Was there even a mass exodus? I largely avoid Reddit now, but I do kind of doubt that they’ve been hurt in any meaningful way by all the protests and people leaving…
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Migration goes beyond sheer numbers. The 3.8k users are probably the one that were the most attached to initial Reddit, hence people who would contribute the more. I would rather be with those 3.8k users than the millions of people okay with staying on Reddit despite Spez’s decisions.
I hope that once Lemmy is a bit more polished (instance blocking, account migration, hot filtering working etc.), we will gradually see a second wave of arrivals.
I doubt it, and if it does get successful, there’s unfortunately lots of ways it can be taken down by lawsuits if the big players want to.
It’s currently impossible to follow a GDPR information delete request for example, because you can’t delete the info from other instances.
And if any user uploads copyrighted material, the instance admin is liable.
Same with illegal material.For these reasons, the Fediverse is incredibly vulnerable to a constant death and creation of instances which will make creating a collection of valuable info (like on reddit) impossible.
But I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
But if that were the case, wouldn’t GDPR already be used to take down TOR or torrents or any other p2p tech? All it would take is someone’s personal information being on them, right? (I’m really asking I have no idea)
TOR nodes and torrenters are taken down or charged all the time.
The fediverse itself can’t be taken down, but if you take down instance admins often enough, you force users to keep making new accounts and new communities. Something that prevents establishing a real social network.Then you adapt to that threat with user exports or built in auto migration methods.
The distributed nature makes it much harder to down the fediverse with legal claims than it does reddit/twitter/whatever already. Just being hosted in different countries makes these claims a stunning pain in the ass, as many countries do not require any compliance with the DMCA.
Sure if you want to play in a sandbox alone and have nothing but privacy and lqbgt content (nothing against them in the least bit).
That’s a good point. Right now if I send something out, even if the company I submitted it to deletes it from their servers, doesn’t mean other users will delete copies of the data I want to have deleted. Only the party I submitted it to will have to delete it.
Just take a screenshot of a tweet or a LinkedIn profile or whatever someone posts here in the Fediverse, anyone can capture a copy of it.
It’s currently impossible to follow a GDPR information delete request for example, because you can’t delete the info from other instances.
What makes it impossible? Why would any given instance maintainer be responsible for the data on someone else’s instance? Would it not fall on the GDPR requester to make that request of each individual instance?
The requester can have no idea where his data ended up. That’s why the admin who receives the data is responsible for who he gives it to. And he also has to forward the delete request to whoever he gave it to.
Otherwise, customers of an online service that sells their data would have to request deletion from everyone who bought it, which is impossible cause they don’t know who that is.
The regulation was written to give people more control over their data, but it has no provision for something like federation, and it also doesn’t allow for a “do whatever you want with my data” box the users could check.The regulation was written to give private users control over what big corporations can do with their data. It doesn’t fit for non-commercial (but also not private) use by a loose group of admins. But legally, it still applies.
So then if someone requests that Gmail delete all their email data, is Google then responsible for making sure any emails sent out from it’s server to another is also deleted from those external servers?
Just in case you guys are wondering, there’s probably dozens of us enjoying the fuck out of this conversation. Thank you for asking questions I wouldn’t think of asking. On behalf of all three of us lurking.
Lol yeah this is great.
I really want to hear the answer to this
I don’t have the answer but I think of it like this.
Email is essentially a direct conversation between you and someone in the same room but you may extend (cc) to those people in the house. There is an implicit “I am including you in the conversation”
Lemmy on the other hand is more akin to talking to someone in a crowded bar but the conversation is recorded and anyone over the world has the ability to listen to the conversation at any given time.
Apples and oranges.
Interesting perspective, but then cannot we consider that Lemmy users are aware that they are including all of the Fediverse in their conversation? That way Lemmy instances could be treated in the same way email providers are
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations. When you send an email, you are not making it public.
Essentially yes, it’s called the Right to Erasure or the Right to be Forgotten. If the user is in a country that adheres to GDPR and the company controlling the data operates in a country that also uses GDPR, then that right applies.
The only reason Google/Gmail wouldnt delete (or wouldn’t be able to delete) some of your data would be if they had a lawful or legitimate basis for holding onto it.
I can’t think of a reason Google would give for hanging on to your data but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but they’d have to notify you of that reason as part of their response to your request.
Unless these instances are showing ads and selling data, I’m pretty sure they’re protected from the law. Not only that but if you’re not hosting in the EU that law doesn’t apply to you.
Making money is not a requirement for the GDPR to apply. Neither is being based or hosting in the EU.
In fact, the example the EU provides on their site is of a company that offers free services (and is based outside of the EU):
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_enThe problem here is how does that work? If I host something in the USA, how is someone going to bring a lawsuit towards me if I am also in the USA?
Asking honest questions here. As this just sounds like a lot of chest thumping from the EU.
“Provided your company doesn’t specifically target its services at individuals in the EU, it is not subject to the rules of the GDPR.”
Just say, we don’t provide or target EU individuals and you’re free.
Yeah, but if you don’t have any assets in the EU for them to seize, and if you’re not present in the bloc yourself it doesn’t matter for shit. They have no jurisdiction or ability to enforce unless you really, really want to operate inside of their market at scale.
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations.
Yes, but “the controller” is one instance, and it’s certainly easy for one instance to allow a user to be forgotten. You can purge the user from the instance. Then they are forgotten, as far as the instance is concerned.
As an example, just because someone makes a GDPR request on YouTube to delete a video, does not require Google to actually remove the video from the whole internet. There are plenty of websites that archive content which are unaffected by that GDPR request. It’s the exact same thing with different Lemmy instances, just because you ask lemm.ee to delete your content does not mean that lemmy.world needs to delete your content.
The GPDR doesn’t require Lemmy to remove personal data from the entire internet. But when a Lemmy instance gives data to other Lemmy instance, there are legal responsibilities.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data.
==========
Maybe this is open to interpretation, but I feel that the same Federation protocol that federates out my personal data (my posts and comments), should also federate out my delete requests. I’m unsure why this would be controversial.
This is a big issue of eu regulations. They are needed, but don’t account for non profit initiatives, in practice favoring big players
I’m never to sure about GDPR. The spirit of the law is that any identifiable information has to indeed be removed.
However, does a Lemmy username really fit that definition? If John Doe has all of his Lemmy content under CoolNick89, I’m not sure GDPR applies.
Emails, especially if they contain first and last name, are a different story, but those would only be known by the host instance.
GDPR applies to user names and even IP adresses, according to current case law.
Interesting, thanks. I’ll research this further.
IP addresses make more sense, because they can be used to be cross-checked with your ISP to know who you are.
If you don’t tell anyone your username and use a VPN, there is no way for people to guess your Lemmy username
The law specifically names “online identifier”.
The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics, which expresses the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, commercial, cultural or social identity of these natural persons. In practice, these also include all data which are or can be assigned to a person in any kind of way. For example, the telephone, credit card or personnel number of a person, account data, number plate, appearance, customer number or address are all personal data.
Thanks for the definition, and that brings us to the next question: I know your identifier, [email protected]. However, does that make you identifiable by me, even indirectly? I have no way to identify you using that information.
I always think that they meant online identifier such as [email protected], where the identifier indeed directly allows to identify the person.
The CCPA (USA version) and GDPR (EU) both specify Personal Data, not Personally Identifiable Information. So the contents of my posts are my personal data, even if my username doesn’t identify to a real person. If I want my personal data removed from Lemmy, the GDPR allows for me to request it to be deleted.
Lemmy is still in the early stages. I’m not asking for changes to be made right away, or even this year. But I do feel that my personal data should be under my control. Lemmy should be programmed to federate out the the deletion of all my personal data, if I make such a request.
Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data
(*) Note the CCPA has a ton of exceptions, and only really applies to the larger social media sites.
Interesting. To be honest, I could see such a feature coming down the line, in a few months let’s say.
However, the question that it bring is, what to do with archive.is or wayback machine? Are those also non-compliant for archiving the pages every so often?
Well, the upside and the downside of GDPR is that if you’re not a member of the EU, you can basically just tell them to go fuck themselves because they have little to no actual power to impact you since you’re not within their jurisdiction.
Makes me wonder if the fediverse shouldn’t be individually instanced. Like Each persons phone/browser is their own individual “instance”. Maybe a central hub/series of hubs (like instances as they are now maybe) that act like dns servers to point everyone around. No content is hosted on them, they just tell everyone’s apps where to look to the other apps for posts.
I have no idea, I’m a moron and I don’t know how the internet actually works. I’m guessing this is a problem at scale.
You’re not a moron, you were slightly right with dns. You’re idea is actually quite sound and it’s something I’m interested in also. Basically p2p social networking.
We used to be able to stream 1080p via torrent stream p2p. We could do it.
Or those 3.8k users were on Apollo, RIF etc that didn’t bring any revenue to Reddit regardless.
They could care less about these users leaving, there are plenty of new angsty teenagers to take their place
If they’re the same that generated significantly more content, then it’s still a loss for reddit
It doesn’t really matter, though. The fact that I’m here and not using reddit has netted a huge improvement in my happiness.
To be honest, I don’t really care if more reddit users come here. They can keep their bad takes and dick-swinging contests on reddit.
A very good point. To be honest, if they are happy with that new demographic, and we are happy here, everyone’s happy
Unfortunately, as one of those 3.8k daily users, I’m still using Reddit mostly. Lemmy has a long way to go before I drop Reddit all the way.
That’s fine, really. There is no rush, the only people setting deadlines here were Reddit, and they still have to actually do something about killing access to 3rd parties (I know a lot of people still use 3rd party apps with Revanced keys)
The next wave won’t come until Lemmy post are indexed by google and ranking up on the first page. Until then, searching for obscure things will still land on old Reddit posts.
Depending on the domain, Reddit content might get outdated quite fast (definitely true for tech content).
Even creative fields such as fantheories and such will probably emerge on Lemmy once new shows are released (Futurama could be a good example).
instance blocking
What’s that?
The ability to block a whole instance instead of each community as we can know
The 3.8k users are probably the one that were the most attached to initial Reddit, hence people who would contribute the more.
I had 2 million karma and would hit the frontpage of All almost weekly. I stopped using Reddit once I came here.
Mass migration or not, I’m happier to be here with all of you.
I have to admit, when I came here I was hoping this would be a mass migration, but these days I think Lemmy is already great even without the bulk of Reddit’s user base joining. Easier to participate in conversions, less trolling, less aggression, fewer bots…
Not saying I don’t want Lemmy to grow more, but it’s a fantastic place already.
yeah people here are generally nicer. I do wish there more more active niche communities though
less trolling, less agression
less popcorn </3
But it’s manageable.
I agree. And if I’m being honest, I don’t want 100 million people from reddit suddenly appearing here. Same for Mastodon from Twitter. That would be awful.
Please make them stay where they are.
Ditto. This has been great
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Nice, mr. Fapper McFapper.
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I’m happier to be here with you. •̀ ͜ﻌ•́
I think the problem is, Lemmy’s greatest strength (Fediverse) is also the thing that’s going to hold back a mass migration at this point in time. Onboarding with Reddit is a breeze. You make an account, it asks you what your interests are and location based communities and you’re off to the races. Every community on reddit is immediately available to interact with.
When I came to lemmy I almost gave up on my initial onboarding and I’m a pretty tech savvy guy. I didn’t know where to go to start. There’s all these different lemmy sites and I didn’t know if they were the same thing or different and if I was signing up to the right one. Account creation failed initially without giving an error message (I’ll chalk that one up to just a bug). There didn’t seem to be any NSFW communities until I figured out the instance thing. You’re told you can use your account across instances but when you go to another instance via it’s domain you can’t interact with it, you have to get to another instance through your instance which is confusing as a newcomer. Any one of these issues is a falling off point for a less inclined visitor.
I’m not saying the fediverse thing is bad but the unfortunate byproduct of it is a difficult experience for newcomers, especially when you compare it to Reddit. I’m hoping growth in the community will bring in talent to solve for this initial experience or possibly apps which can handle all of this more seamlessly.
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I wonder if federated instances are something that can just become cultural knowledge over time, like any other technical piece of software. To a degree using reddit is like that to newcomers with it’s unique thread style and “independently” moderated subs. Lemmy just took it to another level.
Very good point. It will be generational maybe too. As younger people enter the Lemmy pool, they may not find it to be that unfriendly since it will be what they are used to.
I had pretty much the same experience migrating from Reddit to Lemmy and I still don’t entirely understand how this thing works.
I’m still trying to figure out if I need to make an account on each Lemmy instance to reserve my username, since this is already my second account after fmhy.ml stopped working.
You joined almost a month back, those were rough times. Today is much better.
Today I would just tell people
- Go to lemmy.world (even old.lemmy.world if they like that interface)
- Lurk for a while
- When you want to create an account, do it in LW. You will be able to move it later on.
That’s pretty much it.
Exactly. Back then federation wasn’t working either, apps were miles behind and servers were slow.
I wish some of the subs I frequented the most were a bit more active here, but I guess it’s a bit chicken and egg. Need to interact more with Lemmy ourselves to motivate others to.
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Doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t a mass mitigation, the %1 who did the modding and content creation were the loudest about the changes and most have started to move to other platforms. It’s very obvious now on reddit that the quality of the posts have started to tank.
yeah im sorry but lemmy.world in its ENTIRETY is basically the size of a small niche subreddit.
How many users moved away from Lemmy.world to another instance?
Mind you that an active user is “anyone who makes a post”, and not readers nor subscribers, which are the metrics reddit uses.
With that said, yeah, no, there was no migration.
Is it important that Reddit suffers? For me the important thing is that lemmy flourishes and has good oc.
I support this point of view, but at the same time I want the status quo to be disrupted and the internet to change, I’m not a fan of allowing corporations to fall into complacency when they hold so much power.
Right? Ignore them, have fun here. No reason to give any thought to them.
That’s the spirit!
This is what I wish more lemmings would grasp. I’ve commented before how there’s this disillusionment that reddit actually died when a bunch of people left. It didn’t. The sooner everyone can stop being in denial about that, the better.
The situation is really more akin to an abusive ex and the people that left realizing that they’re better off without them. You’re in a better place. Stop talking about, focusing on the drama that your ex brought and just embrace your newer better environment.
Millions of people are in that situation and don’t leave because they’ve been manipulated, they’re scared, and in this case addicted. My brother in law switched from Apollo to the official app and hates it, complains every day, and says reddit sucks now…but won’t leave.
Yeah, but like… I have a gf to have someone to converse with. This new gf of mine basically doesn’t speak so I’m just sitting here watching the wallpapers in silence, whereas my ex, while crazy, was very talkative and entertaining.
Ok but your ex getting hooked on heroin and ending up in a prison morgue won’t make your new gf any more interesting.
Yeah but if my current gf is just being silent I’m like… girl why are we even dating? I’ll keep dating her but damn. It’s not a great relationship and I miss the crazy hoe.
If you miss her so bad, you can just go back. It’s okay, really, I guess most people still go to both website. It’s a website after all, don’t see too much into it.
On my side I’m just reminded everytime I have to use RedReader to access Reddit on my phone that they really don’t want me there.
The thing is I can’t. Because if I do I’ll most likely inadvertently break up with my new gf, and I really do want her to succeed in life and for us to get married at some point. I’ll give her some more time.
I basically never used Reddit on my phone and on the computer it’s always old.reddit + RES. Also a reason why Lemmy feels a bit gnnnnh. Navigating without keyboard shortcuts is a paaaain.
Did you have a look at this? https://github.com/vmavromatis/Lemmy-keyboard-navigation
Also this community might interest you: https://sh.itjust.works/c/plugins
That’s a great way to think of it.
To use your analogy of the abusive ex… would you want someone to just never talk about the abusive ex? Never process the trauma? That’s what a lot of people are doing. Noticing that the abusive ex is imploding into a death spiral is kind of validating of your decision to leave. It’s part of the process. There’s no need to shame people for it.
The post is a week old, but regardless, people have had their time to grieve and process. Your friends and family were there for you, they let you vent, they helped you make the transition away from your partner…but they’re gone. It’s time to move on. Let it go. You’re stuck in denial while most people have made it all the way to acceptance. Everyone is ready for you to stfu about your ex.
You’re also reading too much into the analogy. This isn’t really an ex, it’s a link aggregating website and online forum. Just like nobody cared if you deleted your myspace, your Facebook, digg, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, etc…nobody really cares that you deleted your reddit account.
They’ve had their time according to you but maybe people can make their own decisions? Also maybe just chill about it? You don’t have to listen, you don’t have to be here for any of the conversations.
Also you’ve created an entire community of family and friends with backstories so you can then tell me all these imaginary people want me to “stfu”, but apparently I’m the one “reading too much into the analogy”. I think you’re the one that just wants me to “stfu” but you don’t want to say it directly.
I think you’re the one that just wants me to “stfu” but you don’t want to say it directly.
Yes, that would be great. Stfu. Please. Thank you.
You don’t have to listen, you don’t have to be here for any of the conversations.
You seem to have missed the extreme irony in saying this whole replying to a sub comment a week after it was posted by someone who agreed with me.
If you want me to stfu you can just block me, or just stop saying things directy to me that are blatantly wrong. Up to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And I don’t see what the age of the thread or the fact the poster agreed with you - although they don’t exactly, that’s another thing you’re wrong about - has to do with anything. I’m not here complaining about you talking, I’m pointing out how what you’re saying is wrong. You’re the one literally saying you want people to “stfu”. I’m glad you’ve at least owned it now.
It’s petty, but I do hope Reddit suffers. Spez and co has profited off user generated content, free moderation of their communities for a decade plus. Forcing users into the Reddit app that is garbage compared to other 3rd party apps, not to mention the privacy concerns with the app which rivals Facebook.
Quote from Spez in 2016. In May, Steve Huffman said in an interview at the TNW Conference that, unlike Facebook, which “only knows what [its users are] willing to declare publicly”, Reddit knows its users’ “dark secrets”
If Reddit collapses or at the very least their IPO collapses and we can prevent another sociopath from being a billionaire I’ll be very happy with the situation.
It can be seen as a statistic for lemmy’s success
No idea, and I don’t care. What matters for me is that there are enough people on Lemmy to keep it interesting.
word
Just wanted to say that’s a real cool username
How in the bloody hell are those characters in a username?!
I fucking love it, my guy!
Exactly. We don’t need Reddit to fail, we just need Lemmy (or Kbin, I don’t discriminate) to succeed.
This is a much healthier mindset, and I completely support this. I don’t actually want to see a mass migration to Lemmy because it would just instantly replicate a lot of the same issues that Reddit had. Slower, organic, and well scaled growth is wholly preferable to a massive swarm of users. I also think the general quality of users on Lemmy is currently about 10,000% higher than on Reddit, and I would - selfishly - like to see it stay that way.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but as soon as RIF died I was gone. Was on it for over 10 years, and the only way I would view reddit content. Reddit’s ui is cancer.
100%, no RIF no Reddit. I still hope for LIF to be a thing, especially after seeing old.lemmy.world
Finally took the plunge and scrubbed and deleted my reddit account. I’m officially all in on fediverse/Lemmy.
Honestly, as attached as I was to the RIF style after using it for a decade like OP, I have to say that I think the design of Connect is really damn good. Especially when you consider how early in the game it is right now for the Fediverse as a whole. The more modern design, features, and generally slick look to everything got me hooked immediately. Honestly, the only thing I don’t really like about Connect is the App logo on my phone 🙃
This was me for Boost. Had an account for awhile before I aurally used it because I wasn’t aware of third party apps and found the official one or web page a chore to go through. Then went with Boost after trying a few and I was on Reddit daily. Mostly a lurker. Already some of the Lemmy apps are better than the official reddit app and Boost is coming some time as well.
Strangely, RiF works again for browsing
I don’t even see it in the playstore anymore ¯\(ツ)/¯
Although can’t sign in to comment/upvote and no NSFW.
Same but if you Google some technical advice on reddit it will open in RiF. Which still works great for that purpose.
Same for me, but the Joey app instead
I went with sync!
Ljdawson is doing a sync for Lemmy!
Can’t come soon enough
Honestly, I don’t really care. I like it here more than reddit and if it stays like it is, awesome.
I have no desire to see reddit succeed or fail, I simply found a place I fit in better.
Just have a look at the content there, it dropped a lot in quality.
As someone who only ever browsed all, I see no difference.
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I’ve noticed the same. It’s possible that a lot of content creators left. It’s also possible that you and I have gotten used to not having the lowest common denominator stream of consciousness from the Reddit hive mind firehosed in our faces.
I was gonna say. I don’t think r/all has changed much at all, but having actual quality content on Lemmy is really eye-opening as to what a trash heap r/all is.
As a browser, I notice that Lemmy seems much more dynamic and engaging. It’s small, weird and there appear to be all sorts of things going on in the corners which I didn’t notice so much on reddit (they were probably there, but got overlooked die to sheer volume of content). I like the experience so far, reminds me of the early days of exploring the web.
The OC to porn ratio has shifted in favor of porn.
The real metric is the OC to bot ratio
Is that a problem?
Only if you don’t want to see porn
Reddit probably got it’s initial boost from porn that got it to where it is today
I lost all patience with low effort posts. I try to call out anyone asking easily google-able questions or clear karma baiting. It took a couple days of this to realize I needed take a long break from it. I’m debating keeping my account solely to get my karma up a bit more and trying to sell it, not sure yet.
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For a bunch of the subs I frequented the mods just left. Some of those died, some are being taken over by right-wing extremists, some are still chugging along.
Interesting
I didn’t leave to make the service worse.
The service got worse, and so I left.
Anyone that expected Lemmy to instantly get as big as reddit overnight were naive. Overall I think only a small fraction went away but reddit is clearly using tactics like mass inviting to group chats and reopening places to boost activity.
But as they do it quality of posts is dropping i’ve found. Personely i think it will take a long time but reddit is really digging its own grave as competition will appear.
Heh, digging. I see what you did there
If we’re perfectly honest - No.
Reddit has over 53 some odd million users. Million with an M. Lemmy has gained, at most, upwards of just thousands. To call it a ‘mass exodus’ is really overselling it.
It’s going to take a fairly long time, for Lemmy to even scratch 100k even. I’m on both Reddit and Lemmy. Lemmy, for a more positive experience. Reddit, because the numbers are just there.
This crisis has given Lemmy enough users to be a vibrant, viable alternative with the software and apps undergoing rapid development. This means the next time that reddit tries to pull some shit, there will be somewhere for people to go, unlike this time. Lemmy just wasn’t really ready for prime time.
I think you are correct. Lemmy is really just gearing up at the moment, but can’t handle the volume to compete with reddit.
The increase of instances, user guides, communities and third party apps are necessary building stones of a federated reddit alternative of size.
God can you imagine the shit show if millions had tried to come at once this last time? We’d accidently ddos the fediverse to the stone age.
Don’t forget the censorship of the power mods. That’s going to be fun here. Already you have swiss cheese in content depending on how tight your mods sphincter is.
This is it. Reddit will keep pulling dumb shit that drives users away and hurts engagement for short term profits. Having viable and stable alternatives gives people a place to go so they don’t feel trapped.
For comparison, Mastodon got 2.5 Million users and then promptly lost all of them. Since then it has been slowly gaining back and last numbers had them at 1.7 Million already.
This X move by Musk might push them back to 2 million and beyond. The platform has matured.
Lemmy needs a lot of work still, but give it time.
Lemmy has almost half a million accounts ( 400k ) with over 1.5 million posts. lemmy.world grew by ~30k new accounts in June.
Others grew by single digit thousands, so the migration seems to be about ~50k new users to Lemmy.
That’s not trivial, Reddit had those kind of numbers in like 2007. Give it time.
Want this the case when Reddit was tiny and Digg was huge too?
The landscape was different. Digg was in 2004. Reddit in 2005. They both came in a time where social media was at it’s infancy and it was anyone’s game to make it big. Whereas today, there are already established social media sites and the best any alternative social media outlet can do anymore, is absorb some numbers and try to prove to be the better alternative. It’s a lot about thinking outside the box and figuring what a platform can do that the other can’t.
So what’s the solution to blow this joint and start a new paradigm? Television killed radio. Blogs and streaming killed television. Current social media killed blogs. If the fediverse isn’t the solution, then what’s going to kill and replace current 2010s era social media? And don’t say short form video, because that was cool for maybe a decade before the big corpos started pushing it and it was no longer cool.
Corpos ruin everything
Decentralized social media seems like the logical next step. And all major platforms seem to either have users going that way (Reddit, Twitter) or are themselves going that way (Mark Fuckerberg’s bullshit)
I sure hope you’re right. Decentralization won’t solve all the issues of course, and will cause its own problems, but it will hopefully be at least a little better the the chain of walled gardens and outrage- and clickbait-driven cesspool that the internet is right now.
Generally I agree with you, but let me steelman a different argument. It feels to me like we are in the early stages of another digital renaissance like the one that happened during the rise of Reddit & Facebook. I remember that time well as I was just starting high school, and Reddit opened an entirely new world for me after leaving Digg. It felt like where all the cool kids hung out if you will. There was this wealth of information, discussion, political discourse, and it scratched the itch that ultimately formed a lot of who I am today.
It has always been the visionaries who are then backed by the early adopters that form internet culture. Lemmy is, again, where the cool kids (and technically inclined) are choosing to hang out. There is an exclusivity to it, and that feeling of breaking from the herd. That is an exciting and addicting feeling for content creators and users alike. This is all happening as major players like Meta & Twitter are warring with each other over users, and while Reddit allowed itself to succumb to the narcissistic ambitions of one moron (fuck u/spez) who never cared about the spirit of what used to make Reddit truly great.
I think a lot of us (me included) got complacent, and bogged down in the feeling that there would never be a time where the internet felt new, and alive again. It is a failure of imagination really, and I hope this can be one shot across the bow to the major power structures behind the previous generation of social media that blind corporatism rarely if ever can capture the magic or lightning in a bottle that has been the bedrock of culture in the information age. Only time will tell how this project will evolve and change or if it can become something truly great that stands the test of time. But I, for one, am sincerely hoping that it does…just as much for myself as for all of you!
As long as we don’t let ourselves get complacent again this time. I’m not sure what I’d do if even the Fediverse eventually goes the same way.
Lemmy has definitely “scratched” 100k https://the-federation.info/platform/73
Several major subs have closed, they’re forced to campaign to keep mods, a significant amount of content generators have left. Even though it’s been only a couple weeks, they’ve slid on the global index of visited sites. They’ve lost 3-4% of 1.7 billion views in weeks. That’s 10’s of millions of ads not delivered. That alone is several million dollars lost on a site trying to be profitable. This doesn’t include people on the fence, people currently unaffected because their app didn’t die until this week, or people just watching the drama until it’s boring again. Also, Reddit depends heavily on free labor to succeed, the bulk of the community that is leaving is their free labor pool. They don’t have the cash to pay moderators for their time and they just removed the tools that let those people do their work.
This is some fomo type shit… forget about your ex, invest in your current!!!
Their user numbers are available with a web search. Reddit useage dipped towards end of June but has mostly leveled out.
Quite a few mods left, which has had a larger impact than an equal number of general users leaving would. The niche topic sub I was involved in went from four mods to one half-hearted mod. The quality of posts has dropped. Almost every comment thread contains complaints. Reports are piled up.
Most surprising to me when I peeked at the sub this weekend was the amount of borderline-incel desperation and negativity. The sub is for a hobby that while slightly male majority, we had plenty of women contributing with minimal problems. Not anymore. If I were a woman looking at that sub for the first time, I would probably block it. It is so depressing and angry now, I barely recognize it.
I have to wonder how much of Reddit’s traffic is bots and lurkers though.
Post quality is a bigger indicator, and that does seem to be dropping. This is why Reddit banning 3rd party apps was such a big deal. It doesn’t matter if 99% of your users use the official app if 99% of the content posted to the side is posted by the 1% that don’t.
As someone who was around for the digg migration, it didn’t drop off overnight (hell digg.com is still around), but they gradually bled content until everyone was on Reddit. Lemmy right now is very reminiscent of early Reddit.
Post quality is a bigger indicator, and that does seem to be dropping
That’s the thing - it’s hard to track this. If anything it’ll be a slow decline
It’s hard to track this
Not at all. I can already see a decline in the number of Reddit TTS videos I see on my feed and when I do, they’re mostly years old
Easy to see anecdotally, hard to define quantitatively. Reddit is never going to publicize that sort of thing as a metric: “ratio of bot activity to subscribed member activity” would be great but we’ll never see those numbers.
TTS?
Text to speech. There are Tiktok accounts that just scrape popular text posts from Reddit and read them out through text to speech over a video of something like Minecraft parkour or Subway Surfers.
Agreed and not just content creators but active users in general. I bet someone like me who now on average posts 10 messages a day to Lemmy was more valuable to reddit than 10 lurkers.
Do you mind sharing the sub? I’m curious to take a look.
Has the community moved elsewhere, be it Lemmy/Kbin or Discord?
It’s disheartening to see this kind of communities collapse
Honestly I like Lemmy more and more everyday. It’s quality vs quantity when it comes to posts and the users.
The real question is why anyone cares? Move on and just enjoy Lemmy. Forget about reddit.
I feel all those posts about reddit looking for mods for various communities is a good indicator. They might not have lost quantity all that much, but a very small portion of quality kept a lot of reddit interesting and running smoothly. A lot of that has either just dropped entirely engaging or migrated.
I doubt everyone would move. Some people simply take it as a sign to move on and do other things with their limited time on this little planet.
I see it as a signs of problems to come. Being a Mod sucks, the only reason most hung around was that they were passionate for the subs they moderated. Replacing moderators at first might be easy but I believe, with time, the turnover rate will increase linearly thus causing a massive drop in quality content as time progress. Thus causing a feed back loop of less good users, less good content and more shit users, more shit content, culminating in the slow and painful death Reddit.
