First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
First all the bs with Twitter and Elon, then Reddit having an exodus to Lemmy (not complaining lol), then Twitch. Are we like, in an alternate self healing dimension or something?
I don’t think all that many redditors are moving to Lemmy. Judging by the stats on join-lemmy, there are only several thousand monthly Lemmy users, which is nothing compared to reddit which had tens of millions daily users
When I joined lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, the stats on join-lemmy.org were just over 100/month.
Now it’s at 1K/month for beehaw and 1.6K/month for lemmy.ml
There’s also a HUGE list now, where as when I joined last week there were maybe 8?
Small numbers, ya, but Reddit still hasn’t done anything. I am sure July 1st will bring a huge wave of people who are still sticking with Reddit since apps still work.
I feel like reddit power users are the only ones who might switch, normal people simply won’t care. However, power users are already well aware of the coming changes, and have likely already looked for alternates by this point.
Ive seen so many reddit posts on where people are like “what’s wrong with the official reddit app, it’s all I’ve ever used”… Lemmy is much better than the official reddit experience - the issue is most niche communities that exist on Reddit have ~1-5 subscribers here, makes it kind of a hard sell.
Personally i’d way rather be in a small community filled with frequent commenters and posters than a big one where all you see is reposts and ads, however.
Exactly this. I moved from Digg to Reddit ~14 years ago and mostly participate in the smaller/ niche communities on Reddit. I’m switching over to Lemmy and it reminds me of what Reddit used to be like.
I mean, power users make most interesting content, so i can easily imagine regular users just naturally getting, like, bored.
I came here from Reddit in preparation for it getting whack… ready to make a jump to something closer to how old school reddit was. I think we’ll see a lot more people who are like minded coming over too.
@Dandylion @JshKlsn @technology I’m interested in a Fediverse Reddit alternative. I’m familiar with Lemmy as a software project, but not as a community. Beehaw is totally new to me.
What are these projects aiming for community-wise? What is needed to help them grow?
And critically: Who is paying hosting costs and handling DMCA issues?
I cannot answer most of your questions, as I don’t know.
The hosting costs are paid by the instance host. As of now, servers are community funded. This doesn’t seem like a viable long term solution, as people hate paying, but hate ads. Unfortunately one of them has to be done.
DMCA is also unknown to me. I guess it would be the admins of the instance the copyrighted content is hosted on? however, given the fact there’s nothing stopping an instance from being hosted in a different country, similar to pirate websites, I don’t know if there’s anything stopping or enforcing that stuff? I mean, from a legal standpoint. Sure, admins might not want their instance being full of piracy, but that would be more of a morality thing.
One cool thing about decentralization is the higher costs incurred to copyright trolls. No longer can they comb through a single corp platform raising the alarm on violations, they’ll have to spend some effort searching wider, sometimes dealing with uncooperative admins, hydra effect within the same fed network, etc. I can see forces pulling in both directions, not sure where it’ll land.
Imho hosting costs, community moderation, federation politics are the larger elephants in the room. Copyright has always been just a suggestion, the huge platforms are the exception.
A DMCA method, Privacy Policy and even a TOS is what is needed to make me feel more comfortable here. Right now, you have no idea what the plan is for your data (and its rentention), data collection, etc. I might dig into the lemmy code and see if I can sus it out myself if I have time.
Counting methods are probably different, Lemmy stats only count users that posted at least once in the interval. I assume Reddit counts anyone who opens the site.
The Twitter exodus (which is still limited) was because all of the problems at Twitter were sudden. Huge staff cuts meant lower quality, way more bots, and of course, the owner’s mercurial impulses.
Reddit is a bit different. It’s more of a boiled frog situation. A little tweak here, a little change there, all definitely for the worse (and Reddit is going down hill) but so far nothing seismic. Even the number of users affected by the third party apps thing is pretty small because most users just looking at memes and sharing news just use the native app (my wife does).
I’m not sure whether that really results in an exodus.
Look at Amazon: it just gets worse and worse, but have people stopped buying from it en masse? Nope. It’s getting worse, but ever so slowly.
To be clear, I like it better here, but I do not want an exodus of any type. I want slow migration to help the platform grow more organically and for people to see a polished experience.
People won’t come back if they show up once, interact with this not-pretty-but-functional site and don’t like it. So I’d rather wait for the influx of users to be at a later time tbh.
The trick is to have enough of an interest from enthusiasts now to “prime the pump” so when the general population comes over there is enough to keep them here.
It sort of reminds me of the Digg exodus. Reddit was a much smaller site than Digg yet there were many instances of Digg users reposting things from Reddit since the community had quality content despite it’s small size. The Digg redesign only accelerated the migration.
Well right now lemmy is beefing itself up ready for a predict wave a people moving from reddit to lemmy due to the blackout. Now how many of those people stay and how many return to reddit is a different question. Few of us are moving right now, since you’d have to be involved in reddit communities more. But we will see how many people move on the 12th etc
I agree. A few more people will learn about Lemmy and come over, but to call it an exodus is probably nowhere near accurate. I just don’t think most people care enough. Yes Reddit will suffer. I’m just not convinced Lemmy will benefit that much.
That said, I think we will benefit in the sense that there will now be enough people to sustain some nice communities.
Disclaimer: I’m new here, so obviously talking somewhat out of my lower bode parts here.
Reddit may not even suffer if it primarily loses users that browse with third party apps or on desktop with adblock. That would be a net benefit for reddit based on average revenue per user.
That’s fair to point out, but it implies the only utility users provide to the site is ad impressions. I see a couple of reasons this is not the case.
Mods make up a tiny portion of users but are disproportionately 3rd party app users and rely on 3rd party tools. But if any meaningful portion of the mod community leaves? The remainder were going to have a much bigger job without the tools. To attempt the bigger job with a smaller workforce is a double-whammy. Their only option will be to focus on their favorite subs and elevate more members to mods. The inevitable result will be experienced mods being far outnumbered by new mods, all of whom will have to stick to tedious tasks for subs to not be overrun by spam and hate speech. It’s hard not to predict the same result as what’s happened to Twitter’s content.
Now consider nsfw content, which has always made up a huge chunk of reddit’s traffic. Moderation is even more difficult there to begin with and could easily melt down for the same reasons, even setting aside reddit’s growing distaste for it. Reddit is largely young and male and while many users may have no interest in it, the combination of nsfw imgur links going dead, moderation challenges, and the likelihood of reddit cracking down on nsfw is a combination that may cause reddit to be less attractive for many of the young, male userbase to visit.
I think your point still has merit - reddit won’t miss many of the users seeking alternatives. I would say reddit’s casual “I didn’t even know there were 3rd party apps / old.reddit.com” users are also likely to be turned off by the ultimate results of their changes.
Oh, that’s a point. Do third party apps not show those sponsored posts that look like a discussion, but are actually an ad?
I can’t comment on if they do or not as I exclusively use(d) Syncpro, but there are still loads of “real” posts that are blatant marketing attempts that get posted.
I use Infinity (for Reddit), and I don’t see any sponsored posts
I will confirm that I don’t see sponsored content using a third party app and RES.
RIF is Fun does not show sponsored posts.
I think the Lemmy userbase stands to gain much, while Reddit Inc probably won’t feel a gut stabbing loss.
I commented similarly elsewhere, but the “power user” content creator types on Reddit actively avoid r/all for being a dumpster fire. This disconnects them from the fact that there is an absolutely massive userbase on Reddit who scroll the frontpage and keep coming back to that low quality content.
When power users threaten with “if we leave who will create content?” they are not understanding that their content isn’t relevant. R/all is full of low quality reposts, and political ragebait. My own original content probably cracked about 4K upvotes at highest. It was never going to go to the frontpage. When I deleted it, frontpage users never noticed.
That kind of content is more fit for smaller spaces that have not become the self perpetuating juggernaut that the Reddit front page is.
Lemmy and other sites will gain the quality from exiting power users, and Reddit Inc won’t feel it in the way they care about.
I guess the question is: Do you care more about having a good online experience and not thinking about Reddit, or about burning Reddit to the ground? Because the later I don’t think happens from an exodus.
Oh, I’m not saying it’s not good for us (or maybe I did. Badly worded in that case). I just don’t think Reddit cares or will notice to be honest.
I think we are agreeing in high view concept, just expressing it differently.