This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
Well, user traffic has returned to normal, but we also have to consider that it's just traffic. Some of that traffic is also a bunch of people talking about Reddit, protesting, etc.
That being said, I don't think Reddit will die from this, but it doesn't need to in order for the Fediverse to succeed. All it needs is to push enough people onto federated services and kickstart it, just like Twitter did with Mastodon. We aren't going to all switch overnight, it will be a gradual process.
My own reddit traffic has dropped right off since I discovered Lemmy. For now this place has the feel of the early internet: democratic, distributed and friendly. It really makes clear how repugnant Reddit has become.
It really does have that feel!
As someone who was around back then, being in the fediverse actually makes me feel young and lighthearted again.
I hadn't fully realised quite how soul-sucking the corporate web 2.0 was until now I'm completely off it.
This is a good point. Because even websites which replaced others, oftentimes the older one is still there. Like even Digg still alive after Reddit got more popular. Some people say Tumblr's dead but its really not especially for specific interests like games. The success of you isnt based on the failure of someone else, and its important to remember and not become cross because reddit still has users. Especially its been only like 10 days and a lot have already gone onto other sites.
The success of you isnt based on the failure of someone else
Totally agree. Also, that's just a great wholesome motto for life in general tbh hahah.
We should focus on building the community we want and people will come.
Exactly. People also forget that reddit didn't spring up overnight, and the great digg migration wasn't a one-time en masse thing either. It was a slow bleed for 2~3 years even after digg's v4 redesign. Those that stayed on digg turned it into one huge circlejerk about how reddit sucked and it would never take off, and people would end up back on digg eventually ... EXACTLY like what is happening on reddit now. It will take time for Feddi to grow, but it will as long as dedicated users stick around and create interesting content
A lot of sentiment seems to suggest that for Lemmy or the fediverse to succeed Reddit has to fail.
I don't get that opinion at all. Reddit had become overwhelming bloated. A popular thread would have thousands of comments. Most of which would be near identical. Only the most up voted would ever be read and typically they had to have been commented while the thread was new.
The internet is vast, there is plenty of room for multiple social media to exist.
If you dislike what reddit has become then ignore it. If you still wish to use it then you can do so side by side with using Lemmy.
I think that it's important to note the 1% rule.
Most of the traffic of any given platform will be created by people who interact with it only passively; they mostly lurk and, for good or bad, they don't care about it. Admins this, mods that, who the fuck cares, my cat pics sprout spontaneously from the internet.
In the meantime the people who actually contribute with the platform will be a tiny fraction of it. They don't add traffic, but they add value - because they're the ones responsible for creating the content (posting), aggregating value to the content (commenting), sorting the content (voting and moderating). The admins' decisions and the mod revolts affected specially bad this group. And... well, not even the stupid like to be called stupid, and that's basically what the admins did.
Now consider the link. The lurkers are back to Reddit because there's still content to be consumed there, but eventually it'll run dry - because the contributors are leaving the site. As such, you don't expect the mod revolts to have a short-term impact on the site, but rather a long-term one: the site will become less and less popular over time, as the lurkers are looking for content there and... well, nobody is providing them jack shit. Eventually the site will be forgotten by the masses, just like Digg was.
So Reddit will die, mind you. But it won't be a sudden death; it'll be a slow bleeding.
I just wish that this process was slightly faster, specially before the IPO.
This lurker won't (trying to not lurk here). I am happy to get away from there, enough content (and better quality) is here.
The amount of content I'm seeing over here these days lets me know that despite whatever the numbers tell you reddit lost sizeable amounts of community members and content producers. What these statistics hide is the massive dent in reddits free labor pool of mods that are likely done with the platform.
Lemmy has beyond exceeded my expectations of quantity and quality of content. I will pass by reddit occasionally but its become clear that the Fediverse concept can actually work. It has issues that need to be solved, but the minds behind it are very smart and motivated to find a way to make it keep working. The rate of PR's getting merged into lemmy 0.18 are wild.
Yeah I'd much rather be here watching it grow than on Reddit watching it die
I'm not surprised, but you can't forget that a lot of people on reddit don't really post or comment a lot. I myself was one of them, I'm way more active here than I ever was on reddit though.
Same.
I feel like the people here are way more open for discourse, which makes it a lot less scary to voice your thoughts.
Still haven't posted anything though, I'm not a conversation starter, but rather a participant. XD
Am I the only one who thinks that having only a 7% dip in visits and a 16% reduction in time spent on site is really unusual when over 99% of the site was dark for 48 hours? To me, that suggests that something fucky is going on with the count of real users vs bots on the site.
https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/72348
Based on the numbers in this post it's fair to assume reddit is 90% bots.
Huffman has fully torpedoed any credibility he held before this fiasco. I don't trust any statements he could exert influence over.
I'm going to continue using rif until it shuts down at the end of the month but there's no way I'm downloading their shitty app. I have a feeling a lot of people are in the same boat.
I am at an over my dead body moment with reddit. I don't care what their numbers say I'm not going back.
I was on that moment for years, just there was no real substitute. Hopefully, lemmy will remain big enough.
That's fine. I'm sure the passive masses will show back up.
The real problem is content creators and such are or have already left. And well, I'm here, as are all of you!
Passive consumers are a massive force, and will go where the wind blows. But they actively do little. And, about them... Who cares?
Why are all these posts about reddit being posted to /c/Technology? There are so many dedicated reddit communities. The "news" about whatever is going on (or not) over there doesn't need to keep cluttering up this community.
Especially when they are all the same thing. Either "zomg reddit is removing mods" or "zomg reddit is totally back to normal we promise, please come back if you haven't"
Not completely normal. I deleted my account that was old enough to sign up for most websites on its own. I'm not the only one.
Haven't deleted either of both of my 14 yr accounts yet, but I haven't been on Reddit since the blackout and have plans to nuke it all after I navigate new subscriptions and think it through.
FWIW, I find the experience a refreshing re-start, just like when Digg and Slashdot fucked up and I'm already seeing shit posting, memes, and fresh content galore on Lemmy in just the last week. I doubt I'll go back to Reddit except for some esoteric solutions that I find in searches.
"Returns to normal"... minus one user.
And my axe.
Yep that's a reddit throwback but I deleted my 14yo account 2 weeks ago and have actively avoided them since.
I know that is bs because I haven't been there in days and I probably added 100 visits a day to their stats. So they're at least a couple hundred shy. Suck my balls spez.
When Reddit protests were at its height, posts to the site dropped by only 20%. Who is doing the majority of the posting?
I am sure some of it is spam bots. But also - a big value of Reddit is indeed in the long tail of niche communities. Many did not join the protest.
Bots mostly. Take a look at the site, you'll notice many usernames consisting of a random adjective or noun in front of a random noun and a random number at the back. Sometimes they are in camel case, sometimes they are separated by dashes or underscores.
Go to the profiles of those. Bot accounts display that they are 6-12 months old and have no activity for the first few months. The activity starts with out-of-place comments on reposts made by other users (they never comment on OC), so they are likely copied from other users that commented below the original post.
After the initial commenting phase, they start posting. It's never OC, just reposts and they never reply to questions in the comments.
At this point I'm convinced those bots are deployed by reddit themselves because they are so easy to spot and no action is taken against them.
Then there's also the porn bots which collect properly tagged material from other sites and post it to the corresponding subreddits. You can spot them by looking at their profiles, they post 20-30 images an hour without pause. I'm pretty sure those are made by users, we'll see once the API changes go live.
Edit: Typos
Tumblr is still alive, but it's a shell of what it used to be. Given the behavior of Spez, it's only a matter of time before Reddit ends up the same.
Imagine the kinds of fuckery that will happen when Reddit has shareholders.
I am not sure I believe that, it might be that bots can be active again now that the subreddits are reopened, but I know that I am not back. And I won't be back, and I think a lot of people are staying away as well. That the traffic is now normal seems a bit sketchy.
the people still on reddit after the 30th when the third party apps close down, i personally believe can stay there indefinitely. these people, and i, do not exist on the same wavelength.
Don't know about you all, but I will continue to check reddit until Sync for reddit stops working. On July 1st, if it's no longer working, reddit is gone.
Reddit bots and AI have returned Reddit traffic to Normal. They don't need no stinkin' human users causing problems.
Without my daily traffic that's a fact.... Haven't been back there now for 3 to 4 weeks and was a daily consumer / contributor. My relationship with Reddit has ended and zero intention of going back. I have drawn my line in the sand and I'm not supporting the recent shenanigans ! They can kiss my ass.
I'm very curious how this is going to play out. This mostly concerns the core userbase, as in mods and the people who are the most active on Reddit. If a significant portion of those wanders off (or is straight up banned), I could see the platform desolate slowly and painfully.
I mean, they lose content and moderation. I would be very surprised if they can replace the volunteers and still maintain the quality of the moderation.
My guess is that Reddit loses about 5% of traffic by shutting off API access. It isn't great, but it isn't bad either. Spez treats it as a win.
Mod burnout becomes a big thing in a year, with many major subs starting to lock threads and blanket ban harder as the more experienced mods leave and the new set isn't really prepared to handle the workload. A lot of the best of this new block are going to be alt-right, and you'll slowly see subs become more friendly to alt-right views. Mod abuse gets a lot worse.
As the entire site becomes r/conservative, expect the fights that happened with r/The_Donald to be worse and make the site more unusable. This will probably drive off more users as "everything is political". Reddit won't keep its promises on building better mod toolkits, and a lot of LBGT groups leave for other sites.
As the website starts to see a shrinking user base and still hasn't made money, either Spez or a successor goes full Twitter Musk and cuts staff to the bone in hopes of trying to keep some revenue.
Enshitification doesn't happen over night. It might be months before the needle moves. Platforms die because users seek alternatives, but everyone has a different threshold for when they decide to jump ship. Most people just are not paying attention and will only leave when they experience the shit of Enshitification first hand.
And that hasn't happened on Reddit. Yet...
I look up my acct and see my deleted comments and posts being magically revived. Did screen caps of most of it and it is definitely a real thing. Is that a metric for traffic?
This article will age poorly in a week. And like milk in about a month.
I deleted everything and I've not been on for weeks now. Good riddance!
I see an awful lot of people here who have quote left reddit, and yet they still go back to Reddit every day to see what's going on, or to grab popular posts so they can repost it here and try to get imaginary points or something. All they're really doing is helping inflate metrics like this.
I don't think most people understand the protests. I had to explain it to two people who use the platform.