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.
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Depending on the domain, Reddit content might get outdated quite fast (definitely true for tech content).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).
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.
instance blocking
What’s that?
The ability to block a whole instance instead of each community as we can know
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.
Ditto. This has been great
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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.
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.
How many users moved away from Lemmy.world to another instance?
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.
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.
100%, no RIF no Reddit. I still hope for LIF to be a thing, especially after seeing old.lemmy.world
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 🙃
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.
I didn’t leave to make the service worse.
The service got worse, and so I left.
But why not both? 😂
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.
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.
What major subs did close? Not saying it’s not so, just curious.
/r/pics didn’t close, but probably doesn’t get the clicks it did before.
/r/bestof seems to only make a daily protest post.
I’ve stopped visiting so much, so I don’t know a lot, but those two seem significant.
Removed by mod
At time of posting, there are still 1922 subreddits that are private
https://reddark.untone.uk/
Or the 855 subreddits that have chosen to move to other platforms on sub.rehab
But hey, if you don’t like it here, that’s fine, you don’t have to be here. If you’re that bored that you’re choosing to spend time flaming in a social media that you don’t enjoy, might I suggest some hobbies like video games, picking up an instrument, or underwater basket weaving.
CheersUnderwater… basket weaving? (Wondering if this is a technique I hadn’t heard of for softening materials or suggesting one compromise their lung function 🤣)
Why not both?
Yeah, it’s usually done to soften the material, but I’m not responsible for anyone that misunderstands and incidentally drowns themselves 🙃
This place is fueled by pure compium.
If you’re going to rail at someone, at least check for typos first.
Gotem!
This is some fomo type shit… forget about your ex, invest in your current!!!
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
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’m torn on this. Because a sort of injustice happened. Do we really just ignore enshitification, try to educate others, reflect and keep an eye on the site while trying to understand what happened and not repeat old mistakes? Or just move on with our lives and hope that the injustices sort themselves out?
I kinda want to watch reddit burn 🙊
Highway pile up that you KNOW you’re not supposed to slow down for and look at because that contributes to the problem but on the other hand we’re only human so of course I wait a hot second before accelerating back to highway speed.
If you want justice, then you move on and forget Reddit. Otherwise you’re just keeping it afloat and creating free promotion for it.
When you’re visiting it. Not by discussing it, the downfall, and the lessons learned. I don’t think we have to pretend that we don’t care or that it never happened. I just personally don’t go on the site any more to not feed them traffic.
Do you know how negative exposure is also fuelling Apple brand recognition? Yeah, you want it dead - ignore it.
What injustice? Reddit is “their” website and they can do what they want with it, we have always only been allowed to use it for their enrichment. The farmer is always very nice to his animals until its time to cash out.
Lemmy is hopefully the fix, in that it doesnt need to turn a profit, and we’re not locked in.
As the child of immigrants, I can tell you that running off and living your life is absolutely a viable strategy, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to underssand what happened so that the same thing doesn’t happen to my family again.
All that said, it is a website. The planet is broiling around us and the people responsible are not just free, but living like kings.
Couldn’t agree more.
Honestly, we’re better off if all the idiots stay at reddit.
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
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.
