This comment right here
This comment right here
This comment right here
“I’ll stand by you no matter what”
“Wait, I didn’t realize that I’d be sacrificing as well”
Standard motto today with people.
This comment is incorrect as well.
The people that cared left and what's left behind is people that wouldn't leave anyway and the strike only bothers them.
This person is living in a bubble and can't see further than their nose.
Survivorship bias!
Absolutely agree.
I believe this was reddit's intention at least in part. People who care were also those constantly exposing their anti-consumer practices and greedy policies. I'm inclined to believe the administration will be pretty glad, at least for a while, that those who get what's happening are gone.
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 just wonder if all the anti Lemmy posts I've seen have been Reddit employees
Funny you mention that, I found out about Lemmy specifically from a dude who was being downvoted to hell for even mentioning it as an alternative. So glad I decided to look into it I love this place and the whole idea of the fediverse in general.
I understand that the fediverse isn't the most intuitive thing to understand, and that many people won't immediately understand it, but I've seen so many comments saying that it's too confusing (even in response to direct links to instances with the simplest explanations). There has to be an astroturfing campaign of some kind going on
Probably written by AI even. Trolls can do that now.
there has been quite a bit of this - in many venues. I have been involved in so many firefights involving bullshit "what-a-bout"-isms and strawman ideological stupidity that I have wondered how much astroturfing and sock-puppetry was going on. now I suspect there was quite a bit.
investor class protectng its latest cash-cow.
Lazy people fearing change is more like it. I’m waiting to see if capitulation occurs. If things don’t get fixed by month end I’ll zero my main account and walk away.
I've been telling people, the only way this works is if communities migrate somewhere else. Every single blacked out subreddit needs to post their new location on a site other than Reddit. Otherwise people will just stay on Reddit and wait or visit/make new subreddits.
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 :)
This is a very good perspective. I haven't been on Reddit since the blackout started. Probably would have gone back as well but the AMA comments were the final straw for me.
Honestly Spez's attitude in general towards the entire community is what drove me away. I don't really care that much about the 3rd party apps personally. I do use one occasionally, but I primarily use the website. However, I don't think the users, mods and developers are being unreasonable here in what they're asking for and he basically just spat in their faces, lied to and about them, and then pretended he was willing to discuss and work with them while his actions pretty clearly showed that he actually had no intention whatsoever of actually doing anything of the sort.
If you're not willing to budge, just say that. Don't lie to my face while very clearly doing the exact opposite of what you're saying. If you don't want 3rd party apps anymore, just say that instead of promising to work with developers and then basically giving them the middle finger when they try to communicate with you about it. That sort of thing shows exactly what he thinks of the community that has built his company for him and that's the reason he can shove what's left of reddit right up his ass as far as I'm concerned.
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.
I guess it might be because those of us who actually do support the blackout tries to keep staying away until things changes, while a lot of the people on Reddit right now have been content starved for a few days and just waited for the subs to open again (and thus does not want to see them shut down again).
Personally I quite like it here on the fediverse and am not in any way in a hurry to go back to Reddit any time soon.
The same thing happened to me. Even got called "fucking stupid." That was my impetus for nuking my account once and for all. All that's left on the site are the normies who don't care about what's going on. I miss reddit from 2010. Lemmy is like what Reddit used to be and I'm loving it. I just hope the same thing doesn't happen here.
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.
There are a lot of subreddits for specific tv shows or games. Ngl that's the biggest temptation for me. There are shows that I'm obsessed with that no one else in my life has the same love for, and Reddit is the only place I can talk to anyone about them. Sad to let that go.
Hobbies too, especially more obscure ones. I’m really missing the journal/planner subs.
I knew I’d be tempted to go back, though, so I deleted my 13year old account. No regrets and I’m not signing up again. I just hope that my little communities find their way into the fediverse soon.
It's a matter of number of users. The big subs on reddit just have too many people that it just becomes toxic and a circlejerk. The biggest communities here are very nice.
The niche hobby/gaming/tv subs on reddit on the other hand have enough people to have interesting discussion on the topic. There's not enough people on Lemmy to find enough like minded people on niche interests.
Assuming that this is an inevitable trade-off, I wouldn't mind if Lemmy never attracts the number of users like reddit does.
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…
Not going back to Reddit ever, too much bs.
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.
Then the third wave when they finally kill off old.reddit.com
You say smaller, but I'm thinking a lot of people will realise that their clients actually don't work anymore on that date 😂
Yeah I think they're underestimating how many people just won't use the official app. The people who use Apollo, RiF, Relay, etc. are pretty attached.
I know for me reddit is just the app on my phone that I press when I'm bored now. I figured when the app doesn't work anymore I'll just find entertainment elsewhere, which is how I found the fediverse. Now that I'm here the whole concept of decentralized interconnected communities has totally sold me on the project.
The problem with reddit, Twitter, twitch, etc. as I see it is that they're all just trying to profit off their users somehow. That's not conducive to fostering healthy communities of people. I think this whole thing is the future of social networking, take the big corps out of the equation.
unrelated to your comment (sorta), but I just saw your comment update in real time after you edited it. I just thought that's a really cool feature and wanted to point it out :)
Ok that's pretty neat.
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
Man, this is true. So far my experience has been less stressful and more wholesome on the fediverse. It feels more like Reddit from 8 years ago than modern, angry Reddit.
Honeymoon period
You just made me realize I've been sitting here for two hours in a now-dark room and I haven't turned the TV on yet. Fediverse truly is like the old reddit.
The hardest part for me was realizing how shit Google search is without appending reddit.
Someone made a firefox plugin that redirects to archive.org Wayback Machine cache version of reddit:
Completely agree. We need to start building that stuff and contributing more in the fediverse so that can't be a thing in the future
It's crazy, I never noticed before. I wanted to search something about a game yesterday and the first five hits were Reddit threads, the others were clickbait. And I didn't even append "reddit" as a search term. It was a simple search.
There must be other terms. I don't know them but there should be other ways of searching organic content outside of reddit.
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.
See, I really don't need all those people to leave Reddit and appear over here.
I'm fine if Reddit keeps being what Reddit has become over the years, and all the angry, toxic, trolling, shit posting people stay over there as well.
I'm fine with a much smaller, much friendlier community.
That's fair. I just think the whole "fediverse thing" will keep the toxic normies away while the OG redditors from the olden days will be more likely to migrate. Old redditors seemed to be more technical minded, so I figure it'll be self-filtering.
I agree though, I don't want that toxicity here. I've already experienced one such encounter on lemmy and was surprised.
Edit: Should have read the context first. I thought you were responding to my editing all old reddit comments to point users to lemmy, lol. My point still stands regarding that.
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.
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.
The fediverse has one thing going for it that any other alternative lacks: a credible approach to dealing with the network effect. In isolation, it is very difficult to start an independent social media website. This becomes much, much easier when you have neighboring sites that you can interact with. Federation serves as a catalyst. I've been longing for the proliferation of open source social media for over 15 years. Nothing has changed the state of affairs more thoroughly than the introduction of federation.
this comment strikes home so much.
the depression I have felt watching the internet devolve into a swamp of corporate silos and ads has been physically tangible. a mass exodus to federated social is the revolution I hoped would happen 10 years ago.
its late, but the wound has been opened on the giant and its bleeding.
It's certainly the best option that currently exists at least.
There's also a non-zero chance this is astroturfing by Reddit itself as part of Damage Control SOP.
(For that matter, this instance would seem more along the lines of a weaponized "backdraft", IMHO. A rather simple way to turn the subs against their mods to crank up the heat, eh?)
One way I'm looking at this opportunity is like email, anyone can set up an email server thanks to how it got established. So if this pans out and eventually we get funded hosts in the vein of Gmail and Hotmail, who spend money writing fancy UIs and on marketing, we still have a fundamental base where we can shuffle away from the big players and go set up our own servers.
I do hope to see some funded options come into this space, they can control/own their interface into the data, but they can't control/own the data.
This is why I left, Redditors are just something else.
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.
Not all lurkers are like that(not really disagreeing with you though) I would consider myself to be a lurker because i only occasionally comment and even more rarely.post. I rarely comment because i know my wording can be a bit weird so most people don't get it at the first read and somtimes I'm not up for a discussion. I also rarely post because i don't know if that specific thing is worth posting or i just don't know how i think about the topic or something weird
For the most part, the people still commenting on big subs or r/all during the protests are people who are:
These aren't the brightest minds on the internet. Like you said - the decline in quantity has been minor, but quality has gone off a cliff.
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.
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.
I'm doing my part. I hope others do an exodus and not a hiatus.
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.
Or maybe /u/spez is manually changing vote counts, as he did before when modifying user comments without saying so.
I’m honestly so disappointed. People arguing that this is all a “powertripping mods” thing. They can fuck off, and scared mods can too.
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.
This is one of many sad reality in life. :(
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.
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 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.
Eh, I used Reddit daily for 14 years, and quit cold turkey. The first few days were rough, but between the feddiverse and inoreader, I'm doing fine.
Sure the communities I left behind were much larger, but honestly the responses I get here are of much higher quality.
Reddit was my primary social media page for over 2 years now.
Now that it's practically gone, finding good alternatives is hard.
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
It's my understanding that the latest numbers just before the API nonsense put the old and unofficial users only at around 5% of the total userbase. While I suspect that they had disproportionate engagement and moderator numbers, I think most of the people who don't care really are in the vast majority who aren't immediately affected by the change.
Just as with any diversity issue (in this case, a diversity of personality types) the majority is going to find the quality of Reddit content will start to slip as the minority leaves. Failing to stand up for the people who are loudly proclaiming they've got a problem is going to affect everyone, even though it's not immediately obvious.
Also, most of the people who really care have already left.
Maybe all of those in favor of the protests kept their word and only those who are against it remain?
I don't miss Reddit. I checked some comment sections and holy hell is it toxic compared to here. I think part of that is because of what you've mentioned in your comment.
I used to work for this major company, biggest in my country by far.
Whether it was going well or poorly, they tended to offer severance packages to "cut back" on their staff, to appease the grotesquely overpaid consultants that analysed their finances.
What tended to happen, was that the most qualified people, who had no issues finding another job (often better paying), took those packages (I took home a one year salary after having worked there almost three, then had two months vacation and started a better paying job), which left those who didn't really have other options, those who did the bare minimum and had a lot of useless meetings.
I guess that's what reddit is heading for. They are alienating those who contribute the most, the content creators, the mods and the ones who like to engage others. They will be left with their bots, lurkers, racists, reposters and porn-spammers.
Good riddance.
Ever tried having a discussion in any of the default subs? If your opinion differentiates from the hivemind you will be downvoted as spam, without any responses. It completely defeats the purpose of a "discussion"
I’ll be real. I miss it for very specific subs. It’s definitely more toxic but small game subs and stuff like that I miss
I miss my smaller and niche subs. I don’t think I’ve waded into the default subs in a very long time.
Oh well, to everything there is a season, right?
It’s getting really bad. I’m noticing there being a lot of comments in subs where there barely were any and any mention of the blackout and what might happen after the 30th is met by tons of downvotes and removal. Tinfoil hat but it feels like there are bots making these bad faith comments.
I miss Apollo. Turns out Reddit itself was highly replaceable.
I just switched over to lemmy from reddit, and it is much nicer here isn't riddled with ads and toxicity. I just hope that more users do join over here, since there were a few subreddits/people I followed and would still like to see there updates/posts
Literally. The people in favor of the protests are.... Protesting! Everybody else doesn't care.
I think this might actually be the case. Let's see how things work out. Lemmy surprised me as a proper alternative it's just not as content rich as reddit at the moment. Something about chickens and eggs.
Let's just expand and improve it further than the original lemmies did. Don't be afraid to post content, heck scrape content and make this the better option. People will follow content.
I’d like to add that there’s already been a significant increase in the amount of content and comments in just the last few days. I joined a whole 5 days ago (so many ages ago, I know) and back then it was somewhere between 1 and 2k users on this instance. It was way emptier - you could read all of the posts in most of the “big” communities in an hour or so. And the new feed was pretty stale.
Lemmy’s not the firehose of content that is Reddit yet, but it’s making real progress.