I just saw this post over on r/modcoord which is basically a massive list of subreddits participating in the blackout protest. If I’m being honest I haven’t seen this much anger and coordinated frustration since the era right before the digg exodus.
Assuming more and more subreddits join in, it’s going to send a pretty massive message to the users who interact with a blacked out subreddit. Then I’m trying to imagine what happens if after a massive coordinated blackout, Reddit continue on the current trajectory. Is Lemmy even prepared to handle the amount of potential incoming traffic that API closure could lead to? It’s absolutely bonkers to me that the Reddit team might just stay the course…
I do have to wonder if Reddit knows something we don’t… This is… wayyy too much to ignore. I assume they’ve done analysis of the worse cases and mass user departure. The only reason I can assume they’re not backing down is due to the very high upfront costs of Reddit. Less users = less costs which theoretically means more profit. You have a very good point, and its something all Lemmy server owners need to be prepared for, which is a huge influx of users joining on the blackouts, even then, it may not be enough, unintentional DDOS attacks are still DDOS attacks. This is a golden opportunity of a lifetime for Lemmy, but I fear with even a 10th of Reddits current userbase, Lemmy admins won’t be able to keep up… I feel for all the developers and admins that make Lemmy possible, and I really hope it goes well for everyone involved. Donate to server admins and the main project if you have a few dollars spare, or if anyone is comfortable with coding I’m sure they need some devs.
Reddit knows something we do know: that Lemmy is still young and still has some serious issues with scaling. By pulling the plug and dumping that many people on Lemmy now, all those people will be met with an error page instead of a viable Reddit alternative, driving them back to Reddit.
I can only hope it doesn’t actually play out like this…
This was my initial experience. Tried Lemmy, it wouldn’t let me sign up. Back to reddit. Tried again a day later (yesterday) on a different instance and it worked. People who aren’t so persistent might not try again though 🤷♂️
I saw one of the Lemmy devs say they’re a little unprepared cause they’re working on a pretty big performance overhaul still.
Timing is critical with these kind of migrations and if a lot of people flock to Lemmy just to have it croak at the new load it could really turn people off of Lemmy before they can even try it
I’m hoping for the best, but fearing the worst as far as Reddit goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the math and just don’t care.
Reddit knows they have sudo access, and that ultimately the upset users are not that large, just fairly vocal, and won’t miss them. They’re probably planning to let this play out and know they can force the subs open again with new moderators if it comes to it. I think they’re banking on most users merely being annoyed that their favorite subs are closed for a day and then forgetting all about it.
if they are it’s a good approach: look no further than climate protests for how people get when they are even mildly inconvenienced even though it’s the literal existence of the planet we’re talking about there. a lot of ordinary people love protest–as long as it literally never affects them in any way, and they never have to see it or hear about it. they’re probably not going to like it when it’s something this… banal.
they know that they can circumvent moderators’ lockdown and make subreddits public at will and sack the mods who don’t agree with the change, and they’ll still have tons of people willing become a moderator for the sense of pride and accomplishment that you get from ruling your tiny little castle.
I’ve got my popcorn ready for whatever happens down there.
popcorn tastes good.
Me too, here we go!