First of all, thank you @ljdawson@lemmy.world for pursuing Sync for Lemmy. It’s honestly given me so much hope for Fediverse adoption to actually happen. I do have one thought to share with you to help with success:
Come July 1st pretty much all Sync users are going to open the app due to muscle memory or due to a lack of awareness of what’s happening.
If they see “this app doesn’t work any more” or similar, they are simply going to delete the app and will likely go to the official Reddit app. The opportunity to engage them will be gone.
However, you can use it as a huge marketing opportunity if on that day it says something to the effect of:
- Sync for Reddit doesn’t work any more due to the API changes…
- However Sync for Lemmy is in development
- Here’s how you try Lemmy (and/or kbin) in the mean time…
- Keep Sync for Reddit on your phone to receive a notification when Sync for Lemmy is launched
Even if they don’t try Lemmy right away, if they get a notification from the old app saying the new one is ready they will possibly try it at that time (but you need to convince them to keep the old app on their phone)
But the clock is ticking - after July 1st the chance of engaging someone in this way is very low as they’ll likely uninstall the old app. IMO getting this teed up is of a higher priority than developing the minimal-viable-product for the new app.
You likely already have this in the works, but wanted to throw it out there incase you hadn’t planned on it already. Thanks again for doing this - I am so hopeful and excited for a viable alternative to Reddit and Sync could be such a huge piece in making it possible!
Originally posted to /r/syncforlemmy but figured I should put my money where my mouth is and post here as well. After all, this is the future!
For sure, we are still chronically starved of users. Need to play our cards right in the next few months.
In addition to OP’s idea, all of us who still have our reddit accounts should be going over there and letting people know about Lemmy in a helpful way, like ASAP. It’s really easy now because all the threads are about reddit sucking and how there is no alternative. But in a few weeks when reddit forgets, it’s going to be viewed more as spam to constantly keep bringing up Lemmy on reddit.
If we can make people aware of Lemmy before the app shutdown, it’s much more likely that they decide to actually try Sync for Lemmy.
Oh I’ve been trying to, hopefully got a few converts so far. Trying to tiptoe the line between informative and pushy since “horses water and drinking bla bla”
Yeah, good point. I just to go super enthusiastic and positive with it usually. The main problem is I don’t feel like I’m getting enough eyes on my comments. The migration/alternative subreddits are weirdly quiet.
Honestly the best way to pitch it IMO. It’s been such a great experience here I almost feel compelled to proselytize the glory of the fediverse, but if I can’t keep it in my pants a bit I’m certain to put people off the message.
I’ve noticed that too the few times I’ve checked. I wonder how many people there are still regularly tying to do outreach. I’ve had some luck on the selfhosted sub, of course you’d expect that lot would be more eager to jump on a self-hostable platform anyway. Piracy subs too for obvious reasons lol
Yeah, piracy has so much activity for obvious reasons. And they constantly get kicked out and stuff and piracy is an area that does require lot of self learning to do safely, so probably the most undeterred.
But, I follow lot of games, tech, and pc related stuff mainly and pretty much only sub that bothered to actually do anything was /r/privacyguides. Which is the instance I am on. So when these tech/pc/game subs you think would more embrace new tech aren’t making any efforts to leave I think it’s a sign most people including the mods don’t actually care about leaving. They actually care way less than most non tech related subs.
Very true, their adaptability to ever changing conditions makes them a great demographic for early adoption.
I think people interested in guarding their privacy are another great demographic for switching platforms too as they’ve already been primed for the discomfort of dropping the easy option such as a service that mines every interaction for advertising data for something that may be slightly less intuitive to use, but keeps their privacy much more intact.
It’s an unfortunate situation, but most people are pretty lazy (myself included) and aren’t really interested in exploring options outside their comfort zone, and that’s fine I suppose. I feel like most people just consume reddit content and aren’t really interested in the community aspect of it, and completely uninterested in contributing to it, so if it’s still giving them the ability to mindlessly scroll and consume than that’s good enough for them. Once that starts to disappear, maybe they’ll become more receptive to switching platforms, but no way of telling at this point.
Yeah the Piracy community seems like it could become an anchor on this platform, which I would love.
Pirates are generally aligned against capitalism and corporatism, but they are not all in the same boat, politically speaking.
Such a diverse yet similar group could prove very helpful in charting a middle course amongst some of the more opinionated instances.
Arggh!
Oh yeah, I think this will be a great platform for the Piracy minded amongst us. Not beholden to a central authority, censorship resistant, no legal liability encompassing the network of discrete nodes. Lots of upsides.
I hope this will be the case as well. Those that want to Pirate aren’t going to be sticking around long on instances whose owners are defederating the pirate horde I think.
Word. Glad you’re part of my instance and looking forward to watching how this develops together.
But you didn’t laugh at my pirate puns 😭
Same same
Lol somehow all of those puns completely slipped past me, idk how I even missed that
Got a hearty chuckle out of me on the second read through matey. Hmm maybe more of a cackle tbh
Yeah I was reaching for that joke a bit 😅
Best way is just to express excitement that development of reddit app for Android is continuing on a different platform, since many people in /r/Android use third party apps probably due to the demographic that even bothers to subscribe to /r/Android to begin with. All other subs might be more casual users who use stuff like reddit redesigned and don’t use adblockers, so this whole confusing cumbersome process is not something they care about. They just go API? What? Third party apps? Uh I don’t use that I don’t care. Ads? I’m used to it.
Apple is one that has nothing really that feels organic. There’s no like hey Apollo for Lemmy is coming out. And Apollo is kind of the only app that Apple users even care about compared to Android where there’s so many loved Reddit third party apps. Apple users are very used to subscriptions being sold on Apps too, so having to pay to remove ads and using official apps isn’t as big of a concern.
Plus, I don’t know that it even really matters going over to reddit to try to mention anything until the app comes out and it turns out to streamline the whole process of signing up and subscribing to different communities outside your instance as opposed to doing the weird !syncforlemmy@lemmy.world entry then wait for it to show up.
State of lemmy right now is something that people who weren’t deterred by the research they had to do ended up using. Apps have an opportunity to make it so none of that is necessary, but until then there is no selling point. People who wanted to move have moved, and those that didn’t stayed. Ones who are upset are shitposting, but I doubt they actually want to leave reddit since shitposting is also a sign they still want to stay on Reddit and wishing Reddit would roll back changes.
All good points, I largely agree. I still think it’s important to spread the word on reddit right now and use our momentum.
I think the biggest obstacle is the mods. I think very few actually gave a serious thought to leaving reddit, and some using reddit to communicate to each other when reddit can read everything instead of moving to stuff like slack, matrix, or even discord was bizarre. It was like a union discussing plans while corporate is invited to sit in.
To me it is very apparent the mods don’t want to leave reddit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many who are holding polls on whether to continue black oust or go back to operations are hoping redditors vote to reopen so they can save face and say it was a community decision and they had no choice and that they are remaining on reddit for the community. Like just looking at some mod profiles they are still contributing to subreddits that are functioning normally, so even their contributions indicate they want things back to normal since they are providing the type of content in line with what reddit wants.
And obviously the people left are people who just want to use reddit, so when mods don’t give indications of wanting to move the remaining community with be very hostile. I feel like people who have made the decision to leave have had their commenting and contributions to the reddit site just drop significantly, and or completely left. So to me it seems difficult unless the mods get on board with actual alternatives.
Totally agree with all of this. They’ve been bowing down to reddit for so long they can’t truly comprehend leaving. And reddit is fully aware of that fact, which is why they’re not even pretending to negotiate.
You’re spitting facts
I realized if the mods wanted to increase visibility to alternatives they could restrict /r/modcoord and then put in an announcement and link to the lemmy or kbin instance where the reddit mods proceed to do the rest of their rants. That would be an opportunity to get people who love drama to check out lemmy or kbin to lurk, and people who want to participate whether negative or positive would also then have to end up making an account to talk back to the mods.
That’s another good idea, but I fear many of the mods simply don’t care enough. But I do, and I can give you this meager reward
I’ve noticed myself and others getting downvoted for mentioning lemmy. Other posts mentioning discord or whatever just get ignored.
I don’t think it helps to go looking for arguments though. Some people will stay on Reddit. Some will leave. Que sera, sera.
I had a better than expected, but not completely groundbreaking post that you can use as a template. It’s for a local subreddit, which are understandably small and generally will just go where the other site content is. Remember that users are not going to quit reddit because of a single sub, they need all their subs or a good number of them to be replicated here before it becomes viable. That work is being done, but I think the best thing you can do is plant the seed of having an alternative community for people who want to leave. If reddit becomes a ghost town, the people downvoting will just move by themselves. Change is hard.