No Stupid Questions

Not a mass exodus. Call it a brain drain, if you will. The churn includes those who posted or were moderators. Since those who stayed are directly or indirectly supporting practices that most of us find unacceptable, Reddit will probably forever have that sour taste. It will gradually turn into a pale reminder of what it once was, and it will lose its spark. The sheer volume, quality, and length of posts in the Fediverse is indicative of new user profiles. I am so glad I took the plunge!

It's not a mass exodus. There was a sizeable influx of people from Reddit to Lemmy/kbin, sure, but that's measured in the (low) hundreds of thousands. Reddit has hundreds of millions of active users.

The reality is it's not even close to a mass exodus, not yet.

It's hard to get an exact number but you can extrapolate based on the growth of Lemmy in the last few weeks. While not record-breaking, it is quite an impressive growth.

Also note that not everyone who left Reddit came to Lemmy. There is also Kbin, Tildes and alternative. Some never really left at all.

I think the real damage done to Reddit (ultimately by themselves) is showing the world that there are real alternatives (even if a bit rough around the edges). They are materializing and growing as threats and if Reddit doesn't step up their game, they could be in some real trouble.

The other possibility is that some other company might step up and build a Reddit clone, much like what Meta's Threads is to Twitter, once they see that there is blood in the water and a potential to displace Reddit as the "frontpage of the Internet". Heck, even Threads is built on the Fediverse, maybe a bigcorp-backed Reddit clone might be as well.

From Reddit's PoV I don't think that there is a mass emigration; it's just that the most engaged sectors of the community left, so the 99% left don't give a damn about it. Over time I predict that it'll be a slow drain, not a mass exodus.

However from Lemmy/Kbin's PoV there is a mass immigration. And the users are disproportionally active; for example a comm with 3k subscribers getting 1k upvotes in a post, stuff like this.

It depends on what you mean by "mass exodus".

There has been a mass exodus, in the sense that a mass of people have exited the site and moved elsewhere in a very short period of time. There has not been one, in the sense that the majority of users have left the site.

I get that the people most affected by changes may want to feel like literally everyone and their dog pulled up stakes to follow them. That they'd want that sense of solidarity, and the feeling that they're giving a proper "Fuck you" to the people that ruined their good time. And I get that people who are just exploring new spaces want to feel like they're choosing the "winning" side.

But that isn't the way these things work.

Habits are sticky. Familiar spaces are sticky. Most people do not like change, and will coats to momentum for as long as that momentum exists. They're not going to migrate until Reddit is completely crumbling.

And maybe we don't want them to.

This space is not ready for 50 million people. The moderation tools aren't there yet. The infrastructure to keep them from just jumping on a single server isn't there yet. The tools and documentation to help people easily set up new instances are still new and being stress tested.

The goal of killing a billion dollar company, or three of them even, isn't within reach. That's not a thing that happens overnight. But this is the ground work for taking on that task.

The first thing people need before they can even consider leaving is a viable alternative, and that's what we're making here by being active, and interesting.

I don't care I like it here, fuck that place

In terms of overall users, probably not. In terms of valuable, knowledgeable and hardworking users? Totally.

Take r/AMA for instance. The place was a gigantic draw for Reddit as a space for trustworthy, verified celebrity interactions. The entirety of that work was done by volunteers who have since left that work behind. As such, the place literally can not function as it was.

Another example I saw much closer is r/piracy. Despite what astroturfing bots and Spez Stans would have you believe, Reddit absolutely wanted that sub opened because of what a huge draw it is. Just looking at what they did is enough to prove that. They removed the top mod, manually un-privated the sub, then removed the next top mod for continuing to protest before installing their own. The place is open now and working "normally." Despite this, there's really no one knowledgeable left over there. I looked recently, and I found a lot of highly-upvoted, really awful advice. Like, some borderline dangerous stuff.

Reddit has been dying for a while.

Subreddits like AskScience, that it was famous for, are now shells of what they were because the real scientists who put serious time into that subreddit decided they were done wasting that time. This situation is at least a year old, it predates the protest.

You can see this same dynamic across the site. Places that were once vibrant are slowing down, the flood of posts becoming a trickle. Bots are making most of the posts on big subs. Smaller subs that used to hop with human posts are where you can see the truth. It's not normal for a sub with 500k subscribers to see 10 posts in a week. You see that more often, now.

The truth is that Reddit was always small potatoes. It feels like a big deal when you're there, but it's not. The real user numbers are on TikTok, and Instagram, who each have up to a billion users depending on where you get a number. Reddit is barely there, as social media rankings go. There are people with more views on a YouTube video than Reddit has users. Reddit is an also-ran social media site. It's really not a competitor. It's just easy to steal from, because text.

Reddit has long had a bad reputation as a shitty, toxic place. Habitual Redditors don't know this, not really, you have to talk to outsiders. People aren't that interested in coming to Reddit, they just want answers to their Google searches. It's not a recipe for growth.

Now the true power users, who provide those answers, are moving away from both Reddit and Google, speaking of a company who best watch its step. A lot of people are starting to talk about Google search the way they talked about Reddit search, which never did get good.

Reddit doesn't have that far to fall, is what I'm saying. There isn't a mass exodus, though. You're seeing a late spasm from a steady tide that has been going out for years. 10 years is a looooong fuckin time for a social platform to be around, they start to rot after the first or second year. Reddit has been rotten for some time.

I see a lot of people, here, and elsewhere, trying to act dismissive about the protests, or about how important the moderators were, but the site's entire business model depended on hundreds, even thousands of people doing a ton of real labor for absolutely free. If they've decided to take an "everyone's replaceable" attitude and treat volunteers like employees, they'll pay. It'll be their IPO sagging down to a couple dollars as they limp to bankruptcy, or purchase, but they'll pay. I swear I'll have to buy a couple shares as a collectible.

I'm putting it down as yet another well-earned reminder that you have no business building anything that matters to you on a platform that other people own, it is worth the five minutes a day that it takes to post on it, and no more.

Do not make a job of it, ever, unless that job pays you and pays you so well that people think that you're really a stripper and your job title is just a cover story. "Social Media Manager", gotta be code for OF, bro.

That's how much money you should be making doing labor for a multimillion-dollar corporation. It was fuckin Conde Nast for a hot minute. If the boss can just take your mod and your community away, then you only ever worked there, for free. You were never building a community, you were building their property, for free. You have to stop doing that, and you have to stop presenting it as a virtuous act, unless some fundamental things change.

If you're going to put a lot of work in for your own reasons, then you owe it to yourself to do it under your own control, or not at all.

I see an opportunity on the Fediverse to start from the old model of internetting and jump off to something new that just looks old, where it makes sense to put that work in, but for now it is what it is.

Reddit still lives, like Theoden cobwebbed in his throne, but nobody will come and banish Wormtongue. It's still gonna take years for that old man to die.

Fuckin Yahoo isn't anywhere close to dead. Neither is Digg. Well, maybe Digg.

The thing we North Americans are always a bit too arrogant about is if Reddit somehow gets big in India, or Brazil, then they don't need us, and we'll never know because we don't speak the language. So it's gonna take time for Reddit to fuck that up, they got options.

But don't be too dismissive about the idea of "mass exodus". Digg lost most of its userbase, literally overnight, and it was because of shitty ads. If the only app you can use now is the app that sucks and serves lots of shitty ads in your face, that will do it. People aren't that habitual. It is very, very easy to leave a social site.

I quit TikTok over one shitty post that was my last straw, you just delete the app and forget about it. Yet TikTok is social media heroin. Reddit is a bunch of dudes yelling about shit that isn't worth yelling about. It is much easier to quit. The phone app era means once you delete, it's gone, and it helps to break the cycle. It can and probably will happen, 90% of the remaining users will drop it like it's covered in bedbugs, they just have to stick huge unskippable ads in everyone's face, and they're fucked.

I just don't think that is going to make the splash you'd expect.

But no, no mass exodus, not yet. I'd keep the popcorn bowl close by if I were you, though. I will not put it past them to turn an IPO into a fail state.

You're expecting something like the Digg to Reddit mass emigration. That likely will never happen again, the conditions for that are gone. What's happening is what i predicted for years, people are moving away from the site but not going to a single "replacement" place as there's just nothing like it, but to many. Be it the Fediverse, Discord, Facebook and related properties, various chats, even forums and freaking IRC.

And it's also clear it's not going to be a single massive exodus, but a slow decay over a long time. The site will still be alive ten years from now, like Livejournal and other relics of the past are still technically alive, but will slowly fade from relevance.

And one important thing: Sites like that depend on a few users, the so-called 90-9-1 rule explains it well, only a tiny, tiny percentage of users of the site produce the content it needs to survive, and they're precisely the ones the administration pissed off. And not only that, but it depends on the moderators, without them the site would devolve to a sewer in no time, and they too have been shafted by the administration. A good portion of them have left the site for good, and the hit will be perceived in time, as they cannot be replaced easily.

Everything that made the site good is dying or dead, let it die, or just survive as a zombie. It will become a cesspool of reposts, recycled content and garbage, and any user that creates good content that still remains there will eventually leave at seeing what the site will turn into.

My opinion is that if you give a shit about how and where you spend your time, you will not support a platform run by and inhabited by dickheads.

Vote with your feet, or thumbs in this case.

No. But enough came that Lemmy is now a vibrant place.

I don’t think it’s a mass exodus. However in situations like these I think it’s important to look at the rate of change. r*ddit is steadily getting worse, and Lemmy is steadily getting better. I don’t think there will be an immediate sea change, but hopefully there will be fits and starts in the right direction.

I deleted 14 years of posts and 2 weeks later they banned me for a non-existent TOS violation weeks after the post in question was overwritten with a single letter then deleted.

So, ya, People are going to be looking for a replacement. reddit can go suck a failed ipo.

Mass exodus?

Nope.

Howevir, Lemmy has reached the critical mass of users and is usable. In parallel some active users left reddit, and many sub reddits relies on a handful of active users who post and comment, even one of them leaving here is impacting the life of these subs

There clearly is not. Even people on here, who say they “quit” Reddit, often go on to say “I only go on it now for this one subreddit” or “I only go on it to check news” etc. Spez bet that people would either not care about him shitting all over the Reddit community for profit, or be too addicted to Reddit to actually do anything about it. And he was right.

These predictions that Reddit will collapse because the “power users” have left are ridiculous. It’s not difficult to find recycled trash on the internet to shitpost on Reddit. Hell, bots can do it, and have been. People just want garbage to mindlessly scroll through and leave their dumb comments on (“user name checks out, har har”).

I will personally never use Reddit as long as it’s run my Spez (or any other equivalent asshole), but it’s quite clear that they’ve survived this API debacle just fine.

No and no, it's just hype IMO. But the trickle of new users seems sufficient to make Lemmy a more interesting place to be and a more viable platform long term. That's already quite good if you ask me.

As someone who is still on reddit and other mainstream sites as well as fediverse, here are my impressions.

There is definitely a frustration around the enshitefication of most of the major platforms, which is causing users to seek out alternatives to these sites. A lot of this has translated into increased traffic and membership on fediverse sites like Lemmy and Mastodon, but the reality is the situation still hasn't gotten bad enough for most general users to abandon the platforms entirely, or they stick around because despite everything, they are still the platforms with the most reach, and are still easy to use for most users.

Mastodon seems to have waves of activity based on the latest major fuckup by Elon Musk, but because of the learning curb and the differences in how Mastodon works, combined with the lack of user activity compared to twitter, most users don't stick around. Meanwhile, Bluesky is advertising itself as twitter pre enshitefication, and Threads is promising a userbase comparable to twitter without it being ran by Musk, which to a more casual person may seems more appealing. Fediverse is more appealing to people like you and me because we're nerds. Like we are interested in the technology, and want to dive into it to create the web experience we want. That's not going to appeal to the average user though.

There are weeks where I spend most of my time online on kbin and mastodon, and if I go by word and news posted, it would seem like reddit and twitter are on their final ropes, everyone is rushing to the fediverse, and we are about to enter another wild west period of the internet. But then I go back to reddit, and most of the communities I was apart of still seem as active as they have ever been. Most people I followed on twitter still post regularly with similar amounts of likes, retweets and comments, and most content creators will still point people towards these platforms for further engagement.

One space I have seen a major shift in is the LGBTQ community. There is definitely a diminishing of activity on major platforms mostly because the recent enshitefications have made these platforms more hostile places. Fediverse is a popular alternative for these communities, which is probably why you see a large amount of queer users within the fediverse. A lot of tech communities have also flocked to the fediverse and other communities because these spaces attract a lot of tech savy nerds, and are a great place to find fellow techies who know what you're talking about.

Overall, There is definitely a shift in how people use the internet and how they interact in Social media. The echochambers within the fediverse though would make it seem like it is bigger than it actually is. I would say we are seeing the dawn of the expansion of the internet, where instead of everything being centralized on 4 or 5 major sites, there will be a number of smaller sites that host their own communities. It probably won't be anywhere near as decentralized as the pre youtube and facebook era of the internet, but you'll at least have other places to go to when you get sick of a site, but still want to find like minded people to discuss your interests with.

When the app I used to access Reddit, Joey for Reddit, went down yesterday I moved to Lemmy. They were working with Reddit to setup paid API access and Reddit shutdown their access mid negotiation. I already had a Lemmy account but didn't use it til now. I know a lot of other Joey users that did the same.

Mass exodus maybe in terms of power users. The average Reddit user used the official client before the api restrictions. My guess is that many people who posted good stuff ditched Reddit.

I don't have hard numbers, just loose ones. From what I've read Reddit had about 400 million daily active users. From what I know only about one or two million users are on Lemmy. Now that's a massive jump from where it was just a few months ago, but it's a drop in the hat.

If my information is even remotely correct that's less than 1%.

It's a small but very specific, active minority of the total reddit pie. This is why Reddit won't go away. They have enough of a core audience that doesn't care about how bad the official app or web page may be. It's just good enough for them, which is all they need to scratch their reddit itch.

Seeing growth across a few Lemmy instances over the past few weeks has been fun.

The best thing to happen from the exodus regardless of it's size is that there is now an active, popular, and viable Reddit alternative with better mobile support than Reddit. Reddit will likely never die, but users who get sick of their BS now or in the future have legitimate options with enough active users to keep them busy

I mostly moved to Lemmy. I still browse reddit, but I stay logged out and no longer contribute and my old account was on the top 1% for comment karma. I'll bring that energy to lemmy.

Yes, there's been a mass exodus, but while that term sounds like it means most reddit users have left, it just means a large group of them did. Certainly not most or all.

It's happening in waves. Evey time a big change happens, a group of users see that as the last straw and leave. This killing of second-party apps was my the last straw for me, while most users probably don't care enough to do that.

After 10 years on Reddit I've made the jump to Lemmy. There's the odd Reddit link I click on when doing a Google search

Logically, I want to say no, not really, but I also would have thought the blackout and ongoing protests wouldn't really affect Reddit and they'd ignore it. Reddit itself, however, seems incredibly determined to pursue a course of action which requires performing This Does Not Affect Us At All as dramatically and publicly as possible given the slightest opportunity whether anyone cares or not. This doesn't even include the admins playing subreddit roulette that encompasses actively rebelling subs, subs deep in malicious compliance, and subs that have no idea wtf is going on they just want to talk about their weird NSFW fetish in peace.

So no, I don't think so, but I'm beginning to wonder if Reddit thinks there is and what they're seeing on their side that I'm not.

I wouldn't call it a mass exodus, it's more like a slow and gradual exodus that has started and will keep on happening as Reddit will continue to burn itself down

I refuse to go back to Reddit. Can't wait until Boost for Lemmy to come out.

There's was/is an absolute exodus of power users. It's now a matter of time until the rest move. Not if. When.

My thoughts in detail: https://dbzer0.com/blog/reddit-is-a-dead-site-running/

Digg had the exodus, Reddit has a migration. The majority of Reddit users probably didn't use third party apps, and are fine with ads, etc.

Honestly I’m enjoying the people that did leave and lemmy scratches the Reddit itch. I don’t need more than the exodus that happened

Semi related question: some of my favorite subs were text based subs, are there any similar communities? I'm talking AITA, BoRU, TIFU, relationship advice, etc.

It currently feels like a big discord where we might actually get to know the names of some people we interact with - in 12 years on Reddit I don't think I ever remembered a particular person besides maybe a couple hyper posting mods.

I seriously doubt reddit has seen any significant drop in traffic or unique visitors. Looking back at some of the subs I frequented, they're all business as usual. The mods all backed down the second that they had their mod status threatened, as expected. Almost all of the users I saw that said they were leaving on July 1 when their 3rd party app stopped working are still there.

I deleted my account and moved here, as clearly a lot of people did, but it's a drop in the ocean and that's not even to say that the people that moved here have stopped using reddit.

If even 1% of the people leave Reddit for lemmy it will be a win and probably enough for it to grow organically in the coming months. If even 10% had come over, lemmy would have probably buckled under 10s of millions of users all at once and the experience would have been awesome with like 3% uptime.