So, how do we think this ends?

It can go one of a few ways.

  1. Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
  2. A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.

No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.

I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".

Palteos,

Reddit has weathered controversies bigger than the one that killed Digg. What Reddit has going for it is the fact that it's userbase is fractured into different communities and it's easier for people to stay in their own niche while ignoring the rest of the site.

hackitfast, (edited )

Here's my take, I grabbed it from my reddit comment, it's slightly out of context so excuse that:

I do think reddit will continue to function, but its communities and services will undoubtedly begin to change following July 1st as users begin to shift to different platforms like Lemmy, Kbin, and Squabbles.

And don't think that as reddit aims for quarterly growth, they won't try to pull more shit on their users. It's only a matter of time before reddit is an amalgamation of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

RPAN probably failed because either nobody wanted to use their first party app, or were using old.reddit.com. RPAN was their first attempt at reddit trying to "catch the waves" of services like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. The most recent r/place was the second attempt at getting people to use their mobile app.

Expect reddit to keep adding "trend catching" features over the next year or so while you're confined to reddit.com without RES, and reddits mobile app. Unfortunately, reddit will eventually it will be a shell of what reddit once was, and the users that choose to stay will be the ones willing to put up with their shit.

So yes, of course the point is to make money! Though it will almost always be poorly reflected on its users, and they'll go any length to make sure they're doing just enough to keep you here but not enough for you to want to leave. Users will make their decision to stay or leave over the coming months as you see this "enshiftification".

Here's a good article on this, it's very interesting:

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

demian,
@demian@lemmy.ml avatar

The communities you love are made of people, and people will go to someplace better. When googleplus ended, it was a mess in the initial migration. But soon people agreed to stick to better places, and the communities survived. Reddit is just a venue that used to be nice to hang out with friends and now is turning into a shopping center. It's annoying to change venues, but real friends will stick togheter.

Saitama,

I'm going to do my part to help Reddit become irrelevant. There's only two or three subreddits that I care about, and I never really participate there, it's more to get memes and news from my country. I'm planning to delete my 12 year old account with thousands of posts and just lurk in those subs and steal the content once or twice a week.

0Sunset,

Delete your old post

AbsentApe,

I don't think Reddit will die. This is a rough time. Reddit will survive. They will IPO, make some money, piss some people off, and once the dust settles things will go back to normal. Eventually something else will surpass it.

I'm not going to lie, I'm addicted to Reddit. While I'm not going to abandon Lemmy, I can't just leave Reddit. There are subs that can't be replaced. r/USMC is an amazing place to help active duty and veterans alike. r/Nascar has race threads that are fun as hell to read through. I'm going to limit my use to those subs that I can't get in Lemmy. (yet...)

interdimensionalmeme,

There's no going back to normal if they kill the apps and maybe the old layout too.

Denaton,

I don't think that Reddit is going down, but i have seen users that post regularly on Reddit closing down their accounts and joining Lemmy, this will snowball into more joining Lemmy because the quality of post will eventually go down on Reddit and go up on Lemmy, this is just speculations and have a really lose base.

interdimensionalmeme,

I agree this will snowball This is the digg Exodus all over again. It will happen as fast as Lemmy can make federated content seamless. Interacting with content outside your instance is a chore that needs lots of reading to overcome.

But Reddit used the nuclear option and treated is users with disrespect and took them for granted. This is the end phase.

Pechente,

I think this will just lead to reddit becoming more mainstream - not in a good way but in the way facebook did. This already happened in the past thanks to marketing pushes and most of the bigger subs are really crappy at this point.

So in the long term, reddit might die due to the quality of the content becoming worse. But for now investors might be happy.

MeltedLiquid,

I think you're going to know by one metric. Quality of content over the next ~3 - 6 months. Whether subs stay or go is one thing, that's been part of Reddit for the 12 years I used it. What would get folks to leave is when the communities they are interested in aren't supplying content.

So if you lose some lurkers, that's not gonna matter because they didn't post anyways. If you start losing power users, who regularly feed your community content, what's going to drive you to stick around? If you ask me, I think the fact we are even having this conversation means Reddit is losing in this equation.

somniumx,

I think Reddit has in some parts already lost this fight. For one of my hobbies, simracing, I used a couple of subreddits to stay informed. Honestly, looking back, it was a mile wide but an inch deep. Basically the same 4 topics on rotation. It became stale months ago. Now, I haven't found a good Lemmy community for this. But forums. And it is night and day how much more in depth the discussion is there. Whatever reddit does, I won't come back. The last week has encouraged me to look for alternative content and I found better stuff. Sure, this is most likely different for other interests. But I can't be the only one that found alternatives to Reddit that he prefers, even ignoring API or blackout etc.

oranges,

I'm a fellow Sim Racer..... I used to frequent the sub daily prior to nuking my account a week or so ago. Would you mind sharing the new community you found? I'm yet to find a replacement on Lemmy :)

somniumx,

Sadly, my simracing replacements are the weakest link in my switch away from reddit. Since I race mostly Iracing, I've changed to their forum. Great for technical discussions about the new updates etc.

For updates on the rest, I use the german speaking discord from https://www.germansimracing.de, just to get news about big updates etc.

It's totally different from the subs I used - but to be honest... I don't really miss the 500th question about "what wheel should I buy" or "who's at fault". Since this switch from reddit came at the same time as my switch from VR to monitor (and therefore making a quick session easier to set up) I rather drive a couple of laps when I have to kill 15 or 20 minutes, instead of reading about it.

MeltedLiquid,

Same here. I've begun actively searching for communities forums, lemmy, etc that make me want to participate outside of lurking.

Your point about the depth of content/conversations is so true. The number of times you'd see the same post over and over again. Then dive into the comments for the top comments to be highly predictable copypasta or "unpopular" opinions that were actually super common made browsing very unenjoyable.

Saitama,

MIle wide but inch deep is a good descriptor of a lot of subs these days. For instance, Formula 1. 10-12 years ago when it was more of a niche community you had hardcore fans there with a rich knowledge of the history of the sport. As it grew in popularity the quality of the content decreased. These days there are threads reposting fashion photos of the drivers with hundreds or thousands of upvotes and comments, which ultimately don't mean anything. I can think of other subs where posters started sharing their fan art or creations and eventually everybody was doing it instead of having intelligent conversations.

true_blue,

In my view this isn't the end of Reddit, but it is the beginning of the end. This situation will probably pass, but the lemmy devs and instance owners have already gotten useful feedback about how to handle situations like this, and what kinds of things would help lemmy and the fediverse grow. The next time something like this happens (and there will be a next time) they'll be just that little bit more ready.

Although for me specifically, I don't actually care too much if Reddit dies. I'm happy as long as there's a community here. The best thing that seems to be coming out of this situation so far is that many subreddits are now getting lemmy community analogs for people to move to.

TWeaK,

I want reddit to die. It had its day, and what we have now is a poor reflection on what it was and what it's supposed to be. Change is a good thing, it leads to improvement and making things better.

Cargon,

I used to feel the same way, but the more I think about it, I want Reddit to linger on so it can soak up the lower quality users and content. This will help keep communities like Lemmy more focused and useful for users who are interested in more than just mindless scrolling.

LostCause,

Gone downhill ever since Aaron left RIP. I think if it dies it will be slow and sad, but probably for the best. The model of putting all the power into the hands of some greedy company isn‘t working well for internet communities.

Spidertax,

I mean, if the quality of content on the site currently is any indication of how things will look like going forward, I think maybe ditching reddit will be easier than I thought. it's wayyyyyyy more reactionary than usual, though I think there's some 4chan-originated pot-stirring going on. still though, it's not a pleasant place to be right now.

Levii,

It wasn't pleasant before either, looking back. Everyone else has said it, conversations were so shallow. Every comment section filled with copy/paste, bot-like comments. “Thank you kind stranger” type shit which i found embarrassing to be honest, gave me second hand embarrassment reading it.

Reposts multiple times a week. Low effort, unfunny shitposting. The same 3 questions on repeat seemingly everyday.

Just look at r/askreddit and it says just about everything you need to know for even some of the niche subs.

I kinda want it to die now.

beef_curds,

If it's like mastodon, most people will get bored and move back to reddit. Lemmy will grow marginally, and be more ready for the next stress test.

There will be other reddit outrages after the ipo, and lemmy will be more ready for migration. Repeat. Hopefully there's a critical mass one day, but there's no guarantee.

Graphine,

Personally I'm not moving back. It's a nice change of pace for me being here. I'm finally being more productive with my life now that I don't have Reddit.

Megaf,

I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.

So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.

I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.

Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!

breakerfall,

I think the web front-end works great, actually. Better than reddit (old.reddit, at least).

Works great as a PWA, too.

Megaf,

I agree that it does work, and very well. It just needs some work on the responsive design I think, and maybe aesthetics. But that's just a subjective opinion, not really an issue I might give it a go myself at it when I have some time and maybe I send a PR or two.

Levii,

I think the aesthetic and layout could be tweaked but im quite happily, happier than i was with reddit even, with how responsive and easy to use the UI is.

Even typing a comment i have all these text and image options beneath the text box right now, i havent used them once but could see potential uses for them. In reddit i would have had to do some dumb shit with formatting to get that kinda stuff, so my posts and comments were just text with paragraphs and occasionally a picture.

I may consider running my own federated instance at some point but we shall see!

dethmetaljeff,

For me, it's no more reddit on mobile but I'm not blocking it any time soon. If it's a Google result, so be it, there's still useful content over there.

Scout339,

This is what most people fail to understand. The information that has amassed on Reddit is important, yet they turn so much of it to private, some indefinitely. A proper solution would be to permanently be read-only, and have it be very easy to see "hey, new posts are now on Lemmy, feel free to post there" so that you have a permanent cripple to Reddit's userbase, and you don't burn the library to "stick it to the man".

TicklishRocket,

I think this is a good solution until the info can be transferred over.

lenninscjay,

r/datahoarder is working on archiving everything: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1479c7b/historic_reddit_archives_ongoing_archival_effort/

so that should be covered at least.

Jezebelley,

It's going to end with a relatively small reddit exodus with most returning to reddit in a few weeks. People are lazy, and will concede to the API changes just like they all did with Twitter. Remember when Musk took over and made all those dramatic changes heavily monetizing the platform? Everyone was crying how Twitter will die and that they were all quitting. Well guess what? Almost all of them went back to Twitter anyway and now use the official app just like Musk wanted. Reddit will be no different sadly.

Thanks4Nothing,

I think that those who are most passionate about this situation, and are sticking to their morals, tend to be are more active group and the power users who are actually the backbone of reddit. On reddit, I post a lot, I comment and discuss a lot, and I participate in a ton of communities. I offer a lot of expertise in the niches I am in. I am not going back without a 3rd party app compromise. I think many like me feel the same way. Those who just consume on reddit will probably return.

mibzman,

I've been off Twitter and on mastodon for a long time now so take this with a grain of salt.

November changed mastodon forever. It's 5-10x more active with a much broader userbase. Sure it's gotten quieter than it was in December, but it went from 'weird nerd twitter' to 'small social media'.

The events of this month have brought lemmy from 'alpha demo of activitypub groups' to 'weird nerd reddit'

waspentalive,
@waspentalive@lemmy.ml avatar

Personally, I will only be going back to Reddit if I need help with some specific thing and I can't find it in Lemmy anywhere. And only for that thread.

DJDSXSHOWFX,

I think it's a matter of communities. People would stay on Reddit because of top communities and top quality content made on those communities. As long we have some form of aggregations of users making great content here on Lemmy as well, we're good imho.

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

Why did anybody expect reddit to back down on this. Unless reddit loses a significant portion of its user base then they have no reason to care. Currently, there really isn't any viable alternative infrastructure that could absorb millions of new users. People are going to make a fuss for a bit, but if they enjoyed using reddit before then they'll come back to using it sooner or later.

Frankly, I don't know why people keep fixating on this. I've been using Lemmy for over three years. I use it because I enjoy the community here, and I don't really think about what reddit is or isn't doing.

petriborg,

You're right that 2 days wouldn't be enough - its up to the people on those community boards to yeet themselves out of Reddit and onto something else - Lemmy or whatever.

Nollij,

The blackout was to show numbers- it was not a small minority of users that cared, but rather a significant majority. Pissing off most of your users, especially your most active users, is generally a bad business move.

The real question is what people will do on July 1. Will those same users cave and switch to the official app? Reddit is counting on most users doing that, or at least enough to make it a profitable move. I personally will not.

I will only see Reddit when it comes up from a Google search, and will not get involved in the conversations. Some of my communities are already permanently dead, and others severely weakened. But others are fine, since most users there are already on the official app.

As the quality drops, more people leave, and fewer people join. Reddit could cease to be a central hub and become more niche. It could also turn into a cesspool. There are some signs that neo-nazis and otherwise shitty people will take over, not unlike we are seeing with Twitter. Or it could all blow over, and this was all just a bump in the road for Reddit.

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

I guarantee you that vast majority of users will use the official app because they're addicted to reddit. There is no readily available alternative around, and after some grumbling most people will go back to it. None of these protests really work unless there is a viable alternative available.

Reddit could cease to be a central hub, that's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future. However, I still don't see why people keep perseverating over reddit. At the end of the day why does it matter. Lemmy exists, it works fine and people who really want to break from reddit have that option now. Whether majority of people does so or not doesn't really matter all that much to me.

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