I don’t mean to be pessimistic, bit since most subreddits are only going dark for a couple days, the site will basically be back to normal soon. I wonder how many users here are only here because of temporary outrage and not because they actually prefer Lemmy. I’m curious about people’s outlook on this situation.

  • No idea - but I actually think the Fediverse concept maps to Reddit way better than it has other social networks so I could see some iteration of this really catching on over time.

    For something like Twitter, the whole value proposition is “one big universal conversation” and the federated stuff gets in the way of that a little bit, but Reddit has always been a federation of communities (who occasionally fight, join together, cross post, etc) - that maps really well to this stuff.

  • I have no intention of installing the official Reddit app. I’ve used Apollo for years and I’ll leave once it’s no longer an option. The way Reddit treated the Apollo developer is inexcusable.

    I managed to quit Twitter, I’m certain I can quit Reddit too.

  • I can guarantee I won’t be going back to reddit on mobile if they go ahead with the API changes. I may occasionally use reddit on desktop but 99% of my reddit usage was on mobile via Sync.

    Once they get rid of old.reddit (which they inevitably will) that will force my hand and I’ll have to fully move to Lemmy. As luck would have it, the developer of Sync is considering re-purposing it to run on Lemmy which would be perfect for me.

  • Probably a good chunk, I don’t mean to be pessimistic either but that’s how it usually works on “big” movements.

    Some people follow the flow because they’re caught into the enthusiasm of the moment while not being actually convinced about what they’re doing, those people are highly likely to go back when things are back to normal (tho in my opinion reddit will never be “normal” again).

    How many they are is impossible to tell.

    The blackout is only the first wave, there will be another one IMO when 3rd party apps actually shutdown (June 30th), after that, things will settle and population on lemmy will lower, that’s not a bad thing IMO, it doesn’t do any good to have people here that don’t actually want to be here.

    As for me, since I joined I’m doing my best to be involved in lemmy communities with the specific purpose of not missing reddit anymore and not care anymore when they’ll break old.reddit (they will like their doing with the API).

    I already feel at home here, I’m not going drastic as to nuke my reddit account or anything, tho I’ll most probably make a GDPR request and leave for good.

  • I’m probably going to start using Reddit again when the blackout ends and keep using it until the end of the month, but once RIF stops working I don’t see myself going back. The way I see it, the last couple of days have been a nice stress-test period for Lemmy, but the real exodus will start in July.

      • I’d say it’s the fact that even as time has gone on and reddit has gotten more casual users there is still a much higher percentage of “hardcore” users on Reddit versus other social media. Or at the very least the hardcore users have a lot more influence then on other social medias, since they’re the ones more likely to be posting content lots of people see and moderating content. As well as those users being a lot more likely to be willing to learn a new more complicated platform and more likely to be directly affected by 3rd part apps shutting down. This all combined means that the hardcore users the platform relies on are more likely to leave to places like here and without them will make the website worse and cause more casual users to leave.

  • Unfortunately with the enshittification of almost the entire internet due to a few monoliths controlling almost all traffic and the concept of the hedonic treadmill, the new shitty normal will become acceptable to most people who are not really thinking about it. Not much anyone can do about that.

    In my case and for many others, there’s a breaking point. It’s further along than we probably would like to think it is, but for me it’s being jerked over to an inferior, broken, and cluttered interface designed to maximize the amount of paid BS that I have to see while still having to tolerate the consequences of the centrist “all bigots we can sell to are welcome” mentality of Reddit ownership. It’s become too much for me to want to continue to participate regularly while alternatives like this exist which haven’t yet been ruined yet.

    • This is exactly it for me. I have been wanting to leave Reddit for years, but there has never been a solid alternative. It remains to be seen if content will propagate enough on Lemmy but this recent nonsense from Reddit is driving everyone to find alternatives and may be enough to get the ball rolling.

  • Whatever happens, once RIF is offline I won’t have the muscle memory and habit of opening it. And RIF was the only way I access Reddit, it’s a pain in the ass using Reddit on a mobile browser and their app sucks. So I’m just gonna stop using Reddit daily. I’ll still wander in from Google when looking stuff up, but I won’t be on it daily anymore.

  • Personally, I like it here and will probably stick around. I hope the servers can scale, and that new communities grow.

    I’ll still wind up looking at Reddit for meme content until it turns up here. There’s a lack of goofy pointless shit here currently.

  • I don’t think the kind of people who are willing to try out some geeky experiment of a social network are totally dependent on Reddit culture.

    Exodus from one network to another (or to nowhere) is a thing that’s happened in the past, and if anything, people aren’t willing to go back once they finally take the effort.

    Tho I’m guessing lots of people have multiple accounts such as alts for r34, and may keep using those until Reddit finally shuts off all nsfw.

    • This is still a new frontier of site conglomeration we have no data for. If anything we have contradicting data to previous instances of this occurring because megasites have yet to fail since the rise of Facebook.

      • There have been MySpace -> FB, Digg -> Reddit, Viber -> WhatsApp, Hotmail -> Gmail, BlackBerry -> iPhone. Neither was 100% conversion, some kept their relevancy in certain markets, but those were quite some waves.

        Also, Tumblr completely kicked the bucket with its users dispersing, and while OF managed to save itself by backtracking, people were already migrating to other services.

        It may be true that the likes of FB, Twitter and Reddit are too big to fail right now, but people also keep finding alternatives.

        So, we’ll see.

        • Tumblr still seems like just as popular as it ever was tbh. They rolled back the nsfw ban enough that you can post lewds but not full scale porn and people seem happy with it.

          Yes we’ve had migrations but again nothing significant post 2010. Even digg was nothing like modern web megasites.

  • As much as I want fediverse to become the norm, the thing is that it doesn’t really matter if users switch over - content creators have to switch over. It’s the same reason why Mastodon isn’t very relevant, very few large names actually moved from Twitter.

    • I’d think, there is a slight difference of content creators in reddit, vs twitter. In twitter we tend to follow people and the more famous or important they are, the more followers they have. Reddit or Lemmy is focused on linking, noone is necessarily creating content here, but linking to outside sources. In beginning of reddit, I remember most of posts were links, and later on self posts became a thing. Still lots of the posts are pointed to somewhere outside. (hence actually reddit being greedy, to claim they own the content they have in their website, they don’t)

      Anyway, my bottom line, so a person that is making the content, doesn’t need to be here to be seen. Anyone posting a link and any community gathering enough subscribers to start a discussion over a topic is going to be enough to keep us going.

      Now some good thing for us here is, even a small community with 5 people talking over a topic, but all of them participating, is enough to keep a community going. I’d say, it is even better than a multi million people community, that our posts/comments, most likely goes unseen.

      The only downside is some communities, we need a big presence to have a discussion, and those will be the most difficult to migirate. For example a gaming or tech or a news community of 10 people will still discuss (mostly) the same thing a community of 1000s people would discuss. And the help they provide might be the same. (like how can I beat this game that we all have played)

      The problem would be ask advice, or a local community of a city or a country of 10 people will be much limited in topics or the help they can provide, than one of 1000s or more. Hence those might stay in reddit. like AskDoctors, RelationshipAdvice, AskMen, …

      For me also hobby communities, here would be better, since it will make it easier to be seen/ discuss a topic than a larger community of reddit. On the other hand if mods of those hobby communities of reddit decide to migirate here, would cause all their members to move as well. (hobbies like simracing, VR gaming, 3d printing, …). For these also discord is not a bad place. For example in a discord server of a 3d printing youtube channel, I get much better interaction and help, than the reddit r/3dprinting.

    • To be fair, there’s been a decent amount of content, and the rate of it is getting noticeably higher in the past week I’ve been on here as time goes on.

      June 30th is a hard stop date for mobile usage on reddit, tho. I will not down load their app, nor will I start paying a monthly subscription for relay. I’ll use old.redditon browser for some local subs every once in awhile, but it’s not like I really have much of a choice if I don’t want to use the official app. I imagine I’m not alone in that, and I’d guess a lot of the old guard die hards feel the same.

      I mean look, I’ve used reddit the same way for about a decade now - shoehorning me into an environment that is multitudes worse just isn’t going to happen. Not to mention - moderating and overall quality is going to nosedive. People are going to go back, but it’s pretty clear at this point that reddit is bleeding to death. Things are going to be rough on the new tech for a year, but it’ll get there. It’s not the first time this has happened

  • I used RiF exclusively for reddit, I tried to see how the app was but no, just absolute garbage for me.

    It’s ok though, I’ve been in between places before I want to give this places a try although I’m still confused as to how they are connected.

    • Agreed.

      Old.reddit is OK on desktop. But on a mobile browser, it is constantly harassing you to the official app, which is absolutely terrible.

      When Relay stops working, I don’t see myself going back to reddit much at all.