lot larger - audience.
What sub was it?
I didn’t plan on naming names, but it was r/games
I hope the games communities here take off, I’m fiending for news lol
Oh God as long as we can like Harry Potter games again I’m good
Trueee
I haven’t been terribly active on r/games. I’d there something wrong with Harry Potter games?
Just the usual business of the author being a tosser and people not wanting to support her.
I’m sure it was hard to step away from being so involved with such an incredibly huge community. Good on you though.
Thanks, sadly it was a lot easier than you may think. Unless they make major changes there I can’t see them lasting.
Same story here. Just waiting on my GDPR right to erasure request to be executed before I kill the account entirely.
Can you recommend an appropriate community to post questions to about this? I have all the CSV files from Reddit, just not sure how to proceed/request deletion of my posts from Reddit.
Search through posts and comments here. I used Redact before the API changes to edit and delete almost everything (left the last week of comments after editing to point to Lemmy). I have no idea if it still works. It may have been killed by the Change. There was at least one tool that used javascript, and it should still work.
I was wondering about this, I never posted a lot, mostly lurked and anything I did comment was mostly a stupid joke or question. Is this worth me going through? Fuck spez
Welcome on board - your extensive experience should be a godsend for the relevant communities in here, if you were interested in getting back in the saddle.
Thank you! If you know of any communities in Tech/STEM (I’m a phd biochemist btw) that need some help just point me in their direction.
It’s outside my bailiwick but there doesn’t seem a lot that’s relevant apart from:
At this early stage, it’s often a matter of seeing an unfilled niche and starting a community for it. And that’s why I seem to start one a day. Generally on the “if you build it, they will come” principle.
Games was my favorite sub. :(
Compare the mod list today to from say January, or some time last year via the internet wayback machine. It’s quite sad. Also, for obvious reasons I’m using a different username here.
Is your name a reference to Anthony “JoJ” Johnson?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=CVA_sx0QYf8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Oooh, nice! Thanks, I was just getting fed up with YT, it’s nice to let go of another bullshit stalking in my life.
Any reason you didn’t follow Deimos?
If that is who I think you’re referring to, we didn’t overlap. The founders were gone and made persona non grata (the group gets their feelings hurt when people leave) a VERY long time ago so I’m effectively a stranger to them that’s associated with a group that was hostile to them even if I believe there was complete turnover. Have a look at the mod list now, the longest tenured member is probably at the 4 year mark with the bulk of the team at a year or less. It’s a toxic meat grinder.
I see, that makes some sense. A shame really, I was there when they started the place and there when they became an admin. They truly knew what they were doing in terms of creating a space for real and constructive discussion. Explains why you’re here and not over on Tildes though if there’s literally no more connection between you.
Lemmy.zip has a pretty solid gaming community that’s starting to grow
I’ll have to go check them out, thanks
Thanks for taking an action and sharing the broad strokes of your experience. Like many, I think Re**it will persist irrespective of the changes – but it will be/is much worse for wear. Welcome to Lemmy!
I’m excited for Lemmy. New user but 10 minutes in and I’m dumping the ex.
Welcome aboard!
I genuinely don’t care. Lemmy has completely replaced reddit for me. I was a hardcore RIF user for over ten years. Connect is amazing and content had been like 90% there but with half the bullshit filler that reddit had. I honestly love it. Fuck protesting, just drop them hoes.
I only care in so far as I want to hear every little detail about it falling apart because seeing greedy people losing everything due to their hubris is peak fucking comedy.
It’s good for the soul
Yep, between Reddit and Twitter, I might need to buy some more popcorn.
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Mobile apps are in a development frenzy so we’ll keep getting more and they’ll move fast to make them better. We’ll get more growth as new apps release and mature. But yeah, just give them the punt. I did when the blackouts happened and haven’t missed them one bit. I actually post a lot more here than I ever did.
just drop them hoes.
😂😂😂
Same, loving Lemmy. Only thing I’m conflicted on is when I’m trying to get that super specific search result and can’t find it anywhere else. Can’t wait until Lemmy develops that same degree of information.
Yeah I’ve been using Sync for 12 years and Lemmy has already replaced 90% of what I actually liked about reddit.
The only thing I’m missing is team-specific pro sports communities. I think those will come as userbase increases though.
Shout out to Sync, I think my OG play store receipt for pro was in 2012.
Same boat here, I just miss having a button on parent comments to skip to the next parent comment in the list.
That was nice, but the developer has been really responsive so far and I expect it’ll continue improving.
God I miss that. Jerboa has something similar so I’m using that for now
I don’t know where to ask this, but I’ve tried several lemmy apps and I always run into a weird “not logged in” glitch where the app thinks I’m logged in but I’m actually not. My subscriptions show up, but I can’t comment, etc. If I find a way to log out then in again it’s broken again, then refresh, then it’s fine. Am I the only one with this bug? I also seem to get booted out on lemmy.world in a browser every so often too.
I’ve gotten the same thing. Chalking it up to growing pains.
Without Apollo on my iPhone and Sync on my android, I’m not using Reddit. Lemmy filled that void. The only thing missing are niche communities. That will come with time.
I’ve stopped using Reddit almost completely. I’m checking on the one subreddit I built from the ground up about once a week (1K to 50K, a lot of CSS and automod work, etc), and I’m trying to pass off my other subreddits to other people. At least one is just going to go totally unmoderated, and the one I’m keeping is going to be a lot more restrictive.
Dropped Reddit due the API changes and dumsterfire after that with the CEO. I get they need to make money, but this was simply aimed at taking down third party apps and services.
I really hope this place will grow.
The worst thing about it is that they could have accomplished all their goals if they didn’t shove it on people with a months notice and then Spaz going on a media tour shitting on mods and users
This is what gets me. Christian Selig pointed out in a number of interviews that Reddit could have easily made this work without alienating a huge segment of their user base. I get this vague feeling lately like CEOs are intentionally trying to tank their products, because no one so well paid could actually act so dumb.
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It’s people like Spez and Elon who would be the first to die off in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Their “Smarts” won’t do shit if they don’t know how to survive. Not to mention high profile people will likely be the first on the chopping blocks.
Also being “smart” in an apocalypse likely means building allies and connections. Which can only happen if people can trust your word and don’t think you’re a dick. Something that describes neither of them.
I think he was blinded by the thought of money. When the media reported that ChatGPT trained it’s models using Reddit comments, he flipped out and rushed to slam the gates shut immediately, while telling investors he had potentially billions of dollars worth of data to sell. When he found out that Apollo app and others sell subscriptions, it’s clear from his comments that he got angry and called them all parasites. He wants to be the gatekeeper of Reddit and become a billionaire with it, but his actions fundamentally misunderstand Reddit and will trigger a mass exodus. The content creators are leaving, and while Reddit will still get traffic the content will become stale and it will be another 9gag.
Like, I’m nowhere near this stupid. I’ll run your company better for half what he’s paid
I’m absolutely convinced I could do a better job. He’s a fool
Agreed. I just can’t figure out the reason(s) they’re doing it though.
Borrowing money isn’t cheap any more. The venture capital’s that have been propping up these platforms have decided the risk is now too high, and they’re trying to extract as much of their investment as they can, by any means necessary. I think the venture capitalists see a major recession in or near future, and our battening down the hatches.
Truth is CEOs do dumb shit all the time because most of them are not the “genius” worth all that pay everyone seems to think.
Of course there are many that are worth the pallets of cash they make but it drives all the mid tier to junk CEO compensation up.
Exactly this. Most people would have caved if they had given a 1yr update period and spez had kept his mouth shut. This move screams of a knee jerk reaction to try bd suddenly raise the profit margins, and spez had no idea how the users would revolt.
I think they really expected the 1 month timeline to blow over too
If they just made third party apps a premium feature, they would have seen a much smaller revolt and a significant increase in the number of premium subscribers. Seems like that would have been the obvious approach.
I really like Lemmy better than new reddit because scrolling the front page reminds me of 2010-2016 Reddit. I hated when they added ADS and removed the NSFW subs from the front page. Everything about NEW Reddit sucked.
Lemmy fixed new reddit and I ain’t going back.
That’s what the 3rd party apps did best: didn’t show ads, let me filter posts with keywords in their titles, and let me use /r/frontpage as my default (NSFW posts show in that feed)
Ribbit
You can still delete manually. I sorted my comments by top and edited them to gibberish.
Some people have mentioned their posts being reverted back after those kind of edits.
Man, it’s a damned good thing my posts and comments never add any value to the conversation.
Seriously though, while I haven’t deleted my account yet, in the hope that maybe thing could shift, if/when I do I would like to remove my content.
Is there a known way to remove posts and comments from reddit? I guess they can always just restore from backups. Maybe instead of replacing with “.” or gibberish, making a simple copy pasta to replace them with so it isn’t so obvious.
I should check mine. I deleted everything (that I had patience and time for) that had a lot of upvotes.
I wish I had left some of the helpful stuff that I deleted because I still find myself getting led to Reddit when searching for phone related fixes.
That’s my dilemma too - on the one hand, I want to delete my stuff (not that much of it is worth anything anyway), because fuck the way Reddit has acted and will monetise it.
On the other hand, if anything I ever posted was good/useful/helpful/amusing to other people, then I don’t want to remove that just for the sake of spiting Spez.
Haven’t been back to Reddit since the blackout, except once when I accidentally clicked a google search result to a post there (illustrating my point about potentially helping other people). Don’t really miss it either. Lemmy is great, and I’m glad to see that so far it has lasted beyond the initial rush.
I think Lemmy will, just give it time.
I was an Apollo user when I had an iPhone, then moved to Android and was a Boost user to finally move to Sync, now all of these 3 are dead, do you really think I’d want to keep being active on that “community”?
These devs deserved better, luckily both Android devs moved here, and they will receive the support of their followers, and Apollo already has numerous spiritual successors, Wefwef/Voyager being an awesome PWA and some iOS apps like Memmy and Artemis!
On that point: there is a Boost for Lemmy app in development
Same with Sync for Lemmy!
I was a Reddit is Fun user, and I’m hoping for a Lemmy is Fun app that is nearly identical.
Im pretty sure the rif dev is making a tildes app.
lol call me when tildes finishes their years-long closed alpha
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath
I don’t know what to chose, Boost or Sync for Lemmy or keep trying all the existent apps, I think I’ll use the latter plus Boost and Sync LMAO.
I really liked boost on Reddit, but it probably comes to personal preference. Haven’t tried anything else (besides the official app years ago) and never felt the need to try anything else.
I’m using Jerboa now and is a little similar in my opinion. I just downloaded it today so I’m still playing with it.
I was converted to Reddit by RiF but when I discorvered Sync I jumped ship because it has the best scrolling performance on my shitty Android phone at the time.
Boost is great, but I’ve had more success replicating the old.reddit experience using Sync; the compact/list view feels more “right” to me. I originally started using it because it was the closest analog to Alien Blue at the time, and I never saw a reason to switch. Damn, I used it for almost 10 years!
Yeah pretty excited for that!
Sync for lemmy should be up in a few weeks time. I’m pretty stoked about it.
Mostly excited for Boost for lemmy myself, having a big dev putting that up will be of great help.
Same
I really want Infinity for Lemmy
Have you tried Infinity for Everything?
How exactly do I download this. Also, seems like it’s still in Alpha
It is still in Alpha. Currently viewing communities, users, posts and comments of Lemmy instances mostly works.
Download links can be found here: https://sopuli.xyz/post/1103776
I like wefwef/Voyager. I tried Memmy, but can’t upvote comments, only posts so went back to Voyager.
The decisions that Reddit made allowed Lemmy and Kbin to grow faster.
I’ve been wanting to cut down on social media/Reddit for ages. Reddit making it a huge inconvenience to look at the site on mobile has been great for me honestly
Lemmy is a god send for me. It doesn’t have endless content, so after a few minutes and a few comments, I just close it.
I genuinely enjoy NOT having access to the endless dopamine
It’s absolutely fantastic, there are posts when I open Jerboa that are from yesterday, I haven’t seen that since when I first joined reddit ~2010.
If Lemmy doesn’t grow at all I’ll be perfectly happy, and even if it does I can just hop to another server that has the amount of users I want.
If everything is a dopamine fix, then nothing is.
Same
I’m more than happy they have decided to accelerate their progression towards insignificance.
Have barely been on there since it started besides to visit subs that havent even attempted to move yet, from what I have heard Reddit is definitely worse now with how many people have left, is that everyone elses perspective as well.
I was under the impression not much had changed because a small minority used 3rd party apps tbh.
Vocal minority though, surely?
I’ve visited a few times on Desktop (old.reddit) since the shutdown and the rate of new content seems to have slowed down quite drastically.Twitter metrics used to point to 90% of the content coming from 10% of the users.
If Reddit is similar, it makes sense to assume that many of the very active users were on 3rd party apps (to improve the basic experience, moderation etc.) so those being unavailable could put them off entirely (I know I’m using Reddit a fraction of what I once was).I believe the rule of thumb is the 90:9:1 ratio:
- 1% of users create original content
- 9% of users interact with that content - voting/commenting on it, sharing it, etc.
- 90% of users are essentially just in read-only mode
Not that I don’t believe you, but do you have a source about that? Quite literally for the sake of my curiosity/further reading
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
Seems like in 2014, a peer-reviewed study confirmed that it’s pretty close to accurate:
A 2014 peer-reviewed paper entitled “The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study” empirically examined the 1% rule in health-oriented online forums. The paper concluded that the 1% rule was consistent across the four support groups, with a handful of “Superusers” generating the vast majority of content.[6] A study later that year, from a separate group of researchers, replicated the 2014 van Mierlo study in an online forum for depression.[7] Results indicated that the distribution frequency of the 1% rule fit followed Zipf’s Law, which is a specific type of power law.
There’s a Wikipedia page about it with all sorts of links to rabbit holes you can go down!
Oh wow thanks for the reply! I’ve never read about this topic at all so this will definitely be fun to tumble down
Indeed. Not many people hopped ship, but those who did were disproportionately power users, mods, and other content generators. Because of that, I’ve heard that Reddit content generation has somewhat slowed.
I hadn’t heard that stag from Twitter, but I really do hope that is how it is on reddit and that the content generating users have begin making the switch. Sadly, I think some of reddit recent rise in popularity attracted some folks there only for views so they’ll probably stay. Hopefully their content isn’t much to miss.
I’ve a feeling you’re not wrong about attracting users who’re solely after notoriety, though I’ve a feeling it’ll only further water down meaningful content and discussion on the platform as that no longer necessarily brings with it much in the way of karma
Traffic impacts will be clearer in coming months. But in my view, the amount of noise is higher.
Looking at the popular posts and even my front page, the quality has subjectively gone down. Small subs are virtually the same, but that’s not where Reddit wants to make their money.
I have found that it is actually the small subs that are the most important. The big subs were very easily replaced as it was easy to build a new community from scratch. It’s the small ones that are difficult, and also the ones that pop up in search engines the most.
So many used the excuse to not participate or reopen with the explanation of we are too small to matter, but it is because the community is small to begin with that it is the ones that has the biggest pull back to reddit. Like for example if you search how to play taiko no tatsujin on pc it’s many hits of reddit that just pop up. Especially if you are looking for how to set up custom songs.
Agreed. The large subs content you can get anywhere. News, memes, made up stories, random questions with the same set of answer. Sure once you are already on reddit you might aswell consume it there for convenience, but that isn’t that special.
The small niche subs are what makes it unique. There is a reason why many people have come to add “reddit” to their google searches to find solutions to their problems.
Yeah, I had already unsubscribed from all the default subs long ago. That starts making me curious what type of subs long time reddit users who ended up leaving had avoided themselves and how long their list of filters blocking subs from showing up on /r/all were.
I can’t speak for others, but I literally never looked at r/all. I went directly to specific subs, mostly small and/or specialized. I had been on the site for something like ten years, and while I wasn’t online every day, when I was online, I was talking to people rather than lurking. For me, the whole reason I had to leave is that I went there to engage, and now that the company has made the “business decision “ to become a shithole, I no longer want to engage. So I have taken my 100% of my engagement here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a link between being an active participant and feeling upset enough to leave. If I had been a lurker, it wouldn’t have mattered as much to me that I no longer feel comfortable contributing to spez’s data hoard.
[edit: also, as someone who was there as much to connect with cool people as I was to talk about particular topics, I am not missing specific subs nearly as much as I expected. I am getting more or less the same emotional payoff here as I did from Reddit at its best.]
Speed at which some communities have grown over few weeks has been pretty impressive that some of the subs that never migrated I’m not missing anymore. Of course there are a few that doesn’t have much people or any activity, but it’s been better than I expected.
It’s not just how many left, it’s who left.
some subs are still lively. To be expected, however Lemmy has proven a viable alternative with enough activity to keep me sated, and it’s clearly still growing. Every day a new community pops up that reflects a counterpart on Reddit and the remaining niches are quickly being filled right here.
And those communities haven’t a fraction of the drama and hostility. Mainly because they’re small and new, but that’s why you move to a new site, anyways.
The UFC and MMA subs haven’t moved yet despite there being a few communities on lemmy. I still go to reddit for those.
Lack of care by sports fans is the least surprising. It is after all a group that still pays for cable and puts up with ads after all. They are very addicted to the product.
It’s the gaming and pc subs that I ended up disappointed by, but then those communities ended up having good growth here without need for Reddit mods pushing migration.
Do you know of any Lemmy communities that post gaming clips? I see a ton about gaming discussions and gaming news but none with gameplay.
Game discussions and news was all I followed back on reddit, so hadn’t searched out gameplay clip focused ones. So unaware if that exists on lemmy.
I’m sure those will comes in time too I guess
I think the giant default subs are the same but I’ve definitely noticed less activity on my smaller niche interest subs (the whole point of reddit for me) since the apps shut down.
That’s right. There’s been a downward trend with the quality of content, especially on the tech front. What’s seemingly unaffected are location-based subs.
I visit it for a couple of subs that are not active on here. For the most part it feels the same. I never really cared for the karma system, gold, etc. So switching to Lemmy for me was more about just trying to find a place not being bombarded by ads, bots, and corporate policies.
I think reddit will survive the Exodus of users simply because Twitter is so badly managed that reddit may actually supplant it for a while. However, the drive to monetize all aspects of our lives is actually getting some push back from users so Lemmy may continue to grow in the next few years.
The biggest issues facing Lemmy isn’t content though. It’s ease of adoption.
God yes the ads, I just hate how every corner of our existence is being filled with ads. And if it’s not an official ad or “sponsored post” it’s someone trying to sell stickers on their Etsy or a t shirt bot spamming all and every subreddit. I just really hope those sort of things don’t invade here.
If you have been using an adblocker for years and turn it off for a moment, you really see how fucking bad it has become. It’s almost like a dystopian movie.
But if you use an adbwockew then I can’t suwvive…
👉👈 Pwewse disable youw adbwockew…-Adblock off-
DOWNLOAD FREE RAM! RAID SHADOW LEGENDS GET IT TODAY!
SUBSCRIBE TO PREMIUM! CHECK OUT THIS MERCH!
GET YOUR DICK GROWTH PILLS! HE GETS US!
CARS MOTHERFUCKER! DONATE TO POLITICAL PARTY!
VIRUS! VIRUS! VIRUS! VIRUS! VIRUS!
-Adblock on-👉👈 Pwease…
An advertisment filled dystopian movie? That’s the exact opposite of my new movie, “Barbie”, only in theaters July 21st.
What, no product placement, even? But how will I know what kind of flavored seltzer will make me pretty if I don’t see what Barbie drinks?!
It’s going to be Barbie-que sauce flavored.
…well played, lol. Although now I’m imagining liquid smoke flavor in a cold beverage, and I feel extremely conflicted about it.
It tastes like Worcestershire sauce, so tamarind and anchovies.
I use DNS black holes, adblockers, and I host all of my own media content. I rarely, if ever, see ads.
I will just stop viewing content if I have to go back to watching ads, it’s that simple. I can’t do it.
I can’t even watch TV with my parents on the Tivo anymore. Even fast forwarding through the ads is tedious and makes me angry.
Same. I consider anything I pay for adblock services an investment in my health.
Yeah this is what has amazed me since joining Lemmy is the non existence of ADS. It feels weird that I’m not seeing constant ads disguised as posts here.
I have been bouncing between here and the Reddit official app and holy hell the Reddit app is so shockingly bad with ads that I can only manage a few mins on it.
But is ease of adoption a problem, though?
Lemmy as it is now is great. Sure it could have more users, but I wouldn’t want the “average user” here because then it will be Reddit BS all over again.
Yeah as bad as it may sound, I kind of like that it’s not as easy to get into as reddit’s official app or tiktok or whatever. A barrier to entry can help quality. It doesn’t stop all the toxic assholes but it helps slow down the onslaught of braindead echo chambers and circlejerks that reddit has turned.
Yes, it’s a huge problem. New users are confused when they first get introduced. Ive been here for weeks and I still don’t understand everything. The explanations and infographics that have been made are a mess. It’s why there’s a certain kind of user that makes up the bulk of the site right now.
Doesn’t help that the first attempts to explain it were basically denial that there was a problem and insulting people for not understanding.
As a non-tech-savvy person, the confusion is real, lol. I am okay with just not really knowing what’s going on, and with asking questions or RTFM when I can find it, but that still puts me in the category of “comfortable in a highly technical environment.” People who are genuinely uncomfortable with technology and tech people are going to get a lot of culture shock.
To be fair, I think it goes both ways. People who answer a question from the point of view of a software developer will, quite reasonably, feel hurt if they’re told their answer isn’t helpful. I think it might be good to have a dedicated “landing pad” community for helping new people get oriented, rather than leaving them to ask the nearest person, who might or might not be the best person to ask.
But why is it a huge problem in the context of adoption?
I’m not saying I want or support that. I actually found it very easy to adopt. I am saying it is a hurdle in regards to adoption in regards to platform growth which is often discussed when comparing it to other social platforms.
Ribbit
Is that right? I was under the impression majority opened back up.
Tbh I don’t really care either way, I haven’t been on reddit for 3 weeks now.
These kinds of posts remind me exactly of my first few days on reddit post Digg Great Migration. There was a great multipage webcomic made then too.
So you have lived two apocalypses? I bet this is a good story for your descendants!
God damn us internet vets have seen the rise and fall of many a digital empire. Refugees moving from 1 shell to the next,
IRC/AIM->Skype/vent/mumble->discord/signal/telegram,
netscape->IE->Firefox/Chrome/Chromium,
message boards/use groups->digg/reddit->Lemmy,
Search engines like ask jeeves->Google/yahoo->google.
Napster->kazaa/limewire->torrents/magnet links->Sonarr/Streaming Sites
I could go on but yeah it was insane.
Makes me think back to the days of YTMND, eBaumsworld, & Newgrounds, which would have been the early internet for me. Or the old IRC emulation channel I followed. All my in real life friends were on MSN Messenger, and all my online friends were on IRC
Yahoo came before most search engines. Then there was lycos and webcrawler and the early search engines that were always overloaded, then came stuff like Google.
Also don’t forget stuff like prodigy and compuserve and bbs’s before the web had much content.
I remember having a list of numbers to multiple BBS services. Fun times. The fediverse reminds me of the old BBS’.
Does anyone remember xFire? It was the first ingame overlay chat program I used. Long before I had a Steam account.
Lol yep, didn’t use it as much as vent but I def remember it and that early 2000s XTREME design.
Don’t forget Myspace. I so miss that, Xanga, and AIM.
Something I’d like to share:
I’ve been periodically checking reddit in my Browser to see what’s going on. I commented last week about noticing a sharp decrease in posts on “my” front page. Since then I’ve observed a few more interesting things.
-
Late last week, I noticed that multiple subreddits (BORU and PICS in particular) had like 2-4 posts when sorted by “top, 24 hours.” It wasn’t a case of having to click “next” (I really miss rifs endless scrolling feature…) to navigate to a second page of posts; there was no 2nd page. That was it.
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I also noticed that on the mobile website, ads are designed to look nearly identical to posts (imo it was more obvious that they were ads on rif), and most of the time the website would only have 1 or 2 posts before one of these fake ad posts, so your user experience is immediately impacted.
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The ads don’t seem to be as targeted as they used to be. I used to get ads that seemed to be geared toward me, my searches, and interests. Creepy, but I found it way less annoying than the alternative. Which is apparently a lot of “He Gets Us” and ads for complicated electronics or unnecessary services. Like a mobile vet clinic that isn’t even available in my area, lol.
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The bot posts are getting obvious and WEIRD. I took screenshots last weekend because just about every other post had a robotic, overly formal, and/or downright confusing title. Here are some examples:
56.3k, front page: “A brain tumour changed her life Her nerves are badly damaged! But today she opened a car door…walked…opened a gym door…walked and sat down …BY HERSELF what a lady”
[Quotation marks, format, and ellipses are original]
40.5k, front page: The trapped dog doesn’t wait a bit to hug the rescuer after being freed…
Same weird ellipses, and the way it’s phrased is like a “correct the mistakes” worksheet for 2nd graders.
I think Reddit is in the “find out” stage of their fucking around, even if it’s a quiet or subtle change to the casual observer.
I also tried going to ModCoord [I’m not a mod it just felt like a good place to find updates] and, on my end, it looks like almost everything has been deleted. The same day I took screenshots, /r/PICS posted a public response to reddit’s threats, which weren’t even acknowledged on modcoord. The most recent post I could see was something from GallowBoob? It was really odd.
Is the website being glitchy? Probably. That is, after all, part of the root of this problem. But if anything, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the content has decreased in both quality and depth in the last 10 days. Even if a lot of users are still signing in, I don’t think they’re posting, commenting, or voting as much as they used to. That may be a reflection of the quality of posts, or of users displeasure at the situation, but regardless of where it came from, at least it’s something.
One sub I’m quite a lurker on has 6 million subscribers, and top posts for the day had like 1.5k upvotes, and there was a massive shortage of new/interesting posts.
The change in reddit over the last few weeks has been dramatic.
Yeah, BORU is back to showing only 2-4 posts when sorted by top:day AND top:week.
It’s really weird and makes reddit feel very hollow.
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New here, I miss using RIF but Connect seems pretty good.
Connect is the most usable of the bunch, well, I might need to check Liftoff further, but I am not a fan of its interface.
I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Liftoff tbh, not sure how much of it is my shitty internet or just user error but I swapped to Jerboa a couple days ago and it is much better.
But when Sync comes along that’s gonna be the best for sure
I’m using Liftoff and have 0 issues besides some buttons being too small for my fat fingers.
I can relate, I just collapsed your comment accidentally while trying to upvote it
Every touch screen program I use on all my touch screen devices, you swipe right to go back. On wefwef, it’s a downvote. I’ve erroneously downvoted so many people while trying to go back a page because I tend to use my phone one handed and can’t reach the top right corner with my stubby thumb.
I do like Connect, I just hope they add some QOL features RIF had like thread collapsing, being able to change default download folders, link preview, probably other things I’ll think about later. Great start, though!
You can pess and hold for thread collapse.
Or reverse it in the settings if you prefer a tap i stead of a hold.
I hope they implement the option to start all the comments as collapsed.
Connect dev here. Im taking notes!
Thank you for adding the ‘scrolling past post marks as read’ option. I previously used Joey for Reddit and Connect is the closest lemmy app I’ve found.
Thanks again!
wow! I didn’t expect this, Thank you so much! I’m so excited for what you have in store for us.
Nice job! Of all the current clients I tried I like Connect the best.
collapsing and easy up/down/top/parent navigation are key
I would also like to bring attention to Thunder if you haven’t tried it yet.
