this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Reddit will die off in stages. Slowly.
First the power users are leaving now. These are the mods and the major content creators (think Minecraft leaving)
Eventually they will piss people off again and the more common content creators will leave.
Then after reddit has worse and worse content, the users who just comment will leave.
After that there will be nothing worthwhile for the lurkers and they will leave too.
Reddit will then be a wasteland.
This will all take quite a while. Even Digg took time to die off.
I think the growth of Lemmy over the last few weeks is a clear indicator that Reddit is in decline. I have deleted Apollo and my reddit bookmark and have only gone back when a Google search provided the information I needed. I won't be going back and I think a lot of people are of the same mind.
As a person who really gets stuck in his ways and hates having to change things if I don't have to, here I am on Lemmy. I'm ready to settle in.
Joining this was easier since I haven't been on Reddit since the 12th
Got past the habit stage. Now I'm onto alternatives
I’m the same! Although I’ve even tried to avoid clicking search links to Reddit as well
Unfortunately for me, one of my favorite uses for reddit has been live game threads for various sports and that really only works with a larger user base. For instance, I follow the Seattle Mariners and I have found two different Lemmy instances for them. The one with the most subscribers (44) hasn't had a game thread posted in 13 days despite the Mariners having played like 10 games in that stretch. The other one has 9 subscribers, although it looks like someone has set up a bot to automatically post a game thread and a post-game thread; however, every single one I looked at has 0 comments.
I'm not gonna be able to pull the plug on reddit entirely until Lemmy gets a serious increase in users.
Hi! I'm an admin of fanaticus.social. I'd like to apologize for the game bots disappearance. It's back now! I made pinned a post about it, which you can read here.
We're working hard to iron out the kinks in the game bots but I apologize for the inconvenience. I was on vacation last week and because of a bug, the choice was between keeping the fanaticus servers up or putting the bots to sleep.
The live game threads were some of my favorite parts of Reddit too. I can't do anything about the small user base but porting the game bots over to lemmy and posting content is the best way I could think of to start attracting users.
Lemmy is something like .02% the size of reddit
Let's change that!
What do you propose? Lemmy is significanly more difficult to understand, sign up for, and use, with far less content than Reddit. And the majority opinion seems to be 'fuck those kids that don't understand how to use lemmy, we don't need them'.
I think as more powerful apps are created with simple sign up UIs that auto subscribe to the communities you request etc, and pull content from multiple sources (kbin/Lemmy/mastodon) all on one page... It will become easier for the less technically inclined to join. Just give it time and keep participating here instead of reddit.
I blocked reddit the day they announced the API changes, so no problem there!
I think it is very much a case of developers building, or expanding apps. It's easy to forget that many of these apps are in their developments infancy, because so (technically speaking) is the server software.
There will also, inevitably, be an interplay between app developer and server developer. Work arounds producing accepted items that other apps need to include (for those that remember, think text colour codes on IRC, mostly driven by mIRC (short have history, YMMV, etc etc)
Mind you, I'm wondering if all this federation will bring people back to IRC..
A big part of the problem solves itself with a larger userbase. More content generated, more exposure, search engines show lemmy instances in results, people learn. Lemmy is not that hard to undestand. You can join an instance and explore from there, maybe stay within you instance and be satisfied by your experience. Maybe you'll learn in time about other communities in other instances. When I first joined reddit 10 years ago I didn't understand it either but I kept using it because it was interesting. What I propose is that we keep making content and commenting and that will attract more people and communities will grow.
Fair enough.
I see that too. I suspect that will go away with time. Possibly not very much time tbh. You often see that sort of attitude when a community based around new software is very small and new as culturally it is heavily influenced by people either involved in development or who pride themselves on being early adopters. Neither group is usually very good at understanding the significance of the barriers to entry for most people. Right now we're seeing an influx of people who couldn't care in the slightest about poking at new technology, but who are willing to do so because they want to explore a valid alternative to Reddit. That influx will naturally shift the culture and I'm pretty confident that going forward the general vibe will be that accessibility is an important thing (especially as blowing up accessibility for no good reason is at the core of why a lot of the new people are leaving Reddit.)
I disagree that it was harder to sign up for. At least on Lemmy.World (which I'm confident will become the default instance over Lemmy.ml) you just put in a username, email address and password and you're in.
It does have far less content than Reddit. However, it is largely more active users who create and moderate content who are moving over. It'll take time but they will grow the communities into places with a lot to offer new users. By the time that happens, it's likely Reddit will do something to upset and displace their users again and they'll find growing and thriving communities with increasingly compelling content to greet them. (and hopefully, even if Lemmy hasn't become much easier to understand by then, the explanations and the guides and all the other "welcome new person" stuff will be more evolved by then.)
undefined> I disagree that it was harder to sign up for.
You are correct, and I misspoke. By 'harder to sign up for' I was referring to not just the actual sign up process, but the steps involved before the actual sign-up process (deciding on an instance, which itself requires learning what 'instance' means, as well as at least some research into what federation is, and what the differences are between instances).
That I can relate to. It definitely slowed me down a little when I was looking at trying Lemmy out. I think with all of those sorts of concerns it is inevitable that there will be better and better support for making the onboarding process as easy as possible as time goes on. What sort of resource do you think would have made getting into Lemmy easiest for you?
What I've seen others recommend, and I think would have helped, is the ability to 'port' to another instance. So it can just be "Go create an account at lemmy.ml. Don't worry about the instance, we can always port later if you want".
I know now it doesn't really matter (and have accounts with all the big instances) but I agonized over what instance to join at the beginning because I didn't KNOW it didn't really matter.
The 'port' ability also seems like something that is just a good idea in general, so I believe that to be the best option (that I've seen).
I started using reddit only an year ago. I've tried to use it even earlier, however I didn't understand how things work. It was after i lurked for a while that i figured out things. And Infinity for Reddit app. Lemmy also is taking the similar time.
Do you think that number would change significantly if one were to discount bots from the calculation? I swear 3/4 of comments on some subs were bots, I'd like to think that it'd take a chunk off the actual reddit user base
Yeah Digg didn’t die in a day. It takes time. I joined lemmy today, but I looked into it a few weeks ago first. It wasn’t worth the effort then, it is now. Having an Apollo-like app is a big help too.
Every previous major exodus had the problem that it was the people everyone was better off without leaving. Maybe you hated Reddit in 2015 and were pissed at their decisions, but the alternative was a place dedicated to mocking fat people and saying slurs.
Comparatively lemmy just kinda has a similar vibe to Reddit. Like I need to look for equivalents to some spaces I miss, but it’s not the people we said good riddance to
I'm in the same boat, I just joined today and I'm surprised but Lemmy already scratches the same itch that reddit did
It's been fascinating to watch the corporate web ecosystem that rose in the late 2000s slowly start to collapse.
And it's due to things the users said not to do
I'm not sure if Reddit will "die off". There seems to be a significant portion of users who don't care about the API debacle or protests - they just want to scroll through memes.
I would definitely like to see Reddit experience more pain, given how cunty they've been to users and moderators. But we live in a world where big companies act like shit and get away with it.
no memes to scroll through if there is no one to post the memes
When I've checked the Reddit home page in the last few days (using an ad blocker of course, or sometimes an alternative Reddit front-end), it looks like stuff is still being posted.
Hopefully Reddit will feel more pain that persuades it to change course at least a little bit. But I won't believe that the pain is happening until I see it. Unfortunately it seems to me that there are some Reddit users who just want to watch the funny videos and don't care about Reddit's poor behaviour.
it's still too early. These things take time.
True I suppose things could change over time. We'll have to see.