Lemmy has blown up within the past week. “Taking down reddit” was always a pipe dream, but now we have a real alternative with committed users. I’d call that a success.

I haven’t used reddit for like 4 days which probably hasn’t happened since I signed up. I’m planning on staying here. The reddit of today isn’t like it was in 2011, it’s exploded in popularity. If the vast majority people truly cared about poor social media business practices Facebook Meta wouldn’t be around.

I never expected the blackout to kill reddit or even for them backout of the API changes (especially after the spez AMA). But I will say I’m surprised at the influx of people to lemmy, I started on lemmy 5 days ago and even since then there’s been an explosion of content and discussion which has made it a viable alternative for me.

I was a huge lurker on reddit because it seemed like my voice would never be heard or that it was probably already said. I’m trying to break that on lemmy and I encourage everyone else to as well.

The whole thing had a huge effect from my perspective - I deleted my 14 year old account.

While realistically I wasn’t expecting the death of Reddit, I had hoped something would happen, but, it’s now 2 days later and subs are open and it’s business as usual. Some gaming subreddits are even taking absolutely atrocious stands where they claim they HAVE to be open for the upcoming update to XYZ game. r/Games somehow thinks the various gaming showcases is justification for staying open, and r/Halo justified coming back online because Halo Infinite launches Season 4 next week. Funny enough, I was just perm banned from r/Halo because I called the mods out…

Keep in mind that some subs are back online specifically to ask users what their next move should be. A few subs I’m subscribed to are considering rolling blackouts or allowing posts only one day a week. There’s still 2x the amount of subs currently private than total subs that originally signed up! Many news sites are reporting that the blackout is continuing today (shout-out to all the reddit journalists fighting back with the tools they have). Its way too soon to declare this whole thing “didn’t work”.

I agree. I’m watching /r/ModCoord and it seems quite a lot of subs are going dark indefinitely - but we need the biggest subs on board to make a difference.

Advertisers are taking note, though, which is promising - especially if we can get a bit of steam behind the campaign to bring subs down indefinitely.

i just broke my own rule and posted to reddit modcoord using a burner account. will react and burn it in 24 hrs.

my message to them was this: unfortunately human mods will be the next to go - they’ve shown their power to reddit and once this ipo happens they move from becoming a thorn in spez’ side to a risk to shareholder value that needs to be “mitigated.”

spez wants control. control of the apis. control of the app. control over the platform . he can get there first two but then mods prevent the last. he needs control if the ad revenue is to happen so he can exit with his golden parachute. health of the communities or platforms be damned.

i suspect at some point he’ll not only demod all of the human mods in favor of botmod + ftes but may also go the extra step to delete the mod accounts entirely – he’ll justify the killing of their handlers with some bs policy.

this will leave mods demodded; powerless with no voice or identity - consider… how can u/newname prove they’re really u/ex-mod without revealing personal info that might doxx themselves?

recommended they establish an alternate means of communication with their community here or on discord.

we should also consider standing up an mod coord here so they have a place they can freely speak and plan without sock puppet spez accounts or bots courting the conversation.

Many subs are down indefinitely and a large portion of supporters are gone completely, reddit also has gotten a hell of a lot more toxic, more bots, and more company dick sucking since the blackout, this website will not get new users.

I think we all know that these blackouts aren’t going to be the death of Reddit. The admins always had the power to in-blackout subreddits if they are deemed important enough. The best thing that came of this whole ordeal is the absolutely MASSIVE spike in Lemmy users (see https://the-federation.info/platform/73).

As long as enough people stay here, we can continue to grow based on momentum, and we won’t even need to think about Reddit moving forward. At least, that’s the way I see it.

I think the best thing to do at this point is to use a tool to overwrite all your comments with something like

Edit: Moved to Lemmy

before nuking your account. That’s what I plan on doing before the end of the month.