I decided to take a peek at Reddit to see what kind of activity is happening, a good handful of the subreddits I am subscribed to are still super active with posts and commenters.
There’s quite a few news articles on the front page regarding Spez and the blackouts, I am surprised those articles are even still up for people to see.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit’s and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted…
Perhaps there is some AI activity going on, I mean it’s kind of easy to do in this day and age. You just prompt an army of AI bots to defend Reddit, and try to keep users engaged.
I am so happy I found Lemmy, and I am so happy that there is a comfortable level of activity. Sure it’s only a small fraction of what Reddit is activity wise, but it’s so much more hearty and welcoming.
Reddit has just turned into one big toxic mess. Lemmy reminds me of what Reddit used to be 10 years ago.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit’s and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted…
Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit. So now pro-Reddit content is being upvoted.
Thing is, all the people in favor of the protest left Reddit.
Except the mods. Now they’re getting abuse from those that didn’t care about the protests.
I’m sorry but the protest was a complete failure that accomplished nothing. The real successful protest would be making a sub on here and redirecting their uses to it.
Lemmy went from a few thousand users with very little activity to 100k+ with constant activity. It was a massive success.
We don’t know yet. If it’s sticky then I would wholeheartedly agree. But if activity drops to pre protest levels in a month then eh…
Yeah, we don’t know yet. On the one hand, it’s still the early days of (some) people leaving Reddit - and who knows if they won’t go back.
On the other hand, the API payment structure and the shutdown of 3PAs hasn’t even happened yet. Even people who are completely oblivious to the situation but who are using a 3PA will have to decide if they’ll be able to deal with the shitty official app, if they’ll just stop browsing Reddit on mobile, or if they’re willing to take a look at alternatives.
I guess we will see.
For a website with over 800 million monthly users, 100k is nothing, barely even a rounding error. You can say it was a success for lemmy, but as far as the actual goal of the protest it achieved basically nothing.
As Lemmy grows reddit will shrink. Reddit might always be around, but that’s the same crowd that uses Facebook. Stragglers be damned, many users found a new home and that’s a big win in my books. The rest were shown how shitty and incompetent the management is at Reddit, and it’ll only get worse until they lose more and more users.
And when Lemmy becomes compatible with the wider activitypub network, we’ll gain another 9M users. (Its also closer to 200k now I believe.)
I’m willing to bet even if that were true a good portion of those are fake or a person with multiple accounts.
Over 800 million monthly users, really? :D
Different sources have different numbers. One says 800 million, one says 400 million, the point is that lemmy poaching a couple hundred thousand users is nothing to reddit. If lemmy has 200k users that left reddit, even if we assume the smaller value of 400 million reddit users then that’s only 0.05% of reddit users that left.
What percentage of Reddit users are actually contributing versus just showing up to consume? I’d suspect it’s a very small percentage of that total. If that smaller group migrates away in more significant number, then that’s the real impact. The consumers will show up wherever the content goes.
I wouldn’t say it accomplished nothing. I clearly motivated a bunch of people to start investing in other platforms. Platforms like Kbin and Lemmy now have a lot more mods and developers contributing. It gave alternatives MUCH needed attention. Mos of us had never even heard about these platforms a few weeks ago.
We will get a second influx on July 1st as well, so we need to work had at maintaining activity and community growth in the meantime.
What we have now is already fairly good.
And that’s something that’s easy to forget once you’ve made the change. Uprooting something you use daily, to move to a new platform which feels new and different, takes quite a bit of mental effort and requires you to accept some anxiety, as you wean yourself off your habits. But when the power users go, and the new place becomes more familiar and understood, the rest will follow eventually as every step becomes easier to accept.
I deleted my reddit account years ago and lurked only because trying to interact there was a cesspool. Learning about the alternatives and seeing how well behaved it is over here on lemmy is a breath of fresh air. Sure there isn’t as much content yet but it’ll come. Reddit wasn’t an overnight success either.
I feel after the 3rd party apps get killed off we’ll start seeing a slow trickle of users after the initial flood once the ones that stuck around start realizing the content that’s left in reddit has become low effort bot posts and spam.
Why spoil a good thing? The protest was basically the best they could do, got tons of attention and media.
Obviously time will tell if this actually is the downturn for Reddit, but belittling their efforts just because they didn’t redirect to Lemmy seems a bit entitled.
I actually found Lemmy from a post doing exactly what you said: subreddit went dark, with a stickied post directing people where to go. And here I am! Rock me like a hurricane.
This may just an old interwebz man talking, but I’d say “Don’t worry.”
It’s not a 1:1, but this is similar to what happened with Digg in the mid 2000s. I was there. I migrated from there to Reddit - specifically because Digg had decided to ignore its vocal user base and fundamentally change what the site was.
It ultimately resulted in this :
Worth noting that the main migration happened in 2007 and start of 2008, but look how it managed to drag on for another 4 years before really dying.
I think the same will happen here - like there’ll be a lot of users on Reddit still, but it’ll be heavily corporate controlled and moderated, and most comments will be on the level of “Putin small pp” etc.
I suspect that some of the main subreddits - funny, aww, and pics, for example - could be populated entirely by bots and a lot of people would still browse through them. If you’re just idling through looking for a little dopamine, then r/aww and r/pics are kind of like instagram or tiktok. From Reddit’s perspective, those are the important subs, where the smaller ones where you can find good discussion and insightful answers don’t get enough views to serve enough ads to affect their bottom line.
Those subs could just be replaced with random bot reposts from the last decade. Actually, I think that’s most of the content already. Tho r/pics going full Sexy John Oliver today was hilarious. I even broke my personal embargo to go and vote for the SJO format (and to do a daily re-delete of any of my comments which might have been restored).
Wow, I didn’t realize the Reddit to Digg migration was so drawn out. Do we know how big the initial migration to Reddit actually was in terms of user count? It seems like Lemmy/Kbin are seeded with a few tens of thousands of users, and I wonder how it compares.
The main migration was actually in 2010 after the v4 redesign. Digg wasn’t dying in 2007-2009, it was one of the hottest websites on the internet.
Hmm something happened in 2008-2009 though, as it was when I migrated and I remember loads of people were doing it at the same time.
It might have just been Reddit having a cleaner, more direct interface, and a better community.
The site started to go downhill around that period because of power users and some started to move to reddit, but it was still pretty niche.
I stayed on digg until v4, then I moved with the masses over to reddit. They lost over 30% of their users that month!
The scale is so much larger now. Reddit could lose 1m users and its a blip.
Reddit’s actual daily users only equates to about half that number. While an interesting metric, Google search rates don’t equate to users. Heck, my searching for that information contributed to that and I didn’t click through to Reddit once.
That is a good point, today internet is mainstream, and heavily indexed websites are much more reliant on such type of interactions than forums and social media were when digg was big, so reddit has a comparatively huge influx of click from google searches alone. However, that might change as they are making the web inferface worse and worse to redirect the traffic towards the app. If reddit becomes app-centric, i don’t kno what may change given how it is so reliant on google searches.___
Not if the redditors that leave are the ones that do the majority of the moderating and quality posting. If the quality goes way down, people will look elsewhere. Also, I have a feeling we’ll see a much bigger migration once the third party apps all die on the 30th.
Thats true. I am continuing to keep using reddit to spread awareness of Lemmy so that people know it exists.
Well, “unfortunately” some of them will stay up since they are classified as open-source and non-profit by reddit. So, while I’m glad that these projects live on, it will certainly soften the blow for Reddit on 30th.
Iam not to use. Before I left reddit. Most of it was just reposted tiktoks and just general low quality posts on the big subreddits already
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I have noticed a huge quality decline on reddit. I hope people get fed up and search for other options.
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I’m new as well. Made my account a few days ago. First time participating in the fediverse and I am loving it so far. I love the vibe and building new communities. I wish I better knew how to spread the word because up until last week I never knew any of this existed.
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There’s been so many threads I’ve read on lemmy where pretty much everyone was able to voice disagreement in some way, but the discourse refrained from being toxic. That seemed so very rare on Reddit. I wonder if this is due to the lack of the total karma metric or something.
I think that it’s because the bad users aren’t here yet.
Reddit app is fine for me. Y’all some cry babies.
Reddit app lacks efficient Mod tools and accessibility settings.
That’s not my problem.
This is the attitude of Reddit rn. Shit’s disgusting in all honesty. It’s genuinely depressing how people try their hardest not to push the world to be better.
This is just how people act in general. It doesn’t affect them so it isn’t their problem.
Humans suck, don’t we?
Yes. The only thing we can do is strive to be better ourselves.
I was just thinking how nice it would be in an environment where people don’t just dismiss things that don’t affect them… and circled back to your comment upon the realisation that humans charge an arm and a leg to people for the privillege to be in a nice environment.
We’re paying for the lack of meaningful human interaction in our own lives. We’re slowly realizing it was there along with no need for pretext. Lemmy has been super thought provoking for me tbh. I’ve always been a thinker, but I numbed myself to get by. The whole idea of paying for hapiness doesnt sit right with me at all. I’m here now. We need to keep pushing to get better as people. 💪
I think we are all really smart, here. And look ma! No hands! I’m gonna be a real boy!
Well it’s going to be dominated by the people that are ok with the changes since the people that weren’t left the site.
a lot of them are chatgpt accounts approved by Reddit. Same Reason r/programming went down since many people took notice of it
Funny yet sad that it’s come to reddit botting their own platform to try and shore up support for themselves.
I’m sure advertisers are lining up to market to entirely scripted customers!
https://browsermedia.agency/blog/new-reddit-ads-products-launched/
This allows advertisers to appear in active conservations on Reddit, containing/about their chosen keywords. Advertisers can input relevant keywords, create ad copy containing those keywords and show ads to Reddit users that are interested in those terms.
actually, you couldn’t be more right. That’s fucking right you thought it was a fucking comment but it was actually ad by reddit
Actually now that you’ve brought up the idea, how would advertiser’s even know that they’re hitting real people when they’re looking to pay money for exposure?
I don’t think they can really know. Even if reddit provides proof that they are not doing stuff server-side they could still use regular bots with accounts. Also they need a good moderation quality to minimize third party bots.
This can harm their reputation heavily and it is almost impossible to rebuild that.
I’ve posted a comment, I think on another instance that highlights something similar
They’ve been botting their own platform since DAY ONE.
I read some of them. The ones about “alienating users” are funny. I’m like, no shit Sherlock, that’s part of the point. That’s why it’s effective.
They can’t admit they’re addicted. I was a daily Reddit user. Stopped going there once the blackout hits. And now, the subs I care about are still private. Good.
And somehow, I turned out fine.
I had to move the app from where it usally was and replaced it with jerboa so I can redirect the muscle memory
Same. I’m desperately hoping the Sync for reddit developer goes through with an app for federated, I think he mentioned lemmy.
Jerboa now lives where my Relay app was
It took a bit of work to subscribe to enough active communities from different instances to replace Reddit, along with other settings tweaks, but now I’m content with how many threads and comments I am getting.
I had only planned on skipping Reddit for 2 days, but now I’m disgusted enough with the backstabbing that I have a grotty feeling using Reddit. 12 years of daily participation and all of a sudden it’s not the same.
Yeah for me it really just puts a sour taste in my mouth and I just can’t be bothered
Yeah i deleted all comments and my account yesterday. I think I’ve been on reddit for 9 years, but fuck them. I will probably still use it in the browser when I am looking for specific info, but i am done with doomscrolling every few minutes.
Same here. Yesterday, I had a moment of clarity, logged off, deleted RIF, and came here. That quickly, this is my thing, now.
Same. It’s like a moment of clarity from detoxification. I don’t miss Reddit as much as I thought I would. I just read subs like news and worldnews through an RSS app now.
I actually comment a lot, at least one a day. Presumably these are lurkers who think they are owed content.
Surprisingly I don’t miss it. I have Discord and Kbin. I’ll probably cease browsing Reddit on mobile once RiF dies.
Interesting how a lot of people are going back to RSS in lieu of reddit, myself included
We have come full circle
Addicted to reading comments, I can’t say I’m any better lol
But I do my best to contribute in a positive manner, share bits and pieces of my journey or what I observe in others that I find funny or imagine would inspire good 👍
I caught my husband on reddit yesterday. Went into full attack mode, explained the blackout, and offered to help him switch to Lemmy. Showed him that some if his subs have lems and even tried to sway him with lemmy porn. He didn’t care…at all!!! Now, if i want to read anything on reddit i have to go outside or to the bathroom so he doesn’t see me.
Look people have different motivations for different things, like it or not, not everyone is going to take the API issue and greed of a for profit company as a deal breaker, and I personally dont think we should lash out at those people. At the end of the day essentially all they are doing is choseing a different social media service.
Also may I ask why you “went into attack mode” when you still go onto reddit?
Use of the word ‘attack’ was supposed to be humorous. I was just harassingg him for being on during the 'blackout ’ days and trying to get him to try lemmy. I’m shifting…still look to see if favorite subs have been active, share lemmy links if there is one, screenshot some old stuff, …
Now that’s what I call funny lol 🤣
wait, where’s the Lemmy porn?
That’s the CP-allowing community. Don’t spread that cancer around…
Looking up on that sub and all the current talk, sounds like there was some issue where pedos thought it was okay to post CP there, but it seems under control now.
Probably not them allowing CP in the first place, so much as them struggling to moderate fast enough at first. Make sense for communities exploding this rapidly, and nsfw communities have always and will continue to need to constantly be tightly moderating to get any illegal shit out of there ASAP.
I don’t know what cp is, but whenever i set to ALL / NEW and scroll, every few posts theres a blurred out one.
I don’t know what cp is
cp = “child porn” but likely not in the way you’re imagining. A certain subset of people think that “child porn” is any drawing of a girl, or any photograph of a real woman under the age of 35.
Edit: Oh, look. Angry downvotes and not a single attempt to refute me. Guess I was right.
Uhh, what the fuck?
Survivorship bias. I’ve only been active in posts about leaving Reddit or pushing for change on Reddit lately. Everybody else who cares either left or is doing the same as me.
so I remember seeing there are tools for mass deletion of your reddit comments, I wonder if theres a tool to go and edit them all to say things
Yeah, there’s also tools that will create a local backup of your comments before deleting them
Yes, I did that like many others before me. Here you go: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Some reported that edited/deleted posts/comments reverted back ‘by themselves’. I’m not sure wether that’s reddit restoring “their content”, or wether it’s because some content was locked in blackout subreddits at the time of editing/deleting. Either way, it’s probably good to check again after a few days and repeat the process.
My comments are partially edited, partially original. Will plow them again tomorrow.
The users that believed in/supported the protests and are most against the changes are still not there. So you’re left with the echo chamber of doom scroll monkeys that need their fix. Quite appropriate for reddit, honestly.
This tracks for me, Ive been on reddit for over 10 years and haven’t been back since I found Lemmy and kbin on the 11th.
often, when someone suggests lemmy, they dont get upvotes, but people replying that you can’t go there because its full of tankies, get many upvotes. I saw several times: this subreddit cant move to lemmy, that would exclude people like me, where lemmy is blocked at work.
What kind of firewall blocks lemmy but not reddit?
and which lemmy instances?
I noticed earlier today that all the top posts were reposts of previous top posts on each main sub.
Like they literally just reposted all the top posts of all time.
That’s the kind of thing that is possible when they own it all.
Lots and lots of gold too. Has anyone ever bought it? I have my doubts.
As much as I feel that Reddit was pretty underhanded, I doubt that they’re using AI to fake content to keep people on the site 'cause (a) people would catch on pretty fast by looking at the history of the account and (b) running LLMs probably cost more than the earned advertising revenue.
What’s more likely is that people/bots have always been reposting for karma a while
I don’t think they’ve used AI to do anything or even create fake content. They just reposted things that are already known to be popular, so that new users will experience good content.
Or maybe if Reddit didn’t do it, then it’s just karmabots taking the front-page, because there is no good OC to beat them.
Personally I think Spez and his staff are currently glued to the screen and handing out votes and gold for whatever isn’t about the protest.
This happened long ago. Bots would repost frontpage content that’d past the year-long wait to avoid repost detection. Gif subs would be very quiet without that kind of content being recycled
Occam’s razor tells me this ain’t no AI. Just people who DGAF and want their fun website back.
There are a lot of people who don’t hate the mobile app or only use the website and they probably see this blackout as a huge waste of time.
Personally I’ve moved on. It’s time for the Fediverse to take over social media and forums. It really is the future and I’m here for it.
Occam’s razor tells me this ain’t no AI. Just people who DGAF and want their fun website back.
I would believe that too but at the risk of sounding paranoid, I’ve seen some of these subs open up in real time and it’s always accompanied by some really weird posting/voting patterns. I’ve also seen negative or questioning comments deleted in seconds.
I’ve spent enough time dabbling with AI to conclude that anyone with enough money, can generate enough AI content to drive product forward.
Reddit is now a product, if people are leaving Reddit in droves through the standpoint of a CEO I would think of all kinds of ways to keep the product interesting which means putting on an AI puppet show.
If you go shopping on amazon, often shitty products are reviewed positively by bots to try and drive sales.
Reddit is no different. The money is there, the technology is there, and above it all the greed is there.
It’s no longer paranoia, its more than plausible.
Millions of users are about to stop using the platform overnight when they nuke the third party apps. The culture is going to change dramatically no matter what.
Yeah, probably. I’m afraid they’re going to keep a few 3P apps up, though (they already have started this process) long enough for people to migrate to their official app (because of NSFW content no longer being accessible through the API). So this may take a few years.
I think this is partially resulting from the bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn’t be exploring these spaces the same way.
The reality is that reddit today ISN’T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of “redditors” support the strikes, but I’d believe that a majority of people who use reddit don’t.
People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That’s what people are in larger groups. That’s who reddit is now designed to appeal to.
I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don’t expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.
I think reddit may become what facebook has become. I still use fb for marketplace and niche hobby and local groups. I can see reddit going the same way. I wonder what tech they’re going to throw all of their money at…
Yeah I can see this happening, the one reddit sub I still check in on my local city sub.
I wish people would just drop it. Do not visit Reddit. The blackouts are meh, to actually be effective, do not visit. No clicks, no views, no content.
They gotta do a coordinated Leave Reddit Day like how they did with Digg
That was what the blackout was supposed to be- no clicks, no content. It had some effect but perhaps not the overwhelming effect that was desired. A lot of Reddit traffic now is just idiots scrolling in the app who probably never even notice the blackout let alone care.
That said- I think the effects of the last few weeks are going to take a longer time (many weeks or a few months or more) to truly play out. For me at least, the biggest effect is now I’m diversifying- while my social media time WAS almost 100% Reddit, now I’m trying to do as much Lemmy as I can. The bubble of trust is popped. Unless Spez gets fired and the Reddit board or his successor publicly walks this back and makes commitments to openness, I don’t see myself putting any trust at all in them going forward. Too bad really :(
