After all the BS from /u/spez?
Reddit is profiting a lot from the network effect. By now this reddit is a known brand, has a lot of content is already there, has a lot of people (especially non-technical users) are already on reddit, and they’re there to stay.
All the other reddit alternatives, including lemmy and/or the fediverse suffers from:
- Bugs (I love lemmy, but gosh, have you seen how buggy and sometimes unresponsive it is?)
- The complexity of “servers” (don’t get me wrong, federation is the way to go IMHO, but it is confusing to non-technical users)
- Lack of content
- Lack of users
Everybody is talking about the Digg exodus, but nobody is saying that it didn’t happen in a day, it took ~1 to 2 years.
Lemmy is buggy and unresponsive for you? Huh. For me it’s both way more responsive and not buggy at all, kinda why I decided to give it a shot, instead of dropping social media all together…
The server thing isn’t that bad, just go to lemmy.world and make an account, really not that difficult.
And the lack of content and people is because people started caring about lemmy like a week ago…
The complexity of “servers” (don’t get me wrong, federation is the way to go IMHO, but it is confusing to non-technical users)
I’ll admit the technical stuff is probably the most off-putting. Most major social media got where it is by being idiot proof. The whole set-up will need to be much more streamlined if they want to really dip into Reddits user base.
I think the solution is a central registration which selects a random server from https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
For example, join-lemmy.org should do this, IMHO, without any technicality. Just transparently register to random server, with a curated cross-servers pre-selected list of subscriptions. Once users are distributed across servers, people will just recommend friends/family to join their own server, then the centralization of join-lemmy.org won’t become an issue. But I might be utopian.
I get a “sunk-cost fallacy” feel from it. Like Bill Hicks’ bit went- This HAS to be real. Look at my furrows of worry- look at all this Karma. This has to be real!"
… it’s just a ride.
Honestly, apathy. It is not like people have to start paying for the app or website explicitly
- Facebook/ Meta stole and continues to steal millions of users’ data, the vast majority of the users do not care
- Twitter hacked most third-party apps, but people still use it because it doesn’t affect them personally. They still use it for free, so why not?
- Reddit killed third party APIs? People will grumble, but they will recalibrate their mind and continue using the official app.
I completely agree, and I think another major factor is a function of when you started using Reddit.
I’ve noticed a trend that many of the people who’ve moved on from Reddit (or at least the ones who are posting here and in places like Hacker News) joined Reddit 8+ years ago.
I started using Reddit about 14 years ago, and I’ve definitely noticed a change in the overall vibe of Reddit over those years. There were obvious changes (like cracking down/banning specific subreddits) and there were more subtle changes (like communities growing so large that the comments turned to shit) and there was a departure from a text-heavy, original-content focused haven for like-minded people to a feed full of gifs and inflammatory comment (not to mention ads-that-are-pretending-to-be-posts).
People who have been using it for so many years notice this change, but it was so gradual and over so long a time that they were used to it – essentially the change was slow enough that we were lulled into accepting the new reality of Reddit.
But then this whole kerfuffle has shaken us out of it and made us realize that it’s only going to get worse. So here we are, onto greener pastures.
Now, on the other hand, we have the (many, many) people who started using Reddit more recently. They only know the “new” Reddit. And so they don’t get what the big deal is. They think the mods are throwing a fit and the power users are just whiny and “why the hell can’t I see my memes?”.
They don’t understand what we miss about Reddit.
The vast majority of reddits userbase are consumers. They are already using the official app and don’t care about the politics of the platform. These people are only there to get their content fix.
I realised this when I saw a post on a subreddit where someone shared on how to turn off some kind of notification in the official app. So many other people thanked this person… Reddit has become another mainstream social media site like FB, Instagram and so on.
At this point I just want the place to burn.
deleted by creator
People like being comfortable, new places can be uncomfortable.
It’s this simple. So just let them have their porn-filled garbage can of a place.
Reddit is now in the ilk of MySpace and facebook… Corpo-wasteland devoid of anything but ad revenue and cheers from shareholders.
They can keep it.
This place is already becoming a porn filled place. There’s godamm lolis for the love of god
It’s got nazis too, we truly live in a society.
Yep.
I have zero hope for Reddit. I had no idea there were much better 3rd party apps available for Reddit on phones, so the API changes don’t impact me. But I’ve noticed over the years more and more, astro turfing by bots, bots reposting popular things to karma farm, as to sell the bot to entities looking to influence reddit via the aforementioned astro turfing.
It’s all very gross, I started to feel like a duck sitting in a pond surrounded by ducks, but not really, they’re all decoys, fakes, mean to give the impression of a big crowd. I don’t like that trend, and on top of that, the idea of Reddit going public, and trying to push our content as their value makes me sick. The owners of reddit haven’t done the heavy lifting, we the users, the mods all did the work and built up content. The idea that some chucklefuck was going to profit big from our effort isn’t something I want to be part of any more. So here I am, and I gotta say, Lemmy feels like a 2000’s forum by comparison, and I hope its very nature makes it harder to fall into the same pit falls as reddit and digg did.
I had hope until yesterday. I was a mod and all my users turned on me and said some really hurtful things. I’m gonna give a mod position to someone else on a smaller sub I’m a part of or two and step down from the rest. I’m guessing I’ll still lurk, but I’m done with it.
Why don’t you just step down without assigning a new mod? Let Reddit self destruct itself.
One of my favorite subs went aggressively pro-shill. Not just “you did your best”. But nothing except contempt and endless mockery.
I would say it’s astroturfing. But previously a gaming sub had gone dark for a mere 24 hours as a statement about toxicity and the response was similar.
There’s definitely some hardcore shilling and astroturfing in a lot of subs where blackouts and John Oliver memes have become the norm. People with no posting history, brand new accounts and low karma accounts have flooded in to insult the mods and attack the protest.
I don’t think people understand how important moderation is. I’m sorry you had that experience. I appreciate all the work you’ve put in.
Thank you. Working to let it go.
The arrow of enshitification flys in one direction only. the people that are still there will migrate out eventually. spez was right when he said the majority of users don’t care about the api, but fails to realize that the majority of users don’t generate content. The users that do generate content are jumping ship.
Yeah, the majority of users don’t care about the API because they don’t know what it means - that it’s the interface that enables not just third party apps, but also moderation tools.
The same users that will tell you that they don’t care about the API will start whining when the moderation of their favorite subs turn to shit, when they get overrun by trolls and spammers and bots and advertising.
People just fail to connect the dots.
You’re on the Fediverse where the more “extreme” people moving away from Reddit are. Hence, there is a strong bias toward experiencing the Reddit fiasco in a way that makes one think, that it’s already a sinking ship. For many, Lemmy isn’t as easily useable and mature as Reddit is.
The echo chamber will continue. Too easy to surround ourselves with the same opinions all of the time
That’s kinda true in both cases, right? Like the ones who remain attached to reddit and new transplants to Lemmy will both be like “good riddance”
because the majority of people doesn’t really care sadly
I have no hope, but there are a few subs that I still love and it’s sad that he is destroying that so he can make reddit like every other soul-sucking social network. reddit is unfortunately the only place I can go to discuss random things I love like the EPL, or WNBA, or the japanese show Gaki No Tsukai as no one around me in real live is into them. Hopefully some of that can transfer to lemmy or other places…but who knows…
Reddit is like the restaurant you’ve been going to for several years that was a mom & pop operation with awesome food and atmosphere. It got popular, and the owners made it a chain, so you could get the same food in a lot of different areas. The quality started to go down as they expanded, but it was already very popular. Then the owners started raising the prices, and the atmosphere started to get way less awesome. At some point, you realized that it’s not the restaurant you fell in love with, and it wasn’t a good value anymore, so you started looking for a similar kind of restaurant that was more like that one was early on. But the chain is still really popular, and a lot of people just keep going because it’s what they’re familiar with and they know the menu - they don’t want to go to the work of finding a new place and they’re content with what they’re getting there. The people who have left are a drop in the bucket so far, and the chain restaurant is likely to continue operating for the foreseeable future.
I think a lot of the general reddit user base is still out of the loop on it or just doesn’t care about the drama enough to make any kind of change.
Many users don’t log in every day, and might just sign in to look up answers to specific questions or to read individual subs. Those folks are a lot less likely to have been following all the updates through last month and before since so much was announced across a variety of subs.
Because Reddit has been our online home for years. It’s where our communities are, where are online friends are, it’s become home. People have spent thousands of hours building communities there, as a labor of love.
Unfortunately I agree with you- the home is on fucking fire and unless a monsoon spontaneously erupts we should get the hell out before it burns to the ground.
