this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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It can go one of a few ways.

  1. Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.

  2. A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.

No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.

I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Squabbles seems to have not hit user critical mass. Tildes looks like it's doing well.

The Lemmy + Kbin fediverse seems to be taking off like a rocket and has the best overall chance IMO of becoming the home for the best parts of Reddit's community.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Squabbles

Isn't this developed by one person, isn't open source and forbids NSFW in general? That is never going to go well.

Tildes

No mobile app and no ActivityPub so it's a very specialised. Additionally I don't like the UI at all and I've read this in multiple threads here as well.

Lemmy + Kbin

Both are show the same content as they are federated so it's up to who prefers what really. I prefer Lemmy, but anything is fine.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

re Squabbles: yes, hard agree.

re Tildes: yes, also hard agree. The invitation-only method of growing the community also is draconian and it's going to hit all the scaling problems a traditional site does.

These and others are why you're finding me with you here in the fediverse. I am with you mi beratna.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

These and others are why you’re finding me with you here in the fediverse.

I've been here for a week and it already feels like home!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think people underestimate how much people are unlikely to go back to an abusive relationship when they've found one that isn't. Reddit was a bad habit. I am actually going to be contributing to communities here once I figure it all out. The worst that could happen here so far is not getting any comments or votes which is fine by me. On reddit I could post a picture of my cat and someone could comment "insert random derogatory term" for no reason lol! So far so good here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It really depends on how you interacted with Reddit. A lot of my engagement was with smaller subreddits that sometimes had user bases that weren't necessarily the most tech savvy. I'm not sure how long it took some of the older people on r/quilting to find it, but I'm sure it will take them longer to find the Lemmy version.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, seriously looked at Reddit alternatives when I saw a post from a big sub about going dark and how they were considering moving to tildes - but then found it was invite only. Seems silly for a million+ sub to migrate somewhere invite only

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I want to add, that my wife has been a "scab" throughout all this and has been active on reddit, trying to show me memes and such.

The content she's been showing me has been stale, old stuff I saw back in 2020. Same recycled jokes, same memes. Reddit is in a mode of hard cope right now and I doubt it gets better if we don't return.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

My wife was on Reddit for about 9 years when she got hooked on TikTok about a year ago. In her words, Reddit had become boring. She still checks the local community sub, but that is about it. Just worth pointing out that Reddit is facing pressure from two ends. A lot of the more casual users, and the popular content creators, are on TikTok and other video centric platforms. Reddit can't compete there, as much as they try. The dedicated users they did have, those interested in community and discussion, well Reddit just angered much of that group.

Prior to the blackout, I was angry with Reddit. Since the blackout I've taken a step back and realized how much garbage Reddit is filled with (ads, shitposts, promoted content, etc), and how much I want to find something better. Before the blackout I was planning to quit Reddit out of anger. Now I plan to quit because, as my wife said, Reddit is boring and I'm excited to explore what comes next.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

While I’m enjoying my time here and I’m honestly shocked with the amount of engagement so far, I just don’t see the “fedaverse” ever gaining any mainstream traction. It’s unintuitive and the barrier of entry is way too high. Even googling “Lemmy” doesn’t bring up useful results.

Something like squabbles has a better chance for mainstream appeal, but it would need a miracle as it’s only one duder

That being said, I’ll still be here!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Honestly, the lack of mainstream appeal is part of why I like it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just remember - as content is generated SEO is naturally going to improve, which will start to bring people into kbin/lemmy via Google.

As people spend time here marketing types will start to notice. Shortly thereafter we will see bots. To me, how we as a community handle those bots will be the real "does this experiment survive" test.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Absolutely. It's only a matter of time before someone sees the value in the information/data that is here and begin indexing the entire fediverse/site and working on SEO for it.

There are countless examples of indexers for GitHub for example, if you do any searching for questions related to coding. Pretty much every issue and repo has been indexed.

When reddit first popped up, posts from it came up in search results very rarely, now it's pretty much at the top of many searches, since it's a bastion of knowledge and community groups.

It's really only a matter of time if things do go well here.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Ends? Its already over. You, me, and many who have replied here have moved on. Reddit isn't going anywhere but its just another site many of us will slowly see as irrelevant or uninteresting as the weeks and months tick by. For a short while in my past, DeviantArt was crazy cool. Reddit had a good run. Is Lemmy the crazy cool thing now? I dunno but I'm certainly enjoying it for the moment.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally, I will only be going back to Reddit if I need help with some specific thing and I can't find it in Lemmy anywhere. And only for that thread.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think it's a matter of communities. People would stay on Reddit because of top communities and top quality content made on those communities. As long we have some form of aggregations of users making great content here on Lemmy as well, we're good imho.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It would not crash and burn but rather be messy and decrease in quality gradually over time. Sort of like Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Digg still exists, so I have no doubt that reddit will continue to have its rotting corpse propped up and picked at, even after a lot of its biggest contributors have left the site

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my view this isn't the end of Reddit, but it is the beginning of the end. This situation will probably pass, but the lemmy devs and instance owners have already gotten useful feedback about how to handle situations like this, and what kinds of things would help lemmy and the fediverse grow. The next time something like this happens (and there will be a next time) they'll be just that little bit more ready.

Although for me specifically, I don't actually care too much if Reddit dies. I'm happy as long as there's a community here. The best thing that seems to be coming out of this situation so far is that many subreddits are now getting lemmy community analogs for people to move to.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I want reddit to die. It had its day, and what we have now is a poor reflection on what it was and what it's supposed to be. Change is a good thing, it leads to improvement and making things better.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For me, it's no more reddit on mobile but I'm not blocking it any time soon. If it's a Google result, so be it, there's still useful content over there.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think you're going to know by one metric. Quality of content over the next ~3 - 6 months. Whether subs stay or go is one thing, that's been part of Reddit for the 12 years I used it. What would get folks to leave is when the communities they are interested in aren't supplying content.

So if you lose some lurkers, that's not gonna matter because they didn't post anyways. If you start losing power users, who regularly feed your community content, what's going to drive you to stick around? If you ask me, I think the fact we are even having this conversation means Reddit is losing in this equation.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we'll see a temporary "return to normalcy" after the protest finishes and most subs come back online. But come June 30 and the end of third-party apps, we'll see a bunch of users come back to Lemmy/Kbin again.

In a way, this seems like the best way of driving things. The protest has raised awareness and got a ton of development work going, and then there's going to be a respite giving instances time to prepare themselves for the second surge.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it's like mastodon, most people will get bored and move back to reddit. Lemmy will grow marginally, and be more ready for the next stress test.

There will be other reddit outrages after the ipo, and lemmy will be more ready for migration. Repeat. Hopefully there's a critical mass one day, but there's no guarantee.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'm voting for #1. Even the subs that remain offline will be replaced.

But there's a caveat-- I think Reddit will start to suck more quickly than it has, and, without some core mods and content providers, will become pretty much a shell of itself in a few years. Maybe it's before it's public; maybe it's after.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a few people have said already, I think it'll slowly become more crap and alternatives will slowly bring in people who get sick of it.

They're hoping for IPO and once that's done, they'll be much less forgiving when it comes to cash grabs. I can imagine them doing things like getting rid of old.reddit, not allowing the hiding of suggested posts, ads which are very targeted and intrusive.

I saw an article on the official Reddit Inc website talking about the use context in advertising, where advertiser's can change their ad based on the context of the thread. It doesn't say how they're implementing this but I could imagine a situation where they put ads directly into threads. Either way you'll start to see ads using wording which mimics the subreddits you're in or the comments you write.

I have the feeling the reddits decisions are just going to get worse as long as they can get away with it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, honestly whether or not they back down or some solution is reached regarding the current situation, they will not stop aggressively monetizing users. A lot of veteran users will leave, some will stay or come back eventually, but I think pretty much every veteran user will be gone permanently if they get rid of old Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I honestly hope that some kind of community remains here

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It will. I've been on Reddit 16+ years and I have no itch to return or reopen the app. Meanwhile I'm getting nothing done for work because I have Mastodon, kbin, and lemmy open. The sticky/addictive power is here already.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m an old head Reddit user like you. Are you feeling like Lemmy is feeling like the early days of Reddit. Smaller, more of a community feel?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I’ve been with Reddit for 10 years, and Lemmy feels like what Reddit was around 8-7 years ago. Reddit front page posts used to be in 3-4 digit upvotes max before they changed the vote counting mechanism. Lemmy is already having 3 digit upvoted posts with hundreds of comments. My complaints of Lemmy are purely technical, and hope they get resolved before people get frustrated enough.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I mean, if the quality of content on the site currently is any indication of how things will look like going forward, I think maybe ditching reddit will be easier than I thought. it's wayyyyyyy more reactionary than usual, though I think there's some 4chan-originated pot-stirring going on. still though, it's not a pleasant place to be right now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's going to end with a relatively small reddit exodus with most returning to reddit in a few weeks. People are lazy, and will concede to the API changes just like they all did with Twitter. Remember when Musk took over and made all those dramatic changes heavily monetizing the platform? Everyone was crying how Twitter will die and that they were all quitting. Well guess what? Almost all of them went back to Twitter anyway and now use the official app just like Musk wanted. Reddit will be no different sadly.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Personally, I’m happy where things are now. I came over to Lemmy because of Reddit Third Party App drama, and now I’m staying because I realized that I’m spending much less time on my phone using the less popular Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Not gonna lie I think I'm actually spending more time on Lemmy than Reddit, participating and trying to get discussions going, making content, etc. Just to try and get it active lol

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

you cant really return to normalcy from this, but i dont think most users care. whenever i get into a casual convo about the fediverse online, the general consensus from people is 'yeah reddit isnt going to die, i'll stay on reddit for my communities'. so if the majority think reddit isn't going to die and continue using the site, it probably wont die! it'll just go back to normal with a few million less users (which actually isnt that much for a big site) unless spez hilariously fucks up

really the fediverse is just a lot of people who like tech at the end of the day, not the average web user

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I agree, we're getting an insane amount of hate on our sub for remaining restricted indefinitely. The general users do not seem to care about 3rd party apps or that Reddit can just bend us over at any time.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I think the mod tools are what will blow reddit up ultimately. It's why I'm here.

The third party apps are a hard self own, but I don't use reddit because of third party apps. I use third party apps because the reddit official app is... Special. If they'd forced me to sue their app I would be annoyed, but still interested in reddit.

If you destroy the key tools that enable volunteer moderators to manage communities, the community will die. Example: two of my favorite subs were legaladvice, and bestoflegaladvice. Both required extensive moderating to function (and even then, it was prone to shit shows particularly at LA). No mod tools would make it unmoderatable... Which turns you into Voat pretty fast.

So, I don't think reddit dies July 1. I think reddit spends the next year turning into Twitter, and lemmy has to run as fast as it can to scale.

Hopefully, this is my last post on lemmy talking about reddit, but I doubt I'm that lucky.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m honestly done with Reddit and I really hope enough people find a new home outside of it when this is all said and done. Hanging out on here has made me realize how toxic and mentally draining Reddit actually is.

I think Reddit will continue to grow into a normie cesspool of children and mentality I’ll folks and will eventually go the way of FB and Twitter where the interesting and saine folks will dig out new communities in some other place to be determined

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why did anybody expect reddit to back down on this. Unless reddit loses a significant portion of its user base then they have no reason to care. Currently, there really isn't any viable alternative infrastructure that could absorb millions of new users. People are going to make a fuss for a bit, but if they enjoyed using reddit before then they'll come back to using it sooner or later.

Frankly, I don't know why people keep fixating on this. I've been using Lemmy for over three years. I use it because I enjoy the community here, and I don't really think about what reddit is or isn't doing.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Meanwhile, as the subs are down there are people attempting to replicate them here.

So if you like Dadjokes, hop over to DadJokes

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

According to Reddit’s internal memo, they expect this to blow over Wednesday with most subreddits returning, and they reported no drop in revenue so far. So they’re not likely to give in yet.

What needs to happen is that the blackout needs to continue indefinitely, and more communities need to start migrating to lemmy/kbin. If we move the content here, people will move too.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We already tried to move to Voat in 2015 and it... didn't turn out very well...

I think if the Apollo dev actually releases an Apollo-based app for Lemmy then we might get a chance.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Voat was always going to be a cesspool because of the actual reason they were migrating in the first place. A bunch of hate subs got banned and the kind of people who would be upset enough to boycott that are shit heads so it was inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think a lot of people (myself included) were put off voat due the right wing politics and seemingly toxic nature of the site.

With regards to Lemmy - I'm not a communist by any stretch of the imagination but I'm definitely more left leaning and liberal, and the community aspect here is decent so far.

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[–] Denaton 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't think that Reddit is going down, but i have seen users that post regularly on Reddit closing down their accounts and joining Lemmy, this will snowball into more joining Lemmy because the quality of post will eventually go down on Reddit and go up on Lemmy, this is just speculations and have a really lose base.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.

So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.

I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.

Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!

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