I understand this only because my husband still is looking at reddit. I had to have a talk with him as to why I am changing platforms, the point of not visiting a site during a protest, and how Lemmys and kbin need time to grow. He was looking at news and he said "well your site doesn't have anything! It's basically empty where am I supposed to go for discussion!"
I told him he needs to either just view the news sites directly and contribute, or just try to curb usage and allow the sites time to grow. Use your phones native news app for now, whatever it takes to not add to Reddits ad revenue and user count.
On the contrary, the smallest communities are the most fun and enjoyable to interact in. The big ones are just good for making sure there’s always fresh content on /r/all every few hours. It’ll grow. This is just the first big migration wave, there will be more when the third party apps shut off and there will be more again once people start realizing it’s not just a tiny forum experiment no one cares about.
Reddit feels like it grew exponentially the last few years. I noticed a huge increase in the number of accounts with auto-generated usernames and accounts referring to Reddit as an "app." To me it also seemed to become increasingly toxic with this new wave of users. Hoping for a big reset with one of these new offshoots.
On reddit if you were european you were basically missing the action since the posts were written by americans and already 8 hours old, and your replies would be buried under the hundreds of comments.
Most of the time there was no point if you weren't present like 1h after a post was made.
The only people who would read your comments would be an AI.
Just like a bad ex…. Gotta just let it go.
It feels like a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I agree - I was definitely more of a lurker on reddit than a massive contributor (14 years, <30k karma), but I loved how there was always a relevant subreddit for even fairly niche interests. I miss that on the fediverse - but at the same time, I'm hopeful that the fediverse will, in time, gain wider attention. I don't miss the low quality content, but I miss the sheer volume of content, and with careful curation of subreddits, managing the signal to noise ratio was easy enough.
kbin could be a bit bigger, but the collective reddit personality is downright insufferable, and I suspect it's largely because of its size. There are just too many people with opinions as strong as they are different, and we're often not any better off after our interactions with them.
Plus all the troll bots and fake AI posts.
I do too BUT, it's nice to actually get to engage with people when I make a comment due to the smaller community. Reddit is so big, my comments usually get buried quickly under the memes and quips.
I also choose this guy's social media size.
But seriously, it might grow in time. I think if it gets more accessible, people will start using one of the fediverse flavours, and it will grow from there.
When I started on Reddit in 2012, it was mostly because I was in Rarotonga and I needed something to entertain myself that didn't use hoards of data like YouTube did for me at the time and Reddit was largely text and image based so it fit the bill perfectly.
Over the years I definitely saw a cultural shift and the quality of content absolutely dropped but there was still so much of it that I could still lurk...
This fediverse does a pretty good job of capturing that same vibe of text based forums that I'm really enjoying, whilst I totally get what you're saying about the size of Reddit I'm more than happy to be hanging out here and I actually like the simple interface, reminds me of my Nexus 4 days hah
Became so huge that I was typing a comment on Reddit and most of the time half way through I gave up and close the tab cause it wasn't worth it. It would get buried.
I, too, am a size queen.
Jokes aside, I was telling irl people about how even if I post something to the craft communities, there just isn't a critical mass to make me feel validated from posting.
I made kind of a big overture in many comment sections agreeing with others that kbin felt kinder and different from 2017-present reddit, but then a lot of folks came in and started up the same low-effort content communities and fell back into the same patterns of memes, so now it kind of feels grubby.
And the places on reddit where I loved lurking and reading analyses and hot takes (news, world news, politics) all are total ghost towns in the Fediverse (at least, what early magazines I've subscribed to last weekend).
Whatever the perks are here - and I'm aware it's all a work in progress at this stage - it lacks robustness for me.
I have a hunch: if you knew how much of Reddit's size was bots or work accounts pushing a paid for agenda, you wouldn't miss it.
Size isn't everything. I bet you have heard that before?
Actually, Reddit is too big. Go back ten years, then it was a good size. Before the tons of spam, reposts, onlyfans, owners hell-bent on turning Reddit into some Twitter freak shit show.
I know the overall sentiment is that size doesn't matter, but to new users looking at these sites, that want to see recent posts and engagement. We want people coming from Reddit to feel like the site is growing so they get invested and contribute.
It's still early days though so keen to see how this pans out over the next few weeks, especially with the API ending on the 1st of July. Think we'll get another wave of uptick.
No, I don't miss that at all. I'm here because it's more like Reddit was when I first joined.
I personally don't mainly because it feels like I have nothing of worth to say if there's already like hundreds of comments that have already said my point in a multitude of ways, also just the anxiety of judgement and shit. On smaller platforms like these there's actual room to speak and share stuff
I think there will be another surge on July 1 when 3rd party apps go offline. As submissions, activity, and moderation on reddit decline, it could lead to a larger stream of users leaving the platform and looking for an alternative. Fleshing out content and functionality in the fediverse before in advance of Reddit's death spiral feels important.
I think you really mean you miss the diversity of communities. But at the size of Reddit, the front page is just spam/clickbait. Very few people actually want that level of size. The ideal goal is something that has all of the major communities of Reddit, but we don’t really want it to be that big.
Honestly, I have had my hands full acclimating to the fediverse, bumping between instances to "try them on for size" over the last several days post-Rexxit . . . And the growth just in that short span has been exponential.
I suspect Lemmy will rival the hugeness sooner than you think.
Plus, its been kinda cool to sort by "New" to find new communities/magazines and actual quality content!
I miss Reddit’s size… circa 2010.
Regardless of how many people stay on Fediverse or return to Reddit, the important thing is that so many people are now aware of, and engaging with, alternatives.
Reddit was small once. Then Digg has a seizure and Reddit grew quickly.
Now it’s Reddit having a fit and we’re seeing more people dabbling in the threadiverse. It won’t be the same pace though, it has the same challenges as Mastodon etc.. to encourage people to take a moment to understand federated decentralised Vs the monolithic services they’re used to.. but it’s going to grow. June 30th will be the next influx.
That's what she says.
In the last few years, Reddit has become overwhelmed with bots and trolls. Kbin and Lemmy feel more fresh because they are - it’s too soon for the negative cloud. But it will come eventually. For now, this is a million times better than Reddit.
Most of that size was from lurkers, OnlyFans spammers, bots, and chuds. I much prefer here, where nearly everyone is a real contributor. It feels more like how Reddit was a decade ago
That's what she said.
One of the things I don't miss is the reposting bots. They are a big chunk of the content volume.
