I’m old enough to have witnessed the early beginnings of the Internet in the 90s - and what’s happening now with the fediverse feels like coming back to its roots.
We may well find that the implosion of Twitter and Reddit - within 6 months of each other - is the beginning of the end for “big tech”. It’s unlikely that it will go away entirely but I do feel a seismic shift happening. I seriously hope that it’s not a false dawn.
Lol, fuck spez. I’ve used reddit since 2011 but this debacle has been the last straw for me.
2006 here. Bye,
FeliciaSpez.Class of 2008 checking in. I’ll miss Reddit, but I won’t miss Spez. Spez can eat a bag of dicks.
Ha…diggs
The blackout probably won’t result in Reddit failing, but he has to realize that if he keeps this up, it’s only going to take some aspiring programmers/designers some time to develop more Reddit alternatives, and when one of them becomes viable, down goes Reddit.
Oh, reddit’s still going to be around for a long time, and I don’t think reddit clones were and are any real threat to reddit (See Voat, or any of the crypto based reddit clones). However, Lemmy is different in that federation is a revolutionary change to the reddit format just as nested comments on reddit is a revolutionary change to traditional internet forums.
So, a likely scenario is that high effort content creators are going away first, leaving the average user who only notice the content getting worse and worse until they leave too, and the dreg will get more and more concentrated as more regular people leave, which lead to worse content, turning it into a death spiral.
just as nested comments on reddit is a revolutionary change to traditional internet forums.
Uh, Reddit hardly created the idea of nested comments. You can go back to usenet or Prodigy/Compuserve in the 90s and find nested conversations. Slashdot did it, Daily Kos did it, shit, even the old school VN Boards did it.
Unless I misunderstand your point?
I do think reddit was the one that popularized it though, maybe it would be more accurate to say “combination of nested comments and vote based instead of time based sorting”?
I mean, here’s a Slashdot thread from 2005 (https://web.archive.org/web/20020923232012/http://slashdot.org/articles/02/09/10/0517248.shtml?tid=134) from archive.org showing not only voting, but nested comments.
Slashdot’s “voting” was a little less direct and focused on using what it called “moderation” to keep content on the site relevant. I found the write-up, still pretty much unchanged, here.
Here’s a 2004 thread article from kos with straight up reddit-like voting, not only showing the cumulative score but the # of votes, too.
Reddit was founded in 2005.
One could make the argument that Reddit successfully leveraged it to attract the traffic away from Fark and Digg at the time. They weren’t just a place to get away from Diggs changes, they were a better place.
Threaded forums go back to the late 90’s.
Yep, it’s going to be the new Facebook soon
This situation won’t kill reddit, but it is quite capable of killing reddit’s supremacy.
That’s the thing. Reddit will live on for quite some time, but enough damage has been done to position alternatives as the better choice.
I personally think it will be a combination of all these fediverse sites.Imagine having your own personal site connected to Lemmy, Kbin, and everyone else’s personal sites.
It’s pretty incredible.undefined> I personally think it will be a combination of all these fediverse sites.
Good point. I think that It’ll be the combination of these things that’ll hurt them the most…
Just put a > before the text to quote it, just like reddit. I dunno why it sticks “undefined” in there like that.
That does sound quite exciting when you put it that way. (Also yay, this is my first post!)
Oh oh! I too just arrived
Welcome friends! Make yourselves at home.
Welcome aboard!
It seems to me that you’ve done the math…
I don’t think 99.9% of people care about the extra depth of Lemmy, or anything else like this. In fact the extra layer of complexity makes me think nothing like Lemmy will replace Reddit because people don’t want to put in the extra effort to learn about instances and federation.
I’ll be shocked if any instance hits a million people in the next few years
To a “normal” user, a Lemmy (or any federated) instance is just another Reddit-like site.
If a user signs up and see content in their feed, why do they need to care about federation?The federated system gives “normal” users the content they want, and “technical” users the ability to self-host and connect to other federated servers.
I think a handful of popular federated instances will see the majority of Reddit emigrants who don’t need/care to know about how federation works.
I mean yeah, it looks to be mostly that way with Lemmy.World
Any instance hitting one million is unlikely, on the mere grounds of trying to make one super instance is kind of the opposite of the goal of federation. The winning would be reaching a million members between all instances.
I honestly don’t think people need to sell Lemmy like this.
The vast majority of users are not going to care at all about the fediverse. They just want a site that works like Reddit, and lemmy will give that to them. Personally, I think that within the next year or so, one or two instances are going to become the predominant ones and eventually close themselves off from the rest to better control the content.
I don’t think they will close themselves off. I think we will see three ‘levels’ of instance. The big core instances (a handful) which have dedicated teams running everything (might be volunteer, might be staff), a fairly large smattering of small instances ran by corps (the fedverse is a social media platform after all), as well smaller groups of like-minded people (eg beehaw or lemmygrad), and lastly the hobbyist who want to self host.
Removed by mod
He’s more concerned the investors are going to fire him.
I think we’re talking on it right now. The nerds and early adopters are already here. The community and open source technology will grow organically until we start drawing the attention of the masses because the experience is better. It’s just going to take a few more years of enshitification, just like Digg.
I mean it is pride month, let him dig in those heels! Silly wording aside, where the heck are Reddit’s PR team and why hasn’t the board put controls on Huffman at this point? Where are the adults in the room? Man this going to fill the minds of conspiracy theorists for a decade.
deleted by creator
Honestly, it might not be a great thing just yet. I feel like Lemmy is struggling under the influx, it’s just not ready usability wise. When I tapped on the link to this comment section, I got a weird Latter Day Saints post until I reloaded. There’s so, so many things like that and I’m deeply worried it’s going to give people a bad impression.
Then again…it’s not like they have anywhere else to go…
This was always going to be a mess at first, no question, but I’m worried it will get messy to the point Lemmy starts cracking.
It just further drives home the point that people got way to comfortable using one or two sites. We need to get into the habit of having multiple sites and alternatives again, or this is going to happen every time the “new big thing” goes to shit.
Kbin works like a dream except for the occasional server error.
I love kbin’s UI. It’s awesome that we can be on lemmy, but on a site we prefer
Yep the UI is excellent for my needs. It looks great and is easy to interact with. There are a few nooks and crannies for settings which I imagine will throw a few new users off but it appeals to my ‘learn by clicking random buttons’ nature.
I’ve actually been really enjoying the mobile site. I hope we’ll get an Apollo-style app one day, but the mobile site is pretty damn good for how new kbin is
Funny you should say that I actually literally just started a magazine which I’m beginning to fill with basic mobile UI tips for those who just want to get going: m/quickstart
The missionaries were trying to get ya!
When I first started using reddit over a decade ago it was pretty great. I didn’t really stop to think what would happen if reddit started to act more like a corporation because I was having too much fun.
Now that time has come, and it’s time to move on to a more free (as in freedom) and open system. It’s immoral that all those years worth of human interaction (the howto’s, cat videos, porn, niche topics etc) is “owned” by a corporation.
deleted by creator
The fact that we’re communicating from so many different websites blows my mind! Just a little extra thing that makes this platform even more fun for me :)
This project has legs. I’ve been on Lemmy this past week but now I’m commenting from kbin. Once you start to figure everything out you really see the potential.
I started out on lemmy.world but I tried kbin and I like it’s UI way more. When I realized I could just follow all of those communities on kbin I was sold!
I created this account earlier today a first step to move away from reddit. I’ve heard kbin mentioned and will; have to check that out too.
Indeed.
deleted by creator
I completely forgot how cool the internet was outside of corporate silos. And yes, the '90s internet was slow as hell, but there were so much of it to explore.
Non-internet Bulletin Boards would each host message forums but would exchange packages of messages (such as QWK files) via modem so that you could communicate with others connecting to different BBSs around the world.
Such a magical experience back then.
Then usenet newsgroup servers did much the same, (but probably updated more frequently). The peer-to-peer aspect was transparent to the users, so it was good to have just one “place”, a newsgroup, where everyone could discuss a subject. But numbers were low enough that it wasn’t flooded with messages.
Kid from 90s that grew up with the advent of the internet. It’s somewhat similar, but still very managed and controlled. Internet in the 90s was absolutely wild. Obscure corners, all sorts of content, free, open and you could spend days and days exploring it and still couldn’t enough of it. All of it was unique, driven by passions, curiosities, desires, people wanting to express themselves.
I sort of dislike what it has become and how everything is monetized. But I suppose, this is the cost of progress and innovation in the rest of the areas of our lives.
Late night internet chats, dropping the A/S/L and expecting the person to reply honestly. Those were the days.
Yes. We could make our own little shitty website on a free server like angelfire, with a traffic ticker so we knew if anyone had been there. Mine was a stupid little parody website my friends and I set up for keeping track of acronyms and abbreviations we saw online. Didn’t realize we had something there, and could have been Urban Dictionary lol.
Yeah I gotta say, “Webrings are back!” was not on my 2023 bingo card. But I’m not hating it by a longshot! It feels like a nice hybrid of the lil Angelfire/Geocities sites and yahoogroups/onelist. Usually fandom communities were hand in hand with those two platform elements, and I’ve missed that tight-knit community feeling.
Echoing this, it’s a very similar feeling! We also had guestbooks for people to leave comments and these things called webrings that would let you explore more similar sites. I remember running a small fansite and forum. It was an interesting time.
Ah yes guestbooks. My first foray into actual programming (rather than just HTML) was when I wanted to add a guestbook to my silly little website, followed a tutorial, found out tutorial was borked and went looking for advice on what was going wrong (multiple things). By the time my guestbook worked properly I knew PHP(4 or 5) reasonably well.
I think I have felt that way for one thing or another since 98.
Internet itself blew my mind, playing age of empires with my buddy with just one phone call, then finding about mIRC, peer 2 peer, torrents, stuff i cant remember, and video games getting better graphics at ever increasing steps. I still get a little shocked when I see PS2 games listed as retro games.And now they are making advances way more often in quantum computing.
I just remembered the first time I heard about a terabyte and the story that “the only place that can hold that ammount of massive storage are the vatican servers” (whatever those may be) lol.pretty much yeah, but with IRC
I’m trying to help the Lemmy.world chat community take off. Come introduce yourself!
This whole debacle will end up being a MBA case study in a few years on how not to work with your user community.
Exactly. The effects are not going to be instant though. I still use Reddit everyday. But they have lost my trust. I am now actively looking for other places and other networks. Hopefully Lemmy ends up being the answer. If it does, then my use of Reddit will drop sharply in the next month or two. Who knows, maybe then reddits board of directors will realize that Spez just killed their golden goose.
I still use Reddit everyday. But they have lost my trust. I am now actively looking for other places and other networks.
Same here. My reddit account is now only for a select few communities that haven’t made much of a foothold in federated space yet here on Lemmy. But my reddit interaction is down, and I’m honestly considering deleting my account there given the total shitshow going on.
I don’t think it’s a place I want to go back to, especially given how hostile the place can be overall. Arguing is engagement. Lemmy has been a breath of fresh air in terms of civil and engaging discussion. It’s actually like what reddit used to be over a decade ago.
I still make about one post a day on reddit in communities I like, in a reply that says “there’s nowhere else to turn to” and make sure to mention the fediverse every time. Which is far less than I post on here, where it’s about 50/50 circlejerk about reddit, and the other half is actually engaging with (or even creating) content.
This is my new home. It’s small, but I like it that way. I mean, you can actually find out all communities on an instance, so I actually find a lot more relevant communities here than on reddit. They still gotta grow though.
But i have a feeling it will probably show that it doesn’t matter.
Reddit CEO Diggs in heels as outrage engulfs website
FTFY
I’m definitely not going to download the official reddit app, I’m done with it for good. Lemmy’s mobile website is good enough for now, hoping that the Apollo developer decides to make a Lemmy client eventually
Why not jerboa? Works decently well… EDIT: nevermind, forgot it’s not on iOS and mlem isn’t great yet
In case you missed it: if you have Lemmy open in the browser, use the share button and Add to Home Screen. Feels and looks like an app that way.
Haha yeah it’s supposed to but in my experience it feels and looks like a buggy webpage without a refresh button. I still have the shortcut on my home screen, I figure once server issues have been worked out then I won’t need the refresh button as often.
TIL!
Shit, let’s go back to digg, why not? Is it still there?
checks digg.com
Oh shit, nevermind, here is good!
jerboa exists and works very well
Isn’t that only on android? I’m on iPhone
Mlem on iOS
It’s in beta. And Testflight is full. Should be out on July first tho. The Homescreen solution is fine for now.
Yeah Mlem is very buggy and missing a lot of big stuff right now. That being said, folks should use it to at minimum provide feedback so it can improve.
So is Jerboa on Android. These apps are quite new and need some time to evolve.
You can also put Lemmy on your homescreen as a PWA.
It’s in beta. And Testflight is full. Should be out on July first tho. The Homescreen solution is fine for now.
I also will never install the official reddit app. I’m trying to move away from reddit altogether for various reasons.
I created this account this morning and am writing this message on Jerboa (got it off fdroid). So far so good!
Fellow Jerboa user here - it’s basic but it has everything needed. Currently I’m in a remote French Polynesian island and it’s perfectly responsive.
Bonjour from Canada!
Bonjour! En tant qu’Américain non francophone, être ici me donne envie de ne pas avoir appris le latin au lycée.
J’ai appris le français au lycée. Je ne me souviens pas de grand-chose par contre. Google a traduit cela pour moi, mais ça a l’air correct.
Oui, il semble que je me sois fait un ami qui utilise également Google Traduction pour communiquer en français. C’est l’essence de ce qu’on appelle la lingua Franka. Quelle chance j’ai rencontré celui qui est connu sous le nom de SkullRot. Bonne journée à vous et bonne chance dans vos efforts.
Yeah I’m on jerboah from the Google app store. Seems to work fine
“Protest and dissent is important,” Huffman said. “The problem with this one is it’s not going to change anything because we made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on.”
Protest is important, just not against us.
/c/Leopardsatemyface ?
They have the right to do what they like.
Redditors should delete that label, and simply set up shop in their garden shed instead.
“This is a business decision, not like all those other times people protested companies.”
Someone may tell this guy that making (bad) business decisions is probably the #1 reason why businesses fail
This, combined with some other news stories explicitly mentioning Lemmy as an alternative, is a very positive thing for the community here.
Removed by mod
Well, that’s a great way to get investers. 😂 I read this article this morning, and it makes me sad.
deleted by creator
Here’s hoping John Oliver uses that in his upcoming bit… 🤩
I don’t think he’s that deep into internet culture but it would be funny as hell.
He’s got a whole team to keep tabs on things exactly like this. I’m man, FFS, this is HuffPo we’re talking about here. It doesn’t take a rabbit hole of arcane internet lore to exhume Digg. Let me have my dream. 😁
Holy shit that would have been priceless.
Now Spez is sucking off Musk in the media talking about how Twitter’s “cost cutting measures” were genius, firing most of your staff is never a genius move.
Makes me wonder what morale is like for the employees at Reddit. Working for a CEO that admires Musk’s takeover of Twitter would have me running for the door.
Lol. Isn’t that moron getting evicted? Yeah, “genius” my ass
Landlords HATE this one weird trick!
Twitter is still thriving? O_o
Back channel asking Musk to buy Reddit for $40B
Can I just say thank you to all of the journalists protesting against reddit with the tools they have available? Most articles I’ve seen are pro reddit community or barely neutral. Dozens of news sites are involved, from left and right news sites, to finance magazines, to explainers like Reuters and NPR. Multiple articles a day are keeping this at the forefront of everyone’s mind - especially spez and potential investors - as well as ensuring the whole thing stays transparent. I’ve seen a few articles that link directly to lemmy and kbin signups too 😊
I agree. Honestly, I think these types of (front page!) articles are the only thing that CEOs pay attention to these days. I have no skin in the game anymore, since I deleted my (long-standing) account on Reddit and completely switched to Lemmy. However, it’s nice to see people take a stand against greed and, from what I’m seeing in the last day or so, hypocrisy…
Get on squabble as well.
to me lemmy has taken a big dip in activity the last couple days, particularly in the more niche communities. hopefully it grows back over time, but I’m not that optimistic.
I would expect the big jump to come when people who are barely engaged with this whole thing try to open Apollo or Sync or whatever in a few weeks, seeing it doesn’t work, then spending 5 minutes trying to use the official app before getting frustrated and googling “reddit alternative”
then they’ll come to Lemmy and be just as frustrated with a confusing new architecture, buggy website, and apps in their infancy.
Maybe, but I think people overstate this. Reddit’s desktop UI and official app still confuse and upset me. Frankly the on-boarding to Lemmy is easier if anything
I found it as an alternative and haven’t had any issues on a mobile chromium browser. Sign up was fairly easy too. Maybe that’s because I was directed to a federated offshoot with less logins.
To me both lemmy and kbin got a very important push, it showed the potential of the fediverse to sustain communities.
The dip in activity is something expected, the platform is still in its infancy and will get more refined with time, eventually being able to retain non tech-savvy users.I’m literally not tech savvy at all, and I’m here. Lol.
Yeah I don’t understand why people are complaining so much. I really wouldn’t describe myself as tech savvy at all, I can only Google my way out of tech issues sometimes. But I went here, picked an instance I liked, signed up, downloaded Jerboa and I’m here and done.
I honestly couldn’t even tell you how I made my account, which tells me it was super easy, because if it frustrated me I would remember it, lol. I needed my husband’s help with a printer issue, and literally all I needed to do was open the settings and select “fit to paper” 😂 and I couldn’t figure out how to change the paper thickness on the printer at work to use cardstock. But I’ve been on Jerboa for a few days now, and while I’m still discovering some features, it’s not hard or frustrating, and most everyone in the community is friendly and helpful.
It boils down to the fact people generally don’t want change, but they don’t want Reddit.
Some people complaining about Lemmy want it to be “Reddit 2.0” where Reddit 2.0 is the same and better than Reddit without realising that work has to be put in to make it better, and that better inherently means it cannot be the same. They want their cake and to eat too.
As for me, I’d prefer to think of Lemmy/kbin/fediverse as the next step, not the same as Reddit, but serving a similar purpose. And because we’re just getting started, as a developer I know there’s going to be more kinks that need to be worked out, so I stick with them.
I’m not expecting Reddit to fully disappear either - many people just won’t care, they want to be where the people are, and currently Reddit is where the people are. They won’t move untill there’s enough people, and by then the platform should have already stabilised. You’ll know when Lemmy hits the mainstream when it’s mentioned regularly in passing in news articles as a source, not like this “what is Lemmy or what is the fediverse” article barrage were getting currently.
Everyone knows, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, is that spez is a moron, and is doomed as CEO.
I might be a little bit cynical but I suspect at least some of them are only writing about it because Reddit was the source of all of their stories and they don’t want to have to do actual journalism again…
Where will the gaming sites get their Skyrim article material now lmao
I really appreciate The Verge’s coverage on this. I guess someone there really have an axe to grind on Spez or Reddit lol.
