Took a peek on Reddit, it really boggles my mind how oblivious and obedient people are.

I decided to take a peek at Reddit to see what kind of activity is happening, a good handful of the subreddits I am subscribed to are still super active with posts and commenters.

There's quite a few news articles on the front page regarding Spez and the blackouts, I am surprised those articles are even still up for people to see.

The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit's and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted...

Perhaps there is some AI activity going on, I mean it's kind of easy to do in this day and age. You just prompt an army of AI bots to defend Reddit, and try to keep users engaged.

I am so happy I found Lemmy, and I am so happy that there is a comfortable level of activity. Sure it's only a small fraction of what Reddit is activity wise, but it's so much more hearty and welcoming.

Reddit has just turned into one big toxic mess. Lemmy reminds me of what Reddit used to be 10 years ago.

Tower14,

Its such a weird complaint that these people are having right now. They're demanding that unpaid people come back and labor for them for free and/or give away the tools they've created for free.

It's like they have no idea how reddit works. People whining that the NFL sub is closed and demanding it to be reopened for instance. They can go make their own sub and moderate it themselves, but they dont. The entitlement to just demand that people do free labor for you is insane.

RomeCallen, (edited )

whats really funny/sad to me is how mods get no real respect right now or maybe ever

like are some mods lame, sure, but its a super thankless job that i dont think gets enough cred and thats the part that i think has disappointed me the most. mods are super needed online, and its a shame some people cannot see that

snarfback, (edited )

I think this is partially resulting from the bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn't be exploring these spaces the same way.

The reality is that reddit today ISN'T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of "redditors" support the strikes, but I'd believe that a majority of people who use reddit don't.

People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That's what people are in larger groups. That's who reddit is now designed to appeal to.

I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don't expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.

CoWizard,

I think reddit may become what facebook has become. I still use fb for marketplace and niche hobby and local groups. I can see reddit going the same way. I wonder what tech they're going to throw all of their money at...

Itsmeshakes,
Itsmeshakes avatar

Yeah I can see this happening, the one reddit sub I still check in on my local city sub.

Duchess,

i would agree with this, but at the same time after a couple of days of floundering i joined lemmy.world, subscribed to a few communities and am finding a better experience than reddit in its heyday because people are actually talking to me here lol

lixus98,
lixus98 avatar

I hope these people stay there, I like the community that moved to Lemmy/kbin as they are friendly and chill.

MeccAnon,
MeccAnon avatar

Hear hear!

OonTaaKissa,
OonTaaKissa avatar

True, browsing here has made me realize just how toxic and low quality reddit threads were. The users here feel a lot more mature and disagreements can lead to discussions, while on reddit some 12 year old would just reply with "L take" and downvote you :D

jiji,
jiji avatar

I miss my niche chill subs that I don’t think I’ll ever see come here, as they were already small on Reddit so I don’t imagine enough people will be “here” to make it a viable community. But I don’t miss browsing popular subs and all the top comments being the same jokes, often literally just the same joke? I know all of Reddit isn’t the same group but it’s kind of funny Reddit as a whole mocked things like “the narwhal bacons at midnight” but then would be ok with other, newer, repeat gags just because they effectively said “hey we’re a part of the same thing and I/we show that by all proving we ‘get’ the joke”.

BuddhaBeettle,
BuddhaBeettle avatar

Oh yeah, Back on reddit I never checked the notifications on my comments. I liked giving the advice but got terrible anxiety when someone answered because I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance of someone flying off the handle. Making it even harder, english ain't my native language and from time to time if Im tired I mess up.

In here people have been so nice, even as Im learning and messing up how to work this platform.

lemann,

there was a fifty-fifty chance of someone flying off the handle

This pretty much led me to prefer lurking on Reddit rather than interacting lol

mystiick,

From what I've seen with these mass exodus to the fediverse events, this is how it goes. A whole load of people leave $corporate_website, and then get impatient with the fedi-replacement being slow from the sudden spike in traffic. The impatient toxic people go back to $corporate_website, and the friendly chill people stay here.

It's great to see the fediverse growing, but I don't think we actually want to see it become twitter/reddit levels of popular.

islandmonkeee,
islandmonkeee avatar

I hope the Fediverse gains traction slowly, rather than becoming some sort of Binley Mega Chippy.

soft_frog,

Outside of lemmy.ml migrating to a new server under load and Beehaw decederating, everything seems to work smoothly for me.

weirdbeard,

I have (maybe naive) hope that the logistics of federation might help stave off enshittification longer than other places before, since the “platform” no longer controls the content.

lemann,

I'm assuming this is about the possible enshittification of Lemmy? I'm not too sure if such a thing is possible - right now at least

There's no ads, devs are supported by OSS funding (NLNet) and a Patreon, and many of the instances accept donations in one way or another to keep the servers running. It's also defederated so you could just host your own Lemmy and interact with everyone else that way

Ohh I just noticed you're on Kbin - not too familiar with the funding for that but it looks like the developer was provided a grant from NLNet as well.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

I personally know I don't want any server by itself to become deddit or twatter popular but I hope the fediverse at least attracts similar numbers of good people.

I believe there's a substantial number of people who found large platforms banal and toxic, so they might have been refraining from participating.

I know I was avoiding Instagram but now I'm interested in trying out pixelfed for example.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit’s and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted…

Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit. So now pro-Reddit content is being upvoted.

cyanide,

Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit.

Except the mods. Now they're getting abuse from those that didn't care about the protests.

DaveFuckinMorgan,
DaveFuckinMorgan avatar

I'm sorry but the protest was a complete failure that accomplished nothing. The real successful protest would be making a sub on here and redirecting their uses to it.

sam,
@sam@lemmy.ca avatar

Lemmy went from a few thousand users with very little activity to 100k+ with constant activity. It was a massive success.

justaveg,

We don't know yet. If it's sticky then I would wholeheartedly agree. But if activity drops to pre protest levels in a month then eh...

Cannacheques,

I guess we will see.

gmmxle,

Yeah, we don't know yet. On the one hand, it's still the early days of (some) people leaving Reddit - and who knows if they won't go back.

On the other hand, the API payment structure and the shutdown of 3PAs hasn't even happened yet. Even people who are completely oblivious to the situation but who are using a 3PA will have to decide if they'll be able to deal with the shitty official app, if they'll just stop browsing Reddit on mobile, or if they're willing to take a look at alternatives.

Tango,

For a website with over 800 million monthly users, 100k is nothing, barely even a rounding error. You can say it was a success for lemmy, but as far as the actual goal of the protest it achieved basically nothing.

GenericUsername,

Over 800 million monthly users, really? :D

Tango,

Different sources have different numbers. One says 800 million, one says 400 million, the point is that lemmy poaching a couple hundred thousand users is nothing to reddit. If lemmy has 200k users that left reddit, even if we assume the smaller value of 400 million reddit users then that's only 0.05% of reddit users that left.

hermitix_world,

What percentage of Reddit users are actually contributing versus just showing up to consume? I'd suspect it's a very small percentage of that total. If that smaller group migrates away in more significant number, then that's the real impact. The consumers will show up wherever the content goes.

toxic_cloud,

I'm willing to bet even if that were true a good portion of those are fake or a person with multiple accounts.

sam,
@sam@lemmy.ca avatar

As Lemmy grows reddit will shrink. Reddit might always be around, but that's the same crowd that uses Facebook. Stragglers be damned, many users found a new home and that's a big win in my books. The rest were shown how shitty and incompetent the management is at Reddit, and it'll only get worse until they lose more and more users.

And when Lemmy becomes compatible with the wider activitypub network, we'll gain another 9M users. (Its also closer to 200k now I believe.)

bill_1992,

Why spoil a good thing? The protest was basically the best they could do, got tons of attention and media.

Obviously time will tell if this actually is the downturn for Reddit, but belittling their efforts just because they didn't redirect to Lemmy seems a bit entitled.

jennwiththesea,
@jennwiththesea@lemmy.world avatar

I actually found Lemmy from a post doing exactly what you said: subreddit went dark, with a stickied post directing people where to go. And here I am! Rock me like a hurricane.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

I wouldn't say it accomplished nothing. I clearly motivated a bunch of people to start investing in other platforms. Platforms like Kbin and Lemmy now have a lot more mods and developers contributing. It gave alternatives MUCH needed attention. Mos of us had never even heard about these platforms a few weeks ago.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0fcf9f4e-742b-4125-956e-a1ae9860161e.png

briongloid,
@briongloid@aussie.zone avatar

We will get a second influx on July 1st as well, so we need to work had at maintaining activity and community growth in the meantime.

What we have now is already fairly good.

ClamDrinker,

And that's something that's easy to forget once you've made the change. Uprooting something you use daily, to move to a new platform which feels new and different, takes quite a bit of mental effort and requires you to accept some anxiety, as you wean yourself off your habits. But when the power users go, and the new place becomes more familiar and understood, the rest will follow eventually as every step becomes easier to accept.

Nommer,

I deleted my reddit account years ago and lurked only because trying to interact there was a cesspool. Learning about the alternatives and seeing how well behaved it is over here on lemmy is a breath of fresh air. Sure there isn't as much content yet but it'll come. Reddit wasn't an overnight success either.

I feel after the 3rd party apps get killed off we'll start seeing a slow trickle of users after the initial flood once the ones that stuck around start realizing the content that's left in reddit has become low effort bot posts and spam.

Ragnell,
Ragnell avatar

From the fediverse side of things, good. The bootlickers can stay there until the whole thing gets shutter, people with sense can come here.

SillyJester,

I do agree they should replace the mods who do the strikes. The mods should've quit out of principle. They will go back to modding as usual soon if they haven't already to fill their need for the sensation of power. They're doing unpaid work for a for profit organization. I'd like all the mods to quit and for Reddit to have to pay for moderation or face the consequences. But I don't care about the third party apps at all. I'm just perplexed by mods letting themselves get exploited like that.

DrownedAxolotl,

I think it's mostly a power trip like you said, or just a straight up passion project for those who want to have a community around their niche. As for the larger mainstream subs, yeah they're just doing unpaid labor.

geoffervescent,
geoffervescent avatar

Some reddit mods have turned their unpaid volunteer janitor gig on Reddit into a business without redditors realizing. For ex. Onlyfans was started by mods in NSFW subreddits who used reddit up votes to decide which models to recruit models who in turn would bring horny traffic over.

CoWizard,

WSB and other trading subs also come to mind. I wonder how much actual market manipulation happens there.

jrest18n,

Of course that site is like that now.

Everyone who cares left...

CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N,
CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N avatar

The users that believed in/supported the protests and are most against the changes are still not there. So you're left with the echo chamber of doom scroll monkeys that need their fix. Quite appropriate for reddit, honestly.

DoucheAsaurus,
DoucheAsaurus avatar

This tracks for me, Ive been on reddit for over 10 years and haven't been back since I found Lemmy and kbin on the 11th.

Skooshjones,

The same thing will happen with Reddit users that has happened for decades now in the digital world.

The ones that start to care about their freedom, privacy, ecological/sociological impact, and consumer rights will most likely move off of those closed and controlled platforms either completely, or replace them with better platforms.

The majority of folks either don't care, or aren't willing to give up the conveniences/benefits give up the toxic corpo platforms.

We need to focus on making our platforms better all the time, raising awareness for things like FOSS and consumer rights, and making sure we are as helpful and welcoming as we can be.

smokinjoe,

The lack of societal solidarity for the betterment of everyone is sad.

But that's ok, reddit was never going to die after this protest.

I think what took place was a successful test of what alternatives exist out in the wild.

Now it's up to those of us who migrated to post through the highs and lows of early adoption in order to encourage others to come and stick around when the next shitty move by Spez takes place.

For example, I migrated to Mastodon in late 2018 during an initial surge. And over the years tried to keep posting content so that when the next migration took place when Elon took the reigns, people were able to possibly feel more at home.

This shit takes time. A lot of time. But the internet is a big place and there's plenty of opportunity for things to be better. We just can expect things to rush themselves

FeelThePower,
@FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

what made the switch easier for me, was installing an RSS feed widget to my desktop and adding lemmy instances to it. gradually, i start to notice topics that interest me more and more which are viewable straight from the rss widget itself and i am able to comment on it, thus i have interacted more on here in the last few days than reddit. though it is still hard not to add :"reddit" to my searches online.

Chufi,

That is a great idea. Sorry friend, I'll have to steal it!

FeelThePower,
@FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The more on here the merrier! I don't mind at all. :p

luminaree,
@luminaree@lemmy.world avatar

It's funny reading posts that say something along the lines of "I've always used the reddit app and it's fine, I didn't even know there were third-party apps". I get this might be astroturfing or bots but if not, congrats on not having a clue, I guess.

mindrover,

I haven't used an app for reddit since Alien Blue. I was just on the mobile website. I can still understand the problem with what they're doing. I don't know why so many people can't understand a problem unless it affects them personally.

noodle,
@noodle@feddit.uk avatar

It's probably not purely bots. My girlfriend is one of those people lol

She isn't tech literate and doesn't get things like FOSS or 3rd party. To her, the Official Reddit™ App is a mark of trust and safety. She doesn't use an adblocker (despite my protests) and just avoids services like Youtube where ads are unavoidable.

Kissing_Ash,

People have been saying it but were being ignored for weeks: this blackout thing will not work. And we were correct. It was a useless attempt to try and win over the majority.

Plenty of people use the main app and are the majority of users, and it is what it is. The ones who care about the Reddit API fiasco should move away. That’s the only valid move.

I’ve done it, and everyone else who care should. Leave the ones who are fine with Reddit on Reddit.

sudneo,

I see the blackout as a nudge to overcome addiction. A few days or weeks without content, and people start looking around. The the network effect (downward) will make the rest.

I want to specify that I have no interest in all the userbase of reddit moving to Lemmy, but just an initial influx of people who care will help making it reach a critical mass. After that, reddit can even reopen fully, at that point it won't matter.

Kissing_Ash,

Except those people went to twitter, Instagram, and tiktok for their memes, news, and funny moments. All the major subs that I subscribed to are back on and people are back as usual there. The blackout was useless and another lazy version of internet activism, and it made people hate the mods instead of Reddit for “power tripping.” Literally made people side with Reddit because of that lol.

sudneo,

I had a different experience, to be honest. The sub I am more active in, /r/Italy is open, but it has still a ridiculous activity, and most of the active users wanted an indefinite blackout. A sibling sub, italyinformatica is even more desert (yesterday last post was 4 days ago). I think that in principle the blackout is a very effective way to protest, it worked like a charm to keep me off the site, at least, but I agree that saying "we do it for 2 days" undermines the whole thing.

MrPear,

I don't think it's particular the main stream of Reddit that is protesting, it is indeed a small percentage. However, I think the discussion in the recent Waveform Podcast hits the nail on the head:

That small percentage that left Reddit are the people that care most about Reddit. Those are the powerusers. The users that generally contribute most to the platform, be that in the form of content, informative comments, moderation, writing tools or other stuff. It's the people that are most valueble to the website. When those people leave there might others might not notice it instantly, but after a while the overall experience will deteriate somehow.

It is somewhat comparable to if when many of the big youtubers were to leave Youtube after bad management. They might be only 1% of the people uaing Youtube, but they are also the people that are important to the website for the experience of the other 99%.

zouden,

Thing is though, only those power users are likely to care about the decline in content quality.

The people who just use it for memes and funny videos won't even notice

MrPear,

I completely agree. However, my point is that the people that are leaving are a lot of the people that make Reddit Reddit. They play an important role in how well it's moderated and what content is on Reddit. So when many of those people leave while the others stay, the overall experience could get worse. People might not know why the platform starts to feel worse, but it does.

Maybe the impact won't be big at all, but I can definitely see it happening.

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit populated itself with fake accounts early on in its life, so they could be very well doing the same thing again here.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2

ps. This is my first comment, does hyperlinking work here?

MadWorks,
@MadWorks@lemmy.world avatar

Hyperlink worked just fine.

eldingo,

I wish people would just drop it. Do not visit Reddit. The blackouts are meh, to actually be effective, do not visit. No clicks, no views, no content.

Classified,

They gotta do a coordinated Leave Reddit Day like how they did with Digg

SirEDCaLot,

That was what the blackout was supposed to be- no clicks, no content. It had some effect but perhaps not the overwhelming effect that was desired. A lot of Reddit traffic now is just idiots scrolling in the app who probably never even notice the blackout let alone care.

That said- I think the effects of the last few weeks are going to take a longer time (many weeks or a few months or more) to truly play out. For me at least, the biggest effect is now I'm diversifying- while my social media time WAS almost 100% Reddit, now I'm trying to do as much Lemmy as I can. The bubble of trust is popped. Unless Spez gets fired and the Reddit board or his successor publicly walks this back and makes commitments to openness, I don't see myself putting any trust at all in them going forward. Too bad really :(

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