Ask Lemmy

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.

Again, as long as we're being thoughtful and having fun here, people will come naturally.

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.

Have they suffered at all? I think the answer is fairly obvious. You’re here, right? Would you be here if they hadn’t fucked around? I wouldn’t be here.

Some of the larger subreddits shut down or turned into a John Oliver meme, one niche one I enjoyed is gone, the rest seem to be back to business as usual. At the moment? I'd say not much has changed.

Who cares, though? This isn't reddit, let's stop focusing on that and focus on Lemmy.

Im working on a case study for a publishing firm about the whole API announcement and subsequent fallout so I've been watching all this really closely. The thing I'm most anxious for is the data on web traffic to reddit and it's competitors, which I can only get on a monthly basis. It dropped a lot from May to June, which you could attribute to the protest or even the summer. However, Discords traffic increased during that time, and it was the only major social platform to change in either direction. I'm hoping to get some clarity once July data comes out but I don't think we well know for sure about long term impact for a while. Reddit I'm sure knows more but definitely won't share it publicly unless necessary, like if they do go public, but I'm not sure that kind of data would be included in a filing.

(I tracked traffic on similarweb and Semrush. Lemmy is on there too, but is tracked per server, and most were tracked starting in may or June so data is pretty limited and can't really be compared.)

The content on Reddit has gotten noticeably worse - but less as a result of Lemmy's existence and more of a reaction to killing 3rd Party Apps.

Unfortunately for me, some of my favorite communities haven't migrated over to Lemmy. So I'm still using Old Reddit Desktop to access them.

I got a lot of people from the r/place Fuck Spez movement to switch over. I also got really enlightening advice from one of our supporters. They told me that people will come over once we become easy to use and well established, which we're nearing but not there yet.

With all the third party apps we have gotten like Liftoff and Voyager, things have been a lot more accessible. However, we still have lots of work to do.

Until we become easy enough to use that you feel comfortable telling your family members to sign up and they use it without assistance, we will primarily be a community of tech savvy individuals.

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.

I found a large amount of the developer / programming reddits died, so I noticed a large difference but a lot of other subs there has been no change so it depends on what you are in.

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.

Reddit is like World of Warcraft, the only thing that can kill it is itself.

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.

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.

I believe that most of the people, including myself, are still waiting for proper 3rd party apps. I still use Boost for Reddit untill the developer releases Boost for Lemmy, then I switch completely. The app I'm used to is more important to me than the platform I'm using. But.. Needs to be said that Reddit's behaviour is horrendous and therefore I don't want to be using it. The future is decentralised..

I deleted my account. That probably showed 'em.

Personally I could have lived with the ads but the quality of the subs I followed dipped massively after the mods left or were forced out. The people who left may have been fewer than expected they were the ones creating the decent content and most importantly keeping the worst of the bots at bay.

The whole obcession with Reddit is getting a little too much and continuing it is maybe a bit immature.

I mean, I get it: I've left a couple of jobs during my career (now spanning over 2 decades) because they did some pretty asshole things and I had a choice to move to better pastures, yet after leaving I still had a strong want for them to somehow be screwed for being assholes, kept wanting to know how things were back there and would've been happy if I found out they did go somehow screwed.

So it is understandable, IMHO.

However there comes a point when you gotta mentally go "I'm in a better situation now and they don't matter to it, so there's no point in wasting any energy on them" and stop looking back.

Sure, feel free to tell others about Lemmy (for said others rather than because of Reddit), but stop wondering about Reddit.

PS: I wrote "immature" because as I grew older it just became easier to turn another leaf and getting over the "old place", so I reckon it's maturity, but maybe it's just me.

Yes, because it has lost some of its most passionate users. The only effect will be a subtle drop in quality to the site, though, which will be completely unnoticeable to the average user.

only thing i cant stand about lemmy is trying to understand what the fuck it is and how it works.

some top post about a “sub”? “lemmy place”? idk what to call it, “defederating from us”. does that mean from all lemmy things, that lemmy thing? what does it mean to defederate? is there an easy way to browse for subs like reddit?

No, and I (honestly) don't care either. A nice sum of users is better than a bunch of users that are (at most) "rotten apples" willing to denigrate everything and everyone.