this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
47 points (98.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

25937 readers
986 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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...

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Is it important that Reddit suffers? For me the important thing is that lemmy flourishes and has good oc.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Right? Ignore them, have fun here. No reason to give any thought to them.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

This is some fomo type shit.... forget about your ex, invest in your current!!!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I agree but I still want Reddit to burn 😂. But I'm an asshole so that's okay.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hear, hear!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just have a look at the content there, it dropped a lot in quality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As someone who only ever browsed all, I see no difference.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I suspect their July user metrics will see a hit, but even if all Lemmy activity came directly out of Reddits numbers they would still be a top 10 website in the US by traffic.

You can't have "the downfall of reddit" as a goal, you can only hope for the proliferation of a better experience, hopefully here. Lemmy not dying is preferred over reddit dying.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Maybe some are waiting for Boost or other 3rd party apps but there will likely not be a super big number coming over. Apparently doom scrolling is preferred for a large swath of Gen Zers

Need to focus on improving these communities and being active/creative especially in building niche communities on Lemmy.

I see so many communities created with just a link or two posted weekly by community creator. That kind of activity gives Lemmy a bad look.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I didn't leave to make the service worse.

The service got worse, and so I left.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The subreddits I watched seem to be as busy as they always were, and the corresponding communities on Lemmy are mostly devoid of activity. Frustratingly, I'm still getting reddit links from my friend, which I leave unopened. Maybe Reddit took a hit in terms of users and post quality, but I'm growing increasingly skeptical that a mass migration is going to happen.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I really don't care about reddit anymore. I pretty happy with Lemmy right now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No idea, and I don't care. What matters for me is that there are enough people on Lemmy to keep it interesting.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Personally I came over bc the app I used stopped working (boost). Lemmy seems to have the same content I used reddit for:

  • US politics headlines
  • Memes
  • Niche communities

I don't plan on going back to reddit unless it's via Boost. Fediverse is better anyway

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know if I'd call it a mass exodus, and I don't know that it directly has anything to do with Lemmy, but there's been a noticeable dip in quality. Fewer posts across many of the front page subreddits, fewer votes, more bot posts, more low effort posts, less discussion in comment sections, lots of deleted comments and accounts... overall there just seems to be a dip in quality.

I was going to delete, but decided to stick around for a while first, to see how things pan out, and I've got to say the mobile site is even worse than expected. I get constant pop ups trying to direct me to download the app, then when I say no the website will auto reload, often sending me back to the top of the page. It's difficult to find and respond to anyone who replies to your comments, and sometimes if you sort by top: today it won't even show any posts. Just... blank. Clicking on a post opens it as a tab that is more like a popup, and closing it resets where you were on the page.

I could keep going but I think that pretty much summarizes what I've noticed. Don't know that it's directly related to a Lemmy "exodus," and I'm still finding my way around here so I can't really say, but reddit as we knew it seems pretty dead.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

People don't like change, and most have extremely short memories. I doubt Reddit will see any major loss and will back to business as usual very soon if they are not already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This didn't happen quickly with Digg either. This won't be as substantially decimating to the platform as the Digg exodus was, because reddit is WAY bigger than Digg was.

I'd say it took me about 3-4 years to fully migrate away from Digg to reddit, and that process was very similar to today, where there were a ton of platforms gaining steam (even while it was pretty clear that reddit was where the party went).

I think reddit's quality of content will deteriorate over time, and the moderation will suffer. It is going to die a death of 1000 paper cuts. The API change was just reddit saying "Hey, come stab us with your paper knives!"

idk. Reddit in 15 years will probably look a lot like newspapers do today. Kind of a joke, but somehow still standing.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, of course not. If you're using Lemmy as a "protest" instead of thinking that it's a better platform, it's totally ineffectual and you'll go back to using Reddit sooner or later. Personally, I think that the fediverse is a more compelling idea than the traditional internet, so I'm sticking with Lemmy for a bit in one form or another.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Fuck Reddit. I’m here now and it’s great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't think any platform collapses overnight. What you have to do is do is make something "better" and engage in a campaign of attrition to get people to move over. Produce content that other visitors see and like. Submit links to that content to aggregators (e.g. Slashdot / Fark etc.). Even start submitting links on Reddit that lead over to Lemmy and so on.

Make Lemmy feel as normal as Reddit. People will get used to the interface, the quirks and perhaps stay. Every person who stays is one less for Reddit. Now "better" is doing some heavy lifting since Lemmy has some advantages (ad free, federated) and some disadvantages (inline media & limits, sign up confusion, app). The disadvantages need to be addressed and the advantages need to be made stronger.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Lemmy got a large bump over the last few weeks, but with how many issues there are on Lemmy in terms of the servers going down and such, I wouldn't be surprised if the daily number of visitors here levels off and possibly even starts to decrease as users get tired of this.

Heck, just to post this comment took about 2 hours to on and off servers showing as being down. I can understand some growing pains as the site grows, but many users won't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Steve Huffman has helped me cut down on my time on social media, and even screentime in general. Because I left the platform that I used so much because of one stupid decision he made.

I can now start my sand grain collection thanks to him.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›