So, how do we think this ends?
It can go one of a few ways.
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Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
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A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.
No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.
I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".
Squabbles seems to have not hit user critical mass. Tildes looks like it's doing well.
The Lemmy + Kbin fediverse seems to be taking off like a rocket and has the best overall chance IMO of becoming the home for the best parts of Reddit's community.
I want to add, that my wife has been a "scab" throughout all this and has been active on reddit, trying to show me memes and such.
The content she's been showing me has been stale, old stuff I saw back in 2020. Same recycled jokes, same memes. Reddit is in a mode of hard cope right now and I doubt it gets better if we don't return.
My wife was on Reddit for about 9 years when she got hooked on TikTok about a year ago. In her words, Reddit had become boring. She still checks the local community sub, but that is about it. Just worth pointing out that Reddit is facing pressure from two ends. A lot of the more casual users, and the popular content creators, are on TikTok and other video centric platforms. Reddit can't compete there, as much as they try. The dedicated users they did have, those interested in community and discussion, well Reddit just angered much of that group.
Prior to the blackout, I was angry with Reddit. Since the blackout I've taken a step back and realized how much garbage Reddit is filled with (ads, shitposts, promoted content, etc), and how much I want to find something better. Before the blackout I was planning to quit Reddit out of anger. Now I plan to quit because, as my wife said, Reddit is boring and I'm excited to explore what comes next.
Seems like grounds for a divorce.
I kid of course! My girlfriend is staying off Reddit, but she’s definitely missing it and hasn’t found a good substitute for her mix of subreddits yet. It’s especially rough since twitter’s gone downhill, and that was her other main scrollable content.
NTA divorce immediately
For the first 12 hrs or so it was just a bunch of as reddit posts. Like 20 pages of it and a few political
Isn't this developed by one person, isn't open source and forbids NSFW in general? That is never going to go well.
No mobile app and no
ActivityPubso it's a very specialised. Additionally I don't like the UI at all and I've read this in multiple threads here as well.Both are show the same content as they are federated so it's up to who prefers what really. I prefer Lemmy, but anything is fine.
re Squabbles: yes, hard agree.
re Tildes: yes, also hard agree. The invitation-only method of growing the community also is draconian and it's going to hit all the scaling problems a traditional site does.
These and others are why you're finding me with you here in the fediverse. I am with you mi beratna.
I've been here for a week and it already feels like home!
Two days and same!
While I’m enjoying my time here and I’m honestly shocked with the amount of engagement so far, I just don’t see the “fedaverse” ever gaining any mainstream traction. It’s unintuitive and the barrier of entry is way too high. Even googling “Lemmy” doesn’t bring up useful results.
Something like squabbles has a better chance for mainstream appeal, but it would need a miracle as it’s only one duder
That being said, I’ll still be here!
Honestly, the lack of mainstream appeal is part of why I like it.
Just remember - as content is generated SEO is naturally going to improve, which will start to bring people into kbin/lemmy via Google.
As people spend time here marketing types will start to notice. Shortly thereafter we will see bots. To me, how we as a community handle those bots will be the real "does this experiment survive" test.
Absolutely. It's only a matter of time before someone sees the value in the information/data that is here and begin indexing the entire fediverse/site and working on SEO for it.
There are countless examples of indexers for GitHub for example, if you do any searching for questions related to coding. Pretty much every issue and repo has been indexed.
When reddit first popped up, posts from it came up in search results very rarely, now it's pretty much at the top of many searches, since it's a bastion of knowledge and community groups.
It's really only a matter of time if things do go well here.
Me too. No large corporations guiding the communities and more open discussions can be had without fear of being banned.
Not sure about that. I saw a post today about lemmy.ml's admin, who's also one of the main lemmy developers, banning people who said something bad about China for "orientalism", then doubling down in it in the comments. Apparently mod logs for any instance can be accessed by any mod of any other instance. Otherwise I wouldn't have even known. Not sure how I feel about using a service developed by someone so toxic, who's also in charge of a big chunk of user accounts.
If you dont like the moderation here you can use a different instances. Thats the main reason why Lemmy has federation. And our job is to build this software, not be perfect moderators who somehow make everyone happy.
And if I want to participate in a community that's hosted on lemmy.ml I'm still under his jurisdiction. Besides, someone this banhappy being in charge of the development doesn't fill me with much confidence. Nothing stops them from implementing some hidden change that prevents sharing something they don't like.
yeah when you get used to reddit sinophobia (which is a product of their "policy" department that's aligned with the atlantic council and other quasi-government think tanks) anything else feels like oppression.
It's not helped by the fact that it has the same name as a famous musician. Googling for Lemmy just brings him up — the Fediverse doesn't show up unless you scroll down a ways, if it even shows on the front page at all. Same with Tildes and Squabbles, both being already existing words. Branding is important for recognizability, and "Reddit" has the advantage of being a unique name.
In my view this isn't the end of Reddit, but it is the beginning of the end. This situation will probably pass, but the lemmy devs and instance owners have already gotten useful feedback about how to handle situations like this, and what kinds of things would help lemmy and the fediverse grow. The next time something like this happens (and there will be a next time) they'll be just that little bit more ready.
Although for me specifically, I don't actually care too much if Reddit dies. I'm happy as long as there's a community here. The best thing that seems to be coming out of this situation so far is that many subreddits are now getting lemmy community analogs for people to move to.
I want reddit to die. It had its day, and what we have now is a poor reflection on what it was and what it's supposed to be. Change is a good thing, it leads to improvement and making things better.
I think we'll see a temporary "return to normalcy" after the protest finishes and most subs come back online. But come June 30 and the end of third-party apps, we'll see a bunch of users come back to Lemmy/Kbin again.
In a way, this seems like the best way of driving things. The protest has raised awareness and got a ton of development work going, and then there's going to be a respite giving instances time to prepare themselves for the second surge.
Knowing corporate, reddit is playing good cop/bad cop with app devs right now. Apollo and RIF had huge targets on their backs for being popular, profitable, and developers who aren't afraid to speak out.
meanwhile over at baconreader there has been radio silence from the devs, largely because i think they are cutting a deal with reddit for a much better rate in return for knuckling under. pricing terms of course will be under a NDA
I’m honestly done with Reddit and I really hope enough people find a new home outside of it when this is all said and done. Hanging out on here has made me realize how toxic and mentally draining Reddit actually is.
I think Reddit will continue to grow into a normie cesspool of children and mentality I’ll folks and will eventually go the way of FB and Twitter where the interesting and saine folks will dig out new communities in some other place to be determined
I couldn’t agree more with your opinion on Reddit. Over the past 10 years it has become so much more toxic and unwelcoming. It is hivemind culture and it is only going to get worse over time. The reporting on the Boston bombings should have been writing on the walls and that was a good while ago. Looking at it now, I just can’t believe how depressing it was just doom scrolling on that app daily.
I've been over reddit for years now.. But there was no good replacement. Lemmy fills that void.
According to Reddit’s internal memo, they expect this to blow over Wednesday with most subreddits returning, and they reported no drop in revenue so far. So they’re not likely to give in yet.
What needs to happen is that the blackout needs to continue indefinitely, and more communities need to start migrating to lemmy/kbin. If we move the content here, people will move too.
I think the mod tools are what will blow reddit up ultimately. It's why I'm here.
The third party apps are a hard self own, but I don't use reddit because of third party apps. I use third party apps because the reddit official app is... Special. If they'd forced me to sue their app I would be annoyed, but still interested in reddit.
If you destroy the key tools that enable volunteer moderators to manage communities, the community will die. Example: two of my favorite subs were legaladvice, and bestoflegaladvice. Both required extensive moderating to function (and even then, it was prone to shit shows particularly at LA). No mod tools would make it unmoderatable... Which turns you into Voat pretty fast.
So, I don't think reddit dies July 1. I think reddit spends the next year turning into Twitter, and lemmy has to run as fast as it can to scale.
Hopefully, this is my last post on lemmy talking about reddit, but I doubt I'm that lucky.
I mean, if the quality of content on the site currently is any indication of how things will look like going forward, I think maybe ditching reddit will be easier than I thought. it's wayyyyyyy more reactionary than usual, though I think there's some 4chan-originated pot-stirring going on. still though, it's not a pleasant place to be right now.
A return to normality is impossible since there will be no more third party apps. It may seem like things are as they were besides that, but the progressive move by Reddit to ignore Reddit's core value proposition (link aggregation and commenting) will continue, only to be replaced by attention towards monetisation-centric features no one asked for like NFTs & followers (which the third party apps ignored, gee I wonder why).
Reddit has a cancer. You can either stay in denial and experience the terminal death in slow, painful motion, or you can just move on now.
If it's like mastodon, most people will get bored and move back to reddit. Lemmy will grow marginally, and be more ready for the next stress test.
There will be other reddit outrages after the ipo, and lemmy will be more ready for migration. Repeat. Hopefully there's a critical mass one day, but there's no guarantee.
Ends? Its already over. You, me, and many who have replied here have moved on. Reddit isn't going anywhere but its just another site many of us will slowly see as irrelevant or uninteresting as the weeks and months tick by. For a short while in my past, DeviantArt was crazy cool. Reddit had a good run. Is Lemmy the crazy cool thing now? I dunno but I'm certainly enjoying it for the moment.
Personally, I’m happy where things are now. I came over to Lemmy because of Reddit Third Party App drama, and now I’m staying because I realized that I’m spending much less time on my phone using the less popular Lemmy.
Not gonna lie I think I'm actually spending more time on Lemmy than Reddit, participating and trying to get discussions going, making content, etc. Just to try and get it active lol
I think no matter what Reddit won’t be exactly the same. The smaller the community the bigger the impact.
I’ve just resigned myself to needing to make a big change.
Same. I'm done just being a content/ad zombie for them
It's going to end with a relatively small reddit exodus with most returning to reddit in a few weeks. People are lazy, and will concede to the API changes just like they all did with Twitter. Remember when Musk took over and made all those dramatic changes heavily monetizing the platform? Everyone was crying how Twitter will die and that they were all quitting. Well guess what? Almost all of them went back to Twitter anyway and now use the official app just like Musk wanted. Reddit will be no different sadly.
Reddit is different from Twitter. You stay in Twitter for famous accounts, not for the communities like Reddit. If enough of people (especially mods and power users) actually move to another place, Reddit will slowly die. The community-based approach of the fediverses I think works well with immigrants Redditors
Reddit was never going to just shut down overnight, but it's more or less done for me (barring some sudden change with the API stuff, but even then I'd make an effort to use it less). I'll keep my account around and might occasionally go to it to look up specific things or visit more niche communities that don't have much of a presence here or on other alternatives yet, but I'm done with just generally browsing reddit or providing any content for them. I'm enjoying it here and hope the boost in activity allows for continued growth and filling out of communities for more specific topics.
I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.
So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.
I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.
Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!
It would not crash and burn but rather be messy and decrease in quality gradually over time. Sort of like Twitter.
Digg still exists, so I have no doubt that reddit will continue to have its rotting corpse propped up and picked at, even after a lot of its biggest contributors have left the site
I think you're going to know by one metric. Quality of content over the next ~3 - 6 months. Whether subs stay or go is one thing, that's been part of Reddit for the 12 years I used it. What would get folks to leave is when the communities they are interested in aren't supplying content.
So if you lose some lurkers, that's not gonna matter because they didn't post anyways. If you start losing power users, who regularly feed your community content, what's going to drive you to stick around? If you ask me, I think the fact we are even having this conversation means Reddit is losing in this equation.
you cant really return to normalcy from this, but i dont think most users care. whenever i get into a casual convo about the fediverse online, the general consensus from people is 'yeah reddit isnt going to die, i'll stay on reddit for my communities'. so if the majority think reddit isn't going to die and continue using the site, it probably wont die! it'll just go back to normal with a few million less users (which actually isnt that much for a big site) unless spez hilariously fucks up
really the fediverse is just a lot of people who like tech at the end of the day, not the average web user
I agree, we're getting an insane amount of hate on our sub for remaining restricted indefinitely. The general users do not seem to care about 3rd party apps or that Reddit can just bend us over at any time.
Unfortunately yeah :/ a few people I've talked to support the blackout but have never heard of Lemmy or the fediverse and presumably have no alternative
Reddit has pissed me off with this move and I hope this decision of theirs kills the value of the company and scares investors away. Money is the only thing they care about so hopefully they feel the sting. The loss of Apollo really upsets me and I’m hoping that maybe the developer will consider building a Lemmy app.
As a few people have said already, I think it'll slowly become more crap and alternatives will slowly bring in people who get sick of it.
They're hoping for IPO and once that's done, they'll be much less forgiving when it comes to cash grabs. I can imagine them doing things like getting rid of old.reddit, not allowing the hiding of suggested posts, ads which are very targeted and intrusive.
I saw an article on the official Reddit Inc website talking about the use context in advertising, where advertiser's can change their ad based on the context of the thread. It doesn't say how they're implementing this but I could imagine a situation where they put ads directly into threads. Either way you'll start to see ads using wording which mimics the subreddits you're in or the comments you write.
I have the feeling the reddits decisions are just going to get worse as long as they can get away with it.
Yeah, honestly whether or not they back down or some solution is reached regarding the current situation, they will not stop aggressively monetizing users. A lot of veteran users will leave, some will stay or come back eventually, but I think pretty much every veteran user will be gone permanently if they get rid of old Reddit.
Yeah for sure. One thing I was thinking is that old.reddit and lots of the third party apps don't include new features Reddit put out (I think the API didn't include stuff like chat etc.) So they also could not want third party apps cause it might get in the way of people adopting new features (power users using apps that didn't have those features).
I honestly hope that some kind of community remains here
It will. I've been on Reddit 16+ years and I have no itch to return or reopen the app. Meanwhile I'm getting nothing done for work because I have Mastodon, kbin, and lemmy open. The sticky/addictive power is here already.
I’m an old head Reddit user like you. Are you feeling like Lemmy is feeling like the early days of Reddit. Smaller, more of a community feel?
I’ve been with Reddit for 10 years, and Lemmy feels like what Reddit was around 8-7 years ago. Reddit front page posts used to be in 3-4 digit upvotes max before they changed the vote counting mechanism. Lemmy is already having 3 digit upvoted posts with hundreds of comments. My complaints of Lemmy are purely technical, and hope they get resolved before people get frustrated enough.
I definitely agree that lemmy needs some polish. I can’t really recommend it in its current state but I’m definitely having fun here
How do I think this ends? I think it won't matter to their bottom line. Although I am happy with the participation thusfar, Reddit benefits not only from the current use, but the redirecrion from every Google search toward Reddit. Unless moderators deleted the content before they leave (idk if even possible), the impact is but a blink in a profit report. And the CEO will use their stability as a personal reinforcement.
That said, good riddance, I don't want those willing to stay to be a part of communities I'm in anyway. So far the new life here on Lemmy seems to be very cooperative and positive-- I hope this is maintained.
We run ads on Reddit to get a few suckers to use our apps. Our ad campaigns the past 2 days have sucked, so much that we started using Google AdWords again. That's permanent damage to Reddit's income, since a portion of our advertising budget has been redirected.
You're right, this will change anything major, but it's nice to know there will be a small ripple.
(And yes, Google isn't "better than Reddit", but an exitory ripple is the main point)
I'm voting for #1. Even the subs that remain offline will be replaced.
But there's a caveat-- I think Reddit will start to suck more quickly than it has, and, without some core mods and content providers, will become pretty much a shell of itself in a few years. Maybe it's before it's public; maybe it's after.
I think you're wildly overestimating that timetable - over on that site I'm a member of a sub where you need intimate knowledge of the subject to moderate it effectively (and because of the nature of the subject it gets a lot of trolls to put it mildly). With no community mods that sub would become a cesspit within days, as would subs that are currently the focus of the alt-right, such as science, LGBT subs etc. It's going to be a bin fire if the community mods leave - you'll feel so dirty you'll have to take a shower after every visit to your previously favourite subs...
I was also a mod over there (recreated the same community here, but it'll take time to fill in if it ever does). In that sub, despite well over a million subscribers, less than 200 people wrote the valuable comments. If a sizable chunk of those 200 leave, then the sub dies. And several wrote to modmail about the fact that the sub did not participate in the blackout and that they were done with the sub (and frankly, I don't blame them, I'm also out).
A million members doesn't matter if the couple hundred experts pack up and leave.
Yeah this is what I keep thinking. Most people don't contribute at all, and there's "power submitters" who do most of the posts and top comments. With them gone, who's actually gonna make content for people to view?
We already tried to move to Voat in 2015 and it... didn't turn out very well...
I think if the Apollo dev actually releases an Apollo-based app for Lemmy then we might get a chance.
Voat was always going to be a cesspool because of the actual reason they were migrating in the first place. A bunch of hate subs got banned and the kind of people who would be upset enough to boycott that are shit heads so it was inevitable.
I don't think a consensus alternative is necessarily required. It might be best for the masses to be split amongst the many alternatives giving each one an opportunity to grow, improve and potentially rise up as a result of this event. I for one will not be using Reddit at all except for very specific sources of information which I will probably just scrape and store offline anyway.
I also like the concept of fediverse instances being local, meaning the internet is becoming truly more physically decentralized with local home based servers providing a base for local user registration and content creation/consumption. This has the potential for users to start 'filtering' their online experience to content created by the people in their local communities versus just a vast pool of global users.
I'm not sure I'm on board with joining a local instance. I live in a very conservative and religious country and I don't want to feel the need to censor myself on any community out of fear of having the instance admin ban my account because of differing beliefs. I'm sure it would work better for some than global instances, but I'm afraid they'd be prone to conformity and even nationalism.
Why did anybody expect reddit to back down on this. Unless reddit loses a significant portion of its user base then they have no reason to care. Currently, there really isn't any viable alternative infrastructure that could absorb millions of new users. People are going to make a fuss for a bit, but if they enjoyed using reddit before then they'll come back to using it sooner or later.
Frankly, I don't know why people keep fixating on this. I've been using Lemmy for over three years. I use it because I enjoy the community here, and I don't really think about what reddit is or isn't doing.
The blackout was to show numbers- it was not a small minority of users that cared, but rather a significant majority. Pissing off most of your users, especially your most active users, is generally a bad business move.
The real question is what people will do on July 1. Will those same users cave and switch to the official app? Reddit is counting on most users doing that, or at least enough to make it a profitable move. I personally will not.
I will only see Reddit when it comes up from a Google search, and will not get involved in the conversations. Some of my communities are already permanently dead, and others severely weakened. But others are fine, since most users there are already on the official app.
As the quality drops, more people leave, and fewer people join. Reddit could cease to be a central hub and become more niche. It could also turn into a cesspool. There are some signs that neo-nazis and otherwise shitty people will take over, not unlike we are seeing with Twitter. Or it could all blow over, and this was all just a bump in the road for Reddit.
I guarantee you that vast majority of users will use the official app because they're addicted to reddit. There is no readily available alternative around, and after some grumbling most people will go back to it. None of these protests really work unless there is a viable alternative available.
Reddit could cease to be a central hub, that's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future. However, I still don't see why people keep perseverating over reddit. At the end of the day why does it matter. Lemmy exists, it works fine and people who really want to break from reddit have that option now. Whether majority of people does so or not doesn't really matter all that much to me.