I think people are seeing Reddit as their only solution right now due to the lack of awareness of this place. It's been a bit sad to see all the news articles written about the event but very few plugs for alternate options to visit.
I feel like a lot of people are forgetting about survivorship bias as well. If all the people who supported the blackout left Reddit, then the only people left would be the ones who aren't in favour :)
I noticed that. I made a comment saying something along the lines of me disagreeing with mods going public after only 2 days and got downvoted like crazy but not three days ago it would of been the other way. Just honestly done with that site anyway so going to download wikis from the subs that come back and be done with it.
we have had the first wave - and its gone well. second wave is incomming on or about the 30th - probably smaller, but no less committed (long term). after that its a war of attrition.
I used Reddit because I was bored and watching tv. I barely interacted. I am interacting on Lemmy. There was a lot of angry, toxic people on Reddit. So I am glad they are staying there
Personally, I like the Lemmy community better. It's definitely possible to find great stuff on reddit (and in particular for news, I think reddit is superior to what I've been finding on Lemmy), but the overall ratio of content : crap is much, much higher here.
Now that I've broken the seal, I honestly am not sure what people are going back to so eagerly on reddit. Maybe just the dopamine of lots and lots of stories and comments to interact with, or maybe they're part of something I don't interact with there.
The fediverse is the way. I’m not smart enough to say if it’s the best option, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a profit driven monolith run by out of touch investors. Reddit won’t implode but it won’t be the same as it was even a week ago. This decentralized structure is what the internet wants to be.
For better or for worse, spez was correct in claiming that this will just blow over.
People in general are shit at boycotts, redditors doubly so - there's barely any group cohesion or leadership there.
The people who see an issue with reddit's current behavior have left, the others will just keep going on a much shittier platform. As it has ever been.
People are so weak when it comes to shit like this. Nobody cares about their obligations anymore and it weakens the fight for thoes that care. Not just talking about the reddit blackout. Feels like this is the case with many things in life…
Under lots of the "we're back, let's talk what's next" announcements, comments pop up that say basically - "ah well, guess that's it, just use the app, it's great" and they get positive rating, where a week ago they'd be downvoted to oblivion.
I guess everyone for whom this was actually important, has already found an alternative and at most is waiting for their 3rd party app to break.
Reposting something I wrote in another community I hang out in, but it feels appropriate to the topic:
I won't pretend "Reddit is dying" or anything of the sort, but I have noticed something interesting (that is maybe something I should've noticed long, long ago), and that is that subreddits have an insane concentration of whiny entitled lurkers that seem to want content catered and spoonfed to them.
During this whole debacle, I've seen creators and enthusiasts that drive the traffic be perfectly content creating elsewhere because it was more about expressing their passion of a topic than cultivating some kind of audience. No matter the alternative they chose, they have plenty of outlets for their creation. But everyone else hates this. All of the bitching about blackouts that I've seen haven't been "man I wanted to post cool shit" but more "where am I supposed to get cool stuff from?".
In general, what I've seen is a slight decline in activity, but a sharp decline in quality. Comparatively, my experience in Lemmy thus far has been that people creating were fine moving elsewhere to do their thing, and while communities are still small, I've seen a lot more long-form, thoughtful and respectful discussion because everyone there was a creator and enthusiast about that topic. Looking at the profiles of people commenting, they've typically posted at least once in that community already.
Meanwhile on Reddit, since the blackout wore off on certain subs, I've seen a lot of this:
[In the original, here would be an image of a typical current comment thread in a blackout-related post, but the context of it is explained below anyway]
Where people who bitch about the blackout because "but I wanted to discuss x!!" are then invited to discuss exactly that, and the conversation goes something along the lines of
"I wanted to discuss x!"
"Oh cool, me too. I like x y z about it, though I preferred if x was like this instead, and maybe z could be polished a little more"
"Well, idk I like it"
"ok 👍"
or just
"i like this"
"i like this too 👍"
because they don't actually have any proper formulated thoughts or opinions on the subject beyond surface-level observations, brand identity or attachment, or if they do have them, they don't have the drive to create or lead conversations about it and just lurk waiting for said content and thoughts to be delivered for them.
Which makes the already bad state of egregious repost bots rising to the top because people keep upvoting the same topics over and over even worse.
In a way, I guess it's kinda similar to what happened with 9gag when that hit critical mass.
To expand on this, I also find it interesting and perplexing just how far that entitlement goes. Moderators are on the verge of losing critical tools, and they're essential in maintaining the quality of the discussions held. Creators create the topics of discussion, and are the main driving force in setting the baseline quality of said discussions, and as power users are more likely to be the ones to depend on third party apps to create the content people browse.
Both seem fine with the situation, and/or migration, and very understandably go "Hey we feel disrespected on this platform and are moving to x where we feel we can thrive better without external influences deriding our community" and lurkers, who contribute nothing and have the least barrier of entry because they essentially just need to change the url they search the same terms in, stomp their feet and cry "but I want you to discuss things for my entertainment HERE!!!" like two year olds.
Edited to add, here on Lemmy:
I'm hopeful that this situation will show moderators they can curate a dedicated community anywhere with similar (actually relevant) post flow and quality, but without enduring the abuse of the platform they host it in and a bunch of on-lookers. I really hope they don't buckle in the name of "but we're already established / have so many people / are such a good resource" because all these things can be true elsewhere without receiving death threats or mod mail spam for doing the right thing.
A mix of the ones who actually care not being active on Reddit, along with astroturfing from Reddit itself. Plus, there's always the counter-protest types that whine and scream about everything.
I'm getting downvoted in the /r/gis sub for agreeing with the mods that there should be an indefinite shutdown. It seems all that are left on the site are people simping for /u/spez. Some person even called me a "fucking idiot." Glad to be off that toxic dumpster fire of a website.
All of these subs should have been linking to a comparable Lemmy community instead of just saying they were protesting. The simple fact of the matter is that the lemmyverse is not mature enough of a platform to actually be a reddit replacement. It needs to get a lot of the kinks worked out and it needs a much better onboarding. Hopefully it can take these new users and steadily grow and while they grow they can fix these issues.
I have no intention of unsubscribing from Reddit. The recent move that company has taken has made me hostile to them as a platform. I am far more probable to engage over here and just lurk over there when I need to find the answer to something. To the extent that I can I want to help the Fediverse takeoff and replace Reddit and twitter.
This person can suck it. I was a big time Reddit fan (mostly a lurker) but I decided to continue my boycott of Reddit as long as u/spez is in play and even when he leaves they would need to do a lot to get me to go back. The Fediverse still has some work to do with QoL features but overall it is a less toxic world than Reddit and refreshing to take part in. When mlem and other phone apps really get going I think it will really attract a lot more users as a lot of folks are phone only users and we'll see the Fediverse really take hold.
I knew a lot of people would follow spez and toe the company line, just like they did with Twitter. I don‘t mind, I‘d rather hang out here without all them anyway.
I have noticed this so much today. I pretty much lived in r/hockey for the past 5 years. They had a vote and decided to black out for the 48 hour protest. Once it was clear that the vote was in favor of blacking out (and that the championship deciding game could be played during the blackout), people started pleading to move the blackout to after the championship was decided, which completely defeats the purpose of the protest.
Well, during the blackout, the championship was decided. Now that it's open again, everyone is again flipping out about how pointless the protests were, and how we ruined their experience of watching the championship game.
I have a feeling many of those critical to the protest don't yet fully grasp what a Reddit without 3rd party apps will look like.
They'll soon find out how shit the base experience is without those apps. And we all know old.reddit won't stay around for long either